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WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump on Friday sought to rally disparate strands of conservative activists and Republicans behind him by hailing the historic movement that led to his election and by promising, I will continue to fight for you.

Trump delivered an address that echoed his campaign stump speech to solidify his support at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference run by the American Conservative Union, where he was greeted with a roar as he came onstage.

The victory and the win were something that really was dedicated to a country and people that believe in freedom, security and the rule of law. Our victory was a victory and a win for conservative values, Trump said.

And he redefined the Republican Party that he now runs as the embodiment of the economic nationalism of America First. The core conviction of our movement is that we are a nation that put and will put its own citizens first, he told the standing-room-only hall.

Trump also continued his attacks on the news media, complaining about critical coverage as fake news by dishonest reporters.

More than 9,000 people registered for the CPAC meeting at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Oxon Hill, Maryland, near Washington, D.C., said Keith Zeig, executive director of McLaughlin & Associates, which is conducting the groups straw poll.

Trump delivered a call to action in a speech in which he freely ad-libbed from prepared remarks. The era of empty talk is over, its over. Now is the time for action, he said.

Trump drew applause as he ticked off his plans: building a wall on the southern border; rounding up bad dudes in the country illegally; renegotiating trade deals; bringing back manufacturing jobs; slashing federal regulation; lowering taxes; and keeping out radical Islamic terrorists.

Trump even brought up his defeated Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and her description of some of his supporters as deplorables. The crowd promptly chanted Lock her up.

Trump also dismissed people protesting the plans to repeal and replace Obamacare at Republican town hall meetings.

The people that youre watching, theyre not you, Trump said. Many of them are the side that lost, you know, they lost the election.

Later Friday, Trump met with a persistent critic during his campaign, Ohio Gov. John Kasich. After the White House meeting, Kasich, who was a candidate in the Republican primaries, said that its sort of like being on an airplane: You want to root for the pilot.

He said he shared ideas about changes to the health care law, and that Trump listened carefully and had a positive response.

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President Donald Trump rallies conservative activists - Newsday

Donald Trump Takes On Familiar TargetsIntelligence Agencies and the Press Wall Street Journal (subscription) After a week that showed hints of the reset sought by Capitol Hill Republicans, President Donald Trump undertook several new attacks Friday focused on two of his frequent targets: the intelligence community and the press. Mr. Trump began posting ...

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Donald Trump Takes On Familiar TargetsIntelligence Agencies and the Press - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

Detroit Free Press Editorial Board 7:04 p.m. ET Feb. 24, 2017

Donald Trump stands to profit handsomely from the presidency says Mike Thompson in his latest animation. Mike Thompson/Detroit Free Press

In this Feb. 17, 2017 photo, President Donald Trump speaks while visiting the Boeing South Carolina facility in North Charleston, S.C. As President Trump begins his second month in office, his team is trying to move past the crush of controversies that overtook his first month and make progress on health care and tax overhauls long sought by Republicans.(Photo: Susan Walsh/AP Photo)

There's a name for a government that bars media outlets it views as unsympathetic from access to its workings.

It's not "democracy."

Just ask White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, as someone did in December, shortly before Spicer accepted his current post as President Donald Trump's proselytizer-in-chief.

During the campaign, Trump had revoked the credentials of reputable outlets media outlets at will, sometimes for weeks on end. Asked whether the White House would continue that practice, Spicer scoffed at the notion:

"Look, there's a big difference between a campaign where it is a private venue using private funds and a government entity," he said. "I think we have a respect for the press when it comes to the government. That is something you can't ban an entity from. Conservative, liberal or otherwise, that's what make a democracy a democracy versus a dictatorship."

But that was December.

On Friday, hours after his boss had resumed his slashing attack on the press in a speech before the Conservative Political Action Conference, Spicer barred the New York Times, the L.A. Times, BuzzFeed, Politico and CNN -- established mainstream news agencies with longstanding White House credentials -- from a scheduled media briefing. The right-leaning Breitbart, Washington Times and One America News were admitted, as were representatives of several other mainstream media outlets approved by the White House.

