Trump is losing battle with Fox News

Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel. Don’t screw around with Roger Ailes. The Fox News honcho wields enormous power over an incredibly influential medium, and he’s not messing around after Donald Trump declared that he’s boycotting the cable channel.

Megyn Kelly’s show opener last night demonstrated Trump’s dilemma. Kelly used a fresh round of polls to make the case that Trump is on the decline, even though the businessman still maintains a significant lead, using language that sounded like it was written expressly to get under his skin. Combined with critical comments by other Fox hosts, the harsher new tone spells real trouble for Trump. Watch Kelly here:

Live by cable news, die by cable news. Trump doesn’t want to actually spend money on advertising. Though a billionaire, he does not necessarily have the liquidity to self-fund massive ad buys even if he wanted to and he’s not raising massive amounts from donors. So Trump’s survival depends on earning free media coverage. This requires him to constantly pick fights and devise ways to stay in the news. Month after month, this strategy becomes more challenging. It requires a higher and higher shock factor. As a result, Trump risks coming across as increasingly desperate.

Just yesterday, Trump made the following comments:

• In a phone call to CNN, he attacked CNN’s own Randi Kaye as an “absolutely terrible” liar.
• On Instagram, he called the New York Times’ Jonathan Martin “dishonest” and a “liar” for a story that said “about a third of the seats were unfilled” at one of his South Carolina events.
• On Twitter, he slammed Politico over a piece that said he’s stalling in the polls: “@politico, which is not read or respected by many, may be the most dishonest of the media outlets— and that is saying something.”
• In a profanity-laced interview with the Daily Mail, Trump called the AP photographer who shot pictures of his South Carolina events a “f***ing thief”: “Tell them they’re a fraud, whoever took it. I just got killed on that thing, and it was just really unfair. It’s goddamn unfair.”

After Trump said their editor should be investigated by the FCC, National Review calls Trump “a preposterous little trust-fund wuss” in a new item:“The man is not really a ‘fighter’ or an ‘alpha male’ or an iron-cored ‘enemy of political correctness.’ He’s a thin-skinned performance artist whose peculiar shtick falls to pieces the moment someone useful elects to return a punch. Look through Trump’s recent Twitter contributions and you will see a wounded man who is always a few harsh phrases and a modicum of bad publicity away from curling up in an oversized sweater and listening to ‘Everybody Hurts’ on repeat.”

Sensing weakness, Rubio finally chooses to meaningfully engage Trump:“He had a really bad debate performance last week,” Rubio of Trump in an interview on Kentucky Sports Radio. “He’s not well-informed on the issues. He really never talks about issues and can’t have more than a 10-second sound bite on any key issue. And so I think he’s kind of been exposed a little bit over the last seven days. And he’s a very touchy and insecure guy. And so that’s how he reacts. And people can see through it.” That came a day after Trump called the senator “overly ambitious and too young.” The Donald also attacked the Florida senator for being “sweaty.”

Will Trump cave? Ailes and Donald spoke again by phone yesterday morning. The network said that the pair will meet next week “to discuss their differences of opinion regarding Fox’s coverage.” Ailes will be joined by senior Fox executives for “a candid meeting about our differences,” Fox said in a statement. But unlike their last talk, Ailes may have more leverage this time.

Source The Washington Post