United States President Donald Trump has cancelled the White House’s subscription to The New York Times and The Washington Post, which have published critical coverage of his administration since he came to power, The New York Times reported on Thursday.

Trump has often targeted the media, calling the press “enemies of the people”, and purveyors of “fake news”. He has often accused news organisations of treason and called for lax rules to make filing libel cases against journalists easier.

The Trump administration also called on other federal agencies to end their subscriptions to the newspapers. “Not renewing subscriptions across all federal agencies will be a significant cost saving – hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars will be saved,” White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement.

Trump first talked about cancelling his subscription to the papers on Monday in an interview with Fox News anchor Sean Hannity. He called The New York Times “a fake newspaper” and added that “we don’t even want it in the White House anymore”.

“We are going to probably terminate that and The Washington Post,” he told Hannity. “They’re fake.” The White House subscribes to copies of newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Financial Times and The New York Post.

This is not the first time the US president has got into a fight with the media. After the midterm elections in 2018, CNN White House reporter Jim Acosta’s credentials were revoked after a confrontation with the president in a news conference. Trump restored Acosta’s press pass following an order by a federal judge.

Representatives for The Washington Post and The New York Times did not comment on the president’s latest tiff with the media.

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