It's true that press conferences rarely offer profound insight; journalists' most valuable reporting is most often done elsewhere. But such briefings provide insight into the administration's decision-making andagenda, and offer journalists an opportunity to obtain statements on the record. And there's a greater principle at stake.

It'seasy to dismiss Spicer's move as another puerile provocation in the new administration's campaign to cast itself as the people's champion in a war with the establishment press. But as Spicer himself observed, this is not how elected leaders do business in democracy whose constitution explicitly protects the press from government retaliation.

Nothing like this has ever happened at the White House in our long history of covering multiple administrations of different parties, Dean Baquet, executive editor of The Times, noted in a statement. The White House Correspondents Association, which represents the press corps, condemned the administration for its action, and reporters for the Associated Press and Time magazine, who were invited to participate in the briefing, boycotted it in protest of their colleagues' exclusion.

At best, the unprecedented exclusion of reputable news organizations for the presumed crime of reporting aggressively and skeptically on the administration's activities was an impulsive (and ill-considered) ploy to curry favor with CPAC, with whose membership the new president is anxious to establish his anti-establishment bona fides.

At worst, it's an premeditated attackon an institution this nation's founders recognized as integral to the democratic process -- a first strike by a would-be authoritarian uncomfortable with the checks and balances established by the Constitution and reinforced by more than two centuries of American jurisprudence.

That's the same Constitution President Trump took a solemn oath to uphold last month. He can begin to honor that commitment by reminding himself that the White House he seeks to run like a private country club is not his house, but the American people's. It is the people's interest the White House press corps exists to protect, and the press corps' continued access to the operations of the executive branch that the new president is obliged to protect if he takes his oath seriously.

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Donald Trump's latest step toward tyranny - Detroit Free Press

Look, I dont like tweeting, Donald Trump told Fox & Friends two days before his presidential inauguration. He was lying.

If Trump disliked Twitter so much, he would have surrendered Twitter to the Secret Service at the door to the White House, where using unsecured Android phones is frowned upon. Instead, he continues to tweet from his personal phone, even during national security briefings. He has used Twitter to call people haters, dummies, and losers, and to effectively subvert traditional media outlets. For more than a year he has filled our timelines with insults, turning Twitter into a toxic swamp. Its as if the slime demon from FernGully got his hands on a Samsung Galaxy instead of a timbersaw. As of today, Trump has posted more than 34,000 tweets and retweets averaging about 12 tweets a day, every day, for the past eight years.

The man lives to tweet. And thats exactly why Twitter should ban him.

I love Twitter.... it's like owning your own newspaper--- without the losses.

The presidents dependency on Twitter gives it a tremendous opportunity that no other company has: to deny the president his favorite means of poisoning the well of public discourse. Twitter has the unique ability to embarrass and diminish a man who is so thin-skinned he can be baited by a tweet. It can humiliate a narcissist by taking away his favorite toy. Trump becomes paralyzed by anything that embarrasses his ego, and so embarrassing him could make him weaker.

Trump is not a normal president, and Twitter is often the venue for his disturbing abnormality. This places the company in an uncomfortable position. Twitter is not an internet service provider or anything resembling a utility. It has no obligation to behave like a neutral party; in fact, given its unique position to influence Trumps behavior, it arguably has a moral obligation to take action.

Its okay but why do the haters (& losers) want to follow me on twitter?? Get a life!

It is surely a point of pride for Twitter that POTUS is a power user. But people inside the company also recognize their role in elevating a dangerous man to a position of real-world power. After Trump won the election, one former employee told The Verge that there was a strong sense of what have we done? from Twitter employees. Even Trumps man in Silicon Valley credits Twitter for helping his ascent. I think at a place like Twitter, they were all working for Trump this whole year even though they thought they were working for [Bernie] Sanders, Peter Thiel told The New York Times.

