The Trump Administration, seizing upon the opportunity of untrammelled time to brag and hold attention and boldly reframe and bend the truth, has made the press conference its signature rhetorical form. Even more than in Trump’s famously long, digressive, “weaving” rally speeches, he and his spokespeople have used the formerly staid tradition of speaking to and taking questions from the media to set forth their distorted vision of the future—and, maybe more subtly, to let slip their estimation of the public. Throughout January, the members of the Trump regime welcomed the New Year by blitzing the podium: they took the chaos they’d created—the sudden power vacuum in Venezuela, the fatal incursions of ICE in Minnesota, a spun-up territorial crisis over Greenland—and tried to wrestle it into the shape of a story in which they would prevail.