By Matthew Pertz, Opinion Editor
The incomparably wild campaign of Donald Trump took an unforeseen turn this past week: Trump hired Breitbart’s executive chairman Steve Bannon to serve as his campaign CEO and Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway as his new campaign manager.
Bannon has absolutely no campaign experience whatsoever, so pegging him to run a campaign raised some observers’ eyebrows, especially since he has been given a more powerful position than Conway. Conway is a fearsome political talent specializing in the women’s vote, more important now than ever since the Democratic nominee is poised to win white women for the first time since 1964.
Additionally, ousted Fox News boss Roger Ailes and Fox’s 10 PM mainstay Sean Hannity have been Trump’s closest advisors is recent weeks, suggesting that Trump might not be pivoting towards a general election but instead towards a (second) television career.
The alt-right’s wonder child gained national notoriety as host of The Apprentice, but his allergy to “political correctness” and affinity for insult has galvanized a far larger audience than a primetime slot on NBC ever could. Now, many media pundits are wondering if Trump might be gathering staffers to launch a cable network should Hillary Clinton be promoted to President Clinton.
Any @realDonaldTrump aficionados have noticed a new trend in his tweets: where Trump once linked to CNN and NBC articles, he now cites only purebred conservative sources like The Daily Caller, the Washington Examiner, the Drudge Report and, of course, breitbart.com. He’s also stayed away from any news network that isn’t Fox News since his infamous feud with the Khan family after the Democratic National Convention, according to a report from the Huffington Post (in the wake of this article, Trump participated in a quick interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper).
It’s possible that Trump sees the writing on the wall and realizes that a November victory is increasingly unlikely. According to Real Clear Politics, no credible poll has shown Trump leading since July 24 and Nate Silver’s fivethirtyeight.com give Trump only an 18.5% chance of winning the White House.
It seems clear that Bannon was hired by Trump 2016 in case a majority of states turn blue on Election Day so Trump could guarantee himself a personal hour every night to lambast Hillary Clinton on live television for four years. For establishment Republicans, nothing sounds better than Donald Trump mesmerizing a captive audience until Marco Rubio’s 2020 campaign.
Trump TV could appeal to a broad audience. In 2015, Fox News averaged over 1.8 million viewers during primetime, which translates to 1.8 million people that (to some degree) automatically share his conservative mindset. Hiring Bannon also sends a strong message to the extreme wing of the Republican party. A strong segment of conservatives distrust Fox because of the few serious, nonpartisan journalists the network has hired (think Megan Kelly, Chris Wallace, Bret Baier and Howard Kurtz). A channel controlled by Trump and Bannon could hire enough Sean Hannitys and Ann Coulters to attract anyone doubtful of the “liberal media.”
Plus, cable news is a revenue machine. The Pew Research Center claims Fox News turned a $2.3 million profit in 2015, an astronomical number that even the ostentatiously rich Donald Trump respects. Trump’s biggest strength and most crippling flaw is his Midas complex: he wants to monetize everything he touches.
It’s entirely possible that Trump is preparing to launch a cable network, but for the time being he is still trying to become leader of the free world. We won’t know until 2017 whether this is pure speculation or a new conservative media powerhouse.
