Donald Trump: I'm Off of Fox for the Foreseeable Future

Yesterday's series of tweets deriding Fox and especially that "lightweight" Megyn Kelly now turns into today's Trump Declaration of Embargo.

Trump took a big drop in support after the second debate, falling from 32% to 24%, according to one poll. That would be a bad thing for anybody, but it's particularly bad on a candidate who relies so heavily on the idea that because he is #Winning, he deserves to win. Take that away, and he's only got an immigration plan for back-up.

Granted, that's a good back-up, but the immigration issue is only a paramount issue to a (decent-sized) fraction of voters; many more voters were on the Trump bandwagon because the bandwagon existed, and bandwagons are fun.

One Fox News insider argues that this is because Trump is worried about his polls, but... that guy just seems to be speculating as I am, without any inside information. It's an okay theory, but is only insight into Fox's thinking, not Trump's.

But, as I said, it does make sense. Trump has been able to survive every gaffe, poor interview or debate performance, and possible menstruation reference because the polls kept showing him either rising or at least not being hurt by them. He was immune to most forms of political damage.

But what happens if that's no longer true? Speaking for myself, Trump's nigh-invulnerability to conventional attacks made him a much more appealing candidate -- after all, how many times have you seen a candidate that the media just couldn't scratch? That's a powerful appeal -- it's just an extraordinary thing you'd like to see more of.

Almost just out of scientific curiosity, you'd just want to study it and figure out how this Media Invulnerability works.

But Trump seems to have had not actual invulnerability, but just a fearsome amount of armor and resistance (I can't help putting this in D&D/videogame terms). And he seems to be on the brink of exhausting that.

More Trump TV: Trump seems to have done reasonably well on Steven Colbert, if this clip is any indication. He certainly knows his own quotes!

Ted Cruz also did some good for himself on Colbert, with one caveat: Everytime Ted Cruz began to seem human, talking about the difficulties of running for president (he was funny when he was knocking the constantly-begging-for-money aspect of the job), he would correct himself, and begin offering some canned talk about how "energized" he is by all the people supporting him and America and Freedom and Reagan.

Like, he was showing his actual human side -- and it was a winning look -- but then his Internal Editor told him to stop doing that and he went back into robotic campaigning mode.

posted by Ace at 01:53 PM

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