Trump gets an all-Trump channel
WASHINGTON — As Father’s Day specials go, it was hardly stirring. But it was very Trumpian.
Donald Trump Jr., interviewing President Donald Trump on his online talk show Thursday night, debuted a new campaign ad that absurdly claims that Osama bin Laden — who U.S. forces killed in 2011 — had endorsed Joe Biden for president.
“That’s your Father’s Day present,” son said to father. “Congratulations.”
The president nodded as if he had just won a medium-priced set of steak knives. So went his first interview on “Triggered,” which appears on an online “newscast” channel from the president’s reelection campaign that attempts to mimic a cable news network.
If Trump owned a media company, which advisers say he discussed when he believed he would lose the 2016 election, it might look something like “Team Trump Online,” the current production. And if he or his family start one after he leaves the White House, this could be the pilot.
“This is the warm-up act,” said Frank Sesno, a former CNN anchor and the director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University. “There’s nothing he would like more than to throw his name on a channel, a digital brand.”
Not only is the campaign able to test an audience and gather valuable data from supporters for a future product. Trump doesn’t have to pay for it.
“Being able to do all these things for your image on somebody else’s dime does suggest that Donald Trump is a master of the art of the deal,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, who has researched and written about media and politics for decades.
Biden, also hoping to reach supporters during the coronavirus shutdown, has a podcast called “Here’s the Deal” and appears at times on YouTube. But the Trump channel is on almost nightly, while Biden’s shows are intermittent.
At times, the Trump channel resembles Trumpfriendly media like Fox News or the more conspiratorial One America News Network. It relies on hosts who amplify Trump’s tweets, denigrate the national media, and ignore or explain away facts that challenge the president’s falsehoods.
But the content on Trump TV is purer, if a bit clunkier, than even on avowedly pro-Trump OANN. And the hosts are closer to Trump’s inner circle.
They include Donald Jr., his girlfriend and former Fox host Kimberly Guilfoyle, the president’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump, and a small group of campaign officials and surrogates in the tight-knit Trump family troupe.