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Donald Trump either knows he has already lost the election, or is planning a corrupt presidency to rival the rule of media empire-owning former Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi
With just 21 days to go until the US presidential election, there are new signs that Donald Trump (or at least those around him) are increasingly coming to believe that the game is up, and looking ahead to life after the election under the presidency of Hillary Clinton.
The Financial Times reports that Donald Trump’s son-in-law and close adviser, Jared Kushner, has been making confidential overtures to investors about funding a new startup Trump News Network:
Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has informally approached one of the media industry’s top dealmakers about the prospect of setting up a Trump television network after the presidential election in November.
Mr Kushner — an increasingly influential figure in the billionaire’s presidential campaign — contacted Aryeh Bourkoff, the founder and chief executive of LionTree, a boutique investment bank, within the past couple of months, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.
Their conversation was brief and has not progressed since, the people said. Mr Bourkoff and Mr Kushner both declined to comment.
However, the approach suggests Mr Kushner and the Republican candidate himself are thinking about how to capitalise on the populist movement that has sprung up around their campaign in the event of an election defeat to Democrat Hillary Clinton next month. Mr Trump has in recent days ramped up his criticism of the “dishonest and distorted” mainstream media, which he accuses of being biased against him in collusion with the Clinton campaign.
This would certainly explain an awful lot about how Trump has been behaving since seizing the Republican Party presidential nomination in the summer. Since that time, Trump has overwhelmingly defaulted on his promises to switch gears and become “so presidential” and to reach out to centrist voters left unmoved by shrill denunciations of Hillary Clinton as a traitorous criminal.
In fact, rather than any tack back to traditional Republican values, Trump has doubled down on his conspiracy theorising and weaponised victimhood, preferring to drive the segment of America already well disposed to him wild with glee rather than expand his support base or help the prospects of down-ticket Republicans.
In this context, the idea that Trump either never intended to seriously challenge for the presidency (still a stretch, I think) or gradually gave up on that original ambition as he lurched from disaster to disaster (more plausible) starts to gain credence.
As a serious attempt to build an election-winning coalition of voters or persuade a majority to abandon their doubts and embrace his “ideology”, Trump’s continued behaviour has been entirely counterproductive. But as a strategy to enthuse his most ardent supporters and drive a further wedge between them and all mainstream sources of news (even including Fox News) it has been a masterpiece. Journalists are now routinely booed at Trump rallies, while the candidate himself accuses the media of being part of an organised establishment plot to swing the election for Hillary Clinton.
Currently these voters are served only by the more fringe conservative media – sites such as World Net Daily, Breitbart, InfoWars and alt-right personalities like Paul Joseph Watson and Mike Cernovich. And while many of these outlets are professionalising their operations, there probably still exists a gap in the market for a well-funded, professional-looking television news network that looks like CNN but talks like Alex Jones.
And now there is compelling evidence that Donald Trump, rather than seeking to help unite America in either victory or defeat, instead intends to capitalise on the partisan rancour and mutual distrust which will be left in the wake of this toxic presidential election campaign.
All of which raises a couple of rather pressing questions.
If Donald Trump is planning to set up a television news network regardless of the outcome of the election – raising the prospect of the most powerful man in the world also having a media empire to sing his praises from dawn to dusk, like Silvio Berlusconi (in so many ways) on steroids – is that not yet more evidence of his authoritarian, almost dictatorial intentions?
But if the Republican presidential nominee really has given up any prospect of winning the election and is instead abusing his platform to whip up a narrower subset of supporters with the hope of turning them into a loyal viewer base for his new television news network, then should he not be summarily removed from the GOP presidential ticket and replaced with somebody who is actually running to win for party and country?
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Top Image: Wikimedia Commons
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Semi-Partisan Politics 
Oh dear oh dear! A large dose of moral and intellectual superiority complex going on here. You seriously want world war 3? Anyone who sneers about ” conspiracy” is just another ” useful” puppet….there is such a thing as being a right stick-in-the mud Conservative …..all politics is a ” conspiracy” – it’s being going on for hundreds of years……Psssst……it used to be called ” a plot.” Fancy actually advocating a criminal who wants war against someone who wants to negotiate. Fancy advocating the disgusting propaganda against Russia put out by the vicious unstable democrats and naturally, I guess, given your background, gravitating towards the Guardian and Times to obtain their information. I think this is a case of intellect getting the better of common sense but anyone who seemingly ” hates” Trump the way you seem too, is someone to whom I would not want to listen anymore. Very, very disappointed.
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I’m sorry to hear that, but I call it as I see it. Trump is an opportunist, not a conservative. For the life of me, I don’t understand why anybody takes him at his word. He spotted a great opportunity to exploit deserved anti-establishment feeling and did so masterfully, but I see no evidence that his “conversion” to conservatism is genuine or that his positions are anything more than cynical attempts to exploit people’s ignorance and short memories. This is a man who donated money to the Clintons, was friendly with them and who agreed with them on a range of left-wing positions. When was his “Road to Damascus” moment, the day he renounced his former views and became a conservative happy warrior? I simply don’t believe it ever happened.
If elected, Trump will be a grave disappointment to conservatives at best, and an authoritarian nightmare for the entire country at worst. Electing him president is a risk with almost zero upside and the very real possibility that his toxic personality will permanently stain even the better ideas that he now supposedly stands for.
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