Trump bashes CNN after retweeting 'Fox & Friends' four times

President Trump blasted CNN Tuesday morning in a series of tweets after three employees resigned in the wake of a story about a Russian investment fund that the network retracted and deleted from its website.

Trump, who has repeatedly labeled CNN "fake news" and whose administration has made it a habit of antagonizing the network, appeared to revel in the fact that three journalists, including a Pulitzer Prize-winner and a finalist, were out at the network.

Trump's criticism didn't end with CNN. The President used the opportunity to call out several media companies that have published stories critical of his administration, labeling them all "fake news."

CNN responded directly to Trump's claim that the network's ratings are down.

The president hasn't kept his disdain for mainstream media outlets a secret, but one major news network he never calls out is Fox News.

On Tuesday, he kept that trend alive by retweeting four separate Fox & Friends stories, including one featuring former Breakfast on Broad host Jillian Mele. He also retweeted a link to a book being sold by Fox News host Eric Bolling (retailing for $26.99), who bragged that "President Trump has a copy."

Trump did not weigh in last month after Fox News was forced to retract a story about a slain Democratic National Committee staffer, Seth Rich, that fueled unproven conspiracy theories alleging that Rich provided thousands of internal DNC emails to Wikileaks.

No one at Fox News resigned or lost their jobs following that retraction.

Several Fox News pundits, including hosts Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, leaped on the news of the resignations at CNN as fitting a narrative the network often pushes about mainstream news outlets promoting a liberal agenda.

Carlson said on his show Monday night that CNN "is no longer just a news organization. It is a campaign with a political mission, run, not surprisingly, by a man named Jeff Zucker, who once expressed interest in running for office himself."

Other conservative pundits weren't as hard on CNN. New York Post columnist and Commentary editor John Podhoretz called the network's response to the retraction an "impressive and decisive action," noting that "yelling 'Fake News' " was unfair. That led to a wave of criticism from Trump supporters, something he responded to in a subsequent tweet.

New York Post opinion editor Seth Mandel also praised the network for "taking this really seriously," noting CNN is setting an example for media accountability.

Three journalists in the network's investigative unit — reporter and one-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Thomas Frank, editor and Pulitzer Prize winner Eric Lichtblau, and Lex Haris, who oversaw the unit — have all left CNN in the wake of a story about a Russian investment fund that the network deleted and retracted from its website.

"In the aftermath of the retraction of a story published on CNN.com, CNN has accepted the resignations of the employees involved in the story's publication," a spokesman for the network said in a statement.

CNN has not offered any details why the report was pulled, other than it reportedly did not go through the network's editorial processes. Frank's story reported that the Senate Intelligence Committee was investigating a "$10 billion Russian investment fund whose chief executive met with a member of President Donald Trump's transition team four days before Trump's inauguration."

The story was posted on Thursday night, but didn't receive any air time on CNN, according to Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter. By Friday, the story was removed from the website and scrubbed from the network's social media accounts, replaced with an editor's note noting the piece "did not meet CNN's editorial standards and has been retracted."