Opinion: ‘Trump lives in his own reality’ and other reader takeaways from the president’s news conference

In any other administration, the president fielding questions from reporters would be barely distinguishable from any other day-to-day newsworthy events in Washington. But when President Trump stands in front of a camera and talks to journalists, readers pull up a chair.

For someone as ratings-obsessed as Trump (after his notoriously lackluster performance in his first debate with Hillary Clinton, he bragged about the event drawing a massive television audience), this might be a compliment. But since his news conference Thursday, dozens of letter writers have expressed their dismay at the president’s behavior toward the journalists he berated and his untruthful remarks.

Here are some of their letters.

Studio City resident Daniel Berez wonders about Trump’s grasp on reality:

So the dirty little secret is working its way out of the box: Trump lives in his own reality. He really does believe he won the popular vote and the electoral college by a greater margin than God. He really does believe journalists are dishonest. He says he inherited a huge mess. He’s not just saying it, he truly believes it.

Trump is in way over his head. The stress of his job will further exacerbate his unfitness for the presidency. He jeopardizes the country.

The whispers have begun in Congress: This is the most dysfunctional administration ever, and there is a reason for it. The reason is the president.

Jim Krause of San Pedro criticizes the people around Trump:

For the president to stand in front of a television camera, surrounded by reporters, and tell one lie after another shows he has become dangerous to the nation and the world. Yet cabinet secretaries continue to support him, and the congressional majority does virtually nothing.

Have these people not realized that their names will one day live in infamy?

Los Alamitos resident Terry Bales finds an antecedent to Trump in cinema:

The rantings and ravings of Trump in his news conference reminded me of a paranoid Captain Queeg as played to diabolical perfection by Humphrey Bogart in “The Caine Mutiny.”

All that bombast and denial made me hungry for strawberries.

Calabasas resident Jim Thompson also refers to film:

Watching Trump at his epic news conference saying the real story is not Russia but Clinton stealing the questions at a debate brings to mind a scene from “Blazing Saddles.”

In it, the character Gabby Johnson talks in “authentic frontier gibberish,” and an observer asks, “Now who can argue with that?”

Kymberleigh Richards of Van Nuys suggests a new way for Trump to get attention:

The president blames the media for every downturn, every roadblock, every negative in his brief administration.

As more people come to see his attacks on the media as background noise, I wonder what he plans to do to get attention next. If he’s looking for suggestions, I offer “resigning his office.”

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