Veteran journalist Michael Wolff says Donald Trump is going into the Republican National Convention with one major goal: to pull a giant TV audience, because he believes those numbers will translate into victory in the general election.
"It isn't, in the Trumpian view, politics that win — not consensus, not consistent message, not organization — it's ratings. It is attention (good attention or bad attention, no matter) that make the man," Wolff writes in
The Hollywood Reporter.
Wolff says Trump faces "loathing, disbelief and outright Republican rebellion," but asks, does he really need "the Republican congressional establishment, the evangelical mainstream, the conservative pundits, the senior bench of Republican operatives, the Bush wing, the Reaganite stalwarts, the Fortune 500 CEO clique … to have any hope of getting elected?"
Maybe not.
"Almost 36 million people watched the final night of the 2012 Democratic convention (30 million for the 2012 Republican convention; in 2008 both final night conventions reached an audience of about 38 million). "Trump has talked — and only partially in Trumpian exaggeration — about doing double that for his convention," Wolff says.
"In this, he believes that the record-busting rating for the first Republican presidential debate — 25 million — was what vitally propelled his primary campaign, and that an awe-inspiring convention audience will do the same for the general election."
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