How Conservative Talk Radio Paved The Road For Donald Trump

“We're sort of living in two Americas. If you ever have a chance of being like a gym where somebody's got Fox on, CNN and MSNBC on in the same hour, you watch a couple of minutes of it and you say to yourself, 'Are these shows from different planets or something?' The danger is that to have a robust democracy, we have to be able to speak a common language and have a common base of facts to argue over. Instead, these products make us think that the other side is almost demonic — that they want to destroy America. They want to destroy and trample upon our values. And that's really dangerous."

"It was coming from what he thought and what he believed. He would read the newspaper in the morning he would joke, 'I read the news so you don't have to. I'm gonna tell you what's important.' And Republican politicians are slow to catch on. It's really only with the rise of Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey and Tom DeLay as the Republican leadership that Republicans are really fully operational using this media."

"Before then, it's really just marginalized figures in politics that understand the opportunity presented — starts with far-right conservatives in the House who are the minority of the minorities so no one really cares what they think. And then it really includes candidate Bill Clinton, ironically enough, who when he's hurting for money in the spring of ‘92, he really gets it and it really connects to the medium. Whereas George Herbert Walker Bush doesn't need it. But in '94, Republicans pulled a stunning upset. They take the house for the first time in 40 years and talk radio was a huge help. And Limbaugh is made an honorary member of the freshman class and he's invited to speak at the freshman orientation where he's mobbed like a rock star, signing autographs and taking pictures and that kind of thing. It really is the eureka moment where Republicans really jumped fully onboard."

And that's kind of changed in the world with not just talk radio but then conservative cable news, which sounds a lot like talk radio, the conservative blogosphere, social media. It's really, really changed the legislative process."