Television is dying. He might go for television, because his ego runs his whole show without any interference from those pesky voices of rationality most of us have, but if FOX can’t even get FOX Business News in the black these days, an upstart who is definitionally abrasive and self-limiting in terms of audience will stand even less of a chance.
This is only somewhat to do with the quality of TV programming. The fact is, essentially nothing on TV has to be consumed at a specific time to be relevant. (That’s the definition of “appointment programming”: Stuff which is only on at a specific time, so you have to block off your own time to see it.) The only exceptions are sports and disaster alerts, and I might even be wrong about sports. That means on-demand streaming services have it all over appointment programming, and that’s never going to change, regardless of how good the appointment programming is.
The people to whom refusal to concede would be a wink-nudge to engage in lone-wolf terrorism* would be getting the winks and nudges directly from his Twitter feed and local Rush-wannabe talk radio hosts and whatnot, not the major national media.
*Why do the Republicans refuse to call it by its name? It cannot be defeated unless it is called by its True Name[tm], as they incessantly tell us.
I wonder if Trump is setting a trap for Democrats on the “election is rigged” issue. Say Trump wins even though polls show Clinton 6 points ahead. Does Clinton just gracefully concede, or does she refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the results right away?
Oh come on… what reason could anyone have to believe that Trump plans his idiocy ahead like this? Josh Marshall’s “Trump’s razor” is the best explanation – everything Trump has done or said is best explained by the stupidest possibility. In this case, and in many others, it’s that Trump is undisciplined, uncontrollable, says whatever he feels at that moment regardless of truth or campaign plan, and has no sense of honor, dignity, decency, or patriotism.
True, but nevertheless I wonder if Clinton and other Democrats might start yelling “Russia!” should a surprise result emerge. They’ve pretty much ruled out that such conspiratorial talk is remotely acceptable.
I’d say there’s a substantial difference between “I’m behind by a ton in all the polls, but if I lose, it’s obviously because everyone cheated at every level” and “I’m ahead by degrees not seen since Reagan, the exit polls show me way ahead as well, every secular indication is that I should win by a landslide, but for some reason that didn’t happen.” At this point, given what we know, Clinton losing is an extremely bizarre and erratic result, and Trump losing is entirely realistic.
Let him not concede, he doesn’t have to. As to media coverage, I say just make it clear you will not park a shot of an empty stage with “TRUMP” displayed onscreen all night but will only cut to his location when he is actually at the mic, speaking; and that if someone else started their victory or concession speech before he does, you will not cut away because there’s signs of him.
Besides for many of the MSM it may become a safety concern for their reporters to be at a Trump event if things are going badly.
The latest poll has Evan McMullin winning Utah. (In case you care, his running mate is someone named Mindy Finn.) He’s still a longshot but it would actually be pretty cool if he won the state. They’d have to decide on a color for him.
I went to his website and unfortunately he uses no dominant colors other than red, white and blue, and red and blue are taken. I guess the Green Party has green. (The “About Evan and Mindy” photo of the two looks like a bad holiday photo, complete with the top of McMullin’s head being out of the frame and it kind of looking like Finn herself took the shot with her phone.)
Also on McMullin’s page is a donation button that says “Chip in $15.” I like the guy and I hope we wins Utah, since that won’t affect Clinton’s chances and he’ll be famous for it.
I haven’t seen a discussion here, but Dan “Santorum” Savage has finally decided on a sex act to use the Trump name for:
The Trump Talk.
This is the talk that parents of girls need to have at some point with their daughters, about how some men will treat them like objects and not like people; that if they’re grabbed or groped or otherwise assaulted, it’s not the girl’s fault, she did nothing to make it happen, it’s entirely the fault of the attacker, and she should speak up.
It’s a big enough organization that they could sell it and be rich the rest of their lives.
I guess it depends what you mean by “major.” The company is easily worth two billion dollars; whatever his failings, Trump has amassed a lot of assets and has a lot of equity in them. His Manhattan properties alone are worth a fortune.
But in the grand scheme of things, no, it’s not a HUGE company. It isn’t one of the thousand largest businesses in America.
I should clarify, I’m not commenting on you, adaher. I meant that if that’s what the Trump team intends in any way, they are even bigger idiots than they have already proven themselves to be. And that saying a lot for the worst-run presidential campaign ever: no money, a terrible candidate, no strategy, picking fights with allies, and maybe even coming up with stupid traps that remind me of David Bossie’s history of mental illness and insane conspiracies.
(For example, when Bossie was on the Whitewater investigation committee, he reportedly directed staffers to receive firearms self-defense training in case the Clintons sent hitmen to take out congressional staffers the way that they took out Vince Foster.)
