Senator John McCain takes aim at Trump over press treatment

Donald Trump's outbursts against the mainstream media in the US have led to veiled criticism from prominent senator and former presidential candidate John McCain, who warned that suppressing the media is "how dictators get started".

McCain has been one of Trump's main critics on the Republican side during the former reality television star's election campaign and since he was inaugurated as the 45th President of the US.

The former general spoke to NBC's Meet the Press programme on Sunday, following the President's claims that several media organisations were "an enemy of the American people".

"I hate the press. I hate you especially," McCain said. "But the fact is we need you. We need a free press. We must have it. It's vital."

"If you want to preserve — I'm very serious now — if you want to preserve democracy as we know it, you have to have a free and many times adversarial press," McCain said. "And without it, I am afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time. That's how dictators get started."

Arizona senator McCain was quick to quash any doubts over whether he believed Trump to be a dictator or not, but pointed to history as an example of how a restricted press can lead to less checks and balances.

"They get started by suppressing free press," McCain said of dictators. "In other words, a consolidation of power when you look at history, the first thing that dictators do is shut down the press. And I'm not saying that President Trump is trying to be a dictator. I'm just saying we need to learn the lessons of history."

Trump gave a fiery press conference last week in which he accused the likes of NBC, CNN and the New York Times of peddling fake news.

He later tweeted that "the FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!".