Blair says that Trump escaped collapse by convincing his creditors he was more valuable to them “financially alive rather than dead.” He proceeded to recoup his losses by shifting from real-estate deals to licensing his well-known name.
.. When asked if he is ever introspective, Trump replied, “I don’t like to analyze myself, because I might not like what I see.” When queried about his temperament, Trump said: “When I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself now, I’m basically the same. The temperament is not that different.” He said he “loved to fight” as a child, “any kind of fight, loved it, including physical.”
.. As a grade-schooler Trump threw cake around a birthday party and gave a teacher a black eye because he was ignorant. His behavior was so out of control that his parents exiled him upstate to a military academy. His experience there only cemented his bully-boy traits. Trump has described the students and the drill sergeants there as people who would “smack the hell out of you,”
.. But his success in capturing the GOP nomination against all odds seems to have created a belief in his own invincibility and reinforced his traits. “He is like a 13-year-old teenager who can stay up as late as he wants, eat junk food; there’s no adult who has the right to take away his phone and stop the tweeting.”
.. Yes, Trump’s lack of impulse control has also been an asset to him. He comes across as spontaneous, funny, and unscripted — the opposite of most politicians. “It’s the paradoxical effect of the bad little boy,” D’Antonio wrote in an article for CNN in March this year. “Yes, he’s out of line and must be taught to respect others. However, the sight and sound of someone behaving with such an unbridled enthusiasm is also thrilling.”
Donald Trump broke the conservative media
“If in 96 days Trump loses this election, I am pointing the finger directly at people like [House Speaker] Paul Ryan and [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham and John McCain and John Kasich and Ted Cruz — if he won’t endorse — and Jeb Bush and everybody else that made promises they’re not keeping,” Hannity exclaimed, later threatening to endorse Ryan’s far-right primary challenger.
.. In fact, throughout the election season, it has appeared that Republicans have fielded more attacks from their supposed friends on the right than their political opponents on the left.
.. “The analogy that I think of is somebody who has a baby alligator in their bathtub and they keep feeding it and taking care of it,” said Charlie Sykes, a popular conservative talk show host in Wisconsin. “And it’s really cute when it’s a baby alligator — until it becomes a grown-up alligator and comes out and starts biting you.”
.. three key forces: Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and Matt Drudge.
.. Simultaneously, the conservative news media sought to lock in its audience by characterizing the mainstream press as an industry comprising dishonest liberals — something with which the GOP was more than happy to go along.
.. “What it became, essentially, was they were preaching this is the only place you can get news. This is the only place you can trust. All other media outlets are lying to you. So you need to come to us,”
.. To avoid being called a RINO (Republican in name only), a Republican would have to take a hardline conservative position on nearly every issue. If, say, they were to hold conservative positions on 90% of the issues, the conservative press would focus on the 10% where there was disagreement.
.. only one candidate could be conservative enough to support for president: Cruz.
.. But something went awry. The most aggressive right-wing members of the conservative press — the members who constantly lambasted certain Republicans for not toeing the hard-right line on every issue — got behind perhaps the most unlikely candidate of all: Donald Trump.
.. “We have reached the bizarro-world point where, for all intents and purposes, conservatives are RINOs,” said John Ziegler, a nationally syndicated conservative talk show host who called Andrew Breitbart a friend. “There is no place now for real conservatives. We’ve also reached the point, I say, we’ve left the gravitational pull of the rational Earth, where we are now in a situation where facts don’t matter, truth doesn’t matter, logic doesn’t matter.”
.. “You look at someone who a few cycles might have been derided as a right-wing lunatic, now they aren’t conservative enough,”
.. he believed some conservative pundits were “just drawn to Trump’s style more than policies.”
.. “I think that some of them just like Trump and were willing to cut him some slack on his shifting of positions because he’s a fighter and they like that,”
.. Ratings may have also played a role, according to conservative talkers who refused to jump aboard the Trump train.
.. Hannity in particular has faced criticism from some colleagues in the conservative-media sphere who allege he has been too cozy with Trump. Ziegler, the conservative radio host, said there’s “there’s no question” a “monetary element” drove coverage overall.
