Donald Trump is the most powerful person in media, according to MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” a favorite program among Washington, D.C.,’s political and media elite.
On Thursday, the panel on “Morning Joe” debated Trump’s role in the Republican Party and in the news media, both of which Trump has dominated since declaring his run for the GOP presidential nomination in June.
“Who’s the most powerful person in the Republican Party right now?” asked show co-host Mika Brzezinski.
“I think it’s Trump,” said New York Times reporter Nicholas Confessore.
Brzezinski then asked about the most powerful person in media.
Sam Stein, an MSNBC contributor and writer for the left-leaning Huffington Post, named Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, but noted that Ailes “backed down” to Trump when he was feuding this week with the network’s star anchor Megyn Kelly.
“I think there’s actually three institutions, I think, in the Republican Party,” Stein said. “There’s talk radio, there’s Fox News, which is run by Roger Ailes — I think the Drudge Report also could be up there as one of the more powerful institutions on the right — and I think Trump by and large is coveted by all three and there was a moment there where he risked that fissure of a relationship between Fox News, and Fox News backed down. You know, they didn’t defend their key anchor and they brought him back on air.”
“So, I would think the answer to the question ‘who’s the most powerful person in media’ would be Donald Trump,” said Brzezinski.
“Yeah,” Stein said.
Trump’s feud with Kelly began at last week’s GOP debate, hosted by Fox and co-moderated by Kelly. After Kelly asked Trump to answer for past derogatory statements he has made about women, Trump went on a media tour de force to criticize Kelly’s question as “unfair.” He said on CNN there was “blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.”
Trump even vowed to refrain from doing any more interviews on Fox. But then Ailes, the network’s CEO, called Trump to smooth things over.
“Roger Ailes just called. He is a great guy & assures me that ‘Trump’ will be treated fairly on [Fox News],” Trump wrote Monday on Twitter. “His word is always good!”
