Of course journalists far and wide were utterly transfixed by Trump’s big press conference yesterday, in which he meandered, ranted, bragged, and occasionally touched on some nuggets of truth: that’s the Trump formula. It’s what he’s been doing literally since he began running for president, all the way back in June 2015. For some reason however, his antics are continually presented as shocking and new, rather than a very predictable continuation of what he’s been doing for approaching 2 straight years.

Trump’s press conferences — and even the White House Daily Press Briefings — have become must-see TV for the political and entertainment media, who love to sit around on Twitter and compete for who can come up with the wittiest anti-Trump riposte in realtime. That’s what the central role of the journalistic community seems to be now: seeing who can rattle off the best Trump jokes, rather than report soberly on what is actually happening with the federal government. Trump loves ginning up petty feuds, and the media are happy to reciprocate. They feed each others’ worst instincts.

It should absolutely go without saying at this point that there are innumerable real issues on which Trump ought to be held accountable. A discerning, sober, tactically-minded media would do this. But what were the White House press corps preoccupied with yesterday? Russia. More Russia. It never ends.

A reasonable media would recognize that Trump’s belligerent instincts are what ought to be curtailed, not encouraged. Those instincts could well lead to some kind of disastrous diplomatic blow-up or lame-brained military confrontation. Therefore, at a long-awaited Press Conference they would lead with adversarial questions and pushback having to do with the antagonistic impulses that Trump and his administration have displayed, such as with respect to Iran. Instead, incredibly, the media takes umbrage with Trump’s perceived lack of aggression toward Russia. That’s the big problem with Trump at the moment, they reckon.

The “nuggets of truth” part is where things get really dicey, because if you acknowledge that Trump has accurately described certain phenomena, you can be sure to incur accusations of “supporting Trump” or similar such nonsense. However, Trump was essentially correct to refer to the entire Russia issue as a “ruse,” a farce that has gotten increasingly outlandish in its alleged implications.

Trump said:

I guess one of the reasons I’m here today is to tell you the whole Russian thing, that’s a ruse. That’s a ruse. And by the way, it would be great if we could get along with Russia, just so you understand that. That tomorrow you’ll say: “Donald Trump wants to get along with Russia. This is terrible.” It’s not terrible. It’s good.

That’s… not wrong. Uttered by anyone else, much of the liberal-oriented media would be heralding what was said here as obviously correct and commonsensical, almost not needing any justification. But Trump utters it, and we’re supposed to believe that it’s all part of some grand Kremlin-directed conspiracy to undermine the very foundation of American democracy. Or something.

This led CBS News White House correspondent Major Garret to reply, “Is Putin testing you, do you believe, sir?”

The point of that stupid question is clearly to goad Trump into a belligerent anti-Putin response, and if he refrains from attacking Putin, that will then be depicted as evidence that Trump is somehow compromised. So just to reiterate: the press is taking fault with Trumps reluctance to engage in antagonistic rhetoric with nuclear-armed foreign powers. Challenged to take a more hostile tack toward Russia, Trump replied:

There’s no upside. We’re a very powerful nuclear country and so are they. I’ve been briefed. I can tell you one thing about a briefing, that we’re allowed to say because anybody that ever read the most basic book can say it, nuclear holocaust would be like no other. They’re a very powerful nuclear country, and so are we. If we have a good relationship with Russia — believe me — that’s a good thing, not a bad thing.

Again…what’s the issue here? Have people gone insane? Trump is doing all manner of objectionable things that warrant scrutiny: his travel ban histrionics, apparent embrace of discredited Drug War policies, and much more. Why is this what the media is obsessed with?

Unsatisfied with the avoidance of nuclear war as a desirable policy aim, Major Garrett, the White House correspondent for CBS News, continued:

“Can we conclude there will be no response to these particular provocations?”

By “provocations” here he’s referring to the reported “Russian spy ship” that is “lurking” off the coast of Connecticut, per CNN (note the antiquated Cold War terminology.) Of course, Garrett forgot to mention recent deployments of U.S. Troops to Poland, Bulgaria, and the Baltic States, which just might be interpreted by various Russian government officials as “provocations.” But, that didn’t come up. More important to Garrett was to try to present Trump as “weak” on Russia because again, the impulse we want to be encouraging in this already erratic and bellicose person is additional aggression.

The resignation of Mike Flynn under dubious pretenses means that this alarmist line of inquiry is going to be front and center for the foreseeable future. Democrats view it as a way to weaken Trump and perhaps even pressure factions of the GOP to abandon him. The press corps views it as a salacious scandal-in-the-making which could eventually bring Trump down. So they can’t resist screaming Russia, Russia, Russia over and over again. Wonderful.