Down in the polls and isolated by illness, President Trump retreated to the safe spaces of two Fox networks and Rush Limbaugh’s radio program in a 36-hour burst of media interviews three weeks before Election Day.
The sprawling, somewhat manic phone-in interviews put Trump front and center on the radar of many of his most loyal supporters, via the most conservative-friendly media outlets, but arguably did little to reach the independent and moderate voters Trump will need to close the gap with former vice president Joe Biden.
The method to Trump’s occasional madness — at one point Friday he boasted to Limbaugh that “our nuclear is all tippy top now” in an apparently reference to military weapons systems — seemed to play out as an effort to seize and maintain the media spotlight without spending any of his remaining campaign cash. Continue reading.