In the early hours Wednesday, Donald Trump managed to shake up his campaign once again and make headlines. This time, instead of bringing in more ties to any Russian advisers or people who can’t seem to keep their history in line, Trump turned to the head of Breitbart to run his campaign. Stephen Bannon has come on-board as the chief executive of Trump’s campaign, followed closely by new campaign manager Kellyanne Conway.
The addition of Bannon carries a lot of weight, clearly showing that Trump is willing to push on to the end of this campaign on his own terms and doesn’t care about the criticism his campaign has been taking. Breitbart has been a very vocal supporter of the candidate, so Trump has surrounded himself with friends, but Bannon also comes with a very interesting addition, according to Bloomberg:
Turner was going to build this huge studio,” he says, “so we were negotiating the deal at the St. Regis hotel in New York. As often happened with Turner, when it came time to actually close the deal, Ted was short of cash. … Westinghouse just wanted out. We told them, ‘You ought to take this deal. It’s a great deal.’ And they go, ‘If this is such a great deal, why don’t you defer some of your cash fee and keep an ownership stake in a package of TV rights?’ ” In lieu of a full adviser’s fee, the firm accepted a stake in five shows, including one in its third season regarded as the runt of the litter: Seinfeld. “We calculated what it would get us if it made it to syndication,” says Bannon. “We were wrong by a factor of five.”
So yes, as The Fader points out, watching those Seinfeld reruns is likely going to help out the Trump campaign and has definitely been helping out Bannon for a while. As Bloomberg notes, it’s hard to say how much the Seinfeld revenue could be helping out in the many battles the site and Trump’s campaign have and will have in the near future. But it’s hard to deny it’s one of the many interesting aspects of the man Andrew Breitbart dubbed, “the Leni Riefenstahl of the Tea Party movement,” according to Bloomberg.
The spotlight is his for the moment, with the New York Times introducing him in an extensive profile and Bloomberg sharing some facts about him. One could say that every action really does carry a consequence with it.
(Via Bloomberg / the New York Times)
