Donald Trump talks about his election victories and says that if he wins the Florida and Ohio primaries, that the race for the Republican nomination is effectively over.
Trump cites story of general who dipped bullets in pigs' blood to deter Muslims
Donald Trump cites dubious legend about Gen. Pershing, pig's blood and Muslims Says that in the Philippines more than a century ago, Gen. John Pershing "took 50 bullets, and he dipped them in pigs’ blood," and shot 49 Muslim rebels. "The 50th person, he said, ‘You go back to your people, and you tell them what happened.’ And for 25 years, there wasn’t a problem." — Donald Trump on Friday, February 19th, 2016 in a rally in North Charleston, S.C. February 23rd, 2016 http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/feb/23/donald-trump/donald-trump-cites-dubious-legend-about-gen-pershi/ [with embedded video]
It's time for the silent majority to start making noise! WE MUST SPEAK UP! Lets unite and Make America GREAT AGAIN! Forget about being politically correct, polite or nice- it hasn't worked. Christians are getting their heads chopped off, women are being raped, shootings, bombings, open borders, our economy is a disaster and we as a country are becoming more divided politically, spiritually, racially, and financially. America desperately needs a strong, smart and powerful leader!
"My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." - John F. Kennedy.
Donald Trump has our country's best interest at heart. It's not going to be an easy fast fix, but we can still salvage, rebuild and Make America Great Again!
A man was pulled to the ground and restrained by police on March 9 after being struck by a man believed to be a Donald Trump supporter at a rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Footage uploaded by a local musician, Ronnie C Rouse, shows the aftermath of the incident as police wrestle the protester to the ground. The man, named by Rouse as Keem Jones, was released by police, as seen at the end of the video.
Rouse, who was also there to protest against the rally, said that he and his friends were asked to leave the event within two minutes of Trump beginning his speech after causing a disruption. His footage shows the police escorting the protesters from their seats to the front of the building.
At a Donald Trump rally on March 9 in Fayetteville, North Carolina, a black protester was punched in the face by a Trump supporter. Event security arrested the victim, rather than his attacker.
At a recent Trump rally an anti Trump heckler was punched in the face by a pro Donald Trump supporter. Since the man who was punched is black and the man who punched him white, it has reignited the firestorm of racism accusations surround the Donald Trump presidential campaign.
[embedded video] Chris Doyle Cumberland County sheriffs department stands by as man is assaulted after protesting at Trump rally in Fayetteville, NC. SHARE. March 9, 2016 [ https://www.facebook.com/chrisdoyle23/videos/1139904969362384/ (with comments)]
In a statement [ https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10153378267475952&id=297216125951 ] on his Facebook page, Sheriff Earl Butler of Cumberland County said the officers have been charged with "unsatisfactory performance and failing to discharge the duties and policies of the office of sheriff." He went on, "The actions of the deputies and their failures to act in situations such as that which occurred during the Trump rally at the Crown Coliseum have never been and will not ever be tolerated under the policies of this office. We regret that any of the circumstances at the Trump rally occurred."
Just after he was slugged in the face, Jones told [ http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/03/video-trump-supporter-sucker-punches-protester.html ] the Washington Post he couldn't believe police went after him instead of McGraw. "The police jumped on me like I was the one swinging," he said. "My eye still hurts. It’s just shocking. The shock of it all is starting to set in. It’s like this dude really hit me and they let him get away with it."
PBS News Story on First-Time Trump Voters Prominently Displays Longtime White Power Tattoos 3/16/16 Last night, PBS NewsHour ran a story on the Tilly family [ http://www.pbs.org/newshour/episode/pbs-newshour-full-episode-march-15-2016/ ] of Fayetteville, North Carolina. The Tillys do not have a history of being active in politics, but various members of the family—both old and young—are being motivated to vote or work for a campaign for the first time by Donald Trump. If you can put aside the fact that the Tillys are rallying behind Trump, this is a small but almost heartwarming story of a family choosing to engage with democracy. That’s also if you can put aside the fact that Grace, one of the central characters in the story, has large white power tattoos on each of her hands. [...] http://gawker.com/pbs-news-story-on-first-time-trump-voters-prominently-f-1765284316 [with embedded video clip, and comments]
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I yelled ‘Black lives matter!’ at a Trump rally. This is what happened next.
Video [embedded]: This is what happened when I protested at a Trump rally First-time protester Sierra Thomas describes her experience at a Donald Trump rally in North Carolina where a black demonstrator was sucker punched by a white supporter earlier in March.
I knew protesting Trump could be dangerous. But I had to do something.
By Sierra K. Thomas March 18, 2016
Sierra K. Thomas is a student at Virginia State University in Petersburg, Va.
As I sat in the Crown Coliseum in Fayetteville, N.C., earlier this month, waiting for Donald Trump’s rally to start, my adrenaline began to rush. I knew I could be hurt for what I was about to do.
I’d driven three hours by myself that morning from college in southern Virginia to protest his campaign. For months, I’d been reading and watching coverage of Trump’s rise. His rallies had become spaces where people felt comfortable being openly racist and hateful, because he allowed them to. And with his ugly rhetoric about Muslims, Mexicans and “the old days” before political correctness, he has encouraged it.
If Trump makes it to the Oval Office, I’m afraid of what will happen to this nation. I want to be a teacher after I graduate; what kinds of lessons would children learn from a president who says it’s okay to kill the families of alleged terrorists and to ban people from the country because of their religion?
When I watched the video of Nwanguma getting pushed around at the rally in Louisville, I grew increasingly upset, frustrated and appalled. I decided at that very moment that I would protest at the nearest and soonest rally. I went to Trump’s website and saw that there would be one in Fayetteville the following week. I ordered a ticket.
I looked all over Facebook for protest groups that would be attending the rally and came across a post by a man named Jonathan Talley, who wrote about needing more protesters [ https://www.facebook.com/Motivated2Succeed/posts/10156745045680393 ]. He already had more than 100, though, and since this was my first time protesting, I felt safer knowing I’d have people there backing me up. I was a little nervous, because my parents didn’t want me to go. They made sure I was well aware of the danger and the consequences I might face. But I was determined not to let fear stop change, and knowing that I’d have people supporting me throughout the whole thing gave me courage.
In my car driving there, I constantly reminded myself of why I was going.
