More on Fox News, Megyn Kelly, Roger Ailes, and the GOP
Establishment vs. Trump
By Tony Lee
(This guy Lee is right on target, by the way!)
* * *
Did Fox News expect anything less from Donald Trump?
After the network taunted the GOP front-runner for two
days leading up to Thursday’s Fox News GOP presidential debate, Trump finally
decided to skip the debate on Tuesday evening, setting off another chaotic
media firestorm that will make him the centerpiece of every story from here to
the Iowa Caucuses on Monday.
By pushing Trump over the edge in what the network may
now clearly view as a miscalculation, Fox News may have inadvertently done
Trump a favor while doing itself a huge disservice.
When Trump and Fox News began sparring over Megyn Kelly’s
objectiveness at the beginning of the week, Fox News boss Roger Ailes may have
figured that the combativeness would create more controversy, which would lead
to even bigger ratings for Thursday’s debate.
Since the Republican National Committee cut ties with
National Review as a debate partner after National Review published its
anti-Trump issue, Trump felt that Fox News should have replaced Kelly with a
more objective moderator, especially after Kelly helped National Review Editor
Rich Lowry gin up the magazine’s “Against Trump” manifesto last week.
* I DID NOT KNOW THIS! I DID NOT KNOW THAT KELLY HAD
WORKED (CONSPIRED?) WITH LOWRY! (HAS THIS BEEN INDEPENDENTLY CONFIRMED?)
“Sooner or later Donald Trump, even if he’s president, is
going to have to learn that he doesn’t get to pick the journalists — we’re very
surprised he’s willing to show that much fear about being questioned by Megyn
Kelly,” Fox News said in a Monday statement.
* MEGYN KELLY ISN'T A "JOURNALIST" - SHE'S A
TALKING HEAD... AT BEST AN ANCHOR AND INTERVIEWER.
(*SHRUG*)
After Trump polled his Instagram followers on Tuesday
about whether he should participate in the Fox News debate (Trump asked: “Megyn
Kelly is really biased against me. She knows that, I know that, everybody knows
that. Do you really think she could be fair at a debate?”), Fox News
inexplicably upped the ante by mocking and taunting Trump in an unprecedented
statement to Left-leaning Mediaite:
"We learned from a secret back channel that the Ayatollah and Putin both intend to treat Donald Trump unfairly when they meet with him if he becomes president — a nefarious source tells us that Trump has his own secret plan to replace the Cabinet with his Twitter followers to see if he should even go to those meetings."
Perhaps Ailes wanted to get an over-the-top response from
Trump so the network could hype the Kelly v. Trump clash like Vince McMahon
promotes Wrestlemania.
* FOLKS... TRUMP'S A SMART GUY. LOVE HIM OR HATE HIM,
HE'S WINNING.
(*SHRUG*)
Controversy does indeed create ratings — and cash. But
even veteran CNN journalist John King said he had never seen a media
organization — let alone one that claims to be “fair and balanced” — issue such
a statement, which inexplicably turned the process for choosing the country’s
next president into a joke.
Fox News’ taunt was the last straw for Trump, who
decided soon after that he was done playing Ailes’ games after the “wise-guy
press release.” After reading it, Trump said, “I said, ‘bye, bye.’”
After blasting “lightweight” Kelly as a “third-rate”
journalist at an Iowa event, Trump said that his decision to skip the Fox News
debate was “pretty close to irrevocable.”
“Fox is playing games,” Trump said. “They can’t toy with
me like they toy with everybody else. Let them have the debate. Let’s see how
they do with the ratings.”
Soon after Trump’s Tuesday evening Iowa event, Trump
Campaign Manager Corey Lewandowski told the Washington Post that Trump is
“definitely not participating in the Fox News debate. His word is his bond.”
Game over.
(*SHRUG*)
Instead, Trump will hold a town hall event to raise money
for Wounded Warriors while his rivals debate for three tedious hours.
(Fox News’s advertisers may even want some of their money
back.)
Ailes may really want to “save the country” from Trump,
but his taunting press release, which was reportedly 100% his, may have
unintentionally done Trump many favors while backfiring big time on Fox News if
Trump keeps his word and skips the debate.
First, Fox News’s childish press release from left field
proved to Trump that the network had no intention of being impartial, and it
gave him the perfect excuse to skip a debate from which he did not have much to
gain.
Front-runners with huge leads routinely avoid giving their
upstart challengers debates because there is not much to gain and everything to
lose.
Now, Trump won’t have to go through Fox News’s anti-Trump
gauntlet while fending off seven challengers bent on dethroning him. It also
allows Trump to separate himself from his crowded field of challengers.
* LOOK AT THE GAINS RAND PAUL MADE AFTER HE PULLED OUT OF
THE LAST GOP "UNDER-CARD" DEBATE!
Second, unlike other GOP candidates, Trump has never
needed Fox News.
Because of his unmatched celebrity and near-universal
name recognition, Trump has been able to go over the heads of the mainstream
media cable and network news networks in an unprecedented way this election
cycle, getting his message — and criticisms of other candidates — directly to
voters.
(And as the front-runner heading into Iowa, he doesn’t
need a Fox News debate to close the deal with his supporters.)
But Fox News needs Trump for ratings.
Already, Ailes has reportedly been desperately trying to
reach out to Trump, who has reportedly told Fox News that he will only field
calls from Rupert Murdoch.
Fox News will probably now have to make major concessions
to get Trump to participate in the debate.
* IF KELLY REALLY CARED ABOUT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE... OR
EVEN HER OWN NETWORK... SHE WOULD HAVE INSISTED ON PULLING OUT OF THE DEBATE
HERSELF. (SHOULDN'T THE FOCUS BE ON THE CANDIDATES - NOT THE TALKING HEADS?)
The one downside of skipping the debate for Trump is that
he may leave himself open to three hours of attacks without being able to
defend himself in real time.
* BUT THAT WOULD HURT FOX... PROVE TRUMP RIGHT...
(*SHRUG*)
* IT WOULD ALSO MAKE THE OTHER CANDIDATES APPEAR
MERCENARY AND ALIGNED WITH THE GOP ESTABLISHMENT'S ANTI-TRUMP AGENDA...
(*SHRUG*)
* AGAIN... TRUMP IS A SMART GUY!
(*CHUCKLE*)
But Trump could easily display his mastery of social
media and Tweet his counterattacks. Or better yet, Trump could go on rival
networks the next morning and have comebacks ready for everything that was said
about him the night before. By saturating the media the morning after the debate,
when final impressions about what happened the night before are congealed,
Trump could have the last word on every issue/criticism/candidate in the
crucial few days before Iowans vote!
* YEP!
And then Trump will be "the story" regardless
of what happens at the debate!
(*GUFFAW*)
* YEP...!
Nobody, after all, knows the “orchestra pit theory of
politics” better than Ailes. And Trump’s media appearances on Friday morning
will "bigfoot" anything that happened the night before.
(*NOD*)
Thursday’s debate will not be as compelling without Trump
and may resemble a glorified under-card debate.
It will lack drama and, hence, ratings.
John Kasich will continue to appeal to liberals. Jeb
Bush’s new haircut, posture, and gestures will not convince viewers he has more
energy. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie will try his best to be relevant by
attacking the gobbledygook spoken by the Senators. The moderators will probably
ignore Dr. Ben Carson again. And Sens. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Sen. Marco Rubio
(R-FL), and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) will drone on like Senators and viewers will
think at times that they are watching C-SPAN.
By skipping the debate, Trump will only reinforce his
strengths among his supporters.
Trump has drawn new voters into the political process and
rocketed to the top of nearly every poll because blue-collar Americans think he
will be their “jackass” who will stick up for the country and their interests
against Washington’s permanent political class and the global elite that have
colluded to screw them over.
By giving Fox News the proverbial middle finger, Trump
reinforces his anti-establishment/outsider bonafides.
* AND... FOLKS... IN ADDITION...
(KEEP READING!)
Trump’s potential absence from the debate...presents some dangers for Fox News’s brand.
Conservative voters felt that Fox News had a finger on
the scale for establishment GOP candidate Mitt Romney during the 2012 election
cycle. And after the network hired CNN retreads and endlessly promoted centrist
Kelly after the 2012 election, many of the network’s core viewers
unenthusiastically watched Fox News because it was the least offensive news
outlet on television. Kelly’s giggling “love-fest” with Michael Moore on
Tuesday evening did the network no favors with heartland viewers that Rush
Limbaugh said do not think Fox News is the “conservative network that it used to
be.”
* AND LIMBAUGH IS CORRECT. FOX NEWS IS "GOP
ESTABLISHMENT TV."
(*SHRUG*)
The network’s treatment of Trump has indeed only
reinforced the suspicions many Fox News viewers have had about the network’s
move toward "the center."
When Fox News and Kelly tried to take out Trump’s knees
in the first debate by painting him as a sexist with a misleading and loaded
question that accused Trump of referring to women as “pigs,” “dogs,”
“disgusting animals” and saying that it was a “pretty picture” to see a
“Celebrity Apprentice” contestant “on her knees,” the backlash was immediate. A
Fox News source told New York magazine that “in the beginning, virtually 100%
of the emails were against Megyn Kelly” and Ailes “was not happy” because “Most
of the Fox viewers were taking Trump’s side.”
No comments:
Post a Comment