United States President Donald Trump on Wednesday night announced the winners of his “Fake News Award”. Apart from his regular targets CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post, the president’s list also included ABC and Newsweek.

Nobel Prize laureate Paul Krugman, who writes opinion columns for The New York Times, is at the top of the list. Krugman had argued on the day Trump won the election that the global economy would never recover. Later, he went on to write that Trump’s inexperience on economic policy and his unpredictability may further damage the economy. CNN’s name appears four times.

The Republican Party’s website crashed minutes after Trump tweeted a link to the list, reported AFP. Initially, Trump had said that the awards would be announced on January 8. It was postponed to January 17, as the White House struggled to explain the purpose of the announcement, reported The Guardian.

After the awards were announced, Trump said there were many great reporters and loads of good news “despite some very corrupt and dishonest media coverage”. “Together there is nothing we can’t overcome – even a very biased media. We are making America great again!”

Hours before Trump’s announcement, two of his own party senators rebuked him for his “disregard for the truth”. John McCain and Jeff Flake, both senators from Arizona, criticised the president for his apathy towards the media.

In an op-ed published on Tuesday, McCain said Trump’s attacks on the media “provided cover for repressive regimes to follow suit”. He argued that the phrase “fake news” was being used to silence reporters and undermine political opponents. “We cannot afford to abdicate America’s longstanding role as the defender of human rights and democratic principles throughout the world,” wrote McCain.

Flake, on the other hand, cited the example of Josef Stalin as he denounced Trump’s war against the media. “It is a testament to the condition of our democracy that our own president uses words infamously spoken by Josef Stalin to describe his enemies.”