Sierra, don’t be afraid. You can do this. No matter what happens, remember why you’re here.
This is for Shiya Nwanguma.
This is for my children.
This is for my ancestors.
This is for every black man incarcerated, beaten and killed because of racism.
This is so all Americans — white, black, Asian, Native American, brown, rich, poor — won’t have a huge target on our backs because we allowed a bigot to run this country.
The organizers’ plan was for demonstrators to go into the event separately and sit by ourselves, so we wouldn’t attract attention and could pop up at different times to interrupt Trump. I walked inside and made small talk with the people sitting next to me, even though almost every second sitting there waiting was a challenge. They were very friendly, up until the moment I started protesting. Throughout the afternoon, I was texting with Talley, and he helped me calm down and stay strong, saying, “Don’t let them shake you, and don’t be scared.”
Shortly after Trump took the stage, the protests began. And the first thing I heard from Trump was: “Go home to Mom!” The crowd ate it up — it seemed like a lot of them were more interested in watching the protests than in hearing his speech.
Here we go! Stay focused. Ignore them. Don’t be afraid.
It was as if my body was on autopilot. The next thing I knew, I was in the middle of the aisle on the steps, one fist in the air, yelling, “BLACK LIVES MATTER!”
No way you’re going to punch us and we’re going to sit idly by.
“BLACK LIVES MATTER!”
No way MY president is going to register people because of their looks, race or religion.
“BLACK LIVES MATTER!”
People began to yell back at me, “All lives matter!” “Get out of here!” “Boo! Trump! Trump! Trump!” I wanted to tell them that of course “all lives matter” but that they weren’t dealing with the same struggles black people were — police brutality, an unfair justice system, generational poverty. The fact that our country has ignored our problems for too long. That we wouldn’t accept the status quo anymore.
Look them in the eyes. Show no fear. Remember why you’re here. Oh — that must be the police touching me.
I turned around, all the while yelling, “BLACK LIVES MATTER!” I couldn’t stop saying it.
Trump looked my way and yelled into the mic: “Get out!” The people I’d been sitting and talking with cheered with the rest of the crowd as police came over.
Three officers grabbed me, and I heard cheering from all around. Maybe in other circumstances, I might have been afraid. But right then, I wasn’t. I didn’t have time to worry, and I most certainly couldn’t show it. I blocked everything out and kept chanting.
Once we got to the top of the steps to exit my section, two officers trailed off and one continued to walk me to the door. He would eventually let me go, without any arrest, to the parking lot to meet the rest of the protesters and keep demonstrating outside the rally.
On the way out, he pushed me pretty hard and tried several times to pull my fist from the air.
“Get your hands off of me, and stop pushing me right now. BLACK LIVES MATTER!”
“Well, you need to keep walking.”
“I have not resisted since the moment you grabbed me. BLACK LIVES MATTER!”
I raised my fist back in the air. “BLACK LIVES MATTER!”
A middle-aged white man in the crowd yelled at me: “Get your little ass out of here! Go home, nigger!”
Don’t stop now, you’re almost at the door! Let them hear you! Don’t give up!
Presidential candidates Donald Trump, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Ohio Gov. John Kasich debate at the University of Miami at 8:30 p.m. ET [the debate actually began at 9:00 p,m, ET] Thursday March 10, 2016, the Republican debate hosted by CNN, Salem Media Group, The Washington Times and the Republican National Committee, moderated by CNN's Jake Tapper will moderate and CNN's Dana Bash, Salem talk radio host Hugh Hewitt and The Washington Times' Stephen Dinan.
Donald Trump’s baffling explanation for violence at his campaign rallies
U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump hugs a U.S. flag as he takes the stage for a campaign town hall meeting in Derry, N.H. on Aug. 19, 2015. (Brian Snyder/Reuters)
By Janell Ross March 11, 2016
It is a sad, sad commentary on the state of political affairs that, after Donald Trump’s answer to questions about violence at his campaign events, reasonable people in both parties had good reason to be afraid.
Trump’s two-part answer actually moved well past the realm of deflecting or spinning. This wasn’t even the kind of victim-blaming that it seems most conservative cable news commentators know how to deploy when discussing this week’s unarmed black citizen shooting. That’s all, sadly, rather standard political fare in 2016.
This was the actual employment of language and logic used to justify cross-burnings, lynchings and all manner of illegal, extra-judicial and inhumane behavior in U.S. history. This is what has been said to support attempted genocides, ethnic expulsions and some of the most shameful political acts around the globe. This is the actual route by which bigotry has, in the course of human history, become accepted practice and policy. This is the way that entire groups have been terrorized, demonized and oppressed.
What America witnessed Thursday night really boils down to this: Moderator Jake Tapper raised the issue of violence at Trump campaign events and then ably asked a follow-up question that included reading just part of the litany of comments that Trump himself has made sanctioning, calling for and justifying the physical abuse of protesters at his massive campaign events.
Then, Trump proved himself to be one of the most able users of the kind of racially coded language that is just complex enough to distract third-graders from its intent. The Trump twist of genius on this positively antebellum political tactic was the decision to incorporate modern, ostensibly neutral terms such as “dudes.”
Trump knows there has to be some room for deniability here; he is not new to this. Trump’s campaign has proven him one of the true artisans of this trade. Believe me. Nobody in this race is better. Nobody.
Trump started with this.
People come [to Trump campaign events] with tremendous passion and love for their country.... When they see what's going on in this country, they have anger that’s unbelievable. They have anger. They love this country. They don’t like seeing bad trade deals. They don't like seeing higher taxes. They don't like seeing a loss of their jobs.... And I see it. There’s some anger. There’s also great love for the country. It’s a beautiful thing in many respects. But I certainly do not condone that at all.
In other words, people who crave simple solutions to incredibly complex challenges are riled up. They are mad. For these people, those who disagree with them have no rights. They are generally members of groups to whom it is proper to assign collective guilt, preemptively contain or dole out aggressive and rapid punishment. You know -- Muslims, undocumented Mexican immigrants, wrongfully convicted black teens [ http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/01/nyregion/trumps-instinct-for-racially-charged-rhetoric-before-his-presidential-bid.html ]. They are the scapegoats for Trump supporters’ emotional and economic pain caused by trade deals.
When Tapper followed up by reading some of Trump’s on-mic, in-public comments about protesters, encouraging his supporters and security to punch, eject and “knock the crap” out of protesters, Trump tried again.
