* Vanity Fair, which is hardly an insider’s political bible, recently arched eyebrows over a Donald Trump piece. It speculated on what might have been the ultimate motive behind the move by Trump to bring on serial sexual harasser and former Fox puppeteer Roger Ailes. In short, to do more than help out on debate prep. In fact, to actually help implement Trump’s Plan B after Clinton wins the election.
Assuming his vanity campaign would come up short on electoral votes but long on an amped-up, alt-right following, Trump purportedly envisions a new media company. Call it Trump TV. It would take advantage of his brand name, his 11 million Twitter followers and his base of white-supremacists awaiting his next bar-stool rant. And Ailes knows a thing or two about media pandering.
* Prediction: If by some catastrophic stretch Donald Trump becomes president, look for re-newed interest in Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 novel “It Can’t Happen Here” and John Frankenheimer’s 1964 movie “Seven Days in May.” The former looks at an American-dictator scenario; the latter, a military-political cabal.
* It’s hardly happenstance that as “pay for play” scenarios persist, Attorney General Pam Bondi grows increasingly unavailable to Florida journalists. And she has looked less than comfortable with non-Fox national media. Frankly, it appears that she never recovered after being schooled by CNN’s Anderson Cooper, hardly the second coming of Mike Wallace, in the aftermath of the Pulse Nightclub shootings.
* Does anybody but the Tampa Bay Times really care about “Gyrocopter” pilot updates?
* A bumper sticker that’s overdue: “Abort Congress.” Prompted by a Zika bill that couldn’t get passed because of Planned Parenthood politics.