It’s Donald Trump’s world, and Roger Ailes is just living in it.
That’s the message Trump sent
the Fox chairman on Monday when he ended his ceasefire with the de facto
king of conservative media. Trump’s latest round of figurative shots fired at network star Megyn Kelly — and Roger Ailes’ bold, forceful response — sets up what TheWrap previously reported as the real 2016 campaign: Trump vs. Ailes.
“It’s always hard to get inside
the head of Donald Trump,” veteran reporter Mark Feldstein told TheWrap.
“The irony is he’s almost taking a page from the Murdoch-Ailes playbook
in his campaign in that Fox’s whole approach is ‘we’re the
grievance-filled underdog against the establishment and elites; Trump is
using Jiu-Jitsu to try and turn things against the very network that
invented it.”
Also Read: Donald Trump vs. Roger Ailes: How Fox News Chief Used Debate to Strike Against GOP Frontrunner
While the media and political
pundits collectively predict Trump’s war against Fox is suicidal for his
White House hopes, Feldstein said not so fast.
“He’s not doing this blindly; he
knows what he’s doing and there’s a calculus behind everything he’s
done and every time he says something that’s more and more wild,
everyone predicts that’s the end of him, but he only grows stronger. The
conventional wisdom is it’s suicidal, but everything Trump’s done that
conventional wisdom said was suicidal has only helped him.”
Feldstein, who teaches
journalism at University of Maryland, suggested the latest Trump-Fox
fight might be his big play for the angry, alienated white male vote.
“He’s sort of criticizing Fox for employing Megyn Kelly and letting her
get away with, as he put it, unfair treatment.”
Trump might be going after a
particular slice of the electorate, but going against the voice of the
GOP is much bigger than just angry, white men — it’s a shotgun pass for
the growing anti-establishment Republican voter, whom Trump is betting
big on by hoping they view Fox News as the personification of the
establishment.
And it might work.
The Trump supporter is the
Fox News viewer on steroids — fed up with the GOP congress and
not-conservative-enough Republican presidential contenders. And sensing
that Rupert Murdoch and Ailes have no interest in Trump’s candidacy
being anything more serious than a short-term ratings boon, Trump made
the calculated decision to fight the machine; a machine that aside from
its brief romance with the Tea Party, is the establishment.
Just look down Fox News’ roster and you’ll see figures who represent a cardboard cutout Republican: Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly,
former George W. Bush press secretary Dana Perino, former GOP campaign
aide Andrea Tantaros, Daily Caller editor-in-chief Tucker Carson,
Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, frequent guest and editor
of the Weekly Standard Bill Kristol. Oh, let’s not forget, GOP
presidential contenders Mike Huckabee and John Kasich used to host
programs at Fox News.
Hell, Fox News even dubbed Trump a one-man Tea Party machine (the network declined to comment for this story).
But Christopher Hahn, a radio host and former aide to Senator Chuck Schumer, believes Trump’s battle against Fox will backfire.
“Never pick a fight with someone
who buys ink by the barrel or pixels by the freight car load,” he told
TheWrap. “He’s picking a fight with a multimedia giant. You can never
win that fight.”
But Trump has won every fight so
far: against illegal immigrants, against war hero John McCain, against
Fox News after the first GOP debate, and of course, against Jeb Bush and
the rest of the Republican candidates who were supposed to be leading
the pack.
And in the full-on war between Trump and Fox News, the Donald’s success or failure rests with Ailes.
What happens when Trump stops
going on Fox News, like he did the last time around, and the ratings
take a dip while other networks hosting Trump soar? Will the legendary
ratings hound still stand with his star Kelly, or backpedal in order to
squeeze every last ounce out of the Donald orange?
“In a way you can ask the same
question about both Trump and Fox: Which really matters more, their
business interest or their political advancement?” Feldstein said,
concluding that the more Trump injects Fox into the 2016 arena, the more
it legitimizes Fox as a political player rather than just a “marginal
network of crazy ideologues.”
To find out which set of
ideologues wins the war, one figure remains out front as a media star
and the champion of fed-up voters.
Donald Trump.