We have some protesters who are bad dudes, they have done bad things. They are swinging. They are really dangerous and they get in there and they start hitting people, and we had a couple of big strong powerful guys doing damage to people. Not only the loudness — the loudness I don't mind — but doing serious damage.
In other words, I have no proof of what I am saying, but my supporters are the victims here. Trump voters have to defend themselves against the aggression of protesters. This, despite the presence of security and Secret Service. They simply have no choice.
Hundreds of reporters have attended Trump events. Hundreds of thousands of Trump supporters have come to these events with their own pocket-sized recording devices. But images of those constantly swinging, dangerous and devilish protesters just haven’t been made public yet.
If Trump says they are “big, strong powerful guys” who are throwing punches — not defending themselves, but throwing punches and doing bad things — then it must be true. That his ideas connect to or lean upon a long and poisonous line of racial stereotypes for credibility is just a coincidence. Right.
Now, to be fair, Trump is certainly not the only candidate who has had peaceful, noisy protesters removed from campaign events. But no other candidate — in either party — has gone so far as to suggest that their supporters resort to physical violence. They certainly haven’t referred to some unidentified time in the past where this was common — pre-1964 comes to mind — as “the good old days.” And no other candidate’s events have been the subject of multiple reports, videos, still photos and audio recordings of outright violence, accusations of Nazi-esque salutes or shouts to light a black protester on fire.
It is difficult to understand why not one of Trump’s opponents on the debate stage said just that.
It is also true that some of the protesters assaulted at Trump rallies have been white people who don’t agree with Trump’s ideas. Some protesters have defended themselves when attacked. But the presence of these people in the ranks of those abused by Trump fans is no more clearly exculpatory than that long-suppressed Chicago dash-cam tape in which Laquan McDonald was shot and killed with his back turned to police.
Trump’s racially charged, primitively coded answers to Tapper’s questions amount to a strong Exhibit A. The unmistakable frequency with which black and Latino protesters at Trump events are singled out for violent — or at least certainly hands-on — attacks and rally removals are Exhibits B-Z. Consider the evidence with care.
And if Trump never saw the footage of the most recent punching incident despite its hold on least a quarter of all cable news airtime Thursday, as he said he didn’t, this, too, is almost immaterial. For quite some time, Trump rallies have functioned like cauldrons of economic and social anxiety where Trump himself manages the under-pot flame.
Now, to be sure, there are Trump supporters who don’t condone this kind of violence. There are probably some who weren’t comfortable with Trump’s comments Thursday night about the violence and big, strong, powerful dudes. Technically, Trump himself said he does not endorse this behavior. Technically, that might have been true — on Thursday. (See video of Tapper's follow-up question above [debate clip embedded]).
But there are others who will happily seize upon Trump’s unsubstantiated, racially charged claims about bad dudes and big, strong, powerful guys and repeat this like the unmistakable truth. It’s familiar and — as we have learned in case after case in which juries have failed to indict or punish officers and private citizens for questionable, possibly illegal behavior — quite believable to a frightening share of Americans.
There will also be Trump supporters who swear that they have witnessed some protester, somewhere, throw the first punch or simply felt afraid and therefore had to lash out. For these people, the facts are immaterial. Trump is the real good guy and his supporters are the ones in peril here. None of those comments Trump made at past rallies matter at all. When that starts Friday morning — and it will start — you can say you read about that here.
Just in case there are Trump supporters who want to buy and swallow a higher-grade snake oil, one that does not have the distinct aftertaste of bigotry, Trump did offer one other explanation Thursday night. For those Trump fans with the sense of history or human decency, Trump said more than once during the debate that his voters are driven by love.
this is part 3 of a 6-part post -- part 2 of this post is the post to which this is a reply, and part 4 is a reply to this post -- the '..., see also (linked in):' listing below is, subject only to further updates for any newer post(s) of note I pick up before completing this post, common to all 6 parts of this post
ROTFLMAO! gotoout .. President Obama Roasts Donald Trump At White House Correspondents' Dinner!
it's good .. they are all, F6, and the link lists as usual a great review for any others of the alien class, who miss so much of your subjective news programs, as O'Reilly's .. (thanks Ted Koppel) .. this
and, lol, including it here was an almost afterthought .. oh, the kids reactions to Trump in NO. 1 are spontaneously good, accurate, and fun to see, too.
Obama's is hilarious, can't wait to share some, as the first-time-ever birth video, with a couple of interested Aussies at the pub.
.. guess it's not surprising that Berlusconi's name slugged in just now ..
Alexander Stille
Mar. 7 2016, 11:43 p.m.
AS A WRITER who has covered Silvio Berlusconi since he became Italy’s prime minister in 1994, it has been difficult not to be overcome with a powerful sense of déjà vu all over again watching the presidential campaign of Donald Trump.
Some of the resemblances are obvious as well as uncanny. Both are billionaires who made their initial fortunes in real estate, whose wealth and playboy lifestyles turned them into celebrities. Both have had ugly divorces and brag of their sexual prowess. Trump notably defended his manhood at the debate last week, while Berlusconi once said, “Life is a matter of perspective: Think of all the women in the world who want to sleep with me but don’t know it.” (This was before Berlusconi began holding “bunga bunga .. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunga_bunga ” parties with prostitutes.) They are masters of media manipulation, Berlusconi as Italy’s largest private television owner, Trump as the star of his own reality TV show and creator of the Trump “brand.” Entering politics, both have styled themselves as the ultimate anti-politician — as the super-successful entrepreneur running against gray “professional politicians” who have never met a payroll and are ruining their respective countries.
The strategy worked well for Berlusconi — he won three national elections and served as prime minister for nine years between 1994 and 2011. Will it do the same for Trump?
Both are deliberately transgressive, breaking through the tedium of politics-as-usual by using vulgar language, insulting and shouting down opponents, adopting simple catchy slogans, and making off-color jokes and misogynistic remarks. Their verbal “gaffes” — which would be suicide for most politicians — are actually part of their appeal. I recall when Berlusconi presided over a European summit, and when negotiations stalled, he said to the assembled heads of state, “Let’s lighten up the climate by talking about soccer and women.” He turned to Gerhard Schroder, then-chancellor of Germany, who had been married four times. “You, Gerhard,” Berlusconi said .. http://tinyurl.com/jpkmt9y . “What can you tell us about women?” The remark was greeted with a chill. At first I thought, How could Berlusconi be so foolish? But his true audience was not the European heads of state — it was Italian men back home. After all, what are the two favorite topics in most Italian bars? Soccer and women.
