“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.
Roger Ailes Is Advising Donald Trump Ahead of Presidential Debates
Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, is not being paid.
.. Mr. Trump said Mr. Ailes was not formally involved in his debate preparations, and chafed at the suggestion that he even needed to prepare for them. “I’ll speak with Roger, but this is not a formal thing,” Mr. Trump said. “I don’t have a debate coach. I’ve never had a debate coach.” He insisted that Mr. Ailes had “no role.”
.. During a prep session, he asked Reagan, who had performed badly in the first debate, how he would handle being asked about his age... He was one of 10 candidates onstage and could often filibuster his way through questions or avoid them entirely as his rivals consumed airtime — an approach that would be untenable in a one-on-one or even a three-way matchup including the Libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson.
The Donald Trump-Roger Ailes Nexus
Ailes determined that politicians could not risk losing voters in thickets of complication and prescription; they had to speak the language of “kickers”—evocative descriptive phrases—and constantly repeat them. He eventually became Nixon’s consigliere for television.
.. Nixon delivered a speech intended to heighten the fears of the delegates in the arena and of the “forgotten” majority of Americans at home—“the non-shouters, the non-demonstrators,” the “decent people,” who worked and saved and paid their taxes. His speech, pitched largely to white working-class voters anxious about law and order, was meant to make them even more anxious, more resentful, more tribal
.. It was from the start a reflection of Ailes—his swaggering personality, his resentments and furies, his misogyny and ethnic prejudices, his quest for personal power. At each stage of his career, he has helped amplify the reactionary memes of the moment: Willie Horton, Whitewater, Travelgate, Monica Lewinsky, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, Benghazi, “the war on Christmas.”
.. And, just as Ailes may have counselled, there was no attempt at building a nuanced case or offering realistic solutions. There was only the assurance that Trump was the panacea. Give him power and everything will change magically and “fast.”
.. Ivanka Trump introduced her father by reminding the Convention of the tremendous “sacrifice” he had made to take a leave from his business to run for office.