Jack Shafer: “It starts with a reporter, usually a female reporter, asking President Trump hard, tenacious questions at a news conference. Trump’s jaw seizes up, rattled and dumbfounded by the questions that he can’t or won’t answer, he abruptly ends the presser by saying, ‘Thank you, very much’ and stalking out of the room.”
Trump’s “increasingly skittish manner with the press marks a turning point in his presidency, a new moment where his usually reliable mouth almighty seems incapable of articulating a put-down or a blow-off response. Our two-fisted brawler of a president, always ready to smash the interlocutors from the press with a virtual folding chair, has replaced moxie with pouts. In the old days, he would have had a ready answer for the much-expected question… But now he’s like the former alpha leader of the troop. He makes a show of maintaining his dominance by beating his breast, but when challenged by somebody superior, he takes his beating then slinks off to a dark, safe place to lick his wounds.”
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