The events at Berkeley Wednesday night have been a boon to Milos Yiannopoulos, of Breitbart News, and to Steve Bannon, formerly head of Breitbart News and now Trump’s consigliere.

As you may know, on Wednesday night, February 1, Berkeley gave Yiannopoulos a major forum to spout his racist and misogynistic vitriol. But police had to cancel the talk because about 150 masked agitators threw Molotov cocktails, smashed windows where Yiannopoulos was scheduled to speak, and threw rocks and fireworks at the police – delivering made-for-TV images of a riot.

According to a promotional Breitbart story that ran before the event, Yiannopoulos was going to “call for the withdrawal of federal grants and the prosecution of university officials who endanger their students with their policies.”

Which is exactly what Trump did via tweet early the next morning:: “If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view — NO FEDERAL FUNDS?”

Thursday night, Yiannopoulos had a friendly interview on Fox News’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight” – a show that, according to the Washington Post, has ridden anger at left-wing activism into best-in-class prime time ratings.

Yiannopoulos wasn’t asked about the content of the speech that was shut down. The conversation focused instead on how Berkeley proved the point that the Left was ceding its right to federal grants by cracking down on free speech.

Which raises the possibility that Yiannopoulos and Brietbart were in cahoots with the agitators, in order to lay the groundwork for a Trump crackdown on universities and their federal funding.

Thursday night on CNN, I said “I wouldn’t bet against” that possibility. Almost immediately an indignant article appeared in Breitbart News, misleadingly headlined “Robert Reich Lies, Claims Breitbart News Organized Berkeley Riots.”

Hmmm. Connect these dots:

(1) Yinnopoulos writes for Breitbart News, which Steve Bannon – Trump’s strategy director – ran before joining Trump.

(2) Before Yiannopoulos speaks at Berkeley, Breitbart publishes an article saying that Yiannopoulos will call for the withdrawal of federal grants and the prosecution of university officials who endanger their students with their policies.

(3) Berkeley opens its doors to Yiannopoulos, but campus police have to cancel the event because of masked agitators.

(4) Hours later, Trump issues a misleading tweet, accusing the university of not allowing free speech and promoting violence against innocent people with different views, and threatening to withhold federal funds.

(5) The next night, Yiannopoulos on Fox News says the incident proves that universities like Berkeley don’t deserve federal grants by cracking down on free speech.

(6) That same night, on CNN, I raise the possibility that Yiannopoulos and Breitbart could have been collaborating with the agitators – saying “I wouldn’t bet against it.” This generates a belligerent column in Breitbart with a misleading headline calling me a liar for claiming that Breitbart News organized the riots.

I don’t want to add to the conspiratorial musings of so many about this very conspiratorial administration, but it strikes me there may be something worrying going on here.

I wouldn’t bet against it.

Don’t get caught up in the predictable brawl over Neil Gorsuch’s credentials or his ideology. That normalizes the Trump presidency.

Instead, there should be no vote on Gorsuch’s nomination until Trump’s legitimacy as a president is established. 

Which means the Senate intelligence committee and F.B.I. must first conclude that Russian operatives were not responsible for Trump’s electoral victory, Trump must reveal his taxes, and he must put his assets into a blind trust.

Mitch McConnell wouldn’t even permit a vote on Obama’s pick, Merrick Garland, on the ground that Obama’s term would end in 10 months. Here, we have a president whose term itself may not be legitimate. 

A Supreme Court pick is the most important nomination a president can make, affecting how the Constitution and laws are interpreted, and potentially affecting generations to come. There should be no cloud over the legitimacy of the president who makes such a pick.

Democrats and courageous Republicans must not produce the 60 vote quorum needed to overcome a filibuster. When and if this strategy no longer works, it is imperative that senators continue to vote against consent orders to proceed with the nomination – until and unless Trump’s legitimacy is established.

Trump is the issue here, as well as the integrity of our democracy. 

Donald Trump has reorganized the National Security Council – elevating his chief political strategist Steve Bannon, and demoting the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Bannon will join the NSC’s principals committee, the top inter-agency group advising the President on national security. 

Meanwhile, the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff will now attend meetings only when “issues pertaining to their responsibilities and expertise are to be discussed,” according to the presidential memorandum issued Saturday. 

Political strategists have never before participated in National Security Council principals meetings because the NSC is supposed to give presidents nonpartisan, factual advice.

