The tax-cut legislation, which the president signed Friday, was pushed through Congress in fits and starts but with persistent White House muscle, the president prodding the House and Senate leadership with remarkable skill for a president who “doesn’t understand government” and oblivious of “how Washington works.”

Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen of Axios, no conservatives they, write that “the media often appraises presidencies and politics through liberal-tinted glasses. But the vast majority of the Republican Party likes, even loves, these policies. We have been saying all year: ‘Watch what he does, not what he says.’ Until recently he hasn’t done much. But these wins are substantial, with consequences for millions of people and many years to come and while Trump failed in repeated attempts to scrap Obamacare, he boasted [Thursday] that abolishing the individual mandate — a provision added to the tax bill — amounts to repealing the health-care program. That’s an overstatement, but letting people wait until they get sick to buy insurance could well undermine the exchanges created by Barack Obama.”

Ross Douthat, a columnist for The New York Times and a card-carrying member of the Exalted Roundtable of Trump Tormentors, nevertheless takes note of the media’s inability to observe two things at once. The “decimation of ISIS,” for example, has drawn only grudging media attention.