Donald Trump is the first major-party nominee whose basic motive is the subject of sincere curiosity. Every other figure who secured the nomination of one of the two main governing parties clearly did so as part of a plan to get elected president. It is possible that this is Trump’s plan, too. But it’s also possible that it’s not, which is one of the things that makes his candidacy, or perhaps his “candidacy,” so unusual. 
 
 It is increasingly clear that Trump’s actions are inconsistent with any rational plan to become president. He is unpopular on a scale that defies historical precedent, utterly loathed by overwhelming majorities. Some people believed Trump was merely playing the part of a right-wing provocateur in order to stand out from the field and win his party’s nomination, and would “pivot” to the center afterward, but these hopes have been dashed. Trump has only become more hated. Nor is he doing basic tasks required of a nominee. When he was asked to call two dozen major Republican donors, Politico reports, Trump called three of them and then packed it in. 
 
 It is entirely possible that Trump is simply in way over his head — he wants to be president but doesn’t know how to go about it, and he trusts his own instincts far too much. The alternate possibility is that he has a different motive. In this scenario, Trump is not completely incompetent, but is shrewdly, or at least rationally, following a plan to enrich or otherwise gratify himself. The trouble has always been discerning what such a plan could be. 
 
 Trump’s campaign has not helped his branding business. To the contrary, it seems to be doing enormous damage. He has lost clients already, and will probably continue to do so. If your last name is synonymous with racism and misogyny, you can’t sell your name to golf courses and restaurants, which have dropped him left and right. Being adored by 30 percent of the country and hated by the rest is a recipe unsuited either for winning nationwide office or selling consumer products. 
 
 What it could well be is a plan to launch an independent media organ. Sarah Ellison reports that Trump is exploring the possibility of a television or other media venture that would cater to his loyalists. “According to several people briefed on the discussions, the presumptive Republican nominee is examining the opportunity presented by the ‘audience’ currently supporting him,” she writes. “He has also discussed the possibility of launching a 'mini-media conglomerate' outside of his existing TV-production business, Trump Productions LLC.” According to Ellison, Trump chafes at the way media have been able to make money off his antics without him getting a cut — a piece of reporting that happens to comport with Trump’s frequent public boasts about the ratings he commands and the money others are making off him. 
 
 And if this is Trump’s plan, it makes sense. Perhaps he grasps a truth the official Republican Party has refused to acknowledge: The conservative base is a subculture. It is a numerically large subculture, but a subculture nonetheless. It rejects the moral values of the larger society and wallows within its own imaginary world, in which Barack Obama is a foreign-born agent of anti-American interests, global warming is a lie concocted by greedy scientists or perhaps the Chinese, and hordes of foreigners are rendering the United States unrecognizable. The greater the gulf between the reality perceived by Trump’s supporters and the reality experienced by the rest of the world, the worse for the Republican Party, but all the more profitable for the media that can cater to their delusions. Figures like Rupert Murdoch, Ann Coulter, and Rush Limbaugh have grown rich doing so. Trump may have figured out that there’s no reason he should work for them when he can cut out the middleman. ||||| Every election cycle has its own breakout media star. In 1992, it was CNN. A few years later, it would be an e-mail blast called the Drudge Report. By 2000, the country had more or less been neatly delineated between MSNBC and Fox News households. The 2008 election introduced Politico and the Huffington Post to the adults’ table. BuzzFeed joined in 2012. 
 
 The breakout media star of 2016 is, inarguably, Donald Trump, who has masterfully—and horrifyingly—demonstrated an aptitude for manipulating the news cycle, gaining billions of dollars worth of free airtime, and dominating coverage on every screen. Now, several people around him are looking for a way to leverage his supporters into a new media platform and cable channel. 
 
 Trump is indeed considering creating his own media business, built on the audience that has supported him thus far in his bid to become the next president of the United States. According to several people briefed on the discussions, the presumptive Republican nominee is examining the opportunity presented by the “audience” currently supporting him. He has also discussed the possibility of launching a “mini-media conglomerate” outside of his existing TV-production business, Trump Productions LLC. He has, according to one of these people, enlisted the consultation of his daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who owns the The New York Observer. Trump’s rationale, according to this person, is that, “win or lose, we are onto something here. We’ve triggered a base of the population that hasn’t had a voice in a long time.” For his part, Kushner was heard at a New York dinner party saying that “the people here don’t understand what I’m seeing. You go to these arenas and people go crazy for him.” (Both Kushner and Ivanka Trump did not respond to a request for comment.) 
 
 “Even old Fox News didn’t have the right read on what the base is. And we do.” 
 
