To many, the constant string of campaign events — up to seven states in one day — was something of a death march. Up early and in bed late, at each stop, the journalists were herded into the “pen” in the center or the back of the arena; in each speech, they were Trump’s rhetorical foil, forced to play the Washington Generals to his Harlem Globetrotters, jeered by the crowds.
To many in the media, it was all a pointless ordeal, leavened only by the apparently gratifying task of catching Trump in a (perceived) gaffe, or noting audience misbehavior.
.. But I was surprised at how few of them ventured beyond the “pen” and into the crowd, how much time was spent on Twitter at Trump rallies rather than listening to real, live, flesh-and-blood Trump supporters.
.. On occasion, mainstream media reports of events I attended bore no resemblance to what had actually happened — such as when NBC turned a happy speech in Las Vegas in Dec. 2015 into a kind of Nuremberg Nazi rally.
Tony Perkins Backs #DumpKelloggs: After Election Defeat, Left Will ‘Use Corporate America to Marginalize Conservative Thought’
Tony Perkins, host of the Family Research Council’sWashington Watch radio show, discussed the#DumpKelloggs boycott with Breitbart News CEO Larry Solov on Monday.
“The Left has lost control of the government – at least, it’s about to – which they have used to basically punish dissenting thought, when it comes to their politically correct agenda. So now there is this, it appears to be [a] rapid move to consolidate their control of corporate America – to use them to be their tool or their weapon of choice,”
.. “It’s like a different version of Hillary Clinton’s ‘basket of deplorables,’” Perkins observed. “Kellogg’s has their bowl of deplorables, and they’re basically dumping this on half of America.
.. “You’re right, a lot of our material is published on Breitbart. When petitions that we do on religious liberty in the military get to Breitbart, they do extremely well – because you’re right, it’s God-fearing Americans who read Breitbart,” said Perkins.
.. What that is, is an attempt – and we’ve seen it come from the Left many times – an attempt to shut down mainstream conservative thought, because they cannot compete in the realm of ideas. We know that we will win on that basis. They try to marginalize people so that you can’t get your ideas out there, and they marginalize you by calling you racist, sexist, and terms like that.”
.. maybe this long-held, long-gone-to playbook of calling conservatives racist is maybe beginning to lose some of its effectiveness,”
.. Frankly, they cannot point to a single fact, a single article on Breitbart that is white nationalist, because it has never existed.”
Breitbart Takes Aim at Kellogg in Ad Dispute
Conservative site launches online campaign to boycott cereal maker
Breitbart fought back hard. “Boycotting Breitbart News for presenting mainstream American ideas is an act of discrimination and intense prejudice,” Alexander Marlow, Breitbart News editor-in-chief, said in the Breitbart News article.
The anti-Kellogg petition accused Kellogg of trying to “placate left-wing totalitarians.”
.. Last week, online-advertising company AppNexus said it would stop letting Breitbart News use its ad-serving tools because the site violated the ad tech company’s hate speech terms, Bloomberg reported.
Other brands, including Allstate, Nest, EarthLink, Warby Parker and SoFi, have also blacklisted Breitbart from showing their ads, Digiday reported.
Bill Kristol: Republican Spoiler, Renegade Jew
While millions of Republican primary voters have chosen Donald Trump as the party’s nominee, Bill Kristol and a small but well-heeled group of Washington insiders are preparing a third party effort to block Trump’s path to the White House.
.. In addition to alleging that Trump is lacking in principles and character, Kristol claims that the Republican candidate is a crackpot conspiracy theorist, a disqualifying trait. Kristol’s evidence is a remark Trump made on the eve of the Indiana primary suggesting that Ted Cruz’s father might have something to hide about his alleged acquaintance with Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. Kristol wrote:
Calling in to Fox and Friends, Donald Trump, as Politico summarized it, “alleged that Ted Cruz’s father was with John F. Kennedy’s assassin shortly before he murdered the president, parroting a National Enquirer story claiming that Rafael Cruz was pictured with Lee Harvey Oswald handing out pro-Fidel Castro pamphlets in New Orleans in 1963.”
The liberal writers at Politico can perhaps be forgiven for reporting that the Enquirer only claimed that Oswald and the senior Cruz were pictured together. The Enquirer actually published the picture.
“Here’s Trump in his own crazed words,” Kristol continues:
[Trump:] “His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Kennedy’s being — you know, shot. I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous. What is this, right prior to his being shot, and nobody even brings it up. They don’t even talk about that. That was reported, and nobody talks about it. I mean, what was he doing — what was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death? Before the shooting? It’s horrible.”
Comments Kristol: “What’s horrible is a leading presidential candidate trading in crackpot conspiracy theories.”
So it might be, if Trump were actually putting forward a conspiracy theory. But what we have here, obviously, is not a theory but some Trumpian campaign mischief — not dissimilar in form to his earlier suggestion that because Ted Cruz was born in Canada, he might not be able to actually run for president even if he were to win the nomination. These were both campaign tricks — dirty tricks if you like — to throw a rival off balance and gain an advantage.