If members of the Washington press corps didn't understand why Donald Trump was elected president last November, they may have an idea after a nearly 80-minute, raucous news conference Thursday in which the chief executive excoriated the media like no one in modern history has done.
He spoke directly to those who have twisted facts, created controversy and tried to leave the impression the nearly month-old administration is awash in chaos.
For his part, Trump said the White House "is running like a fine-tuned machine."
The truth, with a bumpy temporary travel ban rollout and the resignation of a national security adviser, is somewhere between the chaos and the "fine-tuned machine."
Washington is agog at such behavior from Trump, but it shouldn't be. Candidate Trump regularly took shots at the media for the type of coverage it has shown with the administration to date.
And many voters loved it. For nearly 50 years, beginning with the Woodward and Bernstein pursuit of Richard Nixon, they have seen the White House press corps attempt to take down presidents as if it were part of the job description. Usually, it didn't matter whether the individual in the office was Republican or Democrat - ask the Carters and Clintons how they liked the media - but no one has ever fought back. Until now.
They media doesn't like it, either. Not a bit. So its coverage of the administration thus far has reflected that dislike.
So Trump had a few things to get off his chest Thursday.
The press, he said, was "out of control." "CNN," he offered, "is full of anger and hate." "You," he told the room, "have a lower approval rate than Congress."
Just shy of 15 years ago, Ari Fleischer tried to give the White House press corps a little advice in his book "Taking Heat." The first press secretary for then-President George W. Bush wrote about the intelligence of the corps he faced in daily briefings and about its necessity to hold the president accountable. He also pointed out the corps' unneeded propensity for creating clashes where there were none, of attempting to make mountains out of molehills and of using its acknowledged liberal bias to determine how and what stories were covered.
How much more balanced coverage of any White House might be, he suggested, if media outlets employed as many conservative as liberal reporters and if those who were their instructors in college were similarly balanced.
Nothing changed, of course, so the last eight years, with fawning media coverage for President Barack Obama, only made the switch to Trump harder. Because not only does Trump take the press corps to task, but his administration plans to roll back a number of the laws, regulations and executive orders Obama implemented.
"I inherited a mess," he said Thursday.
The media was shocked at such an utterance, forgetting that Obama blamed every poor turn of events in his first term on his predecessor.
Indeed, the Washington media has had its way for so long, most of its members can't imagine being bucked.
NBC's Chuck Todd, host of the long-running "Meet the Press," tweeted Thursday that "delegitimizing the press is un-American."
Trump voters, in turn, might say constantly castigating a president whose administration is less than a month old because the favored presidential candidate of members of the media didn't win and because the president has different ideas for the country than his immediate predecessor is equally un-American.
The media being the media is not likely to let up on Trump, and Trump being Trump is not likely to start behaving like those who went before him and felt it was beneath their dignity to fight back against unfair coverage.
Voters, though, will keep applauding him as long as he keeps his promises, the economy continues to improve and the country doesn't become involved in another long slog of a foreign adventure.
Meanwhile, Trump will continue to be inelegant, rambling, defensive, arrogant and accusatory toward the press. On Thursday, he seemed to enjoy it all.
It was somewhat akin to coming upon the car that passed you at 90 mph being stopped by the Highway Patrol or seeing the bully who harassed you getting his comeuppance from somebody bigger.
"I sort of enjoy this back and forth," Trump said.
Me too, said no one in the smug, self-righteous White House press corps.