US President Donald Trump has described as "terrible" the leaking of details of his fiery phone call with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
The president, speaking for 75 minutes at a suddenly-announced press conference at the White House on Thursday, attacked the media, labelled the Russian call controversy that led to the resignation of his national security adviser Michael Flynn as fake news and said he did not think Russian President Vladimir Putin was testing him with recent military manoeuvres.
Mr Trump blamed remaining members of the Obama administration in the CIA, FBI and other US government agencies for leaking classified information, including details of his January 28 call with Mr Turnbull.
Mr Trump said it was "terrible it was leaked" and he was concerned what will happen when he has calls to discuss hot button issues including North Korea and the Middle-East.
"The same thing with Australia," Mr Trump, discussing the multiple leaks, told reporters.
"All of a sudden people are finding out exactly what took place.
"The same thing happened with respect to General Flynn.
"Everybody saw this.
"The first thing I thought of when I heard about it was , 'How does the press get this information that's classified. How do they do it? You know why? Because it is an illegal process and the press should be ashamed of themselves."
The press conference was described by Washington DC political veterans as unprecedented for its tone and topics discussed.
At one point Mr Trump, while discussing media stories involving the leaks, raised eyebrows when he said: "The leaks are absolutely real. The news is fake".
The president also falsely announced he scored more electoral college votes in last year's election win than any other president since Ronald Reagan.
A reporter pointed out three presidents who followed Mr Reagan, George HW Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, had more electoral college votes than Mr Trump.
"I was given that information," Mr Trump replied.
Mr Trump has only been in the White House for 28 days and has been besieged by controversy and reports of "Game of Thrones" style infighting by members of his team.
The billionaire rejected this and blamed the media for generating fake news.
"This administration is running like a fine-tuned machine," he said.
Mr Trump confirmed General Flynn was fired because he gave false information to Vice President Mike Pence on the pre-inauguration phone call the general had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
But, with the same breath Mr Trump defended General Flynn, saying he did not do anything wrong by calling Mr Kislyak because the Russian was one of 30 or so calls General Flynn made with representatives from other nations.
"Speaking for myself, I own nothing in Russia," Mr Trump said.
"I have no loans in Russia.
"I don't have any deals in Russia."
Mr Trump described as "not good" Russia's recent moves to place a spy ship off the US east coast, launch a ballistic missile and have aircraft buzz a US warship in the Black Sea.
Asked if he thought Mr Putin was testing him he replied: "I don't think so".
He said they were indications Mr Putin had decided, after the General Flynn controversy, Russia could not build a new relationship with the US.
"If you were Putin right now you would say, 'Hey, we're back to the old games with the US. There's no way Trump could ever do a deal with us'," Mr Trump said.
