This is interesting. The Conservative Talk Radio hosts in Milwaukee uniformly don’t support Trump. They all think he is a charlatan and that Trump supporters are just engaging in the worst sort of wishful thinking. They don’t much like or approve of Trump’s reality show persona as he strives to kick the other competitors off the island. I heard Trump on the Vikki McKenna Radio Show on WISN and he presented himself very well. Trump is a superb salesman. He knows how to keep on topic, promote his product and avoid answering the smart-alecky gotcha questions that hostile reporters of every stripe are wont to pose to candidates. Vikki McKenna kept asking him what the border wall looked like. Clearly she thinks it is a canard, a slogan, and doesn’t think it will work. However the evidence of Hungary and Israel is that a border wall or fence will work exactly as advertised, especially if an honest effort is made in its construction and implementation. And if the Democrats don’t sabotage it, as they do with every policy they don’t like (and even many that they do). But Trump deftly side-stepped the question rather than get bogged down in details he knows most listeners aren’t interested in hearing about. Trump spoke with Vikki McKenna for about 25 minutes, it appeared to me he hung up because he thought the interview was over as there was a pause. When they had reached a point of agreement he said let’s part on a good note. In any event, by that stage McKenna’s questions and assertions were just becoming repetitious pilings on and the was nothing to gained by staying on the phone. Reporters and media pundits often act like cops or something and that somehow you are obligated to stand still and answer their snarky questions until they dismiss you. As Scott Adams (the “Dilbert” creator) observed is a great communicator. Trump supporters are extremely loyal and won’t be dissuaded. Trump is a blank slate on which they are writing their hopes and fears. As well as their hatred and disgust with the oppressive “Political Correctness” culture that threatens and harasses them daily. For that reason it is Trump’s “incorrectness” and combativeness that appeals to them the most. The problem is of course that you don’t really know what you are getting with Trump. He professed to be a Liberal for a lot longer than he has claimed to be a Conservative . So we really don’t know if he as had a sincere change of heart, an epiphany, or if he is just an opportunist and will revert to being a New York Liberal and hand the Democrats most of what they want once he is in office. He might just be another Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jesse Ventura and be in over his head, have no real agenda and be unable to accomplish anything. Another promising outsider who turned out to be a disappointment in other words. We are just supposed to trust that his instincts are good and that he possesses the will and the ability to undo the damage to the country that Obama and the Democrats have done. Then there is the question of Trump’s business deals that strike many people as shady at best, although in the aggregate he has been more successful in his business dealings than many Presidential candidates throughout history have been. With candidates like Walker and Cruz we know exactly what we would be getting since they both have political track records of being stalwart and reliable Conservative reformers who will stand up to the Democrats. Trump has no such performance record. Again we are just supposed to trust that his instincts are good and that he will kick the PC Democrats’ ass rather than kiss it. Of course the bottom line is that regardless of Donald Trump’s flaws and liabilities, Trump Presidency is a much more preferable prospect to a Clinton or Sanders Presidency. With Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders we know EXACTLY what we would be getting as well and it would be a disaster for the country. It would finish President Obama’s ruinous socialist / multicultural “transformation”. The fact is the Left has done so much damage to America that it may already be too late to fix things. It’s hard to see how the country’s 20 Trillion dollar debt (and climbing) is going to have a good ending. So it may not matter who is elected President, but least we might have an outside chance of salvaging our future freedom and prosperity, provided that a bold and courageous Conservative reformer could succeed in getting elected.
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BROOKFIELD, Wis. (AP) — Donald Trump is trying to defy convention yet again in the 2016 race for president — this time, by winning an election in Wisconsin without the support of the state's influential conservative talk radio hosts.
The Republican front-runner tried to lay some groundwork for his campaign in interviews Monday with three of the state's leading conservative talkers, including WTMJ radio's Charlie Sykes — to whom Trump confessed on-air not knowing that Sykes is a leading voice against his candidacy. Two interviews later in the day didn't go much better.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker turned to Sykes' Milwaukee-based show to announce he was endorsing Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, and not Trump, in a Tuesday morning interview. Cruz's supporters cheered loudly as Walker's endorsement was played live over the sound system at a rally outside of Milwaukee.
"Ted Cruz is in the best position by far to both win the nomination of the Republican Party and then go on to defeat Hillary Clinton in the fall," Walker said.
Walker aide Stephan Thompson said Sykes and other conservative radio hosts in the state drive the agenda in GOP primaries.
"They are the biggest endorsement," Thompson said.
Walker would know.
He won the 2010 Republican primary for governor, and later the office itself, with support from Sykes and his unofficial counterpart in Milwaukee, WISN radio's Mark Belling.
That year, Walker beat Republican rival Mark Neumann overwhelmingly among voters within earshot of Sykes and others on the air in Milwaukee — especially in the suburban counties that surround the state's largest city. That's the core of the metro area's conservative radio audience and home to almost half of the state's Republican voters.
Two years later, Sykes and other conservative hosts backed Mitt Romney in the state's Republican presidential primary. The former Massachusetts governor won by crushing former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum by more than 20 percentage points in the Milwaukee area.
Trump didn't appear all that ready for his round of talk radio interviews on Monday. For example, when asked about his past criticisms of Walker on Sykes' show, the billionaire businessman failed to mention that he donated $10,000 to Walker's re-election campaign in 2014.
The lack of preparation was notable given the importance of the state's 42 delegates. A solid win in Wisconsin by Cruz would likely require Trump to win the five remaining winner-take-all contests to avoid scrapping for the nomination at a contested national convention this summer.
Sykes in the morning and Belling in the afternoon — both deeply critical of Trump and his candidacy — have built a wide following in nearly 60 years combined behind the mic. They reach a metro Milwaukee audience of more than 500,000 people a day, according to their stations, and more among those living in the state's interior.
There are other conservative talk radio hosts at those stations, too, as well as other voices in pivotal parts of the state, including Jerry Bader in Green Bay and Vicki McKenna in Madison.
On Monday, Bader hammered Trump in an interview for his threats to file a lawsuit over how Louisiana selects its delegates to the Republican National Convention.
Trump went on to hang up on McKenna at the end of a combative interview, during which she challenged his incorrect assertions that Cruz's campaign was behind an ad campaign that featured a risque photo of his wife, Melania.
"There's just something about Wisconsin that's got just a really robust conservative talk radio infrastructure," said Collin Roth, managing editor of the conservative website Right Wisconsin, for which Sykes also writes.
Sykes endorsed Cruz last week and invited him to attend a conservative forum in GOP-heavy Waukesha County to Milwaukee's west. Sykes had long been a vocal opponent of Trump, a fact lost on the billionaire businessman when Sykes interviewed him by phone Monday morning.
"Before you called into my show, did you know I'm a hashtag Never Trump guy?" Sykes asked, referring to a Twitter designation for people united against Trump's candidacy. "That, I did not know," Trump replied, even though it was Trump's staff that called to set up the interview.
Sykes had asked Trump earlier in the interview if he would apologize for indirectly mocking Cruz's wife. He was referring to Trump's retweeting last week of an unflattering image of Heidi Cruz.
"I didn't start it. He started it. If he hadn't started it, nothing would have happened," Trump replied.
"We're not on a playground. We're running for president of the United States," Sykes replied.
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Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa.
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