Sure, you may have seen or heard Republican nominee Donald Trump make calls in to different Fox News programs for the past several weeks. Among them are his best hits and personal favorites: Fox & Friends, which has doubled as part of his regular morning routine; the O’Reilly Factor, an admittedly tougher space for the nominee but still a friendly source all things considered with his longtime vanilla milkshake pal O’Reilly; and then, there’s Sean Hannity, who at this point has abandoned all hopes of objectivity and is basically airing the Sean & Don Best Buddy Friendship Pow Wow as regular programming.
But today, the GOP nominee made a curious move regarding the dayside programming for the network. Trump called in to America’s Newsroom with anchors Bill Hemmer and Martha MacCallum, the first time that he has appeared on Newsroom since February 9th. He appeared briefly with Carl Cameron on October 17th.
Trump predictably slammed the news that Obamacare premiums are set to see a precipitous rise. He also touted the Investor’s Business Daily poll from last week — essentially the only poll that gave him the lead over Hillary Clinton nationally — although the same poll has been rereleased since then indicating that the lead has shifted back to the left, something he failed to mention.
The candidate who famously never met a TV hit, interview, segment, or phone-in opportunity he didn’t like has grown uncharacterically weary of them in recent months. As his polling numbers slipped — and with his controversies ratcheted up in the mainstream media — he has increasingly clinged to the aforementioned “safe spaces.” Even Megyn Kelly earlier this month bemoaned the fact that Trump so severely limited his media accessibility, decrying, “Donald Trump… will go on Hannity and pretty much only Hannity and will not venture out to the unsafe spaces these days, which doesn’t exactly expand the tent.”
Tuesday’s curious move comes just one day after the premiere of what many suspect is the first iteration of Trump News Network, the Facebook Live broadcast from Trump Tower that the campaign will use to air its surrogates and messages nightly until the election. “We’re excited to be bypassing the left-wing media,” said Trump Senior advisor Boris Epshteyn during the broadcast.
Watch above via Fox News.
—
[image via screengrab]
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