But forget facts. Forget analysis. This is the Trump administration. 

And what does Bannon have to bring to the table? 

In case you forgot, before joining Donald Trump’s inner circle Bannon headed Breitbart News, a far-right media outlet that has promoted conspiracy theories and is a platform for the alt-right movement, which espouses white nationalism.

This is truly scary. 

Former National Security Adviser Susan Rice calls the move “stone cold crazy.” Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who also served under George W. Bush, says the demotions are a “big mistake.” 

Republican Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, told CBS News, "I am worried about the National Security Council. … The appointment of Mr. Bannon is a radical departure from any National Security Council in history.” McCain added that the “one person who is indispensable would be the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in my view.”

Here’s the big worry. Trump is unhinged and ignorant. Bannon is nuts and malicious. If not supervised by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, their decisions could endanger the world.

In Trump’s and Bannon’s view, foreign relations is a zero-sum game. If another nation gains, we lose. As Trump declared at his inaugural: “From this day forward, it’s going to be only America First.”

Some of you are old enough to recall John F. Kennedy’s inaugural, when the young president pledged to support any friend and oppose any foe to assure the success of liberty. 

But Trump makes no distinction between friend and foe, and no reference to liberty. As conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer observes, Trump’s view is that all other nations are out to use, exploit and surpass us.

Not incidentally, “America First” was the name of the pro-Nazi group led by Charles Lindbergh that bitterly fought FDR before U.S. entry into World War II to keep America neutral between Churchill’s Britain and Hitler’s Reich.

Trump’s and Bannon’s version of “America First” is no less dangerous. It is alienating America from the rest of the world, destroying our nation’s moral authority abroad, and risking everything we love about our country.

Unsupervised by people who know what they’re doing. Trump and Bannon could also bring the world closer to a nuclear holocaust.

TRUMP’S INFRASTRUCTURE SCAM

Our country is in dire need of massive investments in infrastructure, but what Donald Trump is proposing is nothing more than a huge tax giveaway for the rich.

1. It’s a giant public subsidy to developers and investors. Rather than taxing the wealthy and then using the money to fix our dangerously outdated roads, bridges, airports, water systems, Trump wants to give rich developers and Wall Street investors tax credits to encourage them to do it That means that for every dollar they put into a project, they’d actually pay only 18 cents and we would contribute the other 82 cents through our tax dollars.

2. We’d be turning over public roads and bridges to private corporations who will charge us expensive tolls and earn big profits. These tolls will be set high in order to satisfy the profit margins demanded by elite Wall Street investors. So—essentially—we pay twice – once when we subsidize the developers and investors with our tax dollars, and then secondly when we pay the tolls and user fees that also go into their pockets.

3. We get the wrong kind of infrastructure. Projects that will be most attractive to Wall Street investors are those whose tolls and fees bring in the biggest bucks – giant mega-projects like major new throughways and new bridges. Not the thousands of smaller bridges, airports, pipes, and water treatment facilities most in need of repair. Not the needs of rural communities and smaller cities and towns too small to generate the tolls and other user fees equity investors want. Not clean energy.

To really make America great again we need more and better infrastructure that’s for the public – not for big developers and investors. And the only way we get that is if corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes.

Donald Trump is such a consummate liar that in coming days and years our democracy will depend more than ever on the independent press – finding the truth, reporting it, and holding Trump accountable for his lies.

But Trump’s strategy is to denigrate and disparage the press in the public’s mind – seeking to convince the public that the press is engaged in a conspiracy against him. And he wants to use his tweets, rallies, and videos to make himself the only credible source of public information about what is happening and what he’s doing.

It is the two-step strategy of despots. And it’s already started. It was officially launched the first full day of the Trump administration. 

Step 1: Disparage the press and lie about them: At a televised speech at the CIA, Trump declared himself to be in a “running war” with the news media, and described reporters as “the most dishonest human beings on earth.”

Trump then issued a stream of lies about what the press had reported. 

Some were seemingly small. For example, Trump claimed that the crowd for his swearing-in stretched down the National Mall to the Washington Monument and totaled more than 1 million people, and he accused the media of reporting falsely underreporting the number. “It’s a lie,” he said. “We caught [the media]. We caught them in a beauty.” 

Trump is wrong. Even independent observers reported that attendance was sparse, far smaller than the outpouring of people who attended the first Obama inauguration. 

