The disgraceful, frenzied reaction to President Trump's press conference with Vladimir Putin on Monday would be hilarious if it were not so deadly serious.  It goes without saying that the White House press corps and its international fellows who were present in the room hoped to use the event to attack Trump, no matter what he said.  Had he convinced Putin to resign, they would have attacked with equal fervor. 

Following a private meeting between the two men, then further conversation with advisers, the people of the press seemed to think they were the stars of this show, that the world was waiting to hear their questions asked with their cherished ability to make heads of state squirm.  For reasons no one can discern, these not-journalists see themselves as the one and only conduit of information between Trump and Putin and "the people."  They seem to have forgotten that we can all read, think, and come to conclusions on our own.  Did we need one of them to ask Putin if he had compromising material on Trump?  It was not a serious question, but one meant only to embarrass the president.  Trump by now is beyond being embarrassed by idiot pseudo-reporters.  The man from the AP humiliated only himself.  Trump could have read from an Obama transcript, words they had all glorified in the past, and the media would have reacted exactly the same way because the words came out of Trump's mouth. 

The minute the presser was over, there was a near global political disintegration among our Democrats, most of the RINOs in Congress (Ryan, Flake, Corker, Graham), and the media.  There were only a few voices of reason: Roger L. Simon, Rand Paul, among the few.  As for the rest of the herd, one would have thought Trump had handed Putin the keys to the White House.  He did nothing of the kind.  Trump sat down with the man and began a conversation.  Where it will go, no one yet knows.  Trump knows, as do most people interested in such things, that Russia has spied on the U.S. for at least a hundred years.  Pick up an Eric Ambler novel.  That the Democrats are suddenly upset by this is a joke.  Until November 9, 2016, they loved Russia and humiliated anyone who did not see the former Soviet Union as a model society.  See Paul Kengor.

Obama knew that the Russians were cyber-intruding on numerous facets of our infrastructure and did nothing.  He did not care one bit.  When he said publicly that he'd told Putin to "cut it out," none of our self-congratulatory, ideologically rigid media minded that one bit.  For the media, Obama could do or say no wrong, no matter how much damage he did.  As for calling out the Russians, Obama "knew" that Hillary was going to win, so it didn't matter what the Russians did.  It didn't matter that millions of dollars of Russian money flowed into the Clinton campaign coffers and to what has been the largest money-laundering operation in U.S. history, the Clinton Foundation.  Putin mentioned a certain $400M of it.  Now we know he ordered Susan Rice to shut down the investigation into Russian meddling during the 2016 campaign.  None of that mattered to Obama or to the media.  They don't publicize bad news for their side; their version of the news trumps the country's well-being.

All these hysterics among the media and political class are pathetic.  They know well that Trump has been harder on Russia than Clinton, Bush, or Obama.  They just see an opportunity to do harm.  All those pointy-headed, self-appointed foreign policy gurus cannot abide the fact that Trump is getting things right without their advice and counsel.  That is the root of their unscrupulous and ridiculous gang-up on the president.  They are gobsmacked that they are thoroughly unnecessary.

As for the left-wing media tools, they are equally disoriented by the successes Trump is racking up with alacrity – so disoriented that they are self-destructing before our eyes.  Any montage of the not-analysts on CNN and MSNBC throughout the last few days reveals a full group meltdown of monstrous proportions.  Their shark-jumping criticism of Trump over the Putin press conference has made their mania over the border look like a toddler tantrum.  This time they have exposed themselves for who they really are: terrified, ignorant, blinkered narcissists discovering they are completely irrelevant.  We should all be eternally grateful for the truthful analysts, like Stephen F. Cohen of the Nation, and for Trump, whose instincts are so much better than the lot of the baying hyenas on cable and network so-called news programs. 

They are all oozing fear from every pore.