.. Never mind that in 2014 a federal judge ruled that the no-fly list was “arbitrary and capricious” because the government refused to even confirm someone has been placed on it, much less provide any way to challenge a no-fly designation, which violates the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process.
.. On domestic policy, Trump has a followed a consistent strategy of neutralizing traditional Democratic attacks by adopting the Democrats’ positions.
.. In other words, by adopting the Democrats’ positions, Trump has closed off virtually all the major lines of attack (much as he has done on foreign policy, campaigning from the isolationist left). Clinton can’t hit Trump on guns . . . the minimum wage . . . cutting Social Security . . . or tax cuts for the rich . . . or trade.
.. So how will Clinton go after Trump? She will say that Trump is “temperamentally unfit” for the presidency.
.. Trump will respond in kind — going over all the old Clinton scandals, the Clinton Foundation, the FBI investigation into her use of a private email server. It will be the ugliest, least substantive campaign in memory.
But no matter how it turns out, we’ll get a president committed to the Democratic Party’s positions on most of the major issues at home and abroad.
Donald Trump is destroying the GOP, pluralism, and all adult standards of common decency. And cable’s profits are soaring.
.. In short, cable news is a gerontocratic kingdom where Fox News serves as king, with more than twice the audience of CNN and triple that of MSNBC
.. There is another interesting wrinkle to the Trump Effect: The viewership growth wasn’t evenly spread across networks. One network, CNN, gobbled up the majority of new viewers.
.. in the first quarter of 2016, CNN’s primetime ratings grew 159 percent annually.
.. CNN has been a major driver of Trump’s news presence, an amount of time one analysis valued at equivalent to $3 billion of advertising. But his ubiquity on CNN has been a mutually profitable arrangement.
.. The presidential candidate is reportedly considering a return to the networks once his run is over. It just might work.
Trump “has become irked by his ability to create revenue for other media organizations without being able to take a cut himself,” the story reads. “Such a situation ‘brings him to the conclusion that he has the business acumen and the ratings for his own network.’”
.. Of the more than 13 million people who backed him in the presidential primary, surely some would be attracted to a channel he creates. Just as Trump has found a base that’s dissatisfied by the major political parties, he might be able to attract an audience who feel underserved by the major networks.
.. Philip Napoli, a Rutgers University professor who studies media, thinks a Trump channel could draw an audience, at least at first. The Trump camp’s relationship with Fox News—the back-and-forth between war(s)and peace—proved something: “You can further segment the conservative-news audience, [and] there’s a sizeable segment” Trump could use “to position a network in opposition to Fox News.”
.. It’s difficult to see Trump giving up the limelight. Discussions of a network “would mark perhaps the most reasonable and logical step that the candidate has taken in the year since he launched his candidacy,”
..For one, Trump voters tend to be older and whiter than the general population, just like cable-news viewers. Napoli can envision Trump “cannibalizing” the Fox News audience and, in the angry aftermath of a Hillary Clinton victory, being a “voice for all these disaffected and disappointed voters who didn’t get what they wanted.” Napoli suggested that partisan media becomes more popular when the targeted audience’s party isn’t in power, which would work to Trump’s advantage. As a Republican-friendly network, Fox News would no doubt give airtime to frustrations with another Democrat in the White House. But that might not be enough rage for Trump supporters.
.. People who watch Fox News tend to like politics, Levendusky explained, but many Trump supporters have expressed they are tired of politics entirely.
.. Napoli said politicians have been trying for decades to circumvent journalists:
.. Trump’s potential TV channel, Napoli said, seems to be “part of the ongoing process … to try to marginalize actual journalists.”
‘I can’t imagine a truly credible person agreeing to be his running mate.’
John Weaver, who served as the campaign strategist for Kasich’s presidential bid, was more blunt: “I can’t imagine a truly credible person agreeing to be his running mate, because it would be the end of his or her political career.”
.. the short list is so short. Multiple high-level Republican sources said it is topped by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, with Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions a distant third and Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin also in the mix.
.. But there’s another, simpler reason why these two white men, both more representative of the Republican Party’s past than its future, have emerged as finalists: They actually want the job.
.. She’s expressed a willingness to join the ticket and could help the presumptive nominee with women, three-quarters of whom disapprove of him, according to an ABC News poll.
.. Trump has also courted a number of Southern governors, including Nathan Deal of Georgia, Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, Bill Haslam of Tennessee and Phil Bryant of Mississippi.
.. Tim Scott has also drawn some buzz as a potential pick. The first-term South Carolina senator is well respected in the chamber and would bring diversity to Trump’s ticket as the sole African-American GOP senator.
.. with U.S. allies and the country’s foreign policy overall, some Republicans are clamoring for names of potential secretaries of defense and state, too.
.. “Trump would be well served to identify a list of senior statesmen that he might appoint to those positions,” said one Republican senator who’s pledged to support the nominee.
Plus, it would give the media and the GOP something to talk about besides the latest Trump controversy.
.. Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is practically despondent over Trump these days, after visiting with the presumptive nominee