Similarly, one might have thought Trump would have doomed himself with remarks apparently about the menstrual cycle of Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, and his ability to get .. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/18-real-things-donald-trump-has-said-about-women_us_55d356a8e4b07addcb442023 “a young and beautiful piece of ass.” But this nose-thumbing of “political correctness” has allowed both Berlusconi and Trump to successfully create an unusual hybrid persona: a kind of everyman’s billionaire. Someone who, on the one hand, by virtue of extreme wealth, success, and audacity, is a kind of superman for whom the normal rules of conduct don’t apply. At the same time, their plain, coarse speech connects viscerally with many people, particularly the less educated part of the electorate. They have an improbable inter-class appeal, very rich men who pursue policies that benefit the very rich (see the proposed Trump tax cut .. https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/tax-reform} while making effective rhetorical appeals, in a beerhall idiom, to the grievances of the struggling members of the middle and working classes.
Neither Trump nor Berlusconi has a real political program; what they are selling is themselves. Berlusconi used to say that what Italy needs is more Berlusconi. I recall a very telling moment in his first election campaign: During a TV debate, his opponent, the economist Luigi Spaventa, was pointing out the holes and inconsistencies in Berlusconi’s economic program, and Berlusconi stopped him mid-sentence and pointed to the victories .. http://tinyurl.com/gwjo56n .. of his soccer club, AC Milan: “Before trying to compete with me, try, at least, winning a couple of national championships!” The remark had the air of unassailable truth — however irrelevant it might be to Berlusconi’s fitness to govern. Similarly, when asked how he is going to get Mexico to pay for a giant wall between its country and ours, Trump simply responds, “Don’t worry, they’ll pay!”
Yet there is another element — a systemic one — that helps explain why Italy and the U.S. are the only major democracies in which a billionaire circus has raised its tent: the almost total deregulation of broadcast media. Berlusconi managed through political connections (with evidence .. http://www.economist.com/node/587107 .. of massive bribery) to acquire a virtual monopoly of private television in the 1970s. He introduced highly partisan news programs, giving TV shows to such on-air bullies as Vittorio Sgarbi and Paolo Liguori, who peddled conspiracy theories like Glenn Beck and shouted down political opponents in styles similar to Bill O’Reilly. In both Italy and the U.S., you have major networks that are, in essence, the media arm of one of the country’s main political parties. It’s important to realize, however, that the transformation of the media landscapes of both Italy and the U.S. did not simply happen, but were the result, in part, of political decisions.
About 30 years ago, the Federal Communications Commission had quaint rules called the Fairness Doctrine and the Equal Time Doctrine. They were seen as a way of guaranteeing that private license holders operated at least partly in the public interest and guaranteed a degree of pluralism of views. These rules made a certain amount of sense in an analog age in which the number of frequencies was limited. Television (and television news) was dominated by the big three networks, each of which competed for as much of the total market as it could get. It made no sense for any of them to create an overtly partisan newscast that would alienate Republican or Democratic viewers. This was hardly a golden age — broadcast news was arguably dull, centrist, and establishmentarian — but there were basic rules of civility and a certain respect for factual accuracy.
With the advent of cable television in the 1970s and the Reagan revolution of the 1980s, this all changed. President Reagan’s FCC chairman, Mark Fowler, insisted that television was no different than any other commercial appliance — “a toaster with pictures .. http://www.nytimes.com/1987/01/19/arts/under-fowler-fcc-treated-tv-as-commerce.html ,” he called it. The technological changes in the field — the emergence of cable — reinforced this position. With dozens and eventually hundreds of channels, it was felt, the old rules of fairness and balance were passé, because the sheer number of channels would ensure pluralism. What this view failed to appreciate was that it didn’t correspond with the way people actually consume news: They do not watch multiple points of view, switching frequently between PBS, Fox, MSNBC, and CNN. Instead, each group seeks out the news that fits its own ideological assumptions and stays there.
In 1987, Fowler eliminated the Fairness Doctrine. The next year, Rush Limbaugh created his nationally syndicated radio program. Fox News, headed by former Republican Party operative Roger Ailes, began operating in 1996.
IN BRITAIN, Germany, and France, state media companies still dominate the airwaves and act as a kind of referee for civil discourse and establishing commonly accepted facts; the situation that prevails is akin to American TV before it was disrupted by Reagan and Fox. It has not prevented extremist political movements from developing, but it has meant that the principal conservative parties and their electorates accept basic realities such as global warming and the fact that the invasion of Iraq was not a rousing success. You cannot simply say anything on their airwaves.
Italy, however, has been the outlier in Europe. Not only were Berlusconi’s own networks transformed into his air force and artillery, he consistently placed his own people in strategic positions in the state broadcasting system — his ostensible competitor. A director of news of the largest state channel invented a system known as “the sandwich,” whereby all political news would be presented in the same manner: It would begin with the Berlusconi government’s view of the news, contain a thin slice of opposition opinion, and conclude with another thicker slice of government rebuttal. Without his elaborate web of media protection, it is hard to understand how Berlusconi could have survived so many appalling scandals.
To reinforce their alternate realities, both Berlusconi and Trump have made a special target of the so-called mainstream media. Trump’s use of social media to go after his critics is reminiscent of the frequent attacks Berlusconi made on his critics in the media. One particularly disturbing moment occurred the other day when Trump urged camera operators at one of his rallies to point their lenses at a particular protester, suddenly making her the object of public rage. It reminded me of a moment when Berlusconi stood side by side his good friend Vladimir Putin at a press conference in Moscow. When a Russian journalist asked a tough question of the Russian leader (this was several years ago when such a thing was still possible), Berlusconi made the gesture of firing a machine gun at the woman. In a country where several critical journalists have actually been murdered, this was decidedly unfunny.
Just recently, Trump indicated that he intended to change the libel laws of this country to keep people from writing bad things about him. “The press is a real problem in this country,” he said .. http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/02/29/trump-threatens-to-sue-media-for-writing-incorrectly-about-him/ . “They’re worse than the politicians. … They can write anything they want and you cannot sue them, because the libel laws, they essentially don’t exist, and one of the things I’m going to do is I’m going to open up the libel laws.”