 Trump, this person close to the matter suggests, has become irked by his ability to create revenue for other media organizations without being able to take a cut himself. Such a situation “brings him to the conclusion that he has the business acumen and the ratings for his own network.” Trump has “gotten the bug,” according to this person. “So now he wants to figure out if he can monetize it.” 
 
 Hope Hicks, Trump’s spokeswoman, adamantly denied that such conversations have occurred. (“There is absolutely no truth to this whatsoever,” she told me. “This hasn’t been even uttered. Not even thought about.”) Then, after conferring with Trump, she issued a subsequent statement clarifying her point: “While it’s true Mr. Trump garners exceptionally high ratings, there are absolutely no plans or discussions taking place regarding a venture of this nature.” Meanwhile, someone close to Kushner has suggested that Trump would be unlikely to go so far as to seek out a partner at this stage of the race, given that it might risk alienating many of the established media players that he has outflanked—and that he is relying on to get him elected. (Such a move would also inevitably raise issues regarding the F.C.C.’s “equal-time” rule.) Nevertheless, shortly after my correspondence with Hicks, he tweeted out: “The press is so totally biased that we have no choice but to take our tough but fair and smart message directly to the people!” 
 
 Indeed, the specter of a Trump-focused platform, no matter how unappetizing, is not entirely illogical. Republican candidates have historically used the protracted national election cycle to indirectly land gigs on Fox News or Sirius XM. Election cycles have become veritable job interviews for the likes of Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, and others. But Trump has successfully circumnavigated traditional media outlets more than any candidate in history. He has picked fights with Fox News and won. His campaign has barred reporters from the Huffington Post, Gawker, Buzzfeed, and the New Hampshire Union Leader from events. Earlier this month, a Politico reporter was denied access to an event in California. After The Washington Post reported on Trump’s suggestion that President Obama was somehow complicit in the Orlando terrorist attack, his campaign revoked the news organization’s press credentials. 
 
 A generation ago—perhaps even a few months ago—these tactics would have irreparably doomed a campaign. But Trump has proved that he no longer needs the platform that news outlets have traditionally provided for candidates. As my colleague Nick Bilton has noted, Trump has mastered the attention war on social media and discovered a preternatural ability to tap into his base directly. Love him or despise him, Trump indisputably has the finger on the pulse of his audience. And this connection could certainly facilitate such a hypothetical mini-media conglomerate. “Even old Fox News didn’t have the right read on what the base is,” one person briefed on the conversation told me. “And we do.” ||||| The Associated Press is reporting that President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from Syria crystallized during a December 14 phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. According to the news agency, the decision was “made hastily, without consulting his national security team or allies, and over strong objections from virtually everyone involved in the fight against the Islamic State group, according to U.S. and Turkish officials.” 
 
 One of the surprising details of the report is that Erdogan himself was taken aback at how successful he was in convincing Trump on the Syrian matter. Before the phone call, the consensus position that the Trump administration had reached, backed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, was that Trump would tell Erdogan to back off from his threats to attack Kurdish forces in Syria. 
 
 But during the phone conversation, Trump threw away the script and agreed with his Turkish counterpart. As AP relates, Trump started by reiterating the message of backing off. But then a change occurred: 
 
 Erdogan, though, quickly put Trump on the defensive, reminding him that he had repeatedly said the only reason for U.S. troops to be in Syria was to defeat the Islamic State and that the group had been 99 percent defeated. “Why are you still there?” the second official said Erdogan asked Trump, telling him that the Turks could deal with the remaining IS militants. 
 
 Trump then posed Erdogan’s question to his National Security Advisor John Bolton, who was participating in the phone call. Bolton admitted that the Islamic State had indeed lost 99 per cent of its territory but said that it was in America’s interest to make sure the group did not enjoy a resurgence. 
 
 Trump was not dissuaded, according to the officials, who said the president quickly capitulated by pledging to withdraw, shocking both Bolton and Erdogan. Caught off guard, Erdogan cautioned Trump against a hasty withdrawal, according to one official. While Turkey has made incursions into Syria in the past, it does not have the necessary forces mobilized on the border to move in and hold the large swaths of northeastern Syria where U.S. troops are positioned, the official said. 
 
 From this reporting, it seems likely that it was never Erdogan’s intention to get the United States to withdraw. Rather he made the demand as a bargaining move, to get other, lesser goals. Trump, displaying his mastery of the art of the deal, gave in to Erdogan’s maximum position. 
 
 The White House denies the accuracy of AP’s account. ||||| A charismatic, über-rich New York businessman and celebrity, derided by his political opponents as a con man and “crypto-fascist clown,” embarks on his first run for elected office. He electrifies his die-hard conservative followers with appeals to patriotism, family values, pride and wealth acquisition and a pledge to restore the promise of America. 
 
