Donald Trump gloats over staff 'fleeing' New York Times after opinion writer Bari Weiss quits

US President Donald Trump said The New York Times was "under siege" after the dramatic resignation of Bari Weiss, an opinion editor at the paper.

Ms Weiss, 36, published an open letter to the paper on Tuesday accusing it of kowtowing to a Twitter mob. She also claimed she had been bullied by colleagues for publishing controversial views.

"Wow," the president tweeted. "The @nytimes is under siege. The real reason is that it has become Fake News. They never covered me correctly - they blew it. People are fleeing, a total mess!"

His son Don Jr said that Ms Weiss had resigned "in stunning fashion" and saying she "exposes the Times’ rampant attacks on anyone who breaks from the far-left narrative."

Marco Rubio, the Republican senator for Florida, said her resignation letter was "powerful".

Even Andrew Yang, a former Democrat contender for the presidency, joined in, noting: "If someone like @bariweiss feels like she can’t do her best work at the @nytimes they should make some real changes over there."

Ms Weiss, who was an opinion editor at The Wall Street Journal before joining The New York Times, said the paper was blinded by its liberal readership and, despite famously misreading the 2016 election, had refused to attempt to see other points of view.

"The lessons that ought to have followed the election - lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism, and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society - have not been learned," she wrote.

Her resignation came after a furore over a decision to publish a comment article by ultra-conservative Republican senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who called for the military to be sent in to US cities to quell the George Floyd protests.

James Bennet, the opinion editor, was forced to resign for the piece, and a second editor was reassigned.

Ms Weiss said that articles published by the paper "are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions."

She claimed she had suffered from hostility and harassment inside the newsroom.

"They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I’m “writing about the Jews again," she wrote. 

Eileen Murphy, a Times spokeswoman, said: "We're committed to fostering an environment of honest, searching and empathetic dialogue between colleagues, one where mutual respect is required of all."