I would never accuse Donald Trump of being a smart man.  He’s petulant, impulsive, lacking in foresight and self awareness, and has the temperament of a toddler.  And while I would never accuse him of understanding people on a grand level, he does know how to make people talk about the things he wants them to talk about.  Controlling the narrative is a very real skill that Donald Trump possesses.  It’s not entirely the media’s fault that they tend to get played by Trump.  I mean, the man is the President, what he says is by all accounts the “News”, but the media seems ready and willing to continue running in whatever direction Trump points, and Trump is well aware of that.  In what has been a catastrophic week of domestic terrorism that Trump and the GOP can credibly be accused of helping incite, it was in Trump’s best interest to get people to talk about something else in the week running up to the midterm elections, and by openly threatening use Presidential powers to attempt to illegally threaten to quash the 14th amendment and birthright citizenship, he effectively changed the conversation. It’s like the Jedi Mind Trick, except gross and sad.