Prediction: Trump Starts New Conservative TV Network and Media Empire
By: Lara Henneman
Tags: Culture, Television, Politics, Election 2020, News

It’s what he’s wanted all along anyway: ratings.

“Screaming”- Original art by Lauraxdoodles

Arguably one of (soon-to-be Former) President Trump’s greatest successes in his life was his star-making turn in reality show The Apprentice. It rescued his brand when it was beginning to seem irrelevant and cemented his status as a household name, one that seemed synonymous with wealth and power. The recent New York Times tax exposé shows us that he made made approximately 427 million dollars from his involvement with the show. This financial lifeline shored up his cash-gobbling real estate empire and allowed him to grow his status like air fueling a narcissistic fire. In the face of dual crises of a lost presidential election and a billion dollars of debt coming due, TV will save him again.

With his political and financial fortunes crumbling, Trump will turn again to television to save himself. But this time he’ll build his own damn megaphone. And it will be bigger and badder than Fox or Breitbart.

He’s already turning on his old ally and amplification chamber Fox News. Furious after their early call of Arizona for Biden, Trump threw a temper tantrum in the White House. Competing accounts have either Trump or Jared Kushner calling Rupert Murdoch in the middle of the night to demand that they take it back. In a rare show of respect for the truth, Murdoch refused. So as usual, Trump took to Twitter to air his grievances and attack Fox’s recent ratings and betrayal of him, their Golden Goose.

The snake begins to swallow its tail: just one of Trump’s recent tweets lambasting Fox News.

This is some heavy shade from a man whose love language is television ratings. When he goes after your ratings, he’s trying to hit you where he imagines it hurts. This is a President who referred to his 2016 election not as an important historical event, but as “the greatest night in television history.”

This attack on Fox may seem like a shocking departure from a President who famously watches TV for hours a day, calls into Fox and Friends regularly, and has hired various network personalities into his administration over the years. But it fits completely with Trump’s toxic fealty, in which he demands unquestioning service from his underlings and allies, but will turn against anyone at the slightest change in political winds. He’ll drop Fox News as easily as firing a Cabinet member or reversing his fair weather position on abortion, if it serves his own interest.

More “real news” (née falsehoods) will further impair forward progress in this nation under pressure. Fox has already done untold damage to our nation’s health in its coverage of coronavirus this year alone. One recent Harvard study showed that people who consumed Fox media were less likely to understand the lethality of the virus and take proper precautious, doubtless aiding its pernicious spread across the country. In some places, conspiracy theorists are even trying to sneak into ICUs in an insane attempt to disprove how full those units are of severely-afflicted COVID patients. But Fox and all the alt-right sites in the world couldn’t hand President Trump the electoral votes needed to win the 2020 election.

To add insult to injury (also known as further poking the narcissist with a stick), Facebook and Twitter have started censoring his posts. Conservatives are crying liberal bias and running to new sites like Parler and Rumble. Trump has a a rich campaign trove of data and digital infrastructure at the ready and a hungry audience of at least the 71 million people who voted for him. He could launch a channel tomorrow and be an instant success, unfiltered by pesky checks and balances, censorship, or any kind of dissent whatsoever. Or he could partner with one of the sites he’s been promoting like OANN or NewsMax to hit the ground running (and spend other people’s money). Picture it: TrumpTV, “unfiltered news for true Americans.” No masks, no science, no “political correctness,” just the red-blooded liberty to believe all of his lies. And, if he does decide to run for President in 2024, or through his weight behind another in his image, he’ll use that megaphone to effectively reach his flock and keep them drinking the MAGA Kool-Aid.

TrumpTV could make him an autocrat of content, and fulfill his wildest dreams of perpetual adulation. It could also make him enough money to pay back those mysterious loans and provide an X-factor power supply to control the narrative for the 2024 presidential race.

TrumpTV could take on the “lamestream media” in a way he’s dreamed about for years.

Picture the line-up: Trump could have Coffee Talk with Kim Jung-il or go adventure-hunting white rhino with Putin. Jared Kushner could host Flipping Houses with a Slumlord and Stephen Miller could do a Road Rules reprise that would just be him finding new ways to torture immigrants. Maybe even the shadowy “Q” could executive produce some more invented conspiracies featuring senior democratic officials bathing in the moon-blood of nuns or whatever it is folks are talking about on 8kun these days. In all seriousness, the network would feature the best and worst of Trump — pageantry, evocation and appropriation of American iconography (so many eagles), and as always, cinematic conflict that keeps you tuning in for more.

Plenty of Beltway insiders think this could very well be Trump’s next move- see recent Axios and NPR articles. When asked for a comment on this possibility, Lachlan Murdoch, CEO of Fox Corp said recently that Fox News would welcome the competition. So he thinks its possible. On one hand, I’m horrified. On the other, it’s better than a second term. At least in this scenario you can change the channel.