In the days since Donald Trump’s upset election victory, he’s already proven beyond any doubt that his vow to “drain the swamp” is bogus. His transition team is full of the same lobbyists that he slammed on the campaign trail, and one of the people on his short list for Cabinet is a bank CEO who turned a blind eye to a crooked customer.
But according to Megyn Kelly, Trump never really wanted to drain the swamp at all. In her new book, “Settle for More,” the Fox News host revealed that during the campaign, Trump offered her gifts “clearly meant to shape coverage” of him. For instance, Trump invited Kelly and her husband to spend a weekend at Mar-a-Lago, his estate in Palm Beach. He also offered to pick up the tab for Kelly and two of her girlfriends when they spent a weekend at Trump SoHo.
In both cases, Kelly said, turning the offers down wasn’t even a close call. However, turning down the chance to do softball interviews with Trump was a lot harder. While she knew she was walking away from a potential ratings windfall, she also knew that it would be “television crack cocaine.”
Kelly revealed that a number of other journalists got similarly crooked offers–and many of them didn’t stand their ground. She contended that a number of reporters were “in the tank” for the Donald. Once this became an open secret, Kelly claimed that some of them tried to cover their tracks by coordinating occasional critical reporting with Trump in order to keep up the appearance that they weren’t biased. In a colossal understatement, she describes this as “one of the untold stories of the 2016 campaign.”
Suddenly, Trump’s vicious treatment of Kelly takes on a new, and potentially chilling, light. If you’ll remember, after Kelly asked him some critical questions at the first Republican presidential debate, Trump suggested that Kelly went after him because she had “blood coming out of her wherever.” He also went into a number of vicious Twitter tirades against her, calling her “overrated,” “angry,” “crazy,” and a “bimbo.”
Apparently some of Trump’s followers took it as a signal to attack. Her voicemail was full of obscenities and death threats, and a shady character even showed up at her apartment. It got so bad that when she and her family went to Walt Disney World, they had to take an armed guard with them.
Trump spent most of the campaign in a war against the media, whining that they were biased, crooked, and trying to rig the election against him. He even vowed to use the libel laws to effectively gag critics. And now we know that in truth, he was actually trying to buy off journalists. And he spent the entire campaign calling Hillary Clinton corrupt and crooked?
Let’s not beat around the bush. If Trump was trying to buy off journalists, he isn’t going to drain the swamp. He’s trying to flood it, overflow it, or redirect it. Either way, the people will wind up dead losers.
(featured image courtesy Trump’s Facebook)