 What sounds uncannily like the narrative behind Donald Trump’s 2016 run for the U.S. presidency is in fact the plot of Bob Roberts, the 1992 political mockumentary about a crusading Pennsylvania Senate candidate and self-made millionaire/folk musician (played by Tim Robbins, who also wrote the screenplay and directed). Bob Roberts may not stand under a “Make America Great Again” banner, but the conservative rebel’s “Times Are Changin’ Back” outlook and album title managed to preview both the culture wars of the 1990s and the Trump phenomenon of the current election cycle. 
 
 Roberts is a brilliant manipulator of the media who is not shy about trumpeting his own wealth. 
 
 Roberts is “handsome, meticulously dressed and groomed,” according to the screenplay. “He is the quintessential yuppie but there is also something intimidating about him.” A military school grad with an Ivy League degree, he is a slick businessman whose campaign bus and staff double as a mobile trading unit. Not unlike the current Republican front-runner, Roberts is a brilliant manipulator of the media who is not shy about trumpeting his own wealth and the importance of winning. 
 
 Set during the 1990 election cycle, the film traverses a very different political landscape from today, from concerns with drugs and Contras to the threat of Saddam Hussein, as it follows Roberts along the campaign trail. But Roberts’ brand of “down-home fascism,” as critic Roger Ebert labeled it, transcends the era. It is a populism grounded in division, and the faux folk anthems that the guitar-strumming Roberts sings at his massive campaign rallies are hymns to greed (“I will take my inheritance and invest it with pride”) and diatribes against political correctness, Arabs and “lazy people” who “complain and complain and complain” about their lot in life. “I wanna be rich, I don’t have a brain / So give me a handout while I complain,” goes one of the catchy songs written by Robbins and his older brother, David (their father was folk singer Gil Robbins of the Highwaymen). 
 
 As Roberts’ election fortunes begin to soar, the dynamic surrounding his campaign turns increasingly ugly. Protesters attending his rallies are roughed up as he aggressively calls them out from the stage. The film even captures how his somewhat sinister celebrity grates on many of the journalists and entertainers who have no choice but to go along with it. “It seems you would like Americans to cast their vote based on hatred and ignorance,” says one TV newswoman who can barely hide her contempt for the man she later confides to the camera “has adopted the persona and the mindset of the free-thinking rebel and turned it on itself.” The controversy surrounding Roberts’ guest appearance on a fictional version of Saturday Night Live mirrors many of the misgivings surrounding Trump’s hosting of SNL in November. Unlike with Trump, however, an angry staffer pulls the plug (literally) on Roberts’ performance. 
 
 Bob Roberts is not a subtle film in either its plot or its caricature of far-right politics, and, in the end, it collapses under its own pretenses and far-fetched conspiracies as its Machiavellian protagonist engages in the ultimate deception to win voter sympathy — and a Senate seat. Still, like every shrewd political satire, it nails its mark enough to remain relevant, even while verging on the ridiculous. “Recent events haven’t completely overtaken the movie,” The New York Times wrote of the film’s opening in the midst of the turbulent 1992 presidential election, “but they do indicate just how wild a satire must be these days to remain on the cutting edge of the outrageous.” 
 
 Even in this 2016 election, where the outrageous — and the level of outrage — have reached new heights, Bob Roberts still strikes a powerful chord among those who complain and complain and complain about the state of American politics.
– Is Donald Trump running for president simply as a means of launching his own cable news network? That's the theory put forth by Vanity Fair, quoting anonymous sources close to the situation. Trump is reportedly "irked" that he's bringing in big ratings for other networks without getting any of the profits himself. “He wants to figure out if he can monetize it,” a source says. He's allegedly consulting with daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner on a "mini-media conglomerate." His reasoning, according to a source: “We’ve triggered a base of the population that hasn’t had a voice in a long time.” A Trump spokesperson denies Trump is even thinking about such a thing. But immediately after, Trump tweeted: "The press is so totally biased that we have no choice but to take our tough but fair and smart message directly to the people!” New York Magazine says the theory makes sense. This is the first time it's unclear whether a presidential candidate actually wants to be president. Trump is historically unpopular and shows little interest in changing that, and he's half-assing basic tasks of running for president, such as calling donors. Trump TV would be the "logical end" of his campaign, according to New Republic. “If Trump’s TV station gets 30% ratings, it’ll be doing fantastically well," the website states. "But if that’s his share of the vote, then his candidacy will end in failure.” Transitioning from presidential candidate to media baron wouldn't be easy. Trump would still need a partner for funding and would likely need to buy an existing cable channel. “It’s a fool’s errand,” an entertainment executive tells Vanity Fair. “But then again, we are talking about Donald Trump.” (Did this 1992 movie predict Trump's campaign?)