ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK II:

Donald Trump's first press conference as president-elect was still hours away, but the scene at Trump Tower was already turning hostile.

Hundreds of journalists had crammed into the too-small atrium Wednesday morning, and many were grumpily jockeying for position and power-outlet access. Coiffed TV correspondents elbowed notebook-toting scribblers out of their live shots; producers grumbled about CNN unjustly colonizing a swath of prime seating up front; camera operators barked at each other on the risers. The atmosphere at Trump's press events often has a zoo-like quality. At this one it felt like the animals had been starved, hunted, and turned against each other.

Indeed, the press corps Trump faced Wednesday seemed more divided and less sure of itself than the one that grilled him six months ago, when he last held a formal press conference. With his surprise victory last November, Trump didn't just beat and embarrass his foes in the political press--he burned down their villages, defiled their temples, and danced on the graves of their dead. In the months that followed, news outlets entered into prolonged periods of soul-searching and self-flagellation while Trump took victory laps. Some of the same reporters and pundits who once laughed off his chances at victory were reduced to aggregating his tweets, pleading for access, and posing for chummy group photos at Mar-a-Lago.

At the dawn of the Trump presidency, America's political press corps is feeling anxious, territorial, threatened--and the president-elect showed Wednesday that he's ready to take advantage.

[M]ore than an hour in, Rubio leaned into his microphone.

There had been some discussion beforehand, aired in the Washington Post, about what sort of approach Rubio, the scorned Presidential candidate, would take when confronting Tillerson. "The Florida Republican is likely to reveal what kind of future he wants in President-elect Donald Trump's Washington," the Post's Paul Kane wrote. Would Rubio indicate that he wanted to join those Republican colleagues who have adopted a new level of flexibility in their thinking, and possibly abandon ideas that he had been advocating for years in order to become a Trump facilitator? Or would he play the role of the aggressive skeptic, probing Tillerson's financial ties and Russian sympathies, and staking out his independence?

After stating that he had not yet received his security clearances, and therefore had not yet seen any classified information, Tillerson responded to Rubio's question by saying that he had read the report about the hacking of the Democratic National Committee that was released publicly on January 6th. "That report clearly is troubling," Tillerson said. "And clearly indicates that all of the actions you describe were undertaken."

Rubio asked, based on Tillerson's vast reserve of knowledge about Russia and Russian politics, accrued during his career doing deals in that country as head of Exxon, whether it was possible that a cyberattack of this scale on the United States election could have happened without Putin's knowledge.

Tillerson looked pained, and placed his hand on his heart, in a sort of God's-honest-truth pose. "I'm not in a position to make that determination," he said. He needed more information.

Rubio interrupted him and said, "Mr. Tillerson, you've engaged in significant business activities in Russia, so I'm sure you're aware very few things of a major proportion happen in that country without Vladimir Putin's permission."

"I think that's a fair assumption," Tillerson finally said.

There was urgency to Rubio's interrogation, as, in another city, inside a shiny tower on Fifth Avenue, throngs of reporters were waiting for President-elect Donald Trump to begin his first press conference since the election. The topic there was expected to be Russia as well, and as soon as it started all eyes were likely to shift away from Washington.

Rubio quickly moved on to sanctions that the Obama Administration imposed on Russia late last month, in retaliation for the hacking. He wanted to know whether Tillerson would support a possible law to penalize any country that tried to influence a U.S. election through cyberattacks. Here, Tillerson was even less clear, but his basic point seemed to be that he would want to take into consideration trading relationships and other dealings between the United States and the offending country before imposing any penalties; he said that he opposed the blanket, automatic imposition of sanctions. Tillerson, after all, has spent his career as a corporate chieftain--one who knows the value of pushing economic interests to the top of every calculation.

He and Rubio went back and forth, with the senator expressing incredulity that Tillerson was basically admitting that he might decline to penalize a foreign government if it would harm the U.S.'s economic interests. He then asked whether Tillerson would support the sanctions already imposed by the United States on Russia over the election-related attacks.

Rather than addressing the specific question, Tillerson spoke about the need for a "comprehensive cybersecurity plan" and for a "comprehensive assessment of our cyber threat." It was a familiar strategy of subject-changing and obfuscation, a stab at a verbal filibuster. Rubio kept asking, and Tillerson kept saying that he didn't have enough information to answer.

"Okay," Rubio finally said. "Let me ask you this: Is Vladimir Putin a war criminal?"

"I would not use that term," Tillerson said, scowling.

"Well," Rubio said, "let me describe the situation in Aleppo."

Tweet   @brothersjudd