By all sober accounts, yesterday’s presidential news conference was an odd affair—77 minutes of self-congratulation and verbal assaults on presidential foes, from the courts to the news media. PBS let it run at unusual length, presumably so viewers could see it without filtering.

My own interest is the media. It should always be noted that “media” includes everything from the soberest mainstream analyst to the most demented late-night ranter and the supermarket tabloids, which are currently inventing an Obama plot to impeach his successor.

The White House reporters gathered in the East Room yesterday are foot soldiers—beat reporters—who show up on call for briefings and presidential appearances. They must be professional to get where they are. They can’t afford to lose their cool (and their jobs) by blowing up on camera.

The president continues to call these men and women “dishonest” to their faces. As Neal Gorsuch said of similar attacks on judges, this could be “disheartening and demoralizing” if the reporters let it. But neither they nor judges are likely to do so. The reporters will continue to do their job, which is to report calmly from a White House that is a long way from the “finely tuned machine” described by its occupant, in perhaps his oddest words of all yesterday.