Twitter has banned high-profile jerks before

Twitter has shown the courage to eliminate high-profile miscreants before. Last July the company banned Milo Yiannopoulos, a pied piper of frothing right-wing Breitbart interns, for directing a wave of racist abuse toward Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones. (Trump, a big fan of Breitbart, was also unhappy about the all-female reboot.) But Twitter gave vague reasons for the Yiannopoulos ban, and has struggled to express a coherent vision for rule enforcement even after admitting a while ago that the company sucks at dealing with abuse.

The big question so far has been whether Trump has done something to violate the platforms terms of service. Inside Twitter, employees are skeptical that Trump will break the rules hard enough to justify a ban. A New York Times piece on the question of banning Trump walked the tightrope of Twitters terms of service, noting that hes appeared to tack just inside the lines on the services rules of conduct. The Ringer, Vanity Fair, and others have ruminated on which potential violation Twitter could pick from to boot Trump from the service. But this is the wrong angle of attack.

My twitter has become so powerful that I can actually make my enemies tell the truth.

Nothing would look weaker than trying to nail Trump on a technicality. Kicking the president out because he broke a rule in the fine print might seem like a fair way to do it, but in reality it would be seen as a tacky, cowardly move. Nobody seems to think the president is a regular Twitter user who is subject to the regular rules, nor, arguably, should he be.

Instead, Twitter should ban Trump precisely because it will hurt him. With clear eyes and a full throat, a ban could be a form of direct action against a man who deserves to be deliberately and fiercely opposed. It would be an extraordinary act by a private company to battle someone in power who threatens its interests and those of its users.

Trump harms Twitters users, and is a threat to its business

Twitter already recognized Trump as a threat publicly when it joined 97 others to file an opposition to the presidents immigration ban, saying it inflicts significant harm on American business, innovation, and growth, and that it would make it more difficult and expensive to recruit, hire and retain some of the worlds best employees. A ban would also likely serve Twitters users by ending a high-profile pattern of harassment centered around Trump. Twitter has struggled to deal with this kind of abuse for years, and banning Trump would be seen by many users as a defense of their interests and safety.

In the best-case scenario, Twitter can mitigate the damage Trump will be able to inflict on his nation and world through the careless words and actions he is constantly tempted to produce by tweeting. On balance, the value of the public seeing the presidents thoughts on Twitter seems outweighed by the public interest in those thoughts never occurring in the first place. Weve never had a president tempted to casually imply in a tweet that the US will start a new nuclear arms race. Trumps tweets are not just poorly spelled insults and gaffes theyre often alarming and dangerous.

The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes

Through his rise to power and beyond, Twitter has fueled Trumps rampage of ignorance and animus. He has ruthlessly insulted rivals, attacked journalists, denigrated judges and lawmakers, helped to organize harassment, and cause general instability in the world whether its a tweet threatening to upend essential alliances, or an attack on Nordstrom for choosing to not enrich his family. He even undermines his own administration with Twitter, like today, when he ruined the White Houses response to an FBI scandal with hysteria.

So it would overwhelmingly be a good thing for the president to stop tweeting so much just ask the president, who promised to quit. Dont worry, Ill give it up after Im president, we wont tweet anymore, Trump said last year at a campaign rally in Rhode Island. Not presidential. And yet.

A ban could also satisfy the broader meaning of the companys stated mission to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers. It would not be ironic for Twitter to attack someone who wants to erect costly physical, technological, and social barriers that will erode progress and hope for the lives of millions of people around the world, if doing so sends a message that those measures cannot be tolerated by free societies. There would surely be a risk to Twitters business to provoke protest, but Twitters value does not come from hosting Trump. It comes from the millions of artists, celebrities, reporters, and regular folks who freely contribute to it on a daily basis as a real-time source of information and conversation. Theyre not all going to leave because hes banned.

The whole world is watching Twitter

Earlier this month, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey used an underwhelming quarterly earnings statement as an occasion to recognize Twitters influence and power. The whole world is watching Twitter, he wrote on Medium. You dont go a day without hearing about Twitter. How it carried some of the most important commentary and conversations. How it mobilized people into action.

Twitter forever changed the way the world communicates, and well do it again, he wrote.

