WASHINGTON POST DAILY 202
“Please hold for Mr. Trump.”
Those words have been heard across the media landscape by countless producers and reporters as the presumptive Republican nominee makes the rounds on television, radio, and print — and then makes the rounds again. He is everywhere, often seen sitting with his eyes narrowed across from a cable host, at other times just a voice.
But the saturation is more than a victory tour for Trump. It is indicative of how he plans to approach the general-election campaign. Instead of relying on traditional methods of communication — paid advertising, carefully-chosen interviews, corporate-crafted Facebook posts — he will be the medium and the message, unpredictable and always around.
Trump’s daily routine: hundreds of requests come in through his trusted press aide, Hope Hicks, and they get piled on his desk. (Trump likes to review actual printed documents.) He rifles through them — confirming this, nixing that. But that isn’t the end. He keeps close watch on cable news, he monitors the headlines (which are also printed out). He’ll call into one network while another sets up backstage. And eventually he turns to Twitter, typing himself or dictating to an associate.
For Democrats and Republicans, the obvious consequence of Trump’s ubiquity is that regardless of what they want to focus on, they will likely be forced to respond each day to the mogul’s latest whim. He looms each hour as a constant potential disturbance, for better or for worse.
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| Donald Trump, left, speaks with John Dickerson on "Face The Nation" in New York. (John Paul Filo/CBS via AP) |
To get a sense of why Trump is following an unusual playbook all his own, The Washington Post spoke with longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone, a Nixon-loving bon vivant and ruthless strategist who has been at the billionaire’s side for decades (although he is not part of Trump’s campaign).
Stone said that Trump’s manner, forged in the Manhattan tabloid and business wars of the 1980s, could weather more blows and brushbacks than the typical national politician and thus made the candidate more willing and able to use his persona as his most prominent campaign tool.
“Trump is going to eschew everything the establishment and the press think he should be doing to have a total grassroots communications strategy,” Stone said in the interview. “He’ll be all over the media, doing as many interviews as he can, calling into radio shows, and having wall-to-wall rallies that get broadcast on the cable channels.”
“Remember,” he added, “those rallies also get you to dominate the local news. So you’re all over the local channels, all over the national, wall-to-wall and free.”
A blunt speaking style, a repetition on three issues, and you combine that with a sour and suffering electorate and it all worked,” Stone said.
“He’s not programmable. There was a time 30 years ago I tried to put words in his mouth but it didn’t take. You can tell him concepts. But he doesn’t want to take someone else’s words. He’s not comfortable doing it. He’d rather watch the culture, the news, pick up what he can.”
“No one knew what he is going to do. I still don’t know what he’ll do,” Stone said.
Neither do most Republicans and Democrats. The only guarantee: he'll be on TV, and nearly everywhere else, soon.