PALM BEACH, Fla. — President Trump on Sunday ratcheted up a dispute with The Wall Street Journal, accusing the newspaper of purposely misquoting him as saying in an interview that he has a good relationship with the leader of North Korea.

In two tweets from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., the president applied a familiar denigrating term — “fake news’’ — to a Journal report Thursday on North Korea.

The Journal reported that Trump had boasted during an interview: “I probably have a very good relationship with Kim Jong Un. I have relationships with people. I think you people are surprised.’’

Trump insisted that he had actually started his sentence with the contraction “I’d,’’ not “I,’’ which would change the meaning from a surprising boast of an existing relationship into a prediction that he could have a good relationship with the dictator if he wanted it.

“I said ‘I’d have a good relationship with Kim Jong Un,’ a big difference,’’ Trump wrote on Twitter. “Fortunately we now record conversations with reporters and they knew exactly what I said and meant. They just wanted a story. Fake news!’’

Trump’s attack came hours after Sarah Huckabee Sanders, White House press secretary, posted on Twitter what she called an “official audio’’ revealing that the paper misquoted the president.

She also posted an image with the words “fake news.

Later Sunday, Sanders wrote on Twitter that the White House first requested a correction from The Journal on Friday, the day after the interview.

The Journal responded to the president’s accusations by posting its own audio recording and a statement standing by its report of what he had said.

“We have reviewed the audio from our interview with President Trump, as well as the transcript provided by an external service, and stand by what we reported,’’ it said.

It is difficult to tell from the two audio clips of the quote whether the president’s complaint has merit.