Berlusconi did not have quite the same problem in Italy, where libel laws are far more favorable to plaintiffs. In American libel law, truth is an absolute defense and in the case of media publishing false information about a public figure, the plaintiff must show that the speaker knew it was false or acted recklessly. In Italy’s defamation laws, something can be true and yet defamatory. Berlusconi and his close associates have sued dozens of journalists and critics over the years, often losing but costing his critics money, intimidating publishers, and keeping them tied up in the courts or reduced to silence.
I have learned about the nice distinctions of Italian defamation law from personal experience. When my book, The Sack of Rome .. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/06/books/review/06donadio.html?_r=0 , came out in Italy, Berlusconi’s best friend and the head of his media company, Mediaset, sued me for criminal defamation. His main argument was not that the facts in the book were incorrect, but that I should have included other exculpatory facts that would have left the reader with a more positive and, in his view, truer picture of him. Fortunately, I won the case at trial and on appeal, but in Italy, where there are three levels of justice, 11 years after initial charges were filed, the case is still working its way through the legal system.
Are there lessons from Berlusconi that might help us predict Trump’s trajectory and defend against it? Yes and no. Indro Montanelli, a conservative Italian journalist and a fierce Berlusconi critic, said that Italy would need to develop an immunity to Berlusconi by absorbing a certain dose of Berlusconi. Unfortunately, it took 17 years of constant scandals and economic incompetence for Italians to grow weary of Berlusconi. On the positive side, the American electoral season is much longer than Italy’s. Berlusconi came to power in a kind of rapid blitzkrieg of barely three months. Nine months of all Trump all the time may help create Trump fatigue and allow some immunity to develop. Moreover, Berlusconi benefited from the complications of Italy’s complex semi-proportional system: He won elections without ever winning a majority of votes; it will be harder for Trump to reach 50.1 percent.
Lastly, Berlusconi and Trump have a penchant for self-destruction. The giddiness of public adoration — the narcissistic high of constant media attention — creates a feeling of omnipotence that causes them to make mistakes, as Trump did the other day in resisting the invitation to distance himself from David Duke and the KKK. What Berlusconi did — and Trump follows the same path — is create a kind of ongoing reality show whose ratings depended on him continuing to do and say outrageous things. Berlusconi, as Trump, often overestimated himself and underestimated his opponents. Berlusconi won three times but he also lost twice to a politician (Romano Prodi) who was far duller and far more competent. We have to hope it doesn’t take 17 years for America to tire of the Donald.
Thankfully, unless my judgement has gone dangerously bonkers/haywire, Americans will soon demonstrate to the world that the U.S.A. has had enough of T-blowfish fucking around by using politics to further his brand.
"Donald Trump’s Presidential Run Began in an Effort to Gain Stature"
By Jane Mayer July 25, 2016 Issue
“The Art of the Deal” made America see Trump as a charmer with an unfailing knack for business. Tony Schwartz helped create that myth—and regrets it.
[...]
Schwartz can understand why Trump feels stung, but he felt that he had to speak up before it was too late. As for Trump’s anger toward him, he said, “I don’t take it personally, because the truth is he didn’t mean it personally. People are dispensable and disposable in Trump’s world.” If Trump is elected President, he warned, “the millions of people who voted for him and believe that he represents their interests will learn what anyone who deals closely with him already knows—that he couldn’t care less about them.”
"Donald Trump’s Presidential Run Began in an Effort to Gain Stature"
Never mind Fox. Trump’s most reliable media mouthpiece is now Christian TV.
By RUTH GRAHAM
May/June 2018
Illustration by Chris Gash
HENDERSONVILLE, Tenn. — The Music City campus of the Trinity Broadcasting Network is about a half-hour drive from Music City itself, in a placid Nashville suburb on a bend in the Cumberland River where the main road through town is called the Johnny Cash Parkway. TBN, America’s largest Christian television network, acquired the complex in 1994 after the death of country singer Conway Twitty, who had operated it as a sprawling tourist attraction he called Twitty City. Last year, TBN renovated Twitty’s personal auditorium, leveling the floor, adding large neon signs and a faux-brick backdrop under the original Corinthian columns. The resulting TV set looks like an urban streetscape framed by a Greek temple.
On a February night, in his large office just above the auditorium, the network’s biggest star is making last-minute plans for what’s shaping up to be a busy evening. First, Mike Huckabee fields some logistics for dinner at his nearby condo, where he will host three couples who won the privilege in a charity auction. He takes a call from the actor Jon Voight, who tells Huckabee he is free to do an interview about Israel. (Huckabee leaves the next day for Jerusalem, where TBN opened another studio a few years ago.) He checks with one of his producers about an old “Laugh-In” clip Huckabee had requested. “We aren’t paying $6,500 for it, good gosh!” he laughs when he hears the cost of the snippet. “Did they point a gun at your head and wear a ski mask when you asked that?” (They decide not to use it.)
Two hours later, Huckabee walks onto a stage in front of more than 200 people and kicks off a taping of his hourlong cable show. For nearly all of its 45-year history, Trinity’s programming had been strictly religious, a mix of evangelical preachers, gospel music and a flagship talk show called “Praise the Lord” (now just “Praise”). But Huckabee’s show is saturated with politics. The former two-term governor of Arkansas and one-time Iowa caucus winner opens with a disquisition on the Fourth Amendment (“Our system is designed to make sure the government is your servant”) leading into a pre-taped interview with Senator Rand Paul. It’s followed by an appearance by Kayleigh McEnany, the Republican National Committee spokeswoman and a frequent campaign surrogate for Donald Trump. The crowd roars with laughter when Huckabee promises he won’t go on for as long as Nancy Pelosi, a reference to her recent filibuster-style speech on the House floor. “Can you imagine Nancy Pelosi for eight hours?” he asks, chuckling. “NO!” the audience shouts back.
When “Huckabee” made its debut on TBN last fall, it immediately became the network’s highest-rated show, with more than a million viewers for a typical episode. Unlike every other show the network has produced, it is overtly political and squarely focused on current events. It has a variety component, with musical guests and comedians, and Huckabee occasionally breaks out his own bass guitar on stage. But in its six months on the air, Huckabee has also interviewed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump-defending Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, anti-abortion activist Serrin Foster and former Senator Joe Lieberman. The very first guest on his very first show, last October, was President Trump.
