"He needs Fox News and the crew of sycophantic blogs, talk radio hosts and formerly respectable print publications more than they need him. Sure, they’d lose some audience if they deviated from the Trump party line, but Trump might lose his grip on power. The stakes are much higher for Trump than for the intellectually corrupt right-wing media chorus."
Granted, I think Trump has done his usual Trump thing where he has so ingratiated himself into the right wing media ecosphere that he's made their unconditional support of his presidency as much a facet of their legitimacy as they have for him.
Like all parasites, Trump latched firmly on to a, in this case, willing host, and made their relationship seem a critical component of both's survival, but if ever there came a time when the two separated, Fox News and the rest would survive, albeit weakened than they are now, but Trump- and by extension, his presidency - would not.
As Rubin says, if there came a time where Trump couldn't watch Fox News for the at least six hours a day to get his fix of affirmation and adulation, the meltdown that would result would be something unseen in the annals of presidential politics.
This is all head-noddingly good stuff, it's on point, insightful, and deftly delivered. But then, the turn comes, and it becomes apparent how Rubin, and other conservatives of her ilk, completely failed to see why Trump happened, and why the Republican party base clings to him so fervently.
Speaking of how Fox News is going to run by an newly formed independent company after the media aspect of 21st-Century Fox has been consumed by Disney, Rubin points out that one of the first things the new company did was hire Paul Ryan to the board of directors. Speaking of Ryan's legacy vis-a-vis Trump, Rubin says this:
"Now, as House speaker, Ryan wasn’t one to stand up to Trump. To the contrary, Ryan excused Trump’s behavior and enabled his presidency, only rarely speaking out of school. But maybe this is his chance at redemption. Along with Murdoch, Ryan might make up for the damage he did to the United States by refashioning Fox News from an RT clone into a real news operation. He might actually insist that journalistic standards be upheld by everyone who goes on air. A pipe dream? Probably. Ryan’s hardly a profile in courage."
The thing I want to highlight here is that, even though Rubin acknowledges the scenario as a pipe dream, that dream still has roots in the belief that Ryan will one day find the courage to act on his differences with Trump, and stand up to all that he represents. The problem here is, there is no meaningful difference between Trump and Paul Ryan.
Paul Ryan is a man who built his entire career on the idea that all the protections The New Deal and other social programs to protect people from the vagaries and brutalities of the rich and powerful were, in fact, bad things that needed to be reversed and spent a lifetime working to make it so.
The whole point of Ryan's quest to destroy programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Food Stamps was so ordinary people would be forever at the whim of rich businessmen who doled out jobs and wages at whatever pittance level they deemed acceptable as everyone else scrambled to survive on the bones of what was left.
It is, in a word, serfdom.
It is a worldview based entirely on the subjugation, degradation, and humiliation of everyone Ryan deemed to be unworthy, of living off the gains stolen from those who rightfully earned them.
The only difference between Ryan and Trump is that while Ryan seeks these things as a political and sociological reordering, Trump seeks them for his own personal and petty means. Imagining there will ever be a time where these two disagree over anything more substantial than personality styles is just that, fantasy.
The real whooper though, is this (italics original):
"The question is whether Fox News executives, shareholders and employees decide that they are making money off the anguish of their country and the assault on democratic values and norms. Ultimately, they have to decide whether their business model — stirring up hatred and misleading mostly older, right-wing white audiences — is sustainable and whether they want their legacy to be: Helped make America a worse place."
I don't know what alternate universe Rubin dipped into when she this train of thought crossed her mind, but here, in this timeline, the answer is, and always has been, an unequivocal "Yes."
Jane Mayer had a really great story in The New Yorker detailing how Fox News grew into its role as the agenda setter for the Trump president and, looking at that, and the entire 22-year existence of the network who's sole goal has been to bolster and foster power for conservative figures, why would they change? The network as achieved everything it's set out to do from the moment Rupert Murdoch conceived it and they're going to give all that up because what, it's bad for democracy? Please.
This belief, that there's some nugget of legitimacy or decency in modern conservationism is adult equivalent of believing in Santa or the Easter Bunny. As I've said pretty much from the beginning of Trump's career, he isn't an aberration, he's the trend. If we refuse to recognize that, or prop up writers like Rubin who just want the GOP to do all the same things Trump is doing but with better table manners, then we'll just keep getting more of the same until we drown in the filth we never bothered to throw out.
