Yesterday I saw something about John Dean saying Nixon might not have been impeached if he had Fox on his side.
Tonight MSNBC had long time Trump guy Sam Nunberg on the Chris Hayes show guest-hosted by Joy Reid. Then Gabriel Sherman was on and there was a lot of talk about Fox. Fox is important but it can’t do much without talk radio.
Nunberg has been on MSNBC a number of times lately, and they’re missing a big opportunity.
Sam Nunberg told Gabriel Sherman for the New York Magazine 4/3/16 that he listened to “1000s of hours of talk radio” and reported to Trump and said that helped Trump beat the establishment money and win the primaries. (Thanks again to whoever told me about that.)
From New York Magazine 4/3/16, by Gabriel Sherman:
Throughout 2014, the three (Roger Stone, Michael Cohen, and Sam Nunberg) fed Trump strategy memos and political intelligence. “I listened to thousands of hours of talk radio, and he was getting reports from me,” Nunberg recalled. What those reports said was that the GOP base was frothing over a handful of issues including immigration, Obamacare, and Common Core.
Republicans have been moving right to cater to the ‘popular’ concerns coming out of the asses of a few hundred ignorant racist think tank-scripted blowhards on 1500 radio stations. And they’ve been winning because Democrats and the media think the constituencies that that propaganda monopoly creates are legitimate. Democrats think about moving right for the same reason.
Those made-to-order constituencies — such as created with anti-immigration hate and racism coming off those radios to sell vote suppression legislation all over the country, and all that enabling and intimidation felt by politicians and media, is essentially based on bullshit.
The bullshit might ultimately start with the GOP friendly think tanks but only talk radio can do the unchallenged nationally and locally coordinated repetition to make it real.
When those talk jocks want to know ‘facts’ they ask the Heritage Foundation, or Breitbart or Drudge, or they open up the phone lines to the paid callers or the faithful dittoheads dying to repeat what they just heard from Limbaugh or Hannity a day or a decade ago, keeping all the other listeners and the jocks themselves in line. Like “Obamacare is a failure”, etc. And Limbaugh and Hannity are tuned into the pulse of the nation about as well as any other billionaires.
If the Kremlin wanted to influence US politics the most efficient way would be to help the talk radio gods with their material, steer them a bit with something like Breitbart, which started up about 2008 and competed with the US MIC-based Drudge, and then pump it up with some social media trolling.
Then there was Paul Manafort helping McCain in 2008, and Limbaugh disastrously holding off his support until days before the GOP convention when McCain had to pick Palin to save his campaign from a dittohead-less disastrous start. Palin was Limbaugh’s choice, was she Putin’s choice too?
Did Trump really pay Nunberg to listen to the radio? Did someone else pay for it? Who suggested it?
We know Trump is an idiot. Who told city boy Trump that was the secret to winning the primaries from the establishment candidates with the big establishment money?
At the minimum it suggests the Kremlin was piggybacking and maybe even paying one or more talk radio gods to work with them. Limbaugh attacked Bush and Rubio, loyally made excuses for Trump, and has been attacking the “deep state” and Mueller every day since inauguration.
Before that at the beginning of the Benghazi tragedy all the radio blowhards were repeating that Obama and Clinton had ordered that embassy marine guards could not carry live ammunition. So they were encouraging attacks on US embassies. The Marines spokesman announced it was not true. Where did that talking point come from?
The email hack that Limbaugh used to create ‘Climategate’ and derail Obama at the Copenhagen climate talks in 2009 was Russian. A European Breitbart employee was involved in the early stages of getting the news started. Days after the actual hack Limbaugh was ready with content taken out of context, just in time to send Obama off with a national Republican declaration that ‘Climategate’ was proof that global warming is a hoax. Trump even repeated it, at least once that I heard (see piece in Mother Jones referenced below).
In 2011 Limbaugh led the charge to get the US to default on its debt. That got sequestration.
‘Climategate’ was great for the Kochs and Putin. Debt default would have been good for Putin too, but for the Kochs?
At the worst, the Russians have been using guys like Limbaugh for years and told the Trump campaign that was the best way to coordinate with their planned social media trolling.
Has Nunberg been interviewed by Mueller yet? If not, why not?
Tonight (last night, night before last?) Rachel Maddow sounded the depressing alarm that Republicans are going ahead with total obstruction. It’s not going to be Fox getting Trump and the GOP off easy, it will be talk radio because Democrats and liberals and their allies in the media ignore it. All Democrats had to do was listen to a little talk radio this year, any part of the year, and hear them screaming every day about the “deep state” as they made excuses for Trump.
Trump watches Fox because it summarizes the talk radio repetition. Fox starts something once in a while and it reinforces the propaganda with visuals and it propagandizes a lot of people who don’t listen to talk radio, but it can’t do the kind of repetition or unchallenged lying that talk radio can do.
Instead, the Clintons and their allies and President Obama and a lot of good civil servants doing their jobs with good intent will continue to get trashed by a pack of dipshit Kremlin-colluding GOP assholes who will continue to enjoy the ‘popular’ support of 300 ignorant think tank-scripted liars hiding behind call screeners on 1500 radio stations licensed to operate in the public interest.
Because the Democratic Party and the progressive orgs and their allies in the media still have no clue and continue to blame talk radio ‘s little brother Fox. They don’t even poll for it.
Ignoring talk radio continues to be the biggest political mistake in history.
And MSNBC is screwing up too.
The best way to derail Trump and the GOP and get democracy on track soon is to stop ignoring talk radio, their most important weapon for keeping their base intact and keeping GOP reps from dumping Trump.
Fantastic! As I wrote that this morning I decided to go back and check if there was reference to Trump repeating the ‘Climategate’ bullshit again and found a brand new Mother Jones story about the similarities between that hack and the election hacks! I haven’t read it but that is great news someone got on this! If I read it now it will derail my brain because I’ll bet there will be little ‘credit’ given to the talk radio aspect and I need to finish this diary or it will end up with the hundred other drafts
From Mother Jones:
7 Years Before Russia Hacked the Election, Someone Did the Same Thing to Climate Scientists
“Why does this story sound so darned familiar?”
REBECCA LEBER AND AJ VICENSJANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018 ISSUE