Talker in chief

Get used to raucous presidential press conferences

Representatives of the media and as many of the American people as were interested got some 77 minutes of unbridled President Donald Trump in a hastily called press conference at the White House on Thursday. Subjects ranged from courts to pipelines to relations with Russia to the activities of Mr. Trump’s wife, Melania, and two of his children, Ivanka and Barron. The obvious reason for the press conference was the disarray that observers, from Congress and media, have been increasingly noting in Mr. Trump’s administration a month after the inauguration.

There were several major themes running through the president’s commentary. One was his insistence on his electoral victory: “I won. I won,” he said at one point. A second was his stormy relationship with the media, a subject he returned to five or six times. He accused the press of bias and hatred. At the same time he professed to enjoy the exchange with its representatives. It would also be hard for him to forget the role that media, especially TV, played in providing him a forum to present his case to be president during the campaign.

Mr. Trump continued to promise a lot on measures that had played a large role in his campaign. He claimed to have “inherited a mess” and repeated promises of jobs, reform of Obamacare, and “the massive rebuilding of the United States military.” He promised new executive action this week on banning the travel to the United States of citizens from questionable countries, a measure currently tied up in the U.S. courts.

He found repeated questions about the relationship between himself, his associates and Russia hard to shake off. Matters became especially sticky and heated as he tried to square praising Michael T. Flynn and having fired him as national security adviser. He tried blaming that collision on the media but ended up more credibly blaming the firing on Mr. Flynn’s having misled Vice President Mike Pence. He threw in at one point a “lifetime ban on lobbying for a foreign government” for government employees.

The overall Russian question proved hard to handle. Mr. Trump denied having any property, loans or deals in Russia — a dangerous contention because it’s verifiable, particularly if his tax returns were revealed. He claimed to want a “deal” with Russian President Vladimir Putin but also claimed that it would be difficult to negotiate now, given that the media had muddied the water, again a difficult contention given the gravity of the issues involved in U.S.-Russian relations. These include respect of weapons agreements, Russian meddling in the just-completed U.S. elections and messy issues around the world including Syria and Ukraine.

Mr. Trump indulged in his usual self-congratulatory characterizations of himself, the size of his electoral victory and the efficacy of his administration so far, giving himself an “incredible progress” to date. “We’re going to take care of it all,” he said.

In spite of the president’s digs at the media, which will nonetheless carry out their duty to report his words to the public, Thursday’s press conference can be seen as useful in presenting America’s new president to its people. Also, in spite of his criticism of leaks, they will also still be useful to the public in revealing to them as voters and constituents what is going on inside the nascent government on the Potomac.