Keith Koffler of White House Dossier is one of the very few pundits I have seen who sees through the illusion that President Trump’s tweets are the product of an out-of-control adolescent mind housed in the body of a POTUS.  He understands that the opposition – the media/political establishment – is being played by an expert:

Trump’s calculation is this: By baiting the media with his Twitter account, Trump is both revealing and provoking their instinctive liberal bias, helping undermine their legitimacy. And he is maintaining the energy and commitment of his voter base, which reviles the mainstream press.

And he provides evidence to support the thesis that Trump operates very strategically in the way he handles people:

“He was playing people,” said Tony Schwartz, who helped Trump write “Art of the Deal,” in an interview with the New Yorker last summer. The New Yorker paraphrased Schwartz, who listened in on many Trump calls: “On the phone with business associates, Trump would flatter, bully, and occasionally get mad, but always in a calculated way,” the New Yorker wrote.

In another venue, Schwartz, who hates Trump and wanted to harm his candidacy, recalled that he once saw Trump verbally abuse someone on the phone, hang up, look at Schwartz and calmly say something like, “Do you think it worked?”

Meanwhile, outrage over Trump’s Tweets continues to preoccupy a good portion of the commentariat, as Trump practices The Art of Distraction. I urge the media to continue to look away every time the president in effect tweets, “SQUIRREL!”