Though Barry Diller has threatened to flee the country or rebel if Donald Trump becomes president, he’s not packing his bags just yet.
Diller is entirely unconvinced that Trump, whom he calls a mean, “self-promoting huckster,” will ever make to the White House. The Donald, Barry said, has nothing to offer the voters and no communication strategy, he told Bloomberg .
All he has proven to the country is that he’s a “nasty, mean person” who struck a note with similarly-minded people and whose only talent is making noise to make a buck.
“I don’t think it’s got anything to do with American anger at the elites. He has no communication strategy—except to be what he has always been, a nasty mean person criticizing people and doing, you know, silly kind of showman stuff. Where did he get a national reputation? From ‘The Apprentice.’ What did he do on ‘The Apprentice?’ He fired people.”
And it seems that Barry, a fellow billionaire who owns IAC Interactive, isn’t the only one whose grown tired of him. According to an analysis by the New York Times , it seems America has moved on from the Donald much like it would a boring reality TV show.
Diller is worth $2.5 billion to Trump’s $4.5 billion, and his news media businesses include Match.com, the Daily Beast , and HomeAdvisor.com, CNN Money added. Barry has used his money to forward mostly Democratic candidates — Hillary Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Senator Charles Schumer of New York, and gay rights activist Sean Eldridge, who ran unsuccessfully for Congress.
Though Diller was serious when he threatened to leave the U.S. if he managed to become president, he said he’d put his money on the GOP candidate’s failure.
“I just think it’s a phenomenon of reality television as politics. I think that that is how it started, reality television as you all know is based on conflict… Donald Trump, all he is about conflict, and all that he is is negative conflict.”
Trump’s popularity also hasn’t impressed the fellow billionaire. If the Times’ analysis proves correct, the American public isn’t impressed anymore, either.
Back in July, he garnered lots of attention when he recited Sen. Lindsey Graham’s cell phone number to the entire world. The stunt earned the candidate 34,000 mentions in print, broadcast, and social media the next day. Monday, he tried to generate the same attention when he sent a case of Trump-brand bottled water to Sen. Marco Rubio — a dig at his tendency to sweat profusely and drink lots of water — but no one noticed. The next day, the insult got him only 7,500 mentions.
What’s behind this decline? Lack of substance, according to conservative commentator Erick Erickson.
“It’s kind of a like a season of TV shows: Eventually, people burn out on them. We’ve had a season of Trump and the plot hasn’t changed, there’s no new twist, and people are starting to move on to other TV shows.”
Trump’s less-than-stellar performance during the September 16 debate may have convinced supporters that their favorite candidate doesn’t have much to offer, and he’s also repeatedly alienated Fox News, which has a lot of influence over GOP voters.
Conservative media has moved on to Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, and Sen. Ted Cruz, even as CNN still relies on the billionaire’s antics for ratings. They’re less of an attention-getter these days though, but that hasn’t discouraged Donald one bit.
“I’m not going anywhere. I’m leading every poll. I’m going to win, and I’m going to make our country great again.”
Barry Diller would disagree.
[Photos Courtesy Isaac Brekken, Dave Kotinsky / Getty Images]
