Story highlights Tim Stanley: Journalists may not like the bullying, but many partisans distrustful of press will be fine with it

His behavior may be unfair. But calling out the press is not entirely unheard of, Stanley says

Timothy Stanley is a historian and columnist for Britain's Daily Telegraph. He is the author of "Citizen Hollywood: How the Collaboration Between L.A. and D.C. Revolutionized American Politics." The opinions expressed in this commentary are his.

(CNN) How did President-elect Donald Trump's first press conference go? He nailed it. It was strange, abusive, occasionally misleading. But he nailed it.

Timothy Stanley

And while the media will complain that he tried to silence individual reporters -- which he did -- the reality is that the conference was about as raw and detailed as you're likely to get from a president-elect.

He gave us a dozen headlines from just one encounter. This is the Trump paradox: Trump and the press hate each other yet they feed off each other.

We actually learned a lot. Trump's two legislative priorities are building the wall and repealing and replacing Obamacare. What he'll replace Obamacare with remains a mystery -- but at least we know what's coming. Trump also said that he'll name his Supreme Court nominee within two weeks of his inauguration.

In addition, he compared the behavior of some within the intelligence community to Nazis and suggested that the very mention of Senator Lindsey Graham makes him laugh. He even pledged to sack his sons should they underperform while running his businesses. And, perhaps most importantly of all, he signaled that no amount of speculation on his relationship with Vladimir Putin will shift his position towards Russia. Russia was probably guilty of hacking, he concluded, but that will cease once Trump is in charge.

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