Financially pressed news organizations are not being shy about seizing the moment to celebrate — and cash in on — their aggressive independence. They are responding with a missionary zeal to being treated as “the opposition party” that “should keep its mouth shut,” as Trump enforcer Steve Bannon put it.

The Washington Post has added a dramatic “Batman”-style motto online: “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” The New York Times bought a pricey ad for the Oscars with the tag line, “The truth is more important now than ever.” The Los Angeles Times made new multilingual T-shirts declaring, “We will not shut up.”

President Trump is constantly berating the press because the accounts of his chaotic, careering first month in the job do not sync up with the glossy, self-regarding image he has in the fun-house mirror of his head and in the reflection from his circle of sycophants. Kellyanne Conway calls him “President Action” and “President Impact” and Bannon compares him to William Jennings Bryan. (Trump would definitely want a cross of gold to match his new Oval Office drapes.)

Back in the ’70s and ’80s, with a shameless talent for self-aggrandizement untethered to fact, Trump was able to turn himself into a celebrity. Like his mentor Roy Cohn, Trump learned to manipulate his coverage in the New York tabloids. He even came up with two alter egos, John Barron and John Miller, so he could masquerade as his own p.r. agent and spin tall tales about Madonna and Carla Bruni craving him.

“Posing as John Miller, he used to ask to go on and off the record when talking about girls lusting after Donald,” recalls Sue Carswell, who dealt with both Trump and his fake spinmeister when she was at People during l’affaire Marla Maples.

It doesn’t seem to have sunk in with Trump that he can’t manipulate the press as easily today. He’s the president. When he exaggerates and makes things up now, it has global consequences and subverts American values. It is not like whispering lies about which famous women are panting for him.

In his pouty speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday, he reiterated his sour denunciation of journalists as “the enemy of the people.” The man who made his flashy reputation by being an anonymous and pseudonymous source — and who still spews a constant stream of wild assertions based on anonymous sources — blustered that the press “shouldn’t be allowed to use sources unless they use somebody’s name.”