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ANALYSIS

'Wild and unhinged' Trump rants, raves and deflects blame to the media in press conference

Josephine Tovey
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"Tomorrow, they will say, 'Donald Trump rants and raves at the press.' I'm not ranting and raving... I love this. I'm having a good time doing it."

That was Donald Trump's assessment of how the media would report Thursday's press conference (ranting and raving at the press) and what was actually going on (he was having a good time) - but both of those things were true, at least by the end of it.

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Donald Trump's combative rambling press conference

President Donald Trump spars with reporters for more than an hour, declaring his administration is 'running like a fine-tuned machine' even though he 'inherited a mess'.

In almost a hour and 20 minutes, in a mixture of rambling soliloquy and belligerent exchanges with the press, the US president brushed off a bombshell New York Times report that his campaign team had improper contact with Russian intelligence services during the election campaign, declared he didn't care that his former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn had reportedly spoken to Russia about sanctions during the transition period, protested reports his administration was in chaos and promised a new immigration executive order next week.

"I turn on the TV, open the newspapers and I see stories of chaos - chaos," he said. "Yet it is the exact opposite. This administration is running like a fine-tuned machine."

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The press conference was ostensibly staged so he could announce Alexander Acosta as his new Labour Secretary - after his first choice Andrew Puzder pulled out this week, mired in controversy - but the president moved on from this in mere minutes.

He listed what his administration had achieved in their first month (despite the "mess" he said he inherited), and silenced the criticism that he had been avoiding scrutiny by only calling on conservative outlets in his previous press conference by taking exhaustive questions from across the White House press corps. His answers covered sweeping ground - Russia, Hillary Clinton, WikiLeaks, a nuclear holocaust, racism, immigration, his favourite breakfast talk show and even his leaked phone call with Australia.

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"I said 'that's terrible that it was leaked'," he said in reference to his testy call with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, "but it wasn't that important."

There were substantive answers. For the first time, he addressed detailed questions about Flynn's resignation and made it clear that it was Flynn's deception of Vice President Mike Pence about the content of the call - not the call itself - that was the problem.

"I fired him because of what he said to Mike Pence. Very simple," said Trump. "I didn't direct him [to make the call], but I would have directed him because that's his job... I didn't direct him, but I would have directed him if he didn't do it. OK?"

He was asked repeatedly whether he could say no members of his campaign team were in contact with Russian intelligence agents during the election - something he prevaricated on at first, with answers like "Russia is fake news. Russia, this is fake news put out by the media."

But then he seemed to deny the specific allegations in the Times story: "I have nothing to do with Russia. To the best of my knowledge no person that I deal with does."

However, the overwhelming theme of the day, the one he himself kept returning to - was his war on the mainstream media, their "dishonesty" and "lies", and the repeated assertion that so many outlets were publishing, in his view, "fake news". This is clearly the fight he came to have, and where he wanted to keep the focus.

During the press conference he variously attacked The New York Times ("failing"), CNN ("so much anger and hatred"), the BBC ("just like CNN") and the Wall Street Journal ("almost as disgraceful as the failing New York Times"). For the second time in two days, he heaped praise though on Fox News' breakfast chat show, Fox & Friends ("they're very honourable people").

Pushed on how he could condemn reporting on leaked information - thus suggesting it was true - while also calling the news "fake", the president expressed no problem with this contradiction.

"The leaks are absolutely real," he said. "The news is fake because so much of the news is fake."

The open format did give journalists a chance to challenge him on some falsehoods directly. During his lengthy preamble, he once again repeated the lie that his electoral college victory was "the biggest since Ronald Reagan".

An MSNBC reporter took him up on that, telling him his tally was lower than both Barack Obama and George H. W. Bush and asked "why should Americans trust you...?"

Trump replied curtly: "I don't know, I was given that information."

As the press conference moved past the one-hour mark, there were several extraordinary exchanges with individual reporters that raised eyebrows in the room.

Becoming irritated with the repeated questions on Russia and Flynn, he scouted around for a "friendly reporter". He settled on journalist from Ami, an Orthodox Jewish magazine, who rose out of his chair and asked the president about rising anti-Semitism in the US and recent bomb threats made against 48 Jewish community centres.

The president grew visibly irritated, putting up his hand to cut off the reporter and complaining: "he said he's going to ask a simple easy question, and it's not, not a simple question, not a fair question, ok sit down," before going on to say he was "the least anti-Semitic person".

In another strange exchange, April Ryan, a black reporter, asked if Mr Trump was going to meet with members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC).

"Do you wanna set up the meeting?" he replied. "Are they friends of yours?"

He went on to say a meeting had been set up and then cancelled. The CBC tweeted soon after that they had written to Trump in January and he had never replied.

The faces of some news anchors in the wake of the conference captured the disbelief that many might have felt watching this rambling, pugnacious display. It was "wild" and "unhinged", said CNN's Jake Tapper: "It was an airing of grievances, it was Festivus" (the fictional Seinfeld holiday where George Costanza's father rants about his grievances from the preceding year).

Even over on Fox News, the moderate daytime anchor Shepard Smith declared the display was "crazy".

But to other sections of the media, and perhaps the country, that ferociously back Trump, the event was a ringing success. The Drudge Report's headline declared "Trump eats the press", while Fox News host and Trump cheerleader Sean Hannity called it "amazing" and a "beat down" of the media. Here, they saw a return to the good old days of the election campaign, where Trump would repeatedly taunt the media from the stage while a crowd cheered.

Trump has scheduled a campaign-style rally in Florida this Saturday - an unconventional move for a president just a month into office. He loves the crowds, and knows that they loved the rousing, chaotic, pugnacious campaign that he ran all the way to victory last year.

This press conference was a reminder that he's also counting on the same wild, aggressive confrontations with the media that he had during the campaign to carry him through his time in the White House - especially perhaps, during weeks like this one, when his administration is on the ropes. 

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