openpolitics.com

Trump could not live without the press. It is his crack. He would be adrift and bereft without his sparring partners, lightning rods, scapegoats and amplifiers.

.. His campaign staff “cracked the code for tamping down his most inflammatory tweets,” Tara Palmeri reported in Politico last week, by ensuring “his personal media consumption includes a steady stream of praise. And when no such praise was to be found, staff would turn to friendly outlets to drum some up — and make sure it made its way to Trump’s desk.”

Talk about fake news.

.. Kellyanne Conway calls him “President Action” and “President Impact” and Bannon compares him to William Jennings Bryan.

.. Back in the ’70s and ’80s, with a shameless talent for self-aggrandizement untethered to fact, Trump was able to turn himself into a celebrity. Like his mentor Roy Cohn, Trump learned to manipulate his coverage in the New York tabloids. He even came up with two alter egos, John Barron and John Miller, so he could masquerade as his own p.r. agent and spin tall tales about Madonna and Carla Bruni craving him.

.. “Posing as John Miller, he used to ask to go on and off the record when talking about girls lusting after Donald,” recalls Sue Carswell, who dealt with both Trump and his fake spinmeister when she was at People during l’affaire Marla Maples.

It doesn’t seem to have sunk in with Trump that he can’t manipulate the press as easily today. He’s the president. When he exaggerates and makes things up now, it has global consequences and subverts American values. It is not like whispering lies about which famous women are panting for him.

.. The man who made his flashy reputation by being an anonymous and pseudonymous source — and who still spews a constant stream of wild assertions based on anonymous sources — blustered that the press “shouldn’t be allowed to use sources unless they use somebody’s name.”