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Shoulda seen the writing on the wall all the way back in 2011 about conservative media.
I’ll never forget RedState’s old owners, Eagle Publishing, sending down an edict that they were negotiating a book deal with Trump (who at the time was publicly talking about running for president) and apparently he was unhappy about our front page criticism of him.
We had, at the time, been a chorus of mockery when it came to Trump. So were were instructed that while the book deal was underway our front page disdain for him was not welcome.
I recall @EWErickson, our editor at the time, being furious about it and telling all of us that while the edict was out of his hands there had been no rules regarding our conduct elsewhere and he encouraged us to amp up whatever our criticisms were on social media/other websites.
Of course once the presidential aspirations evaporated so apparently did the book negotiation.
It was as though he did the Tony Soprano divorce move of calling every lawyer in town with no intention of actually hiring them, just to create conflicts that would prevent his wife from hiring her own attorney.
I’d already found Trump to be a distasteful figure but mostly thought it was an act. It was really that particular moment in time that I started to see him as a different kind of slimy and unethical.
There was never any chance of him changing that view for me. He is who he is and I guess I got the first taste of it back then, thus the opposition to him in 2016 and ongoing criticism since. He’s still that guy.
Of course after the book deal was gone so was the edict. If Salem hadn’t snagged up RedState a couple years after I’m pretty sure @resurgent would’ve launched earlier than it did. We kinda hoped for a brief moment that Salem would be different. Lol, right? thebulwark.com/why-we-are-qui…
