PRESS: WE HATE YOU WE HATE YOU WE HATE YOU. TRUMP: OKAY, I’LL TREAT YOU LIKE PEOPLE WHO HATE ME. Press: You’re Inflaming Tensions!

A White House reporter confronted White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders at the top of her Tuesday press briefing, accusing her of “inflaming” tensions with the media and undercutting the credibility of reporters.

Sanders had been asked about whether President Trump accepts the apology from CNN regarding a recent story it retracted about alleged ties between a Trump ally and a Russian investment fund.

“All we are saying is I think we should take a really good look at what we are focused on, what we are covering and making sure it’s accurate and honest,” she said.

“If we make the slightest mistake, the slightest word is off, it’s an absolute tirade from a lot of people in this room. But news outlets get to go on day after day and cite unnamed sources, use stories without sources.”

As she continued, Brian Karem with The Sentinel Newspapers in Maryland interrupted.

“You are inflaming everyone right here right now with those words. This administration has done that as well … Any one of us are replaceable, if we don’t get it right, the audience has the opportunity to turn the channel or not read us. You have been elected to serve for four years at least, there is no option other than that,” Karem said.

“We are here to ask you questions, you are here to provide answers. And what you just did is inflammatory to people all over the country who look at it and say, ‘See, once again, the president is right and everybody else is just fake media.’ Everybody in this room is only trying to do their job.”

Sanders pushed back, briefly addressing the accusations before moving onto questions from another reporter.

They decided to “denormalize” the Trump presidency, and now they’re unhappy that they aren’t being treated in a normal fashion. A modicum of old-fashioned professionalism would have prevented this, but they’re no longer capable of sustaining that.

OUCH:

Plus: CNN faced $100M lawsuit over botched Russia story.

YOU CAN’T HOLD A PRESS CONFERENCE IN HERE, GENTLEMEN — THIS IS THE WAR ROOM! Liz Sheld has the latest from the White House — and much more — in today’s morning brief.

OUR NEWS MEDIA ARE AWFUL: We’re politically divided and hateful. Maybe that’s the media’s fault too.

The media’s antipathy toward Trump is, in both word and story selection, more open in today’s journalism than during previous generations. As conservative politicians have long known, reporters’ questions for Republicans usually are more hostile than their ready acceptance of Democratic statements.

Until the late 1900s, however, professional ethics and editing rules dictated those personal proclivities be muted, if not hidden. Some of us took considerable work-pride in masking political leanings, to the point of regularly changing party voter registrations should anyone check.

In the late 1980s senior editors of prominent Eastern dailies began encouraging writers to insert “attitude” not just in documented news analysis pieces but also in everyday reported stories.

Manpower cost-cutting through buyouts has since sharply reduced editorial oversight of story content. And intense competition in online journalism can permit, even encourage exaggerations and biased shortcuts in reporting quality control.

This combines with a critical reciprocity among zealous reporters to find fault with anything involving Trump.

A lot of 27-year-olds who know nothing, to use Ben Rhodes’ formulation, competing to look edgy on social media.

A BILLION HERE AND A BILLION THERE AND PRETTY SOON YOU’RE TALKING REAL MONEY: How Bad Is the Crisis in Illinois? It Has $14.6 Billion in Unpaid Bills.

Hospitals, doctors and dentists don’t get paid for hundreds of millions of dollars of patient care. Social-service agencies help fewer people. Public universities and the towns that surround them suffer. The state’s bond rating falls to near junk status. People move out.

A standoff in Illinois between Republican Governor Bruce Rauner and Democratic Speaker of the House Michael Madigan over spending and term limits has left Illinois without a budget for two years. State workers and some others are still getting paid because of court orders and other stopgap measures, but bills for many others are piling up.

The unpaid backlog is now $14.6 billion and growing. Illinois is even late paying its utilities bills to Springfield, its own capital city.

Bills that can’t be paid, won’t be.

KELSEY HARKNESS: Nasty Women Target ‘Problematic Women.’ We’re Not Going Anywhere: Armed with reason and born with a uterus, problematic women are dangerous and difficult to dismiss. “Don’t waste your sympathy, Doyle suggests. An attack on a woman’s physical attributes is justifiable when her politics are wrong.”

Well, feminism has always just been agitprop for the left. It’s not as if it was ever especially concerned with the well-being of actual women.

DURANTY LIVES! The New York Times Shills for Communism — Again.

The scorpion stings the frog, every time.

EXCELLENT ADVICE WHICH NATURALLY HAS FEMINISTS ANGRY: ‘Staying fit is one of the best gifts you can give him!’ Conservative wife pens anti-feminist essay telling women to maintain trim figures and prioritize looks to keep their HUSBANDS happy.

