It was also thanks to some information he had gathered that Trump was able to do something that no other Republican has done before: take on Fox News. An odd bit of coincidence had given him a card to play against Fox founder Roger Ailes. In 2014, I published a biography of Ailes, which upset the famously paranoid executive. Several months before it landed in stores, Ailes fired his longtime PR adviser Brian Lewis, accusing him of being a source. During Lewis’s severance negotiations, Lewis hired Judd Burstein, a powerhouse litigator, and claimed he had “bombs” that would destroy Ailes and Fox News. That’s when Trump got involved.
“When Roger was having problems, he didn’t call 97 people, he called me,” Trump said. Burstein, it turned out, had worked for Trump briefly in the ’90s, and Ailes asked Trump to mediate. Trump ran the negotiations out of his office at Trump Tower. “Roger had lawyers, very expensive lawyers, and they couldn’t do anything. I solved the problem.” Fox paid Lewis millions to go away quietly, and Trump, I’m told, learned everything Lewis had planned to leak. If Ailes ever truly went to war against Trump, Trump would have the arsenal to launch a retaliatory strike.
The above was written in the New York Magazine article by Gabriel Sherman who wrote the book "The Loudest Voice in the Room" about Roger Ailes back in 2014.
I read that book but I have to admit that I did not remember this passage, which seems to suggest that Trump may have Roger Ailes in a very ticklish position.
If accurate it not only reinforces the kind of prick Donald Trump is when dealing with people who might stand in his way, but it could also open him up to all kinds of legal problems if it came to light that he was overtly threatening Ailes.
I swear I have NEVER in my life seen anything like this 2016 presidential race in all of my years following politics.
Source http://ift.tt/227K24b
