Trump Remark at News Conference Gives Glimpse Into His Worldview

President-elect Donald J. Trump had been holding forth for about an hour when he gave an unsolicited assessment of the difference between his White House transition eight years ago and now.

“The first term, everybody was fighting me,” he said during his news conference at Mar-a-Lago, his members-only club and residence in Palm Beach, Fla., on Monday. “In this term, everybody wants to be my friend.”

Mr. Trump’s statement was hyperbolic, but not by much.

He has enjoyed a steady stream of vanquished opponents and critics and business leaders who once spurned him arriving to pay respects, seek jobs or simply watch him press “play” on the iPad that he uses to control the music from the patio during the dinner hours.

At least in part, that’s because Mr. Trump has bent the Republican Party to his will. And he has payback on his mind, a fact he made plain on Monday.

Should senators who try to block his appointees face primary challenges, as his allies have promised? If those people are “unreasonable,” then maybe, he said.

Mr. Trump takes a transactional view to almost every international relationship. Since the 1980s, Mr. Trump has talked about other countries “ripping off” the United States, an offshoot of his focus on the need for “fairness.” Monday’s event was no exception to him invoking this theme, as he described Mexico and Canada treating the United States poorly, in his view.