A generation ago—even a few years ago—this would have been unthinkable. Christian TV was largely the province of preachers, musicians, faith healers and a series of televangelism scandals. Politicians were leery of getting too close. To establishment evangelicals, not to mention the rest of America, Christian TV was hokey at best, and disreputable at worst.
But in the past two years, largely out of view of the coastal media and the Washington establishment, a transformation has taken place. As Christian networks have become more comfortable with politics, the Trump administration has turned them into a new pipeline for its message. Trump has forged a particularly tight marriage of convenience with Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network, which since early in the 2016 campaign has offered consistent friendly coverage and been granted remarkable access in return. Trump personally has appeared 11 times on CBN since his campaign began; in 2017 alone, he gave more interviews to CBN than to CNN, ABC or CBS. Trump’s Cabinet members, staffers and surrogates also appear regularly. TBN has embraced politics more gingerly—it is still not a news-gathering organization—but Trump has made inroads there, too, starting with his kickoff interview on “Huckabee.”
Illustration by Chris Gash
The benefits are mutual. For the networks, having White House officials regularly on screen gives new legitimacy to media organizations that have long felt looked down upon. CBN has belonged to the White House press corps for decades and occupied a seat in the White House briefing room since the Obama era. But its status has risen dramatically during the Trump presidency, when press secretary Sean Spicer gave questions to CBN reporters three times in the first two weeks of the term. During a joint news conference with Netanyahu, Trump himself picked CBN’s chief political correspondent, David Brody, to ask the first question. “The Trump administration has given CBN News the opportunity to be recognized in places a Christian news organization normally wouldn’t,” CBN vice president and news director Rob Allman wrote in an email.
For the White House, the relationship is arguably even more useful. Christian broadcasters offer an unmediated channel to the living rooms of a remarkably wide swath of American believers, an audience more politically and racially diverse than you might expect. TBN alone has more local stations to its name than Fox or the three major networks. “It’s about as direct a route as you can go,” says Michael Wear, a former Obama White House and campaign staffer who has appeared on CBN. They offer Trump officials a softball treatment available in few other venues. Huckabee’s own daughter, after all, is the president’s press secretary—a relationship that would disqualify him as an interviewer on most networks. One of Huckabee’s questions to the president was about the first lady, and whether it bothered the president that his wife “has fantastic approval ratings, soaring above anybody else in the entire city of Washington.”
----- Trump has appeared 11 times on CBN since his campaign began; in 2017 alone, he gave more interviews to CBN than to CNN, ABC or CBS. -----
This dance between administration politics and televised religion is new, and is built on a connection between Trump’s message and the Christian TV worldview that runs deeper than it might first appear. It also offers a different kind of answer to the puzzle of why an impious man who can barely manage to pay lip service to actual Christian belief earned a higher percentage of the white evangelical vote than predecessors including Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush—and why, if anything, his bond with those voters appears to be growing stronger.
***
Evangelists have been a fixture of television since the 1950s, and there’s a reason politicians stayed away for so long. Almost from the start, TV preachers carried a unique whiff of tawdriness. There were the preferences for gaudy sets, big hair and absurd stunts, for one. Oklahoma televangelist Oral Roberts once told viewers .. http://www.nytimes.com/1987/04/01/us/oral-roberts-vigil-ends-in-new-plea-for-funds.html .. that unless he received an extra $8 million by the next month, he would die. (The ensuing wave of donations spared him.) Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker opened their own theme park in the 1970s, and TBN, with its own roster of flashy preachers, still maintains its Holy Land Experience park in Orlando, Florida. Then there were the waves of legal disgrace. The “Gospelgate” scandals of the 1980s, implicating big-ticket televangelist Jimmy Swaggart and the Bakkers with a series of sexual and financial misdeeds, seemed to permanently tar the whole enterprise.
Not all Christian television is televangelism, and not all televangelists are corrupt or even tacky. But American presidents have nonetheless mostly steered clear, preferring to select their religious advisers from more sober ranks of pastors and writers. (Billy Graham, spiritual adviser to many presidents, preached on television but had roots and connections far beyond the airwaves.) Presidents occasionally granted interviews, especially with the powerful Robertson, founder of CBN, with whom President Reagan sat down on the network’s “The 700 Club” in 1985—but they have done so carefully and rarely.
Trump had none of that caution. He started showing up on Christian TV years ago, giving his first interview to Brody back in 2011, when he was toying with a run for president that no mainstream network took seriously. Trump discussed his “conversion” to opposing abortion, his respect for the Bible (“THE book”) and his churchgoing habits (“I go as much as I can”). Most Republican candidates make occasional stops by CBN to woo conservative Christians. But Trump seemed to take a real shine to Brody, and he must have known he would need to put in overtime to bolster his credibility with religious voters. As his 2016 run gained momentum, a steady stream of staffers and surrogates, including Kellyanne Conway, former Representative Michele Bachmann and televangelist Paula White, appeared on the network to vouch for Trump’s Christian credentials. White told Brody in June 2016 that Trump had first discovered her ministry by watching Christian broadcasting more than a decade before. “Mr. Trump has always been a huge fan,” she said. “He’d always watch Christian television.”
----- "Having White House officials regularly on screen gives new legitimacy to media organizations that have long felt looked down upon." -----
Whether or not that was true, Trump seemed to sense early on that the Christian television audience would be receptive to his campaign theme of a kind of resentful nostalgia for an imagined idyllic past. When I interviewed Brody last year for a profile .. http://www.slate.com/articles/life/faithbased/2018/01/david_brody_christian_broadcasting_network_s_chief_political_correspondent.html , he said Trump shared with older evangelicals a longing for “1950s America,” characterized by patriotism, prayer in school and an absence of political correctness (though he took pains to clarify that the ’50s were not a good era for “race relations”). As Huckabee puts it on one of his promos on TBN, “If you like baseball, apple pie and you love your mom, I’ve got just the show for you.”
