As evidenced last week, when it comes to bashing the president the anti-Trump media takes no holiday.

What makes Donald Trump different from his predecessors is that he punches back and seems to delight in confusing his adversaries. Newsweek, which fabricated an article on how the president was supposed to be spending Thanksgiving, was the latest victim of Trump’s rope-a-dope. Its political reporter wrote that Trump would be doing some “tweeting, golfing and more” and that like prior Thanksgivings, he would be feasting on 24 dishes, which was a backhanded inference that the president would be overindulging at the dinner table.

What the reporter didn’t know was that Trump was 8,331 miles away, spending the day with U.S. troops in Afghanistan. It was the president’s second visit to a combat zone, his first coming last Christmas.

Even after news of the Afghanistan trip broke last Thursday afternoon, Newsweek’s fake story remained online for four more hours. The author, who ended up being fired, said it was an “honest mistake.”

It’s impressive to see how Trump’s team was able to create so many rabbit trails to throw off media hounds, many of whom are so intent on embarrassing or bringing the president down.

The mission began with Trump secretly slipping out of his Florida residence Wednesday evening without his usual motorcade and departing from an undisclosed airport. Told that he’d be spending Thanksgiving at his Mar-a-Lago club, reporters had no idea that the president was secretly flying back to Washington.

To avoid giving away the secret trip, Air Force One, the presidential aircraft that Trump had flown to Florida a day earlier, was used as a decoy and remained parked at Palm Beach International Airport.

At about 9:45 p.m., the president boarded the Air Force One twin that was concealed in a hangar at Andrews Air Force Base. Even the traveling press members were clueless. Twelve of the 13 journalists who traveled with Trump were picked up on the roof of a public parking garage near Joint Base Andrews just outside Washington but were not told their destination.

Cellphones and other transmitting devices were confiscated from everyone traveling on the flight. To prevent suspicions, Thanksgiving-themed tweets were prepared ahead of time from Trump’s account.

The reporters learned of their destination from White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham two hours before arrival. They were barred from reporting on the trip until just before their departure from Afghanistan. Amid chants of “U-S-A” at the Bagram base, Trump told troops that he wanted to win the war in Afghanistan and that “We don’t play for ties.” After a bilateral meeting with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, he also announced the restart of peace talks with the Taliban who, he said, are anxious to make a deal.

Trump ran on a platform to not have America engaged in endless wars. After 18 years, the deaths of more than 2,400 American service members and a war costing billions in taxpayer dollars, he feels that it’s time to reduce troop strength in Afghanistan, where about 12,000 American troops are currently serving.

It didn’t matter to the anti-Trump media that the president spent his Thanksgiving in a foreign land with American troops or that he announced an opening up of Afghanistan peace talks. Giving the president any kind of credit for trying to end the longest war in American history just isn’t an option for the media never Trumpers.

The big news that some in the liberal press chose to focus on last Thursday was that Melania Trump was suspiciously not seen with the president during his unannounced visit to the troops.

Blinded by a hatred for this president, anti-Trump talking heads on outlets like MSNBC and CNN seem to engage this president in a Whack-a-Mole game every week. But as commander in chief, Trump wields a heavy mallet, often sending the media liberals back into their holes to recover and where they try to come up with a new phony headline for another day.

By Jim Zbick | tneditor@tnonline.com