One of the media’s favorite shams is to trot out some grave-looking, slow-talking Washington mandarin like Jim Clapper to question the moral and mental “fitness” of Donald Trump to lead the country. It is impossible to watch these oh-so-pained interviews without laughing. Clapper, after all, is a confirmed perjurer whose deliberate lie to Congress about collecting personal data on Americans went unprosecuted because of the crookedness of Obama’s Justice Department. Yet CNN’s histrionic man-child Don Lemon treated Clapper like a moral colossus, listening with bated breath as he slowly unburdened himself of his deep anxieties about the president.

“I really question his… fitness to be in this office. And I also am beginning to wonder about his motivation for it. Maybe he is looking for a way out, “said Clapper. The stupidity of this remark, not to mention the staleness of it (he is simply repeating the hysterical punditry from the 2016 primaries, when the prattle was that Trump entered the race not to win but to feed “his ego,” “expand his brand,” and so on, and that he “very well might drop out before November”), serves only to illuminate Clapper’s lack of fitness for intelligence work. What an arrogant and dishonest dummy. No wonder Obama’s shadow government sent him out to lie about the political espionage of Susan Rice and John Brennan against the Trump campaign (as “far as he knew,” no spying on the Trump campaign happened, Clapper told NBC before the “unmaskings” came out).

According to the media’s propagandists, Trump has now “lashed out at Clapper,” which is akin to saying that the victim of a mugging “lashed out” at his mugger. Stand still while we punch you — that’s the demand underlying all of these phony stories.

Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, who thinks we should all treat her as a “serious” and “objective” reporter because she wears glasses and sighs as she relays the latest half-baked and hysterical White House gossip, contributed to a piece this week with the headline, “Mnuchin’s Wife Mocks Oregon Woman Over Lifestyle and Wealth.” The headline writers at Pravda couldn’t have done better than that one. An honest headline on the piece would have been the exact reverse: Oregon Woman Mocks Mnuchin’s Wife Over Lifestyle and Wealth.

The Oregon woman had needled Mnuchin’s wife for traveling with her husband on a government plane (a trip to Kentucky for which the Mnuchins reimbursed the government). The woman, who is cast as a saintly victim by Haberman, wrote to Mnuchin’s wife with sarcasm: “Glad we could pay for your little getaway.” Mnuchin’s wife, justifiably annoyed by the implication of the remark, simply responded in kind to the snotty woman:

Aw!!! Did you think this was a personal trip?! Adorable!… Have you given more to the economy than me and my husband? Either as an individual earner in taxes OR in self sacrifice to your country? I’m pretty sure we paid more taxes toward our day “trip” than you did. Pretty sure the amount we sacrifice per year is a lot more than you’d be willing to sacrifice if the choice was yours.

In other words, the Oregon woman picks a fight with her, Mnuchin’s wife gives her a well-deserved shafting, the woman then plays the victim while protected by the patronage of the most powerful members of the press, and Haberman writes it all up as an example of Trumpian “punching down.” The mugger, so to speak, even gets to wax patronizingly philosophical about the defects of her victim. Haberman gives the last word to the Oregon woman, who pontificates, “It seems like she’s been in public life for a long time. It just seemed wholly inappropriate.” See, you can be a mugger and a snowflake all at the same time!

To use another analogy, the media’s coverage of Trump is like the behavior of a hit-and-run driver who strolls back to the mayhem he caused and wonders why the driver in the totaled car is “so mad.”

Members of the ruling-class commentariat have called Trump a “sociopath,” said that he isn’t “fit to be human,” smeared him as a racist Nazi-coddler, and hurled countless other fanatical insults at him. And they wonder why he talks about them disparagingly at rallies? They are all so baffled and “disturbed” by it and turn to the Clappers for “perspective” on its meaning. All of this empty outrage is nothing more than a temper tantrum from a group of hopelessly entitled phonies who can dish it out but can’t take it.

Clapper gasped that he had never seen a president behave like Trump, as if that observation alone served as a devastating criticism. Even if true, who cares? No other president has been attacked like Trump. Unlike a long line of neutered Republican presidents who cowered before the media, Trump refuses to be a chump. That is a mark not of insanity but of commendable self-respect.