I have just the hat for Mr. Kimmel

There's actually an upside to Trump's autocratic instincts

- STEVE LOPEZ COLUMNIST

YURI GRIPAS Bloomberg PRESIDENT Trump holds a hat reading "Trump Was Right About Everything!" in the Oval Office.

These are dark times, the average cynic might argue.

But do not despair.

If you focus on the positive, rather than the negative, you'll have to agree that the United States of America is on top and still climbing.

Yes, protesters gathered Thursday outside “Jimmy Kimmel Live” in Hollywood to denounce ABC's suspension of the host and President Trump’s threat to revoke licenses from networks that criticize him, despite repeated vows by Trump and top deputies to defend free speech.

You can call it hypocrisy.

I call it moxie.

And by the way, demonstrators were not arrested or deported, and the National Guard was not summoned (as far as I know).

Do you see what I mean? Just tilt your head back a bit, and you can see sunshine breaking through the clouds.

Let’s take the president’s complaint that he read “someplace” that the networks “were 97% against me.” Some might see weakness in that, or thin skin. Others might wonder where the “someplace” was that the president discovered his TV news favorability rating stands at 3%, given that he could get caught drowning puppies and cheating at golf and still get fawning coverage from at least one major network.

But Trump had good reason to be grumpy. He was returning from a news conference in London, where he confused Albania and Armenia and fumbled the pronunciation of Azerbaijan, which sounded a bit more like Abracadabra.