Barry Diller: Trump is a 'self-promoting huckster'
As we edge ever closer to 2016, some are developing contingency plans for a Trump nomination. Founder and chairman of IAC Interactive Barry Diller, for one, knows what he’ll do if the GOP frontrunner nabs the nomination.
“If Donald Trump doesn’t fall, I’ll either move out of the country or join the resistance,” said the billionaire media executive in a conversation with Erik Schatzker at the Bloomberg Markets Most Influential Summit.
Diller continued with some grade-A shade:
Schatzker: Aren’t you already part of the resistance?
Diller: No, I mean, what will be necessary. The real resistance.
Schatzker: Is he the only candidate you’re worried about?
Diller: No…by the way, I am truly, I’m not moving, and I don’t think I’m joining the resistance… I take any bet, that it won’t happen.
In other words, a Trump nomination is worth defecting from the U.S.—but that would never happen. Diller continued to criticize Trump while displaying a pretty deft knowledge of current reality television:
I just think it’s a phenomenon of reality television as politics. And I think that that is how it started. Reality television, as you all know, is based on conflict. Nobody wants to watch reality television of two housewives sitting in a room, talking about where they’re going to go get their hair done. It’s all about conflict. And Donald Trump, all he is is about conflict, and it’s all about negative conflict.
And continued:
He’s a self promoting huckster who found a vein. A vein of meanness and nastiness… He has no communication strategy except to be what he has always been: A nasty, mean person, criticizing people, and doing silly showman stuff. Where did he get a national reputation? From The Apprentice. What did he do on The Apprentice? He fired people. Now, that lasts a little while until it doesn’t last, and then you’ve got to get B and D celebrities to do the same kind of firing thing.
Trump, for his part, called Diller an “angry fool” in a tweet:
Maybe these two could bury the hatchet and develop a reality show where Trump discusses where he gets his hair done with two housewives, which I would most definitely watch.
Danielle Wiener-Bronner is a news reporter.