But if Trump detected a cultural affinity with viewers of Christian television, he was also capitalizing on a deliberate turn that the medium was already taking. On TBN, “Huckabee” is part of a change under the leadership of Matt Crouch, who took over recently from his father, Paul, who founded the network back in 1973. The talk show is the network’s most obvious nod to politics, but in the past few years it has also added a newsmagazine show called “The Watchman,” focused on “gathering threats to America’s and Israel’s security”—it’s hard to overstate Christian TV’s interest in Israel—and started airing “Somebody’s Gotta Do It,” in which blue-collar conservative Mike Rowe visits “hardworking Americans” on the job. (Rowe’s show originally aired on CNN; TBN recut the episodes .. http://mikerowe.com/2017/11/otw-somebodys-gotta-do-it-on-tbn/ .. to include scenes like family prayers and snipped out mild cursing.) This is, in part, an effort to reach a new audience of millennials who aren’t as interested in watching sermons on TV. “We’ve got to get beyond the church, beyond the pews,” Colby May, a TBN board member, said of the network’s new direction. May says TBN isn’t trying to emphasize politics per se, but to be seen as more relevant. Huckabee’s interview with Trump “was an exciting and different kind of guest for Christian television,” he says. Graham-callout2.jpg
CBN, for its part, had been in the news business since the 1970s, when the network opened a bureau in Washington, and “The 700 Club” transformed from a variety show into its current newsmagazine format. Robertson relishes his role as a kind of ward heeler of the Christian conservative vote, and candidates courting that vote would make obligatory campaign stops on CBN. But Robertson’s own pronouncements on current events seemed enough to keep mainstream politicians at arm’s length: Since the peak of his influence in the 1980s, he has become better known for dire predictions based on divine revelation, his notorious linkage of Hurricane Katrina to American abortion policy and his repeated insistence that Islam is less a religion than a dangerous political system.
If that last point sounds like something you might have heard at a Trump campaign rally, that begins to get at the affinity between Trumpworld and this particular set of TV viewers. In retrospect, it’s possible to see Robertson as a kind of elder statesman of the exact kind of “politically incorrect” conservative populism that Trump’s campaign rhetoric tapped into so naturally. A viewer who had stuck with Robertson through all that wasn’t likely to be put off by a candidate who took potshots at Mexicans and Muslims.
By the time Trump arrived on the political scene, it almost didn’t matter that he wasn’t much of a Christian, or tended to mangle the names of the books of the Bible. This audience recognized him as a kindred spirit in everything but religion. His hair-sprayed reality-TV persona—to say nothing of the bluster and the heroic monologues—aren’t that far from the preaching style that has prospered on cable evangelism. His family’s pastor when he was a child wasn’t the minister of the local Presbyterian church, but celebrity success guru Norman Vincent Peale .. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/10/donald-trump-2016-norman-vincent-peale-213220 , who had a long-running radio show called “The Art of Living.” Trump ran his campaign events more like tent revivals than policy symposia. And his books and TV persona dovetailed surprisingly well with the “prosperity gospel” preaching that thrives on Christian TV, the relatively new American theology in which material wealth is seen not only as a reward for good behavior, but a kind of endorsement by God.
***
Today, Christian broadcasters have rewarded Trump not just with airtime for his surrogates, but with uncritical, often defensive coverage of his administration. Appearing as a guest on “The Jim Bakker Show” soon after the racial violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, last summer, Paula White compared Trump to the biblical queen Esther, and told viewers that opposing the president meant “fighting against the hand of God.” CBN’s Brody this year published a hagiographic “spiritual biography” of the president, The Faith of Donald J. Trump, in which he argues that Trump is on a “spiritual voyage” that has landed him surrounded by believers in the Oval Office. The president obligingly sat down for an interview for the book and later promoted it on Twitter as “a very interesting read .. https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/965780052167286784?lang=en .”
The White House Faithful
In a parallel world of news, Trump administration figures aren’t shy about one-on-one interviews. That parallel world is the Christian Broadcasting Network.
1. Melania Trump on “The Brody File”; 2. Adviser Kellyanne Conway on “The Brody File”; 3. President Donald Trump on “The Brody File”; 4. United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley on “The 700 Club”; 5. Attorney General Jeff Sessions on “Faith Nation”; 6. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on CBN News; 7. Vice President Mike Pence on CBN News; 8. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt on CBN News; 9. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson on CBN News
To watch an appearance by a Trump official on “The 700 Club,” or “Faith Nation,” the Washington-based political show hosted by Brody and Jenna Browder that debuted last summer, is to enter a softer precinct of the news universe, one in which officials are treated gently and allowed to air out their views with help, not challenge, from the hosts. When Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney appeared on CBN days after the brief government shutdown in January, he discussed policy issues including immigration and the possibility of passing a spending bill. When Brody asked him about what he would say to Hispanic Christians worried about deportation, Mulvaney reassured them that the president “wants to figure out a way for the DACA folks to stay.” Brody didn’t push him with a follow-up. In December, Vice President Mike Pence went on Brody’s show in part just to reassure evangelicals that Trump is on their team. “The president is a believer, and so am I,” Pence told Brody. “The American people, I think, can be encouraged to know that in President Donald Trump, they have a leader who embraces and respects and appreciates the role of faith and the importance of religion in the lives of our families, in communities in our nation, and he always will.”
It’s not just a “trust me” argument: Trump has actually delivered the goods in Washington, especially for this particular strain of evangelicals. And he has brought more televangelists and Christian broadcasters into his inner circle than any president before him. White, arguably his closest spiritual adviser, hosted a show that aired on TBN and BET for years. His lawyer, Jay Sekulow, has his own daily call-in radio show on a Christian network. Trump’s faith advisory board, announced during the campaign, included many members drawn from the world of television ministry, including Ken and Gloria Copeland, who have headed a daily program since 1989; Tony Suarez, who hosts a talk show on TBN’s Hispanic-oriented network; Jentezen Franklin and Robert Jeffress, whose sermons air as their own programs on TBN; and Mark Burns, who founded the web-based NOW Network. Johnnie Moore, another advisory board member, is a communications consultant who has worked with clients including CBN. “If you look at his evangelical advisory council, it’s people with media connections, more than broad church-based connections,” Robert Jones, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, says. “That’s a weird slice of the evangelical world.”
