In his first press conference since being elected president, Donald Trump thanked the media. He praised news outfits that didn’t publish a story about a document that describes alleged Russian efforts to compromise him, even though many of those news organizations had the story for months and held on to it. The two press outfits that did publish the story, CNN and BuzzFeed, got whipped by the president-elect. Trump called them “fake news” and refused to take questions from reporters representing their organizations.

You almost have to wonder, though, if he shouldn’t be going easy on them, especially BuzzFeed, which posted the original document in its entirety “so that Americans can make up their own minds about allegations about the president-elect that have circulated at the highest levels of the US government.” The report is so bizarre and incoherent that it has the effect of undermining the accusations that Trump has unsavory ties with Russia.