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There were two audiences for Donald Trump’s press conference and he was only interested in one of them.

The President elect was not speaking to media, the Washington establishment or the diplomats anxiously preparing missives for Foreign Offices around the globe.

He only cares about the people who elected him - those who genuinely believe he will make America great again.

While the political mainstream noticed only his narcissism, inconsistency, bragging and mangled syntax his supporters would have heard him say words which if tweeted would have been entirely in capital letters.

“WE WILL BUILD A WALL”, “US FIRMS ARE MURDERING WORKERS,” “FAKE NEWS.”

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To this extent his press conference was success.

Other politicians used to convey messages in dog whistles - unpalatable but populist messages said at a pitch which voters heard but did not demean the speaker.

Trump doesn’t care for such niceties.

He uses a foghorn to transmit his views and opinions.

All the charges that stood against Trump before he was elected still stand.

And he managed to add a few more to the rap sheet during the event.

It tells you everything that he started with a lie.

His first comments were to welcome the media to his first press conference as president elect.

“We used to give them on an almost-daily basis,” he said.

Not true. His last press conference was in July and he rarely held others during the presidential campaign, let alone three or four a week or whatever he concludes is a near daily basis.

This was not the only mistruth. The Republican Party had not been hacked, he claimed.

(Image: REUTERS)

The intelligence agencies, about whom more later, contest this.

He never said that the wall , sorry WALL, would be a fence, he told one reporter, presumably forgetting he had told CBS on November 13 he would accept fencing in some areas.

The refusal to take a question from CNN and his threat to Buzzfeed after they revealed the contents of that intelligence report was pathetic.

The egomania is as deplorable as ever.

He frequently referred to himself in the third person, boasted he ran a "wonderful business" and begged approval for turning down a £2billion deal with Dubai.

When he was asked specific questions he resorted to bluster or shifted the subject to another area.

Tellingly, there were no details about his replacement for Obamacare, a policy he derided as a “complete and total failure.”

Asked to release his tax returns - a convention accepted by all his immediate predecessors - he point-blank refused. “I won,” was his reason.

Anyone with concerns about the probity of the White House, which is a reasonable reservation in the country which gave us Watergate, should be alarmed he is putting his business interests in a trust run by his closest family.

This is not even a blind trust. All we had was an assurance from a serial liar that he will not talk business with his sons.

This did not even cause a small spike on the Richter scale of alarm measuring his utterances.

(Image: Getty)

By far the most worrying was his open disdain for the intelligence services.

It was eventually prized from him that Russia might have been responsible for hacking, though he claimed all countries were trying to hack America: "Russia, China, all countries."

His argument that it was the Democrat’ Party's fault it was hacked for not having a better fire wall was the equivalent of blaming a burgled homeowner for not having a double lock.

Relations with the intelligence service appear beyond redemption.

All trust has evaporated between the man nominally responsible for defending his country’s security and those charged with fighting terrorism and containing domestic and international threats.

This press conference was a 19th Century freak show for the multi-media age.

Which is just what the former TV star would have wanted.

He is happiest when blurring the lines between politics and entertainment.

Unfortunately, we are stuck on this network for four years.