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To: Albion Wilde

I didn’t read your links, because I’ll freely stipulate that Trump has done plenty of good for veterans in the past, and I’m sure he will in the future. I applaud him for that. My contention is that that the event tonight is about him, not about veterans.

I’ll ask you the same question I asked you earlier, and I’ll ask the question I asked of Hostage :

Is Trump requiring that media covering his rally tonight donate $5 million to veterans’ charities? As you point out, he called for the networks to do that but he was not in control. Now he is in control, and he predicts very high ratings for his event. If he is not requiring the donation, why not?

If Trump intends to focus attention on veterans rather than on himself, do you agree that he will yield the camera to veterans tonight?


69 posted on 01/28/2016 5:05:55 PM PST by HoustonSam
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To: HoustonSam
Is Trump requiring that media covering his rally tonight donate $5 million to veterans' charities? As you point out, he called for the networks to do that but he was not in control. Now he is in control, and he predicts very high ratings for his event. If he is not requiring the donation, why not?

He called for one network to do it on the third debate, the CNN one if I recall; and I cannot remember whether it is even legal to do, or whether the GOP or elections officials had anything to say about whether it even could be done.

To know the answer to about tonight's event, in addition to the legalities of campaigning, we would have to read the hastily-arranged contracts and what sort of last-minute advertiser sponsorships C-SPAN was able to buy, since they did not have a long time to plan. Advertisers are where the money comes from. Had Trump stayed in the scheduled debate at Fox, that debate has had weeks of advertising already pumped into it. I don't know exactly how the contracts work, and whether the amount of network profit is tied to the viewer ratings as projected in advance or after the fact. But it seems logical that this last-minute event maay not have as much "margin" as a Fox event would have had. So I don't know.

But I do think his point in the past was well taken: the GOPe and the networks were indeed banking on his drawing power to cash in with sponsors and then were loading up more and more debates and longer debates with ineffectual formats just to milk the situation; recognizing his ratings draw as the winner of all the debates, he tried to get them to give some of their unexpected high profits to the veterans.

The way you posed your challenge sounds like you have judged him hypocritical in advance, like the long-lost relatives who show up expecting a handout when they learn another relative has had a windfall; when in fact he is under no more obligation to do it at all.

70 posted on 01/28/2016 5:46:47 PM PST by Albion Wilde (Who can actually defeat the Democrats in 2016? -- the most important thing about all candidates.)
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