Donald J. Trump may be the first to run because he sees a presidential campaign as the best way to attract attention to himself. There seems to be no other driving passion in him, certainly not the passion to govern.
.. The shift is from politics to grabbing attention, and, quite possibly, from winning the election to winning the defeat, which is how he has spent practically his entire career.
.. Mr. Trump is no fool. He couldn’t possibly have thought that insulting the Khans, who had lost a son in combat, or dithering over whether to support the speaker of the House, Paul D. Ryan, or disingenuously hinting that the only way to stop Hillary Clinton was to shoot her, would have boosted his prospects for winning. They only boosted the attention paid to him.
.. It was a decision designed to make sure he continues to be an attentionmonger rather than another pol. Mr. Bannon, a provocateur at Breitbart, has never run a campaign, but he knows a lot about how to get media attention.
.. Sarah Ellison of Vanity Fair and Brian Stelter of CNN have speculated that Mr. Trump may want to use his new notoriety to build a media empire. His alliance with Mr. Bannon may help him do that. So may his reported linkup with Roger Ailes for campaign advice.
Fox Faces Its Uncertain Future: The Minor Murdochs Take Command
After all, a business can be going along fine, and then—BOOM!—it hits a iceberg and you start flooding below the waterline. It can happen, and it does happen. Remember Circuit City? Bear Stearns? Lehman Brothers? Sports Authority? Once, all were billion-dollar companies—then gone in a moment. The fatal problem might be fraud or corruption, but more often, it’s simply that management didn’t see “over the other side of the hill.” Tastes, demographics, technology all change–rapidly and without warning–and so if the captain isn’t on watch, well, nemesis is dead ahead.
Here at Breitbart News, we see ourselves as a small yet up-and-coming competitor to Fox. Yes, you read that right, Breitbart is on the rise, and Fox is in decline.
.. the meaning is clear: The Murdoch sons, aka the Minor Murdochs, think Fox is too conservative, too Roger Ailes-like, too Middle American. And they have a plan to fix that.
.. Third, Megyn Kelly’s July 29 hissy fit aimed at guest Mike Huckabee, which Breitbart headlined as “Megyn ‘Eve’ Kelly Has Meltdown Over Trump Muslim Ban—Is Rebuked By Huckabee.” Actually, come to think of it, Kelly’s performance was more like a hissing fit. Huckabee, always the gentleman, had no choice but to sit back and let Kelly’s venom-spittle fly.
.. Wolff identified James Murdoch as the lead hit-man; he indirectly quoted him as saying that since the 76-year-old Ailes couldn’t stay in the job that much longer anyway, “Why not turn lemons into lemonade and get credit for kicking him out for being a sexist pig?”
Exclusive — Fox News Stars Stand With Roger Ailes Against Megyn Kelly, More Than 50 Fox Contributors, All Primetime, Willing To Walk
“If Fox wants to become the ‘all about Megyn Network,’ that’s fine,” one top Fox News host said. “We stand with Roger. And real anger has emerged that the so-called Megyn incident happened 10 years ago. The consensus among the hosts and contributors is: ‘Why didn’t she say anything then? Really, the same woman that posed half naked in GQ? The same woman on Howard Stern saying what?’”
.. The fact that nearly the entire network is willing to walk out over this, and support Ailes over Kelly is significant in that they have banded together to show their strength. It will harder than ever now for the Murdochs to side with Kelly over Ailes, especially with the lack of any evidence of her allegations–and the fact that Kelly waited 10 years to say anything about this evidence-less supposed incident.
.. In comments to the outside firm investigating the matter, according to New York Magazine’s Gabriel Sherman—an anti-Ailes agitator in the mainstream media—Kelly alleged that Ailes sexually harassed her. She and her attorneys have, sources say, manipulated her way in a manner that rival Claire Underwood of the hit Netflix dramaHouse of Cards. “Even her haircut looks like Robin Wright [the actress who plays the ruthless First Lady in the series],” said one source in Cleveland. “She’s a woman who not just will do anything for power, but anything to make it all about her.”
Donald Trump Appoints Media Firebrand to Run Campaign
Mr. Bannon was appointed a day after the recently ousted Fox News chairman, Roger Ailes, emerged in an advisory role with Mr. Trump. It was not lost on Republicans in Washington that two news executives whose outlets had fueled the anti-establishment rebellion that bedeviled congressional leaders and set the stage for Mr. Trump’s nomination were now directly guiding the party’s presidential message and strategy.
Mr. Bannon’s most recent crusade was his failed attempt to oust the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, in this month’s primary, making his new role atop the Trump campaign particularly provocative toward Republican leaders in Washington.
.. Mr. Bannon is likely to be more amenable to letting him run the sort of media-focused campaign he prefers.
.. “This is Trump going back to the nativism and nationalism that fueled his rise in the primary,” said Lanhee J. Chen, who was Mr. Romney’s policy director in 2012. “But it’s very dangerous to the future of the party because it only further narrows the appeal of a party whose appeal was already narrow going into this cycle.”
.. the possibility that the coming weeks could resemble a conservative publicity tour more than a conventional White House run, fueled speculation that Mr. Trump was already looking past November.
.. the growing influence of Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, conservative donors from Long Island. The Mercers are investors in Breitbart
.. Before Mr. Ailes’s ouster, some of the network’s most prominent journalists and contributors privately complained that Mr. Ailes was pushing them to be more supportive of Mr. Trump.