A press conference like no other
Trump fronts media for first time as leader and unloads a torrent of grievances
The leaks are real. But the news about them is fake. The White House is a fine- tuned machine. Russia is a ruse.
For its stunning moments and memorable one- liners, Donald Trump’s first solo news conference as President has no rivals in recent memory. For all the trappings of the White House and traditions of the forum, his performance was one of a swaggering, blustery campaigner, armed with grievances and primed to unload on his favourite targets.
In nearly an hour and a half at the podium, Trump bullied reporters, dismissed facts and then cracked a few caustic jokes — a combination that once made the candidate irresistible cable TV fodder. Now in office, he went even further, blaming the media for all but sinking his not- yetlaunched attempt to “make a deal” with Moscow.
That matters, Trump said in one of his many improvisational asides, because he’d been briefed and “I can tell you . . . nuclear holocaust would be like no other”.
This was his and his aides’ attempt to get the boss his groove back. Trump used the event to try to claw his young Administration back from the brink after a defeat in court and the forced resignation of his top national security adviser.
He taunted reporters and waved away their attempts to fact- check him in real time. He ( incorrectly) touted his Electoral College total and repeatedly blasted his November opponent — somehow mentioning Hillary Clinton more than anyone else in his defence of his Administration’s early days. He bragged that his White House is “a fine- tuned machine” and claimed “there has never been a presidency that has done so much in such a short period of time”. If only the news media would give him credit.
Over and over, he accused the political press of being dishonest and suggested that any negative coverage of his administration was “fake news”.
He unloaded a torrent of grievances while positioning himself as the stand- in for the everyman, who, he declared, hates and distrusts reporters as much as he does.
“The press — the public doesn’t believe you people anymore. Now, maybe I had something to do with that. I don’t know. But they don’t believe you,”
The hastily called news conference was not on the White House’s original schedule for yesterday, and some of Trump’s own aides were surprised when the President let slip at a morning meeting that he would hold the event in the East Room just hours later.
The performance was vintage Trump, a throwback to the messy, zinger- filled news conferences he held during the early stages of his campaign. And, when combined with a rally slated for tomorrow in Florida, it appeared to be the start of a onet wo punch meant to re- energise a President whose White House in recent days has been buffeted by crisis and paralysed by dysfunction.
Trump was eager to assign blame elsewhere, ignoring the nation’s healthy economy and relative peace when he took office to say “to be honest, I inherited a mess, a mess, at home and abroad, a mess”.
He mostly blamed the media for his woes, rebuffing suggestions that he was undermining confidence in the press or threatening the First Amendment by trying to convince the nation that “the press honestly is out of control”. “The press has become so dishonest that if we don’t talk about it, we are doing a tremendous disservice to the American people,” he said. “Tremendous disservice.”
Never before has a president stood in the White House and so publicly maligned the press or attacked reporters by name, according to presidential historians. Not even Richard Nixon in the days of Watergate.
“It was bizarre theatre,” said Douglas Brinkley, a professor of history at Rice University. “He turned a presidential press conference into a reality TV show in which he can be the star and browbeat anyone who objects to him with the power of his office.”
Douglas Brinkley, a professor of history at Rice University. “