Let’s say the Trump administration was a Showtime TV series about a team of pugnacious politicos stumbling their way through the early months of an administration. Call it “Gnomeland.’’

The synopsis of the most recent episode would be: Team Trump belatedly discovers that health care is complex. Sean inspects his staff’s phones and holds a no-tough-reporters gaggle. Donald makes a jaw-dropping boast at CPAC — but bad-boy Steve B. steals the show.

As evolving story lines go, the president’s discovery that health care “is an unbelievably complex subject,’’ one that “nobody knew . . . could be so complicated’’ is most noteworthy. And if by nobody Trump meant “nobody in Trump Tower,’’ he is no doubt right.

In the interest of accuracy, however, it’s worth pointing out that anyone who has mastered the basics of health care policy knew that Trump wouldn’t be able to fulfill his campaign promise to replace Obama- care, with health care that’s both much better and much less expensive.

Now that he himself is apparently starting to realize that, the question is this: What will Trump do? An honest, honorable president would acknowledge as much. Which is why one suspects this president will now try to sell America a health care pig in a political poke.

But today let’s focus on Team Trump’s effort to define its solemn purpose at the Conservative Political Action Conference. After all, every historic movement needs a raison d’etre, and as Trump sees it, he and his supporters are part of a movement “the likes of which . . . the world has never seen before.’’

That ritual boasting done, Trump declared that “we need to define what this great, great unprecedented movement is, and what it actually represents.’’ But though he went manfully about that task, doing so proved akin to pinning a drop of mercury to a sheet of wax paper. The best central-premise summary he could summon: The United States “will put its own citizens first.’’

Rare is the administration that doesn’t abide by that dictate, though most state it somewhat less baldly for fear of seeming boorish on the world stage. But credit where it’s due: Trump’s was a much more felicitous formulation than the other themes that have suggested themselves in the early going. Things like incompetence. Or muddle-headedness. Or maybe, in a takeoff on the JFK days, Golf-a-Lot.

If Trump’s braggartly boilerplate offered little new, chief strategist Bannon’s remarks were scrutinized as though he were Dr. Robert Ford, the Anthony Hopkins character who masterminds the shoot-’em-up narratives in “Westworld.’’ Bannon, who doesn’t say much in public, has a reputation among a certain type of combative conservative as a big thinker capable of seeing around corners. (After all, who else, in their longing for another Reagan, settled on Sarah Palin?)

Maybe, but as far as one could tell from his CPAC remarks, Bannon’s animating impulse is resentment toward the mainstream media, which belittled the campaign he helped direct. An index of that came with his inane warning to CPAC about the mainstream media: “If you think they’re going to give you your country back without a fight, you are sadly mistaken.’’

That transparently tinny formulation was obviously meant to fool and inflame the faithful.

And maybe it will, for a time. Trump’s real foe, however, isn’t the media, but rather facts and truth. Which is why a future version of “Gnomeland’’ will have this as its summary: “The Trump team learns something John Adams knew: ‘Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.’ ’’

Scot Lehigh can be reached at lehigh@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeScotLehigh.