“Fox News Created The Trump Monster”: The Billionaire Egoist Is The Creation Of The Network Now Trying To Destroy Him
Okay, so as I write these words, someone could be about to release a post-debate poll showing exactly what establishment Washington, which now apparently includes even Fox News (!), yearns to see a poll show—that Donald Trump has tumbled, and that the new leaders in the GOP field are the comparatively sober Jeb Bush and John Kasich, along with maybe Carly Fiorina, since everybody seems to be swooning over her now. Maybe it’ll happen.
But what in fact did happen is that we got this NBC News-Survey Monkey poll showing Trump still ahead and Ted Cruz and Ben Carson vaulting into second and third place, respectively. It’s an online poll, and I know we’re supposed to question its methodology (which the pollsters explain here, if you’re interested). So I’m not going to sit here and swear by it. But on Monday, two other post-debate polls came along showing that Trump is still going strong. So the results are interesting enough, and they track closely enough with other anecdotal evidence that’s made its way to my inbox, that it’s certainly worth asking: What if Trump is still clobbering the rest of the GOP field?
If he is, we’re at a very interesting politico-cultural moment: The moment when, to a sizeable portion of the GOP electorate, Fox News stopped being their warrior and instead became just another arm of the lamestream media. If that’s true, everything we’ve known and assumed about our political divide is now moot, and we’re flying totally blind. The Republican Party has unleashed furies it can no longer remotely control.
First, here are the numbers, if you haven’t seen them. Post-poll, Trump went to 23 percent, according to NBC. That’s actually a gain of one statistically insignificant point, but reflect on this: He gained that point even though poll respondents said by a huge margin that he lost the debate (29 percent called him the loser; next closest was Rand Paul at 14 percent). Ted Cruz gained seven points, going from 6 to 13 percent. Ben Carson gained three points, moving from 8 to 11 percent. Marco Rubio stayed flat at 8 percent, and Jeb Bush and Scott Walker, the other “first-tier” candidates, finished in the cellar, losing three points each.
So add it up. The Tasmanian Devil candidate who’s obviously tapping into deep right-wing anti-establishment anger and the two other most extreme candidates combine for 47 percent. The two who in my view you can reasonably call quasi- or comparatively moderate, Kasich and Bush, combine to hit 9 percent.
All right, though, enough on the polls. Maybe enough time hasn’t elapsed for Trump’s Megyn Kelly comments to truly sink in with the Republican electorate. But here’s the anecdotal materials that suggests he’s still on the rise. First, which candidates were most heavily Googled during the debate? Huh. What a coincidence. It was Trump, Carson, and Cruz. The biggest single Google moment by a mile came during Cruz’s first remarks (“If you’re looking for someone to go to Washington, to go along to get along, to get—to agree with the career politicians in both parties who get in bed with the lobbyists and special interests, then I ain’t your guy.”) Carson scored well while talking terrorism and during his close, and Trump throughout.
Here’s a little more. I was on Fox on Sunday, on Howard Kurtz’s show. Every time I finish that show, I have 30 or so tweets in my feed. Usually, the tweeters are angry at me, for the obvious reasons. But Sunday, they were mostly mad at The Blaze’s Amy Holmes for her robust defenses of Megyn Kelly and attacks on Trump. This tweet, while more polite than most, is representative of the argument. Trump isn’t perfect, but lay off him already. Fox screwed up. And most of all: Don’t tell us what to think!
We’re used to this kind of rhetoric when conservatives volley it in the direction of The New York Times and CNN. But what are we to make of it when the target is Fox?
Two things. First, if I’m right about this and other polls back all this up, this process is officially beyond anyone’s ability to predict. Ignore all “surely this will finally start Trump’s downfall” stories, and all positive Jeb! stories. And is Cruz soon-to-be first tier? I admit that I sure missed that. I didn’t think he registered a heartbeat in the debate. It’s hardly remarkable that I was wrong about something, but most commentators pretty much dismissed Cruz, too.
And Carson! It’s not like he comes out of nowhere. They’ve been selling his first book by the truckful in Christian bookstores for years, and for gosh sakes, Cuba Gooding Jr. played him in a movie. But normally that would translate into a respectable sixth or seventh place. If he’s really doing better than that, something important has changed. And don’t ignore what an extremist he is: In his more recent book, which I actually read, he sincerely questioned whether citizens who pay no net income tax should have the right to vote—“Serious problems arise when a person who pays nothing has the right to vote and determine what other people are paying.”
The second thing we’re to make of this is that Fox and the Republican Party have created this new reality. When you spend years nodding and winking and yuk-yuking about the President’s birth certificate, how can you be surprised when the guy who has repeatedly demanded to see it turns out to be really popular with your base? You promote a politics that attacks women not merely for having abortions but for wanting to use contraception, and then you’re shocked when your hard-shell voting base turns out not to be overly offended by remarks like Trump’s?
Indeed Roger Ailes recognized all this when he decided to make nice with Trump on Monday. In the first instance Ailes did it because Trump has leverage, and The Donald’s threat not to go on his air meant a heavy hit in the ratings department. Ailes was also certainly feeling the blowback from his core audience–the kinds of tweets I alluded to above. And beyond all that, somewhere deeper down, Ailes knows that Fox made Trump, politically, and that the two are made for each other.
The Republican Party and Fox permitted and encouraged Trumpian vitriol for years. All that talk over the years about birth certificates and Kenya and terrorist fist-jabs (remember that one?!) and the moocher class and the scary brown people and all the rest of it…all of it created a need for a Trump, and for other Trump-like candidates, to flourish. Now it threatens to overtake them. If they’re wondering who created Trumpism, I have someplace they can look. The mirror.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, August 12, 2015
“Arguing Candidly With Trump Instead Of Flattering Him”: Inside Story; Behind Trump’s Breakup With Consultant Roger Stone
The tumultuous split between Roger Stone and Donald Trump – allied since their introduction more than 30 years ago by the late and legendary right-wing attorney Roy Cohn – erupted from internal divisions that have troubled the real estate mogul’s presidential campaign almost from the beginning, according to knowledgeable sources. Among the figures who may seek to fill the strategic vacuum left by Stone’s abrupt departure is none other than David Bossie, who runs the Citizens United Foundation and has long been associated with disreputable figures on the Republican right.
Stone’s very public resignation followed the Fox News Republican primary debate and Trump’s subsequent sparring with moderator Megyn Kelly. He complained on CNN that when the Fox anchor raised his past misogynist remarks during the debate, “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes…Blood coming out of her wherever.” Interpreted as a reference to menstruation, which Trump later denied, those words provoked a powerful backlash from across the political spectrum, leading to an angry argument between him and Stone over the debate results and aftermath.
On Saturday morning, Washington Post reporter Robert Costa tweeted an interview with Trump saying that he had fired Stone, whom he disparaged as a “publicity seeker.” Stone tweeted back: “Sorry @realDonaldTrump didn’t fire me—I fired Trump. Disagree with diversion to food fight with @megynkelly away [from] core issue messages.” The provocative political consultant and “dirty trickster” quickly produced a letter of resignation that he had sent to Trump, lamenting the end of their long personal and professional relationship, while noting that “current controversies involving personalities and provocative media fights have reached such a high volume that it has distracted attention from your platform and overwhelmed your core message … I can no longer remain involved in your campaign.” Friends of Stone confirmed to reporters that he had discussed resigning from the campaign even before the Fox debate.
Behind the media histrionics and dueling Twitter messages, however, were intrigues that sources trace to the hostility between Stone and campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, an ambitious former Capitol Hill staffer and employee of Americans for Prosperity, the Koch brothers’ political operation.
On August 2, Lewandowski arranged the firing of Sam Nunberg, a Stone protégé bounced from the campaign after an anonymous informant sent an email about racist posts on Nunberg’s Facebook page, including a 2007 post mocking the daughter of Rev. Al Sharpton, to the political editor of Business Insider. Under Stone’s direction, Nunberg had almost singlehandedly prepared all of the Trump campaign’s position papers, talking points, and written materials.
But Lewandowski clashed frequently with the volatile, obsessive, wonkish Nunberg and apparently appreciated neither his abilities nor his efforts. When asked about Nunberg, Lewandowski called him “a short-term consultant,” telling CNN that the campaign would “investigate” Nunberg to determine whether he had written the racist posts; and if so, he would be terminated.
Then, despite a personal promise from Trump to Nunberg that he could resign quietly to preserve his career, Lewandowski made sure that the campaign publicly announced his dismissal. It was a gratuitous bit of nastiness that infuriated Stone, who told friends he suspected Lewandowksi’s hand in the exposure of Nunberg’s inflammatory Facebook post.
So Stone had developed a low opinion of Lewandowski well before the Fox debate, telling friends that “due diligence” ought to have precluded Trump from hiring the campaign manager. Lewandowski has no previous presidential-level experience but his résumé undeniably does include stints with former Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH), who went to prison in 2006 after pleading guilty to corruption charges in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, and former Senator Bob Smith (R-NH), who lost his seat in 2002 after angering fellow Republican senators and GOP leaders in his home state. In fact, Lewandowski managed Smith’s embarrassing, doomed campaign.
To those who know Stone, whose experience in national politics dates back to the 1968 Nixon campaign, his irritation at being overruled by someone of such lowly political stature was understandable. The Trump campaign, as he saw it, had become dominated by mediocre climbers who would never speak honestly to the casino mogul.
The Bossie connection also troubled Stone, according to the same sources. Trump had hired Lewandowski after meeting him at a New Hampshire event for Republican presidential hopefuls sponsored by Citizens United and Americans for Prosperity, where Bossie reportedly recommended the 40-year-old operative to Trump. Stone may suspect that Bossie – a disreputable GOP operative who runs profitable email response campaigns — might have designs on the tens of thousands of valuable names and email addresses of conservatives who have contributed money on the Trump website. In only two days, tens of thousands had signed up for a “matching campaign,” making donations that the Manhattan developer promised to double.
Stone’s frustration grew, sources say, because his attempts to influence Trump’s direction and strategy went largely ignored. Instead, he found himself on the defensive internally against adversaries who wanted both him and Nunberg ousted. The worst offense that any consultant or staffer could commit, from Trump’s perspective, was to seek publicity for himself or herself. When Vox published a profile of Stone in late July – without a single quote from him – the piece somehow landed on Trump’s desk and sent him into a rage. Meanwhile, both Lewandowski and campaign press secretary Hope Hicks, a 26-year-old former assistant to Ivanka Trump, were profiled in Politico and the Washington Post Style section, respectively – with no repercussions for either of them.
Campaign intrigues aside, Stone put himself at risk by arguing candidly with Trump instead of flattering him. While sources say that Stone’s advice wasn’t infallible – he wrongly predicted, for instance, that Trump would get little traction without traditional polling and television advertising – he was certainly correct to say that the candidate should have ignored Megyn Kelly after the Fox debate. And if Trump intends to brandish a credible third-party threat, the only figure in his campaign with any relevant competence was Stone, who helped put Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson on the 2012 presidential ballot in 48 states.
Yet the toxic tide of anti-immigrant, xenophobic acrimony that has carried Trump this far may take him further still, even without his old friend and confidant. In a “scientifically weighted” online survey released by NBC on Sunday, he is still leading the Republican race with 23 percent, essentially unchanged from his previous level of support – even though he also topped the list of biggest “losers” of the debate among Republican voters.
By: Joe Conason, Editor in Chief, Editor’s Blog, The National Memo, August 9, 2015
“His Campaign Is Circling The Drain”: What Rick Perry’s Fall Tells Us About The GOP Primary Process
Rick Perry’s candidacy is not dead, it’s just pining for the fjords.
Perhaps I’m being unkind. After all, it’s only August, and there’s at least one example — John McCain in 2008 — of a candidate who hit rock bottom, was counted out by everyone, and came back to win his party’s nomination. But Perry is now struggling for his political life, when he should have been a strong contender for the nomination. How did this happen? We’re talking about a guy who was governor of the largest Republican-dominated state for 14 years, who created a businessman’s paradise of low taxes and almost no regulations, whose contempt for Washington is plain for all to see, who genuinely came from humble beginnings, who served in uniform, who’s a socially conservative, God-fearin’, gun-lovin’, tough-talkin’ Texan with a natural appeal to all of the party’s constituencies. And yet, his campaign is circling the drain. So can Perry’s floundering help us understand anything about the contemporary presidential campaign?
As I’ve mentioned before, candidates don’t depart presidential primaries when they decide their effort is doomed, they depart when they run out of money. Once the stench of defeat is upon you, it becomes harder to get media attention and harder to raise cash — after all, who wants to donate to a candidate who’s on his way out? There’s a moment on all of those campaigns when the staff is gathered together, and the campaign manager stands up in front of them with obvious pain in his eyes, and tells them that they aren’t going to be able to make the payroll. This is where the Perry campaign is now:
Former Texas governor Rick Perry’s presidential campaign is no longer paying its staff because fundraising has dried up, while his cash-flush allied super PAC is preparing to expand its political operation to compensate for the campaign’s shortcomings, campaign and super PAC officials and other Republicans familiar with the operation said late Monday.
Perry, who has struggled to gain traction in his second presidential run, has stopped paying his staff at the national headquarters in Austin as well as in the early caucus and primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, according to a Republican familiar with the Perry campaign who demanded anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.
Perry campaign manager Jeff Miller told staff last Friday, the day after the first Republican presidential debate, that they would no longer be paid and are free to look for other jobs — and, so far at least, most aides have stuck with Perry — according to this Republican.
Perry’s super PACs may still have plenty of money (as of a month ago they had raised nearly $17 million, a respectable if not spectacular total), since they haven’t had to spend what they raised on things like big ad buys. But that may be the first lesson of Perry’s desperate situation: super PACs can’t substitute for a real campaign. While it’s easier to raise money for them since they aren’t constrained by contribution limits, there’s only so much they can do to prop up their candidate when he’s in trouble. If what you need is some more advertising on your behalf to keep you competitive in a primary that’s days away, having a super PAC is great. If what you need is to maintain yourself over the long slog of the pre-primary period, they can do very little, because they can’t pay for your travel or your rent or your staff.
The second lesson could be that, just as everyone suggested, the first debate’s 10-candidate limit really could do damage to at least some of the candidates who didn’t make the cut. Perry was narrowly excluded, even though he trails others who made it, like Chris Christie and John Kasich, by a tiny amount. If he were running a lighter campaign — though I’m not sure, I suspect that the Santorum for President effort right now is two guys and a Geo Metro — he wouldn’t be too damaged by being excluded. But Perry is trying to run a serious effort, and that requires resources.
Perry’s struggles also show that while there may be second acts in GOP presidential primaries, your first act has to be a good one. Most of the people who have won the Republican nomination in recent years did so on their second try — Mitt Romney, John McCain, Bob Dole, George H.W. Bush. But all of them performed pretty well in their first runs, essentially coming in second to the eventual winner. Perry, on the other hand, flamed out spectacularly in 2012. He may be a better candidate this time around, but it appears that few voters were waiting eagerly to hear more from him.
And finally, it’s a reminder that candidate quality matters. Perry may have been an effective politician in the Texas context, where the state is dominated by Republicans and his particular down-home style plays well, but it didn’t seem to translate to other places, four years ago or today. On paper, he may have looked like the perfect Republican presidential candidate. But that’s not where the campaign is decided.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect; Contributor, The Plum Line Blog, The WashingtoAugust 11, 2015
“A Wild And Unpredictable Ride”: The Rise Of Donald Trump Is Evidence That Our Political System Isn’t Working
The Republican Party is in total chaos. Democrats aren’t there yet but may be approaching the neighborhood. It’s time to acknowledge that our political system simply isn’t doing its job.
Once again, following Thursday’s debate and its messy aftermath, the GOP establishment confidently predicts that the Donald Trump phenomenon is over, done with, finished, kaput. Why, he picked a fight with popular Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly! He bluffed his way through the debate with rhetoric and showmanship rather than policy positions! His campaign organization is in turmoil! He wouldn’t even pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee!
By any traditional measure, Trump is not a viable candidate. Yet he continues to dominate news coverage of the campaign, and thus far there is no indication that his transgressions have caused the plunge in his poll numbers that party pooh-bahs so eagerly anticipate.
As Buffalo Springfield once sang, “There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.” (Ask your parents, kids.)
By one early measure — an online poll for NBC News conducted by the SurveyMonkey firm — Trump maintained his big lead following the debate, with Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson vaulting into second and third place; businesswoman Carly Fiorina, who dominated the undercard debate, reportedly leapt into the middle of the pack. The numbers in the SurveyMonkey poll are less important than the trend lines: So-called “protest candidates” are capturing voters’ imaginations in a way that establishment candidates are not.
Trump, Fiorina and Carson have never held elective office; the basis of their appeal is that they are not professional politicians. Cruz has spent his time in Washington ostentatiously declining to play politics as usual, recently going so far as to call his own majority leader a liar.
At this point, it is fair to say that a significant portion of the party has lost faith in the GOP establishment. It’s also fair to say that this has little or nothing to do with where candidates stand on the issues.
Trump made his initial mark in this campaign with demagoguery about illegal immigration. But with the exception of Jeb Bush, the other GOP contenders have basically the same position: Seal off the border with Mexico, if necessary by erecting a physical barrier.
Carson has compared the Affordable Care Act to slavery. No other Republican in the race uses such over-the-top language, but they all pledge to repeal Obamacare. Cruz vehemently opposes the Iran nuclear agreement. All the Republican candidates feel the same way. Fiorina wants to shrink bloated government. Everybody else does, too.
