If Trump loses, his consolation prize may be a whole new right wing media juggernaut.
Most political observers are skeptical that Donald Trump has helped his chances of winning the presidency by entrusting his campaign to the executive producer of Breitbart News, Stephen Bannon; or by hiring Roger Ailes, who left his position atop Fox News amid a sexual harassment scandal; or by pitching his rhetoric to Sean Hannity viewers and Drudge Report readers, rather than more typical Americans; or by spending so little of the money he has raised on television commercials; or by appearing to care so much about the ratings his Republican National Convention speech got and so little that its viewers were turned off, not turned on.
There is so much about the Trump campaign that doesn’t make sense so long as one assumes that its purpose is to propel the candidate to victory at the ballot box. But what if those involved now perceive a more attractive––or at least plausible–– endgame? Atop the campaign, there are three men whose past behavior suggests both a powerful desire to attract the eyeballs of a mass audience and a talent for doing so.
What if Tuesday, November 8, marks not an end for Donald Trump and associates, but the beginning of Phase Two in an effort to launch a media juggernaut that challenges Fox News for supremacy on the right across all platforms?
It is hard to imagine that Trump and those in his orbit haven’t considered what they will do if they lose in November, or that the media business hasn’t occurred to them (as it occurred to Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, and many other GOP politicians). The longer Trump lags far behind Hillary Clinton, the bigger incentive those whose salary he pays have to prepare for whatever is next––and the more their interests diverge from both the GOP and the conservative movement.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/introducing-the-trump-news-channelcoming-in-2017/496562/
