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Trump compares Mueller probe to 1950s McCarthyism

President Trump criticized a New York Times story on Twitter Sunday, comparing the Mueller investigation to the one run by Sen. Joseph McCarthy during the 1950s.

President Donald Trump lashed out angrily Sunday morning on Twitter, labeling a report in The New York Times that a White House counsel cooperated with Robert Mueller's investigation as a "fake story" and comparing the probe to the McCarthyism of the 1950s.

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The Times reported that White House lawyer Donald McGahn had participated in at least three interviews with the special counsel that stretched to approximately 30 hours.

The president tweeted, "We are now in period with Mueller and his gang that make Joseph McCarthy look like a baby! Rigged Witch Hunt!"

"This is why the Fake News Media has become the Enemy of the People," Trump wrote in another tweet. "So bad for America!"

McGahn and his lawyer, William A. Burck, said they believed the president was setting them up to take the blame for any possible illegal acts of obstruction, the Times reported.

McCarthy, a U.S. senator from Wisconsin, spent nearly five years attempting to root out Communist sympathizers in the U.S. government. He was censured by the Senate after he attacked the Army during hearings in 1954.