by ConservativeHQ.com Staff

Most of what President Trump does or says seems to drive the Left and their fellow travelers in the national news media crazy, but the reaction to President Trump’s rally in Phoenix, Arizona was completely over the top.

The media reaction was predictable and savage as CNN anchor Dona Lemon ranted, “Well, what do you say to that? I’m just going to speak from the heart here — what we have witnessed is a total eclipse of the facts,” Lemon began, adding: “He’s unhinged. It’s embarrassing.”

That wasn’t all, as Politico put it, Lemon “thundered on” as he compared Trump to a petty 6-year-old who creates imaginary enemies. He said Trump’s speech was “without thought” and “without reason” and “devoid of fact.”

“It was devoid of wisdom,” Lemon said. “There was no gravitas. There was no sanity there. He was like a child blaming a sibling on something else.”

“This was a Castro-esque speech in length, an astounding chain of lies … by a man who is obviously mentally unstable,” said Rick Wilson, one of CNN’s stable of anti-Trump Republicans.

The writers for Time magazine’s website contented themselves with quoting Hillary Clinton supporters to express their views:

Dillon Scott of Phoenix, who voted for Clinton, said he came out to express dissatisfaction with how long Trump took to denounce racism after the Charlottesville violence.

“No one should be allowed to get away with what he gets away with, especially in political office,” Scott said.

Meanwhile, a group of protesters chanted, “Wrong side of history! Wrong side of history!”

But what exactly was it that drove the national media so crazy that only Sean Hannity of Fox had anything positive to say about the speech?

The short version is that Trump was Trump last night.

He started off by criticizing the press. “I’m really doing this to show you how … dishonest these people are,” President Trump said toward the beginning of the speech, referring to the media.

He referred to the “failing New York Times” and labeled The Washington Post as a “lobbying tool” for Amazon. He also had predictably harsh words for CNN, a network his White House has frequently feuded with.

“I really think they don’t like our country. I really believe that,” President Trump said of the media.

He also doubled down on his commitment to build the promised southern border wall: “The most sacred duty of government is to protect the lives of its citizens,” Trump said as he promised to secure the United States borders, enforce immigration laws and promote “extreme vetting.”

He said that immigration places a “burden” on American citizens and reasserted the near future of his long-promised southern border wall.

“We are building a wall on the southern border,” the President said, calling the effort “absolutely necessary.”

All of this was vintage Donald Trump straight from the campaign that defeated Hillary Clinton AND the national media to win the White House.

And the President did one other thing to drive the media nuts: He defended his comments about the Charlottesville riots.

According to CBS News, the President spent roughly the first half of his rally defending his response to the violent events in Charlottesville, Virginia. He called the media’s coverage of his initial statement unfair and read from a transcription of his first statement verbatim.

It didn’t seem like half the 90-minute speech to us. The President read his initial remarks about Charlottesville and without the negative media commentary it didn’t seem like it took up all that much time.

The President’s speech in Phoenix was vintage Trump and in a way the comments themselves were almost a letdown – there was nothing new policy-wise and he didn’t pardon Sheriff Joe or endorse Kelli Ward for Senate, although he hinted at both.

That left the highlight of the evening to occur outside the arena where a leading protester was the subject of what one online commentator called “instant karma.”

Trump’s Phoenix speech was good mostly because Trump showed he could still be Trump, and that he wasn’t going to be cowed into abandoning his base – and because along the way he delivered an epic put down to the national media’s Charlottesville narrative – not because it contained anything new.