Trump finds conservative media safe space while recovering
At the most politically and physically vulnerable point of his presidency, Trump has retreated to his safe space: conservative media programs, where he can rely on warm, ego-boosting chats with supporters like Maria Bartiromo, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin.
In these cozy surroundings — his primary way of communicating with the public, as he shuns interviews with most other journalists — Trump has only himself to fear. There is virtually no risk that he will encounter a persistent questioner pressing an uncomfortable topic or that he will appear as defensive or unruly as he did during the first presidential debate.
But his decision to remain within a right-wing echo chamber has threatened to shut off Trump from a much larger — and electorally important — audience of potential voters and political independents whose votes he will need if he is to win the election in just over three weeks.
The president’s refusal to participate in the now-canceled second presidential debate because organizers shifted it to an all-virtual event amounted to walking away from a TV viewership of close to 70 million viewers, baffling political media experts. And while Limbaugh and Hannity command the biggest audiences in their respective fields, their programs have nowhere near the reach of a debate that airs on a dozen broadcast and cable networks simultaneously.
“Trump should want 10 more debates right now,” Alex Conant, a Republican consultant who has overseen communications strategy on Senate and presidential campaigns, said in an interview.
With Trump trailing in almost every poll of battleground states, Conant said, the president’s demands that the debate be held on his terms “was very much an emotional response instead of a strategic one.”
Conant noted how successful Trump was in 2016 by effectively flooding broadcast, print and online news media with his attacks on Hillary Clinton and in his use of that year’s debates to rebound from the disclosure that he had once boasted during an Access Hollywood interview that he could grab women’s genitals with impunity.
“That proved to be an effective strategy for him, because he could go on any media outlet in the country and say Hillary Clinton is a crook,” Conant said. Now, “because he doesn’t have as consistent a message on Joe Biden or a record to defend, he has been unable to do that.”