.. “Hannity is desperate for every ratings crumb on the Fox News Channel. … It’s all about ratings,” he said. “Hannity is not particularly talented, he’s not a smart guy — he used to just be a Republican talking points talk show host who happened to be in the right place at the right time. So he’s very vulnerable at any time.
.. while there are other outlets that belong to the conservative media apparatus, they lack the influence of the hard right. The National Review or Weekly Standard might earn the eyeballs of elites in Washington, but those in the heartland seem to prefer the style of the more aggressive pro-Trump outlets.
.. That has left conservatives who oppose Trump in a tricky position when trying to get their message to supporters. No longer can Ryan or Cruz turn to Hannity for a softball interview. They can’t work with Breitbart or rely on Drudge to help with their legislative agenda.
These Republicans have effectively been exiled from the conservative news media
.. “We have taught conservatives for many years to trust nothing other than what they hear in conservative media. Yet the conservative media has now proven to be untrustworthy.”
Stephen Bannon, a Rookie Campaign Chief Who ‘Loves the Fight’
advised female victims of online harassment to “just log off” and stop “screwing up the internet for men,” illustrating that point with a picture of a crying child.
.. “Steve is a fighter. He loves the fight. He loves the scrum,”
.. Mr. Bannon, 62, who grew up in a Democratic family in Virginia that fled the party in favor of Richard Nixon’s law-and-order Republicanism
.. He made movies that lionized Sarah Palin and vilified the Occupy Wall Street movement as fraudulent rebels backed by well-off liberals.
.. Mr. Bannon, who declined to be interviewed for this article, has made little secret of his desire to frighten Americans out of complacency, fusing relentless provocation and a hodgepodge of conservative ideas to make the case for rebellion against the political order.
.. “Fear is a good thing,” he said in a 2010 interview. “Fear is going to lead you to take action.”
.. Breitbart received 18.3 million unique visitors in July
.. The site has outpaced conservative rivals like The Daily Caller, and Breitbart executives say that monthly traffic has increased by 16 times since the year Mr. Bannon took over.
.. “There are very few people who have dealt with Steve Bannon who have not been cursed at,”
Another Big Curveball in an Unpredictable Year: The Cruz-Fiorina Option
A caller to Rush Limbaugh yesterday, laying out why he prefers Trump to Cruz:
We’re sick and tired of fighting with people who won’t fight, and when it comes to down to Cruz, you know, my instincts with Cruz is that, yeah, he’s a nice guy. And don’t get me wrong, if he magically wins this nomination, of course I’ll support him. But the problem is, I suspect he won’t fight. Three days ago there was an article in Breitbart where he’s being interviewed and he said, “You know, if I’m elected,” he said something to that effect of, “I’m not gonna get personal. This is gonna be about issues.”
Okay, great. You just handed them the election, ‘cause you know what they’re gonna do? They’re gonna make it personal against you and you’re gonna be like the new George Bush just sitting up there like Jeb. You won’t fight. You’ll just sit there and take it and we’re gonna lose again. And the thing is, Trump, you know what? I disagree with probably 80% of the stuff that he believes in, or he purports to. But the thing is, I think we’re facing an existential crisis. It comes down to immigration, illegal immigration and Obamacare.
Think about this: Cruz, the man probably most responsible for the government shutdown, is perceived as a guy who won’t fight — on Obamacare, no less!
.. I don’t understand how you can look at Ted Cruz and, out of all possible flaws, conclude he isn’t willing to fight for what he believes in. (His flaw is more likely the opposite, quixotic fights and antagonism to potential allies that isn’t helpful in the long run.)
.. Secondly, if you elect a ferocious fighter who you disagree with on four out of five issues, it means he’ll be fighting ferociously against you on four out of five issues. You’ve empowered a guy who you mostly disagree with in the hopes that he really comes through on that 20 percent. (Somehow I suspect the caller isn’t focusing extensively on the “touchback amnesty” portion of Trump’s immigration plan.