That’s because Trump, as combative a personality who’s ever occupied the White House, thrives on conflict. While Washington is often called Hollywood for ugly people, few of the dullards, clods, clowns, rapscallions, and mountebanks who occupy seats in the Congress or in the hierarchies of their respective branches of the Permanent Bipartisan Fusion Party (PBFP) have his flair for drama or his tolerance for high-stakes risk.

These two things infuriate the PBFP and its media claque, a.k.a. the Washington press corps. The very things they despise about him, including his insouciant, gleeful rudeness, are the things that bind him to his base and his base to him. As far as the base is concerned, the enemy of my enemies is my president.