If Donald J. Trump continues to hold press conferences when he’s president, we may need a new term for them. Press conflicts? Press confrontations?

The president-elect’s appearance on Wednesday came six months after his last news conference, and one day after word broke that Mr. Trump had been briefed by intelligence officials on the possibility that Russia had collected compromising information on him. Those reports — as well as BuzzFeed’s publication of unsubstantiated, salacious details of the supposed Russian “kompromat” — had already set Mr. Trump on a Twitter tear, in which he asked “Are we living in Nazi Germany?” and declared the reports “FAKE NEWS — A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!”

He showed up at Trump Tower still in caps-lock mode. Sean Spicer, his incoming press secretary, opened by blasting BuzzFeed’s decision as “shameful and disgraceful.” And Mr. Trump, alternately strutting and seething, went hard after his questioners.

Or his nonquestioners, in the case of Jim Acosta of CNN, who got in a shouting match with Mr. Trump for freezing him out, apparently because CNN had been first to report about the intelligence briefing.