The irony is that the Republican field includes several candidates who, in theory, could be formidable in the general election. Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio are both from Florida, a state the GOP basically must win to have any chance in the Electoral College. Ohio Gov. John Kasich or Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker theoretically might be able to pry one or more of the Midwestern industrial states out of Democratic hands.
But the process of quelling the Trump-led insurgency is already boxing the whole field into absolutist positions that will be difficult for the eventual nominee to soften. The longer chaos reigns, I believe, the less room the GOP candidate will have to maneuver.
All of this should make Hillary Clinton very happy. But the Democratic Party and its likely nominee have problems of their own.
To be sure, I’d much rather be playing Clinton’s hand than anybody else’s in either party. In the RealClearPolitics polling averages, she leads her closest opponent for the nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, by 35 points — and beats every one of her potential GOP opponents in hypothetical head-to-head matchups.
One problem, however, is that her favorability has been going down, according to polls. Another is that while Sanders has made few discernible inroads with key parts of the Democratic Party coalition — especially African Americans and Latinos — he is within striking distance of Clinton in the first two caucus and primary states, Iowa and New Hampshire.
Sanders is drawing big, passionate crowds, and I believe one reason is that he, too, is kind of an anti-politician — a man who unabashedly labels himself a socialist and refuses to tailor his views to please a given audience.
Significant numbers of voters seem to be demanding authenticity, passion and rough edges from a nominating process designed to produce none of the above. To state the obvious, this could be a wild and unpredictable ride.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, August 11, 2015
“Find A New Trump Card”: Insulting The Media And His Fellow Candidates Will Only Get The Donald So Far
Donald Trump is leading in the national presidential polls – nearly doubling his closest rival Jeb Bush, according to the latest Real Clear Politics average. He is also outpacing the field in inappropriate comments. It is time for Trump to add some new cards to his deck.
Earlier this summer, the real estate mogul made disparaging remarks about Sen. John McCain’s military service, questioning his heroism because he was captured. Other Republican candidates quickly denounced Trump’s statement and defended the former prisoner of war.
Trump’s latest outrageous comments came as a result of last Thursday’s Republican presidential debate as Trump criticized debate moderator Megyn Kelly’s line of questioning, which included asking him about previously calling women “fat pigs,” “dogs,” “slobs” and “disgusting animals.” Talking with CNN’s Don Lemon on Friday evening, Trump said, “She gets out and she starts asking me all sorts of ridiculous questions. You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever. In my opinion, she was off-base.”
On Saturday morning, Trump clarified that “wherever” was referring to her nose, not her period. But his comment led many, including rival candidate Carly Fiorina, to criticize Trump for his inappropriate remark, and RedState’s Erick Erickson disinvited him to a weekend RedState Gathering.
Trump, of course, responded in kind with personal attacks against those who criticized him. He called Erickson a “total loser. Fiorina was his target Sunday, when he tweeted, “I just realized that if you listen to Carly Fiorina for more than ten minutes straight, you develop a massive headache. She has zero chance!”
In a sense, the events of the last week show that the debate and primary process is working. Trump’s comments give the American people the chance to learn more about his views and his temperament under pressure, as he seeks one of the most high-pressure jobs in the world. The next president certainly should be able to answer tough questions without getting rattled.
Trump and his defenders claim that he is the latest victim of our overly politically correct culture, and that the country’s problems are too large to worry about petty insults and offenses. But Trump has done little to demonstrate that there is any substance to his candidacy – evading the opportunity to offer specifics or policy proposals that he would bring to the White House.
For Republicans, Trump’s campaign is a distraction in what is otherwise an encouraging early primary. Last week’s debates featured a roster of impressive candidates – including four senators, the governors or former governors of some of the most populous states in the nation (including Texas, Florida and New York), the first woman CEO of a Fortune 50 company and a neurosurgeon.
For those who looked past Trump’s reality TV sideshow, the debates offered the beginning of a serious policy discussion about how to address the nation’s problems, from our lagging economy to health care reform to the threat of international terrorism. There are some disagreements among the candidates, and Republicans benefit from seeing those differences on display.
It is easy to understand why many voters are sick of Washington politicians and eager to embrace a blunt, populist candidate who promises big changes. But if The Donald is going to stay in the race, he needs to find a new trump card – leaving the personal attacks and name-calling back at “The Apprentice” set.
By: Karin Agness, Founder and President of The Network of Enlightened Women; Thomas Jefferson Street Blog, U. S. News and World Report, August 10, 2015
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