Donald Trump focuses on New York Times 'going against social media guidelines' while ignoring growing diplomatic row over tweets

Donald Trump has tweeted repeated messages about the use of social media, while failing to address a growing diplomatic row about his own tweeting.

The President has become embroiled in an unprecedented international row after he retweeted posts from Britain First, the far-right extremist group. Theresa May criticised those posts, to which Mr Trump replied telling her "not to focus on him".

Now Mr Trump has failed to address that diplomatic crisis. Instead, his first tweets the morning after the attack on the British prime minister were about the media's use of social media, and their failure to uphold proper standards.

"The Failing @nytimes has totally gone against the Social Media Guidelines that they installed to preserve some credibility after many of their biased reporters went Rogue," he wrote in one of a series of posts. Another said that the paper had become a "virtual lobbyist" for the Democrats because of their criticism of the President's tax bill.

The attack on the paper came as his row with Theresa May and her Government appeared to escalate. Numerous ministers have criticised the President, and some politicians have suggested that his planned state visit to the UK should be cancelled.

Cabinet minister Sajid Javid, for instance, said that the President "has endorsed the views of a vile, hate-filled racist organisation that hates me and people like me. He is wrong and I refuse to let it go and say nothing.”

Another tweet from Mr Trump the same morning focused on North Korea, attacking Kim Jong-un and saying it is "hard to believe his people, and the military, put up with living in such horrible conditions". None of the three tweets sent in the aftermath of the row addressed his controversial tweet directed towards Theresa May.

Mr Trump's tweeted had tagged the prime minister – after initially including the wrong account – and took issue with her spokesperson having criticised his retweeting of the far-right group.

".@Theresa_May, don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom," he posted. "We are doing just fine!"

Mr Trump sent the tweet directed at Ms May overnight, UK time. It was followed up with a whole set of entirely separate posts, most of which focused on the progress of his troubled tax legislation, though there was no response from Theresa May or her staff until the morning.

A spokesman said the prime minister was focused on dealing with extremism.

"The overwhelming majority of Muslims in this country are law abiding people who abhor extremism in all its forms," he said.

"The Prime Minister has been clear over a number of years that where Islamist extremism does exist it should be tackled head on.

"We are working hard to do that both at home and internationally including with our US partners. The Prime Minister is fully focused on dealing with extremism."