The first gripe came three minutes into President Donald Trump's first solo news conference on Thursday, when he accused reporters of ignoring a poll showing him with a 55 percent approval rating - a figure at odds with most other surveys. From there, the president's criticism of the media went from barbed to personal in a cutting assessment of what he viewed as unfair coverage of his first few weeks in office - a period that has seen a succession of crises. On a day when he ceded a loss over a signature policy in a federal appeals court, had to replace his labor secretary pick and faced questions over the resignation of his national security adviser, Trump chose to make the media a central focus of an unusually long and combative presidential news conference. WATCH THE FULL PRESS CONFERENCE HERE: When asked by journalists of contacts between his presidential campaign and Russian operatives, he deflected the questions and put the focus instead on what he described as "illegal" gover...

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