Donald Trump attacks Alec Baldwin in furious, misspelt early-morning Twitter post

Donald Trump has posted a furious, rambling and misspelt tweet about Alec Baldwin, the actor famous for impersonating him on Saturday Night Live.

In an early morning post that rambled on multiple tangents, misspelt the word "dying" and called Mr Baldwin by the wrong name, Mr Trump suggested that the impersonation of him on the programme was painful to watch.

Update: Baldwin responds.

"Alex Baldwin, whose dieing mediocre career was saved by his impersonation of me on SNL, now says playing DJT was agony for him," he wrote. "Alex, it was also agony for those who were forced to watch. You were terrible. Bring back Darrell Hammond, much funnier and a far greater talent!"

The post was a reference to a Hollywood Reporter interview in which Mr Baldwin said of the impression that "every time I do it now, it’s like agony. Agony. I can’t". He seemed to suggest that he was so upset about the President's continuing popularity that portraying him hurt, and indicated that he may not continue to do the impersonation.

Darrell Hammond is an impressionist who portrayed Mr Trump on Saturday Night Live until 2016, when producers decided that Alec Baldwin would take over the job. Mr Hammond had played the role for more than a decade, impersonating Mr Trump long before he launched his bid for president and losing it as the election approached.

The post was deleted soon after and not immediately re-posted, as usually happens when the President misspells a word. In its place, he tweeted another message about his new tariffs on the steel trade with China.

Some time later, the Saturday Night Live tweet returned, with the spelling of "dying" and "Alec Baldwin" corrected. The post also had some other small tweaks: he changed the reference to "DJT" to "me", so that he was no longer speaking about himself in the third person, and removed some other words.

Both of the posts went up unusually early for Mr Trump, arriving before 6am local time.

Mr Trump was once famous for using his Twitter account to attack celebrities as various as Barack Obama and Robert Pattinson. Since he took office, those attacks have mostly centred on celebrities who criticise him, including a post where he called Meryl Streep "over-rated".