I can’t remember the last time a liberal friend or acquaintance mentioned someone on the conventional right. It’s all Trump and his secret allegiance with Putin for them. To a lesser degree they obsess over people like me and our plans to bring back slavery, roll back women’s rights and turn America into a medieval fortress.
It's true, and has been since early in the election cycle. His opponents facilitated it, too. The Democrats and their media allies worked to shift the focus towards the "pied piper" candidates like Trump, Cruz, and Carson, and away from establishment favorites like Jeb! If you want a real facepalm moment just read Trump's bit from 1987 on using the press, and then read the DNC email where they adopted the strategy of throwing kindling to his upstart candidacy. In fact, I'll paste the whole section here. It's probably an egregious copyright violation, but I doubt the author will mind.
Get the Word Out
You can have the most wonderful product in the world, but if people don't know about it, it’s not going to be worth much. There are singers in the world with voices as good as Frank Sinatra’s, but they're singing in their garages because no one has ever heard of them. You need to generate interest, and you need to create excitement. One way is to hire public relations people and pay them a lot of money to sell whatever you’ve got. But to me, that's like hiring outside consultants to study a market. It's never as good as doing it yourself.
One thing I've learned about the press is that they're always hungry for a good story, and the more sensational the better. It’s in the nature of the job, and I understand that. The point is that if you are a little different, or a little outrageous, or if you do things that are bold or controversial, the press is going to write about you. I've always done things a little differently. I don't mind controversy, and my deals tend to be somewhat ambitious. Also, I achieved a lot when I was very young, and I chose to live in a certain style. The result is that the press has always wanted to write about me.
I’m not saying that they necessarily like me. Sometimes they write positively, and sometimes they write negatively. But from a pure business point of view, the benefits of being written about have far outweighed the drawbacks. It's really quite simple. If I take a full-page ad in the New York Times to publicize a project, it might cost $40,000, and in any case, people tend to be skeptical about advertising. But if the New York Times writes even a moderately positive one-column story about one of my deals, it doesn't cost me anything, and it’s worth a lot more than $40,000,
The funny thing is that even a critical story, which may be hurtful personally, can be very valuable to your business. Television City is a perfect example. When I bought the land in 1985, many people, even those on the West Side, didn’t realize that those one hundred acres existed. Then I announced I was going to build the world’s tallest building on the site. Instantly, it became a media event: the New York Times put it on the front page, Dan Rather announced it on the evening news, and George Will wrote a column about it in Newsweek. Every architecture critic had an opinion, and so did a lot of editorial writers. Not all of them liked the idea of the world’s tallest building. But the point is that we got a lot of attention, and that alone creates value.
The other thing I do when I talk with reporters is to be straight. I try not to deceive them or to be defensive, because those are precisely the ways most people get themselves into trouble with the press. Instead, when a reporter asks me a tough question, I try to frame a positive answer, even if that means shifting the ground. For example, if someone asks me what negative effects the world’s tallest building might have on the West Side, I turn the tables and talk about how New Yorkers deserve the world’s tallest building, and what a boost it will give the city to have that honor again. When a reporter asks why I build only for the rich, I note that the rich aren’t the only ones who benefit from my buildings. I explain that I put thousands of people to work who might otherwise be collecting unemployment, and that I add to the city’s tax base every time I build a new project. I also point out that buildings like Trump Tower have helped spark New York’s renaissance.
The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people’s fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular.
I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration — and a very effective form of promotion.
Thanks to Trump's penchant for playing the press to his advantage, and the Democrats' penchant for screwing things up, Trump is, really, the only new story. Nothing else comes close. There are already a number of sentences littered throughout this blog to the tune of The best thing about Trump is... Let's add another. The best thing about Trump is he gives cover to conservatives. A conservative can say something to infuriate our overlords of political correctness, but the focus will always return to Trump within a few days. It reminds me of the Lord of the Rings movies. Frodo, deeply infiltrated into Mordor, catches the attention of the eye of Sauron, whose piercing gaze assures a quick demise. At just the right moment, the army of men arrives at the gates, which conveniently distracts the singularly threaded lord of darkness.
The Trump distraction gives conservatives cover to actually, well, be conservative, without being burned down by the media's beam of focused rage. It would appear that not many conservative politicians are making as much use of the situation as they should, but there is still time. Little by little, they will learn that the backlash for conveying "hate facts" and other such mortal sins is attenuated enough that it can be survived. Steve King, the Congressman from Iowa, is a great example. He committed outrageous heresy when he stated that we can't replenish our nation with other peoples' babies. He really drove down to the core of the matter. It's hard to believe he's survived. Had Hillary won, his outlook would likely be grim. He'd be the recipient of constant media outrage, which would fuel all kinds of money from the coasts towards some RINO usurper. But that's not happening. He will coast through an easy re-election. They don't have the ability to mount a sustained assault on him. Not when Trump is meeting with the evil dark lord of Moscow. REEEEEE!!!!!!
This is all more significant than it might seem. It's happening slowly, and quietly. Think of Paul Ryan, who's on his way out. Probably towards some high-paying consultancy - a fat reward for being a good boy and writing Mr Obama's blank check - but his political career is nevertheless terminated. Not a bad place to end, but you know how ambitious these people are. You have to understand how a guy like Ryan got to where he is now, in a position with very real power. He certainly didn't do so by appealing to conservatives. Nor was it from support from the left. Not direct support, at least. Go to any lefty forum. The consensus is still that he's a terrible bigot, racist, etc etc. Well, he's a Republican, so they have to think that. His support from the right is soft, and from the left is indirect, at best. But that indirect support sustains him. In general, the media create an environment where real conservatives are eviscerated, so only slimy RINOs can ever level up. It's like chemotherapy, but in reverse. The good cells tend to be eradicated faster than the cancer. Ryan's big advantage was that he had a big powerful lord of darkness dedicated to the task of smiting his opponents. To the establishment, a faux conservative who kowtows to the aristocracy is far more valuable than another Marxist Democrat. These players are essential to keep the political theater alive. In a lot of ways, the establishment liberals would rather have a Republican Congress funding the Obama agenda. It conveys a signal of... perhaps legitimacy, but at least one of insurmountable political unity. It energizes the believers and discourages the dissenters.
The longer Trump holds the attention of the media eye, I suspect we'll witness an increasing rate of evidence to support the notion that the RINO protection mechanisms have been neutralized.
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