Here’s the actual essay.

WHEN ACADEMICS LIE AND SMEAR: Nancy MacLean’s Distortion of James Buchanan’s Statement. “My Econlib colleague Russ Roberts has pointed to a passage of Nancy MacLean’s recent book, Democracy in Chains: A Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, in which Professor MacLean left key words out of a quote from Tyler Cowen, thus seriously distorting his meaning. A Facebook friend, Christopher Fleming, has pointed out that she has done the same thing with a quote from James Buchanan, the main player in her book. See if you can tell the difference between what he says and what she claims he says.”

This sort of thing is academic misconduct on a par with plagiarism, but anything for “social justice” I guess. Two lessons here: (1) If you can’t criticize people on the right without lying about them, maybe you just can’t criticize them; and (2) This is why academic institutions shouldn’t hire people who prioritize “social justice.”

FLEXIBILITY: Obama Choked on Russia Long Before the 2016 Election. “It’s no wonder Putin thought he could meddle in the U.S. He had gotten away with everything else he tried.”

Eli Lake:

Rather than asking why Obama didn’t do more to stop Russian meddling, the better question is why President Vladimir Putin thought he could get away with this interference in the first place. In every respect, the U.S. is more powerful than Russia. It has a much larger economy. Its military is superior. Its cyber capabilities are greater. Its diplomatic position is stronger. So why did Putin believe he could treat America like it was Estonia?

The answer is that Obama spent the first six years of his presidency turning a blind eye to Russian aggression. In his first term, Obama pursued a policy of “reset” with Moscow, even though he took office only five months after Russia had occupied two Georgian provinces in the summer of 2008. In the 2012 election, Obama mocked his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, for saying Russia posed a significant threat to U.S. interests. Throughout his presidency, Obama’s administration failed to respond to Russian cheating on arms-control agreements. His diplomacy to reach an agreement to temporarily suspend progress on Iran’s nuclear program made the U.S. reliant on Russian cooperation for Obama’s signature foreign policy achievement.

In the shadows, Russian spies targeted Americans abroad. As I reported in 2011 for the Washington Times, Russia’s intelligence services had stepped up this campaign of harassment during the reset.

Putin took the measure of Obama long before the “flexibility” of his second term, and found him wanting.

RAY KURZWEIL ON LINKING OUR BRAINS TO THE CLOUD. I’m less enthusiastic about this than I once was. I don’t think the antivirus software will be good enough . . .

YOU’LL NEED A HEART OF STONE NOT TO ROFL: CNN’s Very Bad Week.

TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE: Reporters attempting to disconnect unhinged stars from the progressive movement are forgetting one critical fact.

ABOUT AS MUCH AS HUMANS WHO DON’T: Why Dolls that Read Emotions are as Creepy as They Sound.

THE HUGOS AND SF INSIDE BASEBALL: The Claw!

WHICH IS WHY WE NEED TO GET OUR EGGS OUT OF THIS ONE BASKET: Mass extinctions on Earth are more common than you think.

FLORIDA MAN!  WHAT YOU GONNA DO?  Florida thief caught with his pants down.

REALLY?  MICHAEL MOORE? TRIGGLYPUFF?  The sexy new bikini style that looks good on everyone.

BUT VERY SLOWLY, LIKE IN THE NEXT 10,000 YEARS OR SO (ROLLS EYES): Climate change is coming for your morning cup of coffee.

SAVE THE WHAT? Killer whales completely eviscerated a great white shark.

BUT THEN THEY BLOW UP SO FAST: Sesame Street’s Elmo: Refugee kids are just like us.

I hope the Russians love their children, too. And I also hope that going forward, CNN will tell its Website readers that in this case its anti-Trump article is also serving as an in-house PR exercise, since these days Sesame Street is produced by HBO (where Bill Maher’s show is brought to you by the letter “N”), part of the same conglomerate as CNN.

UNDER THE RULES ESTABLISHED BY THE LEFT POST-NOVEMBER, SHE NEEDS TO IMMEDIATELY RESIGN, RIGHT? Sen. McCaskill Had Dinner at Russian Ambassador’s Home in 2015, Contradicting Her Claim.

DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE AND LIBERAL FASCISM: Teachers Are Now Performing Monthly Mental Health Exams on Your Child — and they don’t need your permission.

A PALEO FOOD BLOG: NomNomPaleo.

A BLOG THAT I WISH UPDATED MORE OFTEN: The Angry Pharmacist.