The more he defends the odd duck Michael Flynn, saying he fired him only
because Flynn misled Mike Pence about talking sanctions with the Russian ambassador before Pence went on “Face the Nation,” the more it raises the question: Why didn’t Trump himself tell Pence when the White House counsel told him?
Beschloss riposted with this tweet: “On December 1972 tape, Nixon told Kissinger, ‘The
press is the enemy, the establishment is the enemy, the professors are the enemy.’”
By suddenly calling his own scream-of-consciousness press conference, Trump was out to prove
that he — not Sean Spicer, Kellyanne Conway or Stephen Miller — is the top salesman in the office.
You see, one can only be angry with those he respects.”
Trump got into another megalomaniacal “Me the People” swivet Friday, tweeting the “FAKE NEWS
media” was “the enemy of the American people!” So Trump is even using the rhetoric of Lenin?
“He lives inside his head, where he runs the same continuous loop of conflict with people he turns
into enemies for the purposes of his psychodrama,” says Trump biographer Michael D’Antonio.
Of course, this is merely the observation of someone who is “the enemy of the American people,” according to our president.
The whole idea was to psych out his opponents.”
As presidential historian Michael Beschloss reminded me, the previous gold standard for a president showing contempt for reporters at a news conference
was Nixon during Watergate in 1973, when he said just after the Saturday Night Massacre: “Don’t get the impression that you arouse my anger.