THE TRUMP WAY – AT 10:38 A.M. ET:  Many wince when Donald Trump opens his mouth.  Elegant he isn't.  Presidential he isn't.  He's Donald.

And yet, he's effective.   He won a presidential election despite massive odds.  When someone punches him, he punches back twice as hard, even at the risk of seeming the bully.  Look at his dealings with the media, especially his combative press conference this week.   From Fred Barnes at Weekly Standard:

With Trump, rules have changed. CNN was oblivious to this. It had played up the dubious "dossier" story about Trump. Yet, after Trump denounced the story, CNN correspondent Jim Acosta thought he was entitled to ask a question. Trump refused. "You are fake news," he said, looking at Acosta.

Which leads us to the first change. And by the way, it applies across the board, not just to the media. The new rule is simple: When you attack Trump, he will hit back harder than you could have imagined. "He learned this in the New York media when he was a businessman," Newt Gingrich said in a speech in December.

This is "Trump's core model," says Gingrich, who understands how Trump operates better than anyone else. There's a reason for Trump's counter-punching. He always wants to be on offense. "He's on permanent offense," Gingrich says. This, too, is a change. "He gets up in the morning, figuring out, how am I going to stay on offense?"

That he punches back was lost on Hollywood's Meryl Streep. After she vilified him at the Golden Globe awards banquet, he unloaded on her with bruising force. He tweeted that she's an "overrated actress" and a "Hillary flunkie." I suspect more people read his tweets than watched her speech on TV. More are also likely to remember what he said.

But the main thing was he got on offense.

COMMENT:  A good analysis.  We're in for four years of fireworks.  I can't wait.  It'll be the best show around.

January 13, 2017