Donald Trump should stop picking fights with the press and start focusing on policy

President Donald Trump speaks during a reception for inaugural law enforcement officers and first responders in the Blue Room of the White House, Sunday, Jan. 22, 2017 in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

You couldn’t have engineered a more horrendous start to the Trump administration’s relationship with the news media.

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Over the last week, the Trump White House has managed to do just about everything one can think of to alienate the press corps. And while such spectacles might play well with the conservative base, they’re still politically risky, considering that these are the very same reporters who will be glued to everything the West Wing does every day for the next four years. Indeed, Press Secretary Sean Spicer dressing down the White House Press Corps and leaving the podium without taking a single question is about as wise as approaching a pack of wolves with red meat in your pockets – you are asking to get bitten.

For whatever reason, all of this is going over Donald Trump’s head. The President of the United States is the most important office in the land and the most powerful person on the planet. Commander-in-chief is the most stressful job that mankind has to offer and its responsibilities are so enormous that it’s sometimes difficult to understand how America’s greatest presidents were able to cope with the anxiety.

Many in Washington probably anticipated Trump’s visit to CIA headquarters as being the beginning of his becoming a normal president after months of his running a deeply unconventional campaign. Instead, he chose to speak in front of the wall of fallen CIA heroes about how the media is a dishonest pack of low-lives who don’t give him credit for anything, including those yuuuge crowds at the National Mall during his inauguration.

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And then, of course, there’s the icing on top of the cake: Kellyanne Conway and AlternativeFactsGate. Are the Saturday Night Live writers drafting talking points for the Trump communications team now?

Although I was against Trump’s candidacy, I never considered myself a member of the #NeverTrump movement. Trump deserves a lot of credit for defeating the established Clinton machine, and he has a genuine connection to the working class who want to burn Washington to the ground. I can respect what he wants to do on foreign policy, the past 15 years of which has been going abroad in search of monsters to destroy.

But if Trump continues to pick these worthless fights with the press, he’s going to drag the office of the presidency into the gutter.

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The Oval Office is the place to worry about North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and China’s aggression in the South China Sea, not crowd sizes. It’s the place to repeal and replace Obamacare, schmooze Congress for a $1 trillion infrastructure package, cut regulations, and greet foreign leaders for serious discussions that have global repercussions. All of that is getting lost in the cacophony and silliness of the meaningless topics the Trump administration has chosen to focus on.

President Trump, like all presidents before him, has an ambitious agenda, and he’ll need all the help he can get in a town that has a track record of blocking any reform that is viewed as controversial by the political class. Trump is only making it harder on himself by handing the press a perfect script for negative coverage.

What do you think?

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