More importantly, Trump told CIA employees that agency has been losing the battle against the Islamic State and other terror groups. This assertion runs counter to every intelligence report that has been publicly issued over the last six months.

Trump insisted that he has always valued the CIA. “They sort of made it sound like I had a feud with the intelligence community,” Trump said, continuing to criticize the press for its “dishonest” reporting. 

In fact, Trump has repeatedly vilified the CIA and the entire intelligence community for what he claimed were politically charged conclusions about Russia’s intervention in the 2016 election in order to help Trump. At a Jan. 11 news conference, Trump even accused intelligence officials of being behind a “Nazi-like smear campaign” against him. And in his tweets he put quotation marks around the word “intelligence” in referring to the CIA and other intelligence agencies. 

The weekend before his inauguration he even attacked CIA Director John Brennan (who resigned at the conclusion of President Obama’s term), suggesting he was “the leaker of Fake News.”

In his talk at the CIA Trump also claimed, as he’s done before, that the United States bungled its exit from Iraq by not taking Iraq’s oil. “If we kept the oil, we wouldn’t have had ISIS in the first place,” Trump said, asserting that this is how the Islamic State terrorist group made its money. 

Rubbish. As has been well established and as the media has fully reported, taking Iraq’s oil would have violated international law (both the 1949 Geneva Convention and the 1907 Hague Convention).

Step 2: Threaten to circumvent the press and take the “truth” directly to the people. At Trump press secretary Sean Spicer’s first televised news conference, Spicer castigated the press for its “dishonest” and “shameful” reporting, lied about the inauguration day events and numbers, and took no questions. (When confronted with Spicer’s outright lies, Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, told NBC that Spicer had merely given “alternative facts.”)

Then Spicer issued a dire warning: “The American people deserve better,” he said. “As long as [Trump] serves as the messenger for this incredible movement, he will take his message directly to the American people.”

We’re not talking Roosevelt-like “fireside chats” here. Trump’s tweets have already been firestorms of invective directed at critics, some of whom have been threatened by Trump followers stirred up by the tweets. And CEOs pray their companies aren’t targets, because stock prices of the companies he’s already vilified have dropped immediately after his diatribes.

Trump and his advisors – Steven Bannon, formerly of “Breitbart News” as well as Spicer and others – understand that if a significant portion of the public trusts Trump’s own words more than they do the media’s, Trump can get away with saying – and doing – whatever he wants. When that happens, our democracy ends. 

3. The ongoing contest between the Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders wings of the Democratic Party continues to divide Democrats. It’s urgent Democrats stop squabbling and recognize seven basic truths:

1. The Party is on life support. Democrats are in the minority in both the House and Senate, with no end in sight. Since the start of the Obama Administration they’ve lost 1,034 state and federal seats. They hold only 16 governorships, and face 32 state legislatures fully under GOP control. No one speaks for the party as a whole. The Party’s top leaders are aging, and the back bench is thin.

The future is bleak unless the Party radically reforms itself. If Republicans do well in the 2018 midterms, they’ll control Congress and the Supreme Court for years. If they continue to hold most statehouses, they could entrench themselves for a generation.

2. We are now in a populist era. The strongest and most powerful force in American politics is a rejection of the status quo, a repudiation of politics as usual, and a deep and profound distrust of elites, including the current power structure of America.

That force propelled Donald Trump into the White House. He represents the authoritarian side of populism. Bernie Sanders’s primary campaign represented the progressive side.

The question hovering over America’s future is which form of populism will ultimately prevail. At some point, hopefully, Trump voters will discover they’ve been hoodwinked. Even in its purist form, authoritarian populism doesn’t work because it destroys democracy. Democrats must offer the alternative.

3. The economy is not working for most Americans. The economic data show lower unemployment and higher wages than eight years ago, but the typical family is still poorer today than it was in 2000, adjusted for inflation; median weekly earning are no higher than in 2000; a large number of working-age people – mostly men – have dropped out of the labor force altogether; and job insecurity is endemic.

Inequality is wider and its consequences more savage in America than in any other advanced nation.

4. The Party’s moneyed establishment – big donors, major lobbyists, retired members of congress who have become bundlers and lobbyists – are part of the problem. Even though many consider themselves “liberal” and don’t recoil from an active government, their preferred remedies spare corporations and the wealthiest from making any sacrifices.

