It certainly appears that Mr. Fuentes took the offer that his immediate predecessor turned down. Isn’t it fascinating to observe how the self-styled “most-canceled man in America” is suddenly being granted mainstream platforms?
At least we have the answer to who the next major gatekeeper will be. It should be amusing to see Mr. Fuentes doing interviews with Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Dennis Prager, and the Weinstein brothers. The conversations about conversations should be informative indeed.
There is an informative commentary on US politics in Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon Boy.
Uncle Henry sat down. “Otto could speak off the cuff as easily as you could spit prune pits. He could talk for a full hour with only one or two thoughts to keep him company, and when people suggested he run for Congress, he said he’d be delighted. He had done well for himself, selling flavored grain alcohol to nondrinkers, but the market was drying up now that Montanans could walk into any pharmacy and purchase all the cocaine they needed.
“Otto campaigned on the back of a manure spreader. He said, ‘This is the first time I have spoken from a Republican platform.’ He made speeches against Wall Street and the railroad barons and their terrible greed at the expense of the honest workingman and tradesman, and he was elected with sixty percent of the vote and went to Washington, where he discovered that his outspoken opposition to the railroads had raised the cash value of his vote on railroad bills considerably. A Republican in favor of free enterprise got chicken feed for his vote compared to the People’s Champion from the High Plains.
“Otto once told my father that bribery was simply a case of the free market at work simplifying the decision-making process. He had a fine time in Congress and did not overexert himself. He met with the Northern Pacific and Great Northern lawyers, who were helpful in advising him on regulatory matters. He passed antitrust laws that had about as much effect as a fart in a cyclone, and every two years he put on his old clothes and came home to roam the state and thunder against the Special Interests and the Malefactors of Wealth, and the Republicans put up some squinty old guy with bad breath, and Otto was elected to four terms.
“He moved to New York City after he got beat, running for a fifth term. There had been a bill that would allow the railroads to trade parts of their original land grant for parts of the Crow Reservation and thus open up forty square miles for copper mining, and Otto was going to vote for it, and then Balestrand started talking to him about the Indians and what a rough deal they got, how they were robbed, and the two of them shared a bottle of O-ho-no-ma-wa-hee, and Otto’s conscience was aroused after years of lying dormant. He voted nay. The bill passed, of course, and in the fall, the Republicans put up a cowboy against him, a Rough Rider in the Spanish War, a husband and a father of six, with a level gaze and a square jaw and a cleft in his chin, and the Republican newspapers accused Otto of wanting to give Montana back to the savages, and he was thrashed in the election.“