Donald Trump is the conservative media
No institution that enjoys the trust of Republican voters can successfully stand up to him
Drake, a rapper, wanted to see his friend, the basketball superstar LeBron James, immediately after the Miami Heat won the 2013 NBA Finals. But a security guard refused him entry into the champagne-drenched celebration because he lacked press credentials. “I am media,” the Grammy winner reportedly responded. Three years later, Donald Trump successfully crashed a much bigger party: the Republican National Convention. Mr Trump, a walking media institution, brushed aside early opposition from right-leaning news and opinion outlets and won the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. In the years since, conservative media either have conformed to his vision of politics or tried and failed to persuade Republican voters to abandon it. This dynamic has accelerated as he pursues his party’s nomination for a third time.
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This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “Right nation”
United States December 16th 2023
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- American universities face a reckoning over antisemitism
- The Supreme Court will decide how quickly Donald Trump is prosecuted
- Regulatory changes hint at what might be in store in a second Biden term
- Why New York wants to be more like London
From the December 16th 2023 edition
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