The moneyed interests in the Party allowed the deregulation of Wall Street and then encouraged the bailout of the Street. They’re barely concerned about the growth of tax havens, inside trading, increasing market power in major industries (pharmaceuticals, telecom, airlines, private health insurers, food processors, finance, even high tech), and widening inequality.

Meanwhile, they’ve allowed labor unions to shrink to near irrelevance. Unionized workers used to be the ground troops of the Democratic Party. In the 1950s, more than a third of all private-sector workers were unionized; today, fewer than 7 percent are.   

5. It’s not enough for Democrats to be “against Trump,” and defend the status quo. Democrats have to fight like hell against regressive policies Trump wants to put in place, but Democrats also need to fight for a bold vision of what the nation must achieve – like expanding Social Security, and financing the expansion by raising the cap on income subject to Social Security taxes; Medicare for all; and world-class free public education for all. 

And Democrats must diligently seek to establish countervailing power – stronger trade unions, community banks, more incentives for employee ownership and small businesses, and electoral reforms that get big money out of politics and expand the right to vote.  

6. The life of the Party – its enthusiasm, passion, youth, principles, and ideals – was elicited by Bernie Sanders’s campaign. This isn’t to denigrate what Hillary Clinton accomplished – she did, after all, win the popular vote in the presidential election by almost 3 million people. It’s only to recognize what all of us witnessed: the huge outpouring of excitement that Bernie’s campaign inspired, especially from the young. This is the future of the Democratic Party.

7. The Party must change from being a giant fundraising machine to a movement. It needs to unite the poor, working class, and middle class, black and white – who haven’t had a raise in 30 years, and who feel angry, powerless, and disenfranchised.

If the Party doesn’t understand these seven truths and fails to do what’s needed, a third party will emerge to fill the void.

Third parties usually fail because they tend to draw votes away from the dominant party closest to them, ideologically. But if the Democratic Party creates a large enough void, a third party won’t draw away votes. It will pull people into politics.

And drawing more people into politics is the only hope going forward.

This morning Donald Trump bashed NBC, tweeting: “Totally biased NBCNews went out of its way to say that the big announcement from Ford, G.M., Lockheed & others that jobs are coming back to the U.S., but had nothing to do with TRUMP, is more FAKE NEWS. Ask top CEO’s of those companies for real facts. Came back because of me!”

Here are four takeaways from Trump’s latest tantrum: 

1. As usual, Trump has his facts wrong. Analysts say Ford’s decision to expand in Michigan rather than in Mexico had mostly to do with the company’s long-term plans to invest in electric vehicles. It’s easier for companies to find highly skilled workers to build new products, such as electric cars, in the United States than in Mexico. 

GM said its plan was approved before the election, but it was “accelerated” under pressure from Trump. Relatedly, Sergio Marchionne, CEO of Fiat Chrysler chief executive, said Chrysler’s plan to build some cars in the U.S. had been in the works for more than a year and had nothing to do with Trump. Marchionne credited the decision to talks with the United Auto Workers. 

2. Once again, the tweet reveals Trump’s pathological narcissism. All Trump can think of about is “TRUMP,” which he capitalizes, then insists that the jobs “Came back because of me!” This is the rant of a child wanting attention and praise, not someone who will shortly be President of the United States.

3. It’s also dangerous. Although Trump’s outrage at NBC – like his condemnation of other specific media outlets that don’t report what he wants – is harmless now,  it could threaten press freedom when Trump has power over regulators at the FCC and antitrust division who could make life difficult for targeted media outlets.

4. It’s intended to divert attention from the big stuff. Trump’s specific deals with particular companies diverts attention from his larger initiatives that will hurt working Americans. 

Repealing the Affordable Care Act, for example, will leave at least 18 million Americans without health insurance next year. 

Trump’s cabinet picks are overwhelmingly anti-worker. Andrew Puzder, Trump’s nominee for the Labor Department, wants to get rid of Obama’s overtime rule, which, if implemented, is expected to add $12 billion to workers’ wallets over the next decade. And Puzder is against the minimum wage. 

And the huge corporate tax cuts and military buildup Trump is pushing will give congressional Republicans a rationale to cut Medicare and Social Security, in order to avoid bigger budget deficits. 

A few jobs “saved” is nothing compared to these and other hardships Trump will be imposing on working Americans.

All told, Trump’s tweet tantrum reveals a great deal about the man who’s soon to be president of the United States. None of it inspires confidence. 

Tyrants don’t allow open questioning, and they hate the free press. They want total control.

