Opinions | Trump’s New Media Outlet Goes the Way of His Steaks and Mattresses

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Trump has long been pushing for a fancy venue setting at the media table for hours. In 2016, he and his son-in-law Jared Kushner were planning to start with a competitor on Fox News when they assumed his presidential bid was to toast. In November 2020, he said he was reconsidering a new news network to fight Fox or buy what already had. Last February, he reportedly negotiated to acquire a 40 percent interest in the Parler social media site in exchange for exclusive posting on it. None of these measures reached the increase. Then came the disaster of Trump’s blog, which died earlier this year after 29 days, finding a permanent place to rest in Trump’s cemetery combined with his steaks, coffee pods, dress with neck and bottles of vodka.

Trump’s new media start will teach him soon that the public will view him as a Glenn Beck rather than an Oprah Winfrey. Beck, who proved he could handle millions of captive viewers with just a palaver and a blackboard on both CNN and Fox News a decade ago, started his own media company in 2011. He didn’t exactly fail . He still broadcasts. But his ambitions go beyond his appeal, requiring solid layoffs and chaos. America still liked Beck, but not enough to build an entire network around. Even for people who like him, Beck is like Tabasco. Stimulated, perhaps in small doses, but gag-making swig. Sequence like Trump. Winfrey, on the other hand, has never played in a single political niche. He appeals to the widest segments of the population through his kindness and the quality of his camera-esque that reflects back to his audience their best qualities. When the time came for him to establish his eponymous network, he had no problem maintaining it because he was a safe and reassuring performer and not the scary merchant Beck was playing on TV. People can and have developed all over the world around Winfrey, and she is a billionaire today thanks to those talents.

Americans still like Trump. If anything, he got 74 million votes. But is America like Trump enough to embrace a whole new media universe based on him, or is he more like Beck – best when taken in smaller portions as part of a larger meal? Will enough people make the moves of signing up for a new social media app just to taste Trump’s views? His blog’s failure to get little attention tells you two things: Trump’s audience got Trump’s minimum daily coverage requirements from the regular media, and he created nothing in his blog started a queue for more than the same, let alone a stampede. Trump has succeeded on Twitter in part because he is unique, but mostly because Twitter has already called an audience to entertain him. There is no evidence that he could have invited such an audience alone.

What’s more, do we expect to believe in a media and tech startup with a $ 293 million pocket change in kitty and watched by a 75 -year -old man who could surpass Fox, CNN, Disney and Microsoft? According to a Reuters report, the financier who led the merger that created TMTG has an unimpressive track record when it comes to making big deals. (For more about the formation of TMTG, check out @ BillSPACman’s delightful thread.) When Trump dies, the Trump cachet will accompany him to his cemetery. Does anyone really want to make a long -term investment in a company that has met someone, who isn’t getting any younger?

Obviously, Trump will attract some followers. Equally obvious, he’ll make some news pop. But it’s not like Trump possesses some exclusive insights that will make Baby Yoda inevitable of 2022, when Truth Social is scheduled to begin. Ben Shapiro was there selling the same merchandise, as were Dan Bongino, Tucker Carlson and the entire wing mediasphere.

For the better part of his career, Trump has often been characterized in the press as a grifter, someone who preys on people for a living. That’s a fair fair. Trump’s reputation for milking consumers with slapdash goods and bamboo investors has been so entrenched for so long that anyone buying from or investing in him must first ignore the much evidence arguing against dealing with him. It’s too early in the TMTG story to call the company fast, even though, as the Washington Post puts it, TMTG appears to be more than “a vaguely defined Mar-a-Lago headquarters company, Trump’s club in Palm Beach. ” Based on TMTG’s public statement, there is no clue that the company has a willing to sell, unique technology or even name recognition to exchange. (However, you can download the Truth Social app, but the beta site won’t go live until November.) That Trump can only start a very small take on businesses very large indicates that his reputation for failure in business has finally caught up with him. Billionaires and other truly wealthy people should not have returned Trump’s calls. It’s an old story: Eventually, every grifter runs out of people so fast.

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My former editor deserves a streaming show on TMTG. Send your TMTG demonstration ideas to [email protected]. My email alerts treat themselves as a social network. My Twitter feed will move to Truth Social in 2022. My RSS feed remains old school.

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