I appreciate you trying to be objective and looking for the truth without the lens of politics. I actually saw that particular press conference. I can not believe the amount of press attention it is getting. It was a JOKE. It was apparent to anyone with an ounce of common sense and objectivity that it was a sarcastic joke. Yet the partisan coverage and spin of this really hit me in the forehead about exactly how defenseless we, as citizens, are to being manipulated by a press that is not constrained to honestly report events, but to subject it to political bias before feeding it to us.

If I had not seen the conference and had to rely on what I read in the majority of coverage, especially as the day went on and each iteration of the event got more and more outraged, I, too, would have thought that Trump had committed treason or had invited the Russians to cyberhack the US Government. What is worse, is that many of the news reports were based on OTHER reports, which were based on others, it was like a self sustaining rumor echo chamber.

I admit to being torn in how to view Trump in this: did he make a mistake in granting enough intelligence to the press who were covering that event to know the difference between a joke and real news. In which case, I might feel some sympathy toward him and contempt for the press. Or is this guy an evil ? genius? Did he know the press would do that? In which case, he masterfully stepped on HRC’s hopeful bounce from the night before and stole the press spotlight — in which case, well no real sympathy for the press since it looked like they were in a feeding frenzy and I am not inclined to be sympathetic to people who got burned while trying to burn others….

One bit of humor that I did enjoy at the expense of the press was Trump having to explain, several times, then elaborate on the Jon Levitz SNL skit of the liar — he even did a passable imitation of Levitz’s liar character and some in the press still did not get it…not sure if that is sad because they could not get it or had no sense of humor, or to be sad that perhaps they were so young that they did not know about an SNL classic.