That’s why, according to three senior officials on the transition team, the incoming Trump administration is considering evicting the White House press corps from the press room inside the White House and moving them – and news conferences – to a conference center or to the Old Executive Office Building.

This may sound like a small logistic matter. It’s not. The White House “press room” contains work stations and broadcast booths, and the briefing area for presidential news conferences. Reporters have had workspace at the White House since Teddy Roosevelt was president, in 1901. 

But we’re in a new era, the reign of King Trump.

Sean Spicer, Trump’s press secretary, acknowledges “there has been some discussion about how” to move the press out of the White House. Spicer says it’s because the new administration would like a larger room to allow more members of the press to attend press conferences.

Rubbish. It’s because a larger room would allow the administration to fill seats with “alt-right” fringe journalists, rightwing social media, Trump supporters and paid staffers. They’d be there to ask the questions Trump wants to answer, and to jeer at reporters who ask critical questions and applaud Trump’s answers.

The move would allow Trump to play the crowd.

That’s exactly what happened at Trump’s so-called “news conference” on January 11 – the first he’s held in six months.

It wasn’t really a press conference at all, and shouldn’t have been characterized as one. It was a fake news conference that took place in a large auditorium. 

In the audience were paid staffers who jeered and snickered when reporters asked critical questions, and cheered every time Trump delivered one of his campaign zingers. It could easily have been one of his rallies.  

In this carnival atmosphere it was easy for Trump to refuse to answer questions from reporters who have run stories he doesn’t like, and from news outlets that have criticized him.

He slammed CNN for dispensing “fake news,” called Buzzfeed “a pile of garbage,” and sarcastically called the BBC “another beauty.” The audience loved it. 

Just as he did in his rallies, Trump continued calling the press “dishonest” – part of his ongoing effort to discredit the press and to reduce public confidence in it. 

And he repeatedly lied. But the media in attendance weren’t allowed to follow up or to question him on his lies.

For example, Trump wrongly stated that “the Democratic National Committee was totally open to be hacked. They did a very poor job. … And they tried to hack the Republican National Committee, and they were unable to break through.” 

Baloney.FBI Director James B. Comey said there was evidence that Republican National Committee computers were also targeted. The critical difference, according to Comey, was that none of the information obtained from the RNC was leaked. Also, according to Comey, the Russians “got far deeper and wider into the [DNC] than the RNC,” adding that “similar techniques were used in both cases.”

Trump further asserted at his fake news conference that “I have no deals that could happen in Russia, because we’ve stayed away. And I have no loans with Russia.”

Wrong again. Trump repeatedly sought deals in Russia. In a 2008 speech, Donald Trump Jr. said “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” and “we see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

Trump’s statements at his fake news conference were, and are, big lies. They influence public understanding and opinion about two critically important issues: Did the Russians help Trump win the election, and, if so, why might they have done so?

At the very least, they should have been followed up with questions from the White House press corps. That would have happened at a real news conference in the White House press room, holding 45 correspondents from major media outlets who are assigned full-time to report on the president.  

Which is the danger of evicting the press from the White House and putting press conferences into a large auditorium: Trump won’t be called on his lies, and the White House press corps will lose the leverage they have by being together in one rather small room.  

And that’s precisely why Trump wants to evict the press from the White House. 

A senior official admitted the move was a reaction to hostile press coverage. The view at the highest reaches of the incoming administration is that the press is the enemy. "They are the opposition party,” said the senior official. “I want ‘em out of the building. We are taking back the press room.”

The incoming Trump administration is intent on neutering the White House press corps. If it happens it will be another step toward neutering our  democracy.

At his turbulent his news event last Wednesday (I won’t dignify it by calling it a news conference), Trump reiterated that he will build a wall along the Mexican border. “It’s not a fence. It’s a wall,” he said, and“Mexico will pay for the wall.”

Here are 6 reasons why Trump’s wall is an even dumber idea than most of his others.

1. The U.S.-Mexican border is already well defended, and a wall won’t improve the defenses. The United States now spends $3.7 billion per year to keep some 21,000 Border Patrol agents on guard and another $3.2 billion on 23,000 inspectors at ports of entry along the border, a third of which is already  walled or fenced off.