Its true that Twitter has changed how the world communicates. Indeed, a bizarre facet of our reality is that the president of the United States is a person who tweets. But it is Facebook, not Twitter, that has strained itself to become the public square to break bread with Glenn Beck and behave as if it is bringing people together. (Facebook is currently threatening to become the new world order.) Thats not a brand Twitter needs to compete with. Twitter has the opportunity to stand tall as the only major company in history to refuse this kind of service to a sitting president, while its peers cozy up to Trump by giving him credit for things he didnt do.

Let Mark Zuckerberg be the sweater-wearing town mayor. You can be the leather jacket-wearing renegade, willing to make a stand for your company and your users. Are you ready, Jack?

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." Anas Nin

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Ban Donald Trump - The Verge

Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, poked fun at Donald Trump on Friday, after the American president claimed that Paris is no longer Paris, because, he said, lax border security had permitted foreign terrorists to infiltrate the French capital and change its character.

Speaking to a gathering of conservative political activists in Maryland, Trump argued that terror attacks and violent crime in Europe stemmed from a failure to acknowledge that national security begins with border security.

Foreign terrorists will not be able to strike America if they cannot get into our country, Trump said. He then contrasted this with violence in Sweden, Germany and France he attributed to the migration of radical Islamic terrorists to those nations. The president seemed unaware of the fact that terrorist attacks in Europe have mainly been carried out by native-born extremists, not immigrants.

To reinforce his claim about the supposed harm to French society, Trump cited a friend he identified only as Jim, who told the president he stopped making annual trips to the French capital four or five years ago because Paris is no longer Paris.

The remark came as Trump sought to justify his executive order banning travelers from seven Muslim-majority nations that have no association with deadly terrorist attacks in the U.S. It also seemed to echo the racist rhetoric of French nationalists who claim that immigrants from the countrys former colonies have changed its character.

Trumps decision to cite his friend Jim as an expert on Paris set off a round of trans-Atlantic mockery which the citys mayor quickly joined in on.

Hidalgo was at the Eiffel Tower for the launch of a tourism campaign in association with Disneyland Paris when Trump made his remarks. In response, she addressed a tweet to the American president and his friend Jim showing herself and a Disney executive celebrating the attractiveness of Paris with Mickey and Minnie.

Hidalgo also pointed out that reservations by American tourists for 2017 were up by 30 percent from a year ago.

That statistic contrasts sharply with a reported drop in foreign tourism to the United States, which by the travel writer Arthur Frommer attributed to Trumps attempt to ban travelers from seven Muslim-majority nations.

The founder of Frommers Travel Guides wrote on the companys website Thursday:

Though they may differ as to the wisdom of the move, the travel press and most travel experts are of one mind: They are currently drawing attention to an unintended consequence of the Trump-led efforts to stop many Muslims from coming to the U.S., pointing to a sharp drop in foreign tourism to our nation that imperils jobs and touristic income.

Its known as the Trump Slump. And I know of no reputable travel publication to deny it.

Thus, the prestigious Travel Weekly magazine (as close to an official travel publication as they come) has set the decline in foreign tourism at 6.8%. And the fall-off is not limited to Muslim travelers, but also extends to all incoming foreign tourists. Apparently, an attack on one group of tourists is regarded as an assault on all.

A drop of that magnitude, if continued, would reduce the value of foreign travel within the U.S. by billions of dollars, Frommer observed. And the number of jobs supported by foreign tourists and their expenditures in the United States and thus lost would easily exceed hundreds of thousands of workers in hotels, restaurants, transportation, stores, tour operations, travel agencies, and the like.

Later on Friday, the French foreign minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, noted on Twitter that, even without Trumps friend Jim, 3.5 million American tourists had visited France last year.

Earlier in the day, Ayrault and Uzra Zeya, the Charg dAffaires of the U.S. Embassy in Paris, had attended the ceremonial planting of a tree donated to the French nation by the September 11 Museum in New York, to commemorate victims of terrorism in both countries.

Top photo: Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo at a news conference in the French capital on Nov. 21, 2016

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Mayor of Paris Trolls Donald Trump and His Friend Jim - The Intercept