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Though Thursday's news conference was a messy, fact-challenged affair, it may well have been cheered by Trump supporters across the country who had packed arenas last year to jeer reporters and chant 'tell the truth' at the press pen.Р”Р„n Associated Press-GfK poll taken on the eve of the election revealed that 87 percent of Trump's supporters saw the media as biased against him. Trump had put claims of press prejudice at the center of his campaign in an unprecedented way and earlier this month falsely accused the media of refusing to cover terrorist attacks across the world.

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'He turned a presidential press conference into a reality TV show in which he can be the star and browbeat anyone who objects to him with the power of his office.'Р”В«ut for Trump, it continued a defining theme and amplified his chief strategist Stephen Bannon's decree that the media are 'the opposition party.' 'It was bizarre theater,' said Douglas Brinkley, a professor of history at Rice University. Not even Richard Nixon in the days of Watergate. Never before has a president stood in the White House and so publicly maligned the press or attacked reporters by name, according to presidential historians.

'The press has become so dishonest that if we don't talk about it, we are doing a tremendous disservice to the American people,' he said. He mostly blamed the media for his woes, rebuffing suggestions that he was undermining confidence in the press or threatening the First Amendment by trying to convince the nation that 'the press honestly is out of control.' Trump was eager to assign blame elsewhere, ignoring the nation's healthy economy and relative peace when he took office to say 'to be honest, I inherited a mess, a mess, at home and abroad, a mess.' Yet it was a far cry from the 'buck stops here' mantra popularized by Harry Truman and other presidents who believed that the ultimate responsibility for any White House struggles lay with the president himself. And, when combined with a rally slated for Saturday in Florida, it appeared to be the start of a one-two punch meant to re-energize a president whose White House in recent days has been buffeted by crisis and paralyzed by dysfunction. The performance was vintage Trump, a throwback to the messy, zinger-filled news conferences he held during the early stages of his campaign. The hastily called news conference was not on the White House's original schedule for Thursday, and some of Trump's own aides were surprised when the president let slip at a morning meeting that he would hold the event in the East Room just hours later. You take a look at some of your shows and you see the bias and the hatred.' 'But you've got to be at least a little bit fair, and that's why the public sees it. But they don't believe you,' Trump charged. Now, maybe I had something to do with that. 'The press - the public doesn't believe you people anymore.

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Over and over, he accused the political press of being dishonest and suggested that any negative coverage of his administration was 'fake news.' He unloaded a torrent of grievances while positioning himself as the stand-in for the everyman, who, he declared, hates and distrusts reporters as much as he does. If only the news media would give him credit. He bragged that his White House is 'a fine-tuned machine' and claimed 'there has never been a presidency that has done so much in such a short period of time.' He (incorrectly) touted his Electoral College total and repeatedly blasted his November opponent - somehow mentioning Hillary Clinton more than anyone else in his defense of his administration's early days. He taunted reporters and waved away their attempts to fact-check him in real time. Trump used the event to try to claw his young administration back from the brink after a defeat in court and the forced resignation of his top national security adviser. This was his and his aides' attempt to get the boss his groove back. nuclear holocaust would be like no other.'

That matters, Trump said in one of his many improvisational asides, because he'd been briefed and 'I can tell you. Now in office, he went even further, blaming the media for all but sinking his not-yet-launched attempt to 'make a deal' with Moscow.

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In nearly an hour and a half at the podium, Trump bullied reporters, dismissed facts and then cracked a few caustic jokes - a combination that once made the candidate irresistible cable TV fodder. For all the trappings of the White House and traditions of the forum, his performance was one of a swaggering, blustery campaigner, armed with grievances and primed to unload on his favorite targets. Russia is a ruse.Р”Р‡or its stunning moments and memorable one-liners, Donald Trump's first solo news conference as president has no rivals in recent memory.