2.  The cost of Trump’s fence would be a whopping $25 billion on top of this. That’s the best estimate I’ve seen by a Washington Post fact checker. (When Trump discussed the cost last February he put it at $8 billion, then a few weeks later upped the cost to $10 to 12 billion. )

3.  There’s no way Mexico will pay for it. On January 11, Mexican President Enrique Peña assured Mexicans they would not be footing the bill. “It is evident that we have some differences with the new government of the United States,” he said, “like the topic of the wall, that Mexico of course will not pay.”

4. There’s no reason for the wall anyway because undocumented migration from Mexico has sharply declined. The Department of Homeland Security’s estimates that the total undocumented population peaked at 12 million in 2008, and has fallen since then. According to the Pew Research Center, the overall flow of Mexican immigrants between the two countries is at its smallest since the 1990s. The number of apprehensions at the border is at its lowest since 1973.

5. The decline isn’t because of rising border enforcement but because of Mexico is producing fewer young people and therefore less demographic pressure to migrate to the U.S. In 1965, Mexico’s fertility rate was 7.2 children per woman; by 2000 it had fallen to 2.4; today, it’s at 2.3 children per woman, just above replacement level.

6. There’s little or no evidence undocumented immigrants take jobs away from native-born Americans, anyway. A new analysis of Census data finds that immigrants take very different jobs than Americans. In fact, the United States already allows a significant amount of legal immigration from Mexico under the “guest-worker” program  –1.6 million entries by legal immigrants and 3.9 million by temporary workers from Mexico over the last 10 years – because farmers can’t find enough native-born Americans to pick crops.

Of course, Trump lives in a fact-free universe designed merely to enhance his power and fuel his demagoguery. But you don’t have to, and nor does anyone else.

Tyrants don’t allow open questioning, and they hate the free press. They want total control. That’s why Trump’s so-called “news conference” on December 11 – the first he’s held in six months – wasn’t really a news conference at all. 

Consider:

1. Trump refused to answer questions from reporters who have run stories he doesn’t like, or from news outlets that have criticized him. This is a blatant attempt to control the news media by making them reluctant to run negatives stories about Trump for fear they’ll be frozen out. 

2. He loaded the audience with paid staffers who cheered his statements and jeered at reporters. Never before has a president-elect or president held a news conference larded with paid staffers, designed to give the impression that the media are divided between those who support him and those who criticize him. 

3. He continued calling the media “dishonest.” This is part of Trump’s continuing effort to discredit the press and to reduce public confidence in it. 

4. He condemned individual news outlets. Trump criticized CNN for dispensing “fake news,” called Buzzfeed “a pile of garbage,” and sarcastically called the BBC “another beauty.”

5. He repeatedly lied, and the media in attendance weren’t allowed to question him on his lies. A sampling of Trump lies from his “news conference”:

(1) “It’s very familiar territory, news conferences, because we used to give them on an almost daily basis.” Wrong. His last news conference was July 27.

(2) Trump claimed credit for Chrysler and Ford announcing more production in the U.S. Wrong. Sergio Marchionne, the Fiat Chrysler chief executive, said Chrysler’s plan had been in the works for more than a year and had nothing to do with Trump. Marchionne credited the decision to talks with the United Auto Workers. 

Analysts say Ford’s decision to expand in Michigan rather than in Mexico had mostly to do with the company’s long-term plans to invest in electric vehicles. It’s easier for companies to find highly skilled workers to build new products, such as electric cars, in the United States than in Mexico.

(3) “When we lost 22 million names and everything else that was hacked recently, [the press] didn’t make a big deal out of that.” Wrong. The Chinese hack of 22 million accounts at the Office of Personnel Management was front-page news.

(4) “The Democratic National Committee was totally open to be hacked. They did a very poor job. … And they tried to hack the Republican National Committee, and they were unable to break through.” Wrong. FBI Director James B. Comey said there was evidence that Republican National Committee domains were also targeted but none of the information that may have been obtained was leaked. Comey said that the Russians “got far deeper and wider into the [DNC] than the RNC,” adding that “similar techniques were used in both cases.”

(5) “I have no deals that could happen in Russia, because we’ve stayed away. And I have no loans with Russia.” Wrong. Trump repeatedly sought deals in Russia. In a 2008 speech, Donald Trump Jr. said “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” and “we see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

In short, Trump’s first news conference as president-elect – his first news conference in six months – wasn’t a “news conference” at all, and shouldn’t be called one. 

It’s another example of Trump’s attempt to control the media.  Trump isn’t even president yet, but he’s already eroding our democracy.