Washington: US President Donald Trump has described journalists as the most dishonest human beings on Earth and warned them of consequences for “falsely” reporting that less number of people attended his inauguration.

During a visit to the CIA headquarters on Saturday, Mr Trump said he has been “running a war” with the media. “We had a massive field of people... I get up this morning, I turn on one of the networks, and they show an empty field,” he said. The President said the reason for him visiting the CIA headquarters was that the media “made it sound like I had a feud with the intelligence community”.

“They are among the most dishonest human beings on Earth,” he said. He then recounted an incident about a story that Mr Trump took down the bust of Martin Luther King. “There was a cameraman in front of it. So a reporter writes a story about I took it down. I would never do that... But this is how dishonest the media is,” he said.