Trump began by pointing out to the roughly 400 assembled members of CIA staff that he had made the CIA his first official stop as president — and then almost within a breath was commenting that "the dishonest media" had managed to treat him nicely during his inaugural speech for once.
He then dragged himself back to his intended message — that "there is nobody that feels stronger about the intelligence community and the CIA than Donald Trump."
He called the staff of all the US intelligence agencies "very, very special" and assured them that as president, he supported them.
"I know maybe sometimes you haven't gotten the backing that you wanted, but you're going to get so much backing," he promised.
The president also vowed to bring "great things" for the country and the intelligence community, among them a return to using the "real abilities" of the US in its many long-running wars.
We've been fighting wars for years, Trump explained, but "we've been restrained."
Now, the intelligence community and military will be loosed to get rid of Daesh, he implied. "Radical Islamic terrorism… has to be eradicated. Just off the face of the Earth." The terrorist threat of Daesh is pure evil, the commander in chief said, ignoring complex reasons for the rise of Daesh in the Middle East.
"It's time right now to end it," he announced.
Evoking the phrase "to the victor belong the spoils," Trump also suggested that the US hadn't looting as much as it should have from its foreign adventures and — chillingly, some might say — suggested ‘maybe we'll have another chance" to take Iraq's oil.
Moving along, Trump promised the CIA would be getting a "total star" in CIA director nominee Mike Pompeo and declared again to the intelligence ranks, "I am with you 1,000 percent."
That business out of the way, he couldn't resist a parting shot or two at his favorite target.
"As you know, I have a running war with the media. They are among the most dishonest human beings on Earth," he told the gathering, which promptly erupted in cheers. "And they sort of made it sound like I had a feud with the intelligence community, and I just want to let you know… it is exactly the opposite."
Meandering on, he mentioned turning on his TV set the morning after the inauguration and seeing images of an empty field, nothing like the masses of people he saw yesterday, he said.
"It looked like a million, a million and a half people," he said, erroneously claiming that the crowd stretched as far as the Washington Monument.
The networks are reporting that he drew 250,000 — and that's "not bad" he said. "But it's a lie." The crowds were much bigger than that, the president of the United States insisted.
"We caught them," he said of his favorite amorphous adversary, the media. "We caught them in a beauty, and I think they're going to pay a big price."
It didn't end there.
A "Zeke" from Time Magazine (reporter Zeke Miller, apparently) falsely reported that Trump had removed a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. from the White House.
"This is how dishonest the media is," he said. They reported that he'd removed the bust when really it was just… hidden behind a camera or something — the president didn't make it terribly clear, other than to insist that the bust is present and accounted for.
He only pointed this latest slight out "because I love honestly," Trump said.
And that's not all he loves.
"I love you," he told the spooks. "We're going to start winning again and you're going to be leading the charge."
