• by Joe Mandese , June 10, 2026

Nine years after he first took office, Donald Trump is finally meeting the press. Not the post-Trump namby-pamby version that he has grown accustomed to, but the kind that leans forward, challenges his incessant lies, distortions and gaslighting by holding their journalistic ground.

You know -- what our founders intended for the press to do when confronting a demagogue.

Turns out, he can't take the heat and just storms out of the kitchen. Or as was the case in Sunday's "Meet The Press" interview with host Kristen Welker, he got up and stormed out of the Chippewa Falls barn they were recording the interview in.

Personally, I've been waiting for the moment when Americans -- regardless of their political views -- could see how Trump crumbles when the press does not.

It's something I've been thinking about ever since Trump first took office by literally declaring war on America's free press, and subsequently using the power of his office to browbeat White House correspondents into submission.

Instead of capitulating, NYU professor Jay Rosen recommended a brilliant solution: to send interns instead of seasoned correspondents to cover the White House press briefings.

Needless to say, that didn't happen, although the professionalism of the White House Press Corps degraded for other White House credentialing reasons over time.

So it was refreshing to see some mainstream news outlet hold their ground and push back on Trump to the point where he got so exasperated that he simply walked off.

I know I'm not alone. According to Nielsen, the interview was watched by 3 million TV viewers, marking a 19-week high for "Meet The Press."

And while I've seen some coverage -- mostly from right-wing media outlets, although at least one mainstream one -- in favor of Trump cutting the interview short, my sense is that the majority think it was, well, un-Presidential.

As far as I know, no scientific poll of the incident has been published to date, but I asked Gemini Pro to do its best at guesstimating the percentage of press coverage supporting or opposing Trump's decision to get up and leave. It's for illustration purposes only, but I think it's in the ballpark.