The Trump press conference from Thursday, February, 16, 2017, revealed a surprising truth:  Trump, for all of his instincts and obvious intelligence, is charmingly and patriotically naïve about the nature of the United States Government and the Media.  Trump’s revelation about the Media and its willingness to report anything, even if it is counter to the interests of the country , illuminated that Trump was initially ingenuous regarding the nature of the Political Press.  In that same thought, Trump realizes there are parties within the United States Government itself willing to leak information, even if it sets off diplomatic skirmishes, heightens tensions or even sparks wars, for their own personal gain or to further their own petty ends.

I was shocked because all this equipment, all this incredible phone equipment — when I was called out on Mexico, I was — honestly, I was really, really surprised.

But I said “you know, it doesn’t make sense. That won’t happen” but that wasn’t that important a call, it was fine, I could show it to the world and he could show it to the world, the president who’s a very fine man, by the way. Same thing with Australia. I said “that’s terrible that it was leaked” but it wasn’t that important. But then I said to myself “what happens when I’m dealing with the problem of North Korea?”

What happens when I’m dealing with the problems in the Middle East? Are you folks going to be reporting all of that very, very confidential information, very important, very — you know, I mean at the highest level? Are you going to be reporting about that too?

Even though it would be patently against the interests of the country for the Media to publish Trump’s detailed plans (by way of example) on handling potential North Korean belligerence, in this age of Media as shit-flinging Opposition Monkeys, is there any doubt it would be published anyway?  For Trump, however, he assumed even the Media would not be so debased.  He expected what we used to be able to expect of most Citizens:  despite our political differences, we are all still Americans who want what is best for the country and you are an American first and a journalist second.  Trump optimistically assumes even journalists have a sense of civic responsibility.  At least, he did.  I doubt he feels that way any longer.

The second revelation is found in Trump’s open wonderment of, “you know, it doesn’t make sense.  That won’t happen.”  What the President is saying is he’s “honestly…really, really surprised” that members of the Deep State would leak private and classified phone calls to the press. Or, to put it more bluntly, the members of the Deep State would commit felonies in open insubordination of their new Executive.  I believe it genuinely shocked Trump to learn that not every member of the Deep State would blanch at acting against the interests of their (nominal) boss, the President of the United States.   Even for the most cynical among us, it is at least surprising that the Intelligence Community, bequeathed with special privileges under the guise of “national security”, used surreptitiously obtained information to put out a political hit on someone they simply did not care for.  That is why Trump is right, and the Media and the Left (but I repeat myself) are wrong:  the big story here is the leaker or leakers, who are abusing their power and taking advantage of a trusting polity to actively subvert a peaceful, lawful election.

Trump was akin to the squishy centrist Soccer Parent one encounters on Facebook who says things like, “the government is just there to help us” and “they would never use your information to do THAT!”  I sincerely hope he has been disabused of that notion and ruthlessly removes the leakers from any levers of power and, if appropriate, sends them to prison.

I now humbly submit myself to the Commentariat for evisceration.