Sunday, August 30, 2015

Trump – The New Jon Stewart

Jon Stewart had been a pain in Fox News’ ass lo these many years.  But he quit “The Daily Show” this summer, and the afterglow of his reruns were darkening when Donald Trump rose up to take on his role if not his banner.
He is obviously different from Jon Stewart but the effect appears to be the same.  Megan Kelly had been a frequent target of Stewart, and now here she is in Trump’s crosshairs (crossed hairs?).  Trump is stirring up the GOP way better than Stewart ever hoped to do.  They are at a loss on how to respond.
At least the Fox News gang could run out the old liberal bias meme against Stewart when he criticized their supposedly “fair and balanced” reporting.  But Trump is one of their own – he’s Republican, a successful conservative business tycoon.  And since he is running for President, he’s got a whole new attention gathering stage from which to take pot shots at Fox.
The old truism, which has been floating around the Internet that “Fox News used to work for the GOP, and now the GOP works for Fox News”, may no longer be true.  Not only that, Trump has totally reworked the GOP’s primary run-up status quo.  Jeb! and the rest of the gang are trying to recoup, recover, and re-strategize their campaign.  As much as he would have liked, Stewart was never able to do that.
Seems the overall consensus among pundits is that were Trump to win the GOP primary, he would probably lose the general election.  His nomination is Hillary’s best strategy (hope) of winning.   Or the other pontification is that he will ruin it for the GOP by running as a third party candidate.  Maybe Trump will do to Jeb! what Perot did to his dad in 1992.
However, given current events, tweets, and clickbait, Trump may do to the general election what he is presently doing to the GOP’s method of selecting its next nominee – and the coverage of it by news media as well.
And we still got six months to go before voters start turning hype and spin into facts.
Smart decision by Stewart to get out, now.  Trump’s Tweets and blurbs would have out tongued-in-cheek Stewart’s satirical reporting of the Republican primary and Fox Newspeak coverage of it.

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