I'm very glad I didn't write this article yesterday after the press conference as I started to. It was better I was able to watch it again from 2:45 to 4:00 this morning and see the reactions from the media.
After watching the 77 minute press conference for the second time I am more impressed than I was immediately after. To be honest there were a couple of issues I had. I didn't like his comment about his Electoral College Victory. I thought he was too vague on his answer about his about his campaign talking to the Russians.
I think it is hilarious the MSM is bashing him for saying he inherited a mess. Good Lord! How many times did we hear President Obama say the same thing over the past 8 years with no fallout from the MSM? If anything shows how biased the MSM is that should. Even President Trump's detractors have to see that.
I also think its funny they are calling him a liar for his comment on the Electoral College win. To be fair, it wasn't true and they should call him on it. The problem I have is they didn't call President Obama out for his serial lying. After watching it in its entirety 2 times, if I were a Teacher grading it, I would give The President a B plus, an A plus had he answered the Russian question better and left out the Electoral College comment. I give the MSM a F.
George Stephanopoulos - "What a remarkable window into the state of mind of the President of the United States right there....lashed out at the press, made it very clear he thinks the press is dishonest....never seen anything like that.”
Special correspondent Matthew Dowd agreed: “No, that was the most amazing press conference by a president I have ever seen and I've been watching it since the mid-70s. And I don't mean amazing in great, I mean amazing in spectacular insight into Donald Trump and his state of mind today.” The political analyst noted how presidents usually “are empowered and get bigger” after they take office, but argued that Trump “looked smaller and actually more insecure in his position...”
Dowd then compared the President to a paranoid and delusional movie character: “...it was reminiscent of Captain Queeg in a Caine Mutiny and somebody saying, ‘I’m going to search for their strawberries.’ He's in full-on conflict with the intelligence community and he’s in full-on conflict with the media.”
“When a U.S. Naval captain shows signs of mental instability that jeopardizes the ship, the first officer relieves him of command and faces court martial for mutiny.”
White House correspondent Cecilia Vega chimed in:
I mean, just a couple of the words that I jotted down over the course of the last hour and a half, “bizarre,” “contentious,” if we’re looking – we’re getting insight into the mind of our president, that he is just obsessed with coverage. He's clearly watching television at all hours, talking about late-night programming on cable. He shouted down reporters, he told people to sit down. It seemed as if this is something he had been wanting to do, to get off of his chest for the last few weeks...
Later in coverage, Stephanopoulos wondered: “...it's clearly clear that the President likes having the press as a foil, we see that right there. It worked for him in the campaign, does it work as president?” Dowd replied: “...he walked in there with a hornet's nest of the press. What he did coming out of there was poke it even more. And so, I don’t think he calmed that media down...He actually stirred it up more. So there's going to be a hundred more stories that are going to come out of this.”
Chuck Todd and the other journalists at NBC are openly fuming that Donald Trump continues to call out the biased coverage of his administration. During Thursday’s press conference, an angry Todd tweeted, “This not a laughing matter. I'm sorry, delegitimizing the press is un-American.”
He later whined, “Press bashing may feel good to folks but when it's done by people in power, it's corrosive. Take off your partisan hats for a second.” During live coverage, Lester Holt chided, “It was contentious. It was ugly at moments and we haven't seen anything like it.”
Talking to Holt, Todd declared, “Look, this is a president that appears to be in a bunker mentality right now, whatever that is.”
A lot of this press conference had to do with the President airing grievances about the press and we've got to remember what this is. It's a political tactic. It's one that's a familar one, but he is going at it in a way we haven't seen a president do since Nixon and those early ‘70s.
After a hectic Thursday of media meltdowns reacting to President Trump’s press conference, the lunacy was still flowing on MSNBC’s Hardball. In less than 20 minutes, host Chris Matthews compared a “manic” Trump to Jack Nicholson from A Few Good Men and Alger Hiss attempting to wiggle his way out of being deemed a Soviet spy.
Those comparisons weren’t without plenty of whining from the MSNBC pundit. Speaking to his first panel of the night, Matthews lamented that he’s attacking the whole media and “not...a reporter for making a mistake” because “[e]verybody makes mistakes and there are no angels in the press” or “devils.”
Matthew:
There’s just people doing their jobs under the First Amendment. What is he up to? Why is he attacking all media, all the time except his favs, like Fox & Friends and Krauthammer — the neocon writer. He’s a smart guy. He only picks out those few that he thinks have been selling him lately.
New York Times reporter Yamiche Alcindor agreed, fretting that “[t]his is really about delegitimizing the press and I think a lot of it has to do with the idea that, later on, if we uncover something like — maybe more that there is more to the Russia story.”
In a sign that media won’t be changing their ways, Alcindor admitted that Trump’s attacks on the media make the industry “want[ing] to dig even deeper.”
Ignoring the fact that Barack Obama barely (if ever) accepted responsibility whenever he didn’t get his way, Politico’s Eli Stokols complained: “Well, I mean, he's passing the buck. He takes no responsibility. He says we inherited all of this.”
Out of the blue, Matthews exclaimed seconds later: “It seems like he’s against the idea of reporting!”
The kooky was just getting started as Matthews went on to invoke Nicholson’s role as Col. Nathan R. Jessup in 1992's A Few Good Men and described Trump as “manic” in his behavior:
I don’t know if it — not quite manic. I’m not going to go that far, but there was sort of an element of, you know, Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men — like, you know: “You can't handle the truth.” And he comes out and it’s almost — id is showing. You know, a lot of id. A lot of just psychic, ‘this is what I can't sleep at night about. This is what bugging me.’ It was very — there was no BS to it tonight. He honestly, obviously believes everything he said today — the way he said it — it was so manic or almost manic.
Stokols agreed:
He talked about the tone. He was kind of admonishing the media. ‘You know, your tone is negative.’ And there’s something in that. I mean, what he does with his tone, is he — you know — sounds like a guidance counselor....he’s sort of takes the edge off a little bit about what he is saying so he doesn't sound like Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men. And in so doing, you don’t notice the authoritarianism[.]
