Donald Trump grabbed the world’s attention Thursday, holding a historic 90-minute press conference at the White House where he launched a blistering attack on the media while defending his promise to “fix a broken system” and clean up the mess he had “inherited.”

It was the U.S. president’s first press conference flying solo, and it was mesmerizing to watch the gunners in the national press corps trying to shoot him down, and then fail miserably.

It was not as if the media didn’t have enough ammunition, of course. It had, in fact, a motherlode cache of ordnance.

There were leaks in the intelligence community to deal with, “criminal leaks,” as the president called them. A “dishonest” media out to get him, which pissed off the fourth estate to no end. There were contradictions by Trump himself as to why national security advisor Michael Flynn got the boot. Dodgy communications with the Russians. Another executive-order travel ban in the offing to impede the influx of immigrants from certain Muslim-dominated countries.

It was a potpourri of potential landmines but, at the end of the press conference, most of them came up duds because Trump either stepped around them, or refused to step on them.

Chaos. “What chaos?” asked Trump. “This administration is running like a fine-tuned machine.”

What Trump did in his press conference, at least for those able to ignore the din and their anti-Trump biases, was effectively talk past the media he was so savagely pillorying, and instead talk directly into the living rooms of the American people who elected him.

Trump was very loud and clear about being loud and clear.

After all, he was elected president, no one else. He campaigned on a mandate to “drain the swamp” and that, after “years of politicians lying to you,” he was “here following up on what I promised to do.”

One could almost hear the screams of the establishment elites who had spent years building their power base, only to have a new president who sees them for what they are — a self-serving cabal who couldn’t care less about the average American.

But one suspects, however, that it played well in Peoria, Ill.

No president in U.S. history has ever drilled down that hard, and Trump appeared to enjoy every second of taking the media to task.

“I’m actually having a good time,” he said. “I’m not ranting and raving. I’m just telling you (that) you’re dishonest people.”

As for Trump’s love of hyperbole, get used to it.

It’s part of his shtick.

Like this line about Hillary Clinton, his presidential Democratic opponent, receiving debate questions in advance.

“Can you imagine if I received the questions?” he asked. “It would be the electric chair.”

Still, was he wrong in saying that free trade with America wasn’t in the cards under his presidency unless it was also “fair trade?’

Or that he will fight court decisions on his temporary travel ban on visitors from seven Muslim-dominated countries rather than fold?

“I got elected on defending my country,” he said.

This, like it or loathe it, is not one of Trump’s lies.

markbonokoski@gmail.com