Closer to Trump’s inner circle, the list of friendly faces continues. “This is an evangelical Cabinet,” says Jerry Johnson, president of the National Religious Broadcasters. “You’re looking at name-brand conservative evangelicals that are very comfortable talking to Christian media types.” Jeff Sessions, Scott Pruitt, Rick Perry, Ben Carson and Pence, all evangelical Christians who talk frequently about faith, are among those who have appeared on CBN since Trump took office. And CBN has closely covered what it calls a “spiritual awakening .. https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/politics/2017/july/bible-studies-at-the-white-house-whos-at-the-heart-of-this-spiritual-awakening ” at the White House, including Oval Office prayers .. http://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2017/july/faith-leaders-enjoy-open-door-at-white-house .. and a weekly Bible study involving many Cabinet members, at one point including Betsy DeVos and the now-departed Tom Price.
Pence, who himself hosted a conservative talk-radio show and a television show in Indiana in the 1990s, has been a particularly cheerful booster of the work of Christian broadcasters. Speaking at the 75th annual meeting of the National Religious Broadcasters in February, Pence praised its membership’s work. “Your ministry, your message, your values are needed now more than ever before,” he told the crowd .. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf_-9SvvEJE&feature=youtu.be .. in Nashville. “Every day, every hour, you speak strength to the heart of the American people. You shape our country.” (Christian radio is a different business with a somewhat different audience, but it has proved similarly attractive to Trump. Salem Media Group, the largest Christian radio broadcasting platform in the country, spent a day at the White House last summer, hosting a special broadcast with the theme “Made in America.”)
***
The audience Christian TV is delivering has a surprising kind of political traction, especially if you lost track of Christian broadcasting after the scandals of the 1980s. “Decline is such an easy narrative,” says Mark Ward, editor of the 2015 book The Electronic Church in the Digital Age. “What really happened is [televangelism] went underground.”
Newer TV preachers might not be national celebrities with the name recognition of Oral Roberts and Jimmy Swaggart, but they remain influential. Reliable data on the sector are hard to come by, but a 2005 survey .. https://www.barna.com/research/more-people-use-christian-media-than-attend-church/ .. by an evangelical pollster found that 45 percent of American adults watched Christian television on a monthly basis, just as many as in 1992. “It’s one of these stories that has just gone completely under the radar,” Ward says. “Even though it doesn’t have the same profile it had, it’s still a very decisive arbiter of the evangelical subculture.”
Illustration by Chris Gash
TBN in particular has quietly become a major player, in part by capitalizing on the switch to digital TV two decades ago. When the Federal Communications Commission declared in 1996 that all television stations had to convert to digital broadcasting within a decade, the network’s founders, Paul and Jan Crouch, snapped up many local Christian stations that couldn’t afford the conversion. As a result, TBN is now the third-largest television group in the country, with access to 100 million households and more local television stations to its name than Fox or the three major networks. Its largest rival, Texas-based Daystar, also claims access to 100 million households, and carries many of the same programs. (CBN is no longer technically a network but a production company with a series of syndicated programs that air on stations owned by others, including TBN.)
The networks haven’t escaped the whiff of scandal, particularly TBN, which was hit by another series of negative headlines just within the past few years, including lawsuits and a family feud that left Matt Crouch in charge. Last summer, a California jury awarded Paul and Jan Crouch’s granddaughter $2 million after she said she had been sexually abused by a TBN employee. There are also questions about its financial health: When the Orange County Register reviewed the company’s tax filings in 2016, it found a revenue drop from $207 million in 2006 to $121.5 million in 2014. About five years ago, TBN banished its fundraising “praise-a-thons,” which relied largely on small donations from low-income viewers, and now relies more on underwriting and traditional fundraising efforts. Last year, the network sold at least two significant properties in Southern California, including its gaudy headquarters in Costa Mesa.
----- "If you look at his evangelical advisory council, it’s people with media connections. … That’s a weird slice of the evangelical world.” -----
But viewers still appear to be loyal, and those viewers aren’t who you might think. Both TBN and CBN say their audiences are split almost evenly between Democrats and Republicans. This can likely be chalked up to another fact that might surprise people outside the evangelical bubble: their audiences’ racial diversity. Charismatic and Pentecostal preaching, and the related health-and-wealth “prosperity gospel,” are strong traditions within the black community. Popular black pastors including Creflo Dollar, Tony Evans and TD Jakes have all preached regularly over the years on TBN, Daystar, and other Christian networks. Paula White is the pastor of a largely black church. And CBN’s roster of reporters, hosts and regular guests is arguably more racially diverse than those of many cable news networks.
Wear, the faith outreach director for the 2012 Obama campaign, believes the racial diversity of Christian broadcasting has helped inoculate Trump against charges of racism among his white evangelical voters. CBN and TBN’s on-air diversity “is a significant reason that much of Trump’s base doesn’t take accusations of racism seriously,” he says. Graham-callout3.jpg
In October, TBN aired a special on the American church’s role in racial reconciliation, hosted by pastor Samuel Rodriguez, who prayed at Trump’s inauguration. The year before, Rodriguez appeared on CBN to assure viewers that Trump is not a racist. In an interview taped for “Huckabee” in February, Harry Jackson, a black pastor in Maryland who has frequently defended Trump, told Huckabee the same thing.
For white evangelicals, who voted for Trump overwhelmingly and still approve of his job performance, the approach seems to be working. The networks continually polish Trump’s reputation, and perhaps more importantly, he’s talking to them. “Evangelicals, going back to the time of the Scopes trial, have always been sensitive to being seen as pariahs,” Mark Ward says. “You can get a lot of credibility with evangelicals if you simply make them feel like they matter, if you appear on their TV shows and send your administration to appear on their TV shows.”
In a fundamental way, TV people are Trump’s people. “Trump appreciates people who can communicate in an attention-grabbing way,” says Wear, author of the 2017 book Reclaiming Hope: Lessons Learned in the Obama White House About the Future of Faith in America. “I don’t think Trump would be drawn to a preacher who breaks down five chapters of Ephesians and lays out the Greek and Aramaic.”
Trump has always had a particular genius for circumventing normal channels, and he seems to understand the power of Christian television as a medium for directly reaching an important and particularly loyal segment of his base. When Pat Robertson interviewed him last summer, in a period in which Trump had granted no other non-Fox interviews for months, the president put it succinctly. “As long as my people understand,” he told Robertson. “That’s why I do interviews with you. You have a tremendous audience. You have people that I love.” Share on Facebook Share on Twitter
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