Michael Medved Pays the Price for Not Boarding the Trump Train

This election has been miserable for a lot of people, but most of all for conservatives unwilling to betray conservativism by voicing support for Donald Trump — Michael Medved, for example:

Michael Medved is the only major nationally syndicated host of Salem Media — a fast-growing player in conservative, Christian radio and online media — who is vehemently anti-Donald Trump. (Other more regional hosts like Steve Deace are also on the Never Trump-train).

Medved has blasted Trump as “insecure, unprepared and angrily unhinged.”

Only in a miserable situation can we find out who we really are. For conservatives, Trump’s strikingly non-conservative populist progressive candidacy is such a situation.

Even Mark Levin, who makes a noisy production of his great esteem for himself as a principled constitutional conservative, has announced repeatedly that he will vote for Big Government authoritarian Donald Trump, thereby renouncing those same principles. Others in the ostentatiously principled camp have not only sold out, but have ferociously attacked those who would not join them, the most appallingly examples being Dennis Prager and William Bennett. Only dim bulbs like Sean Hannity and Michael Gallagher, who either do not to understand what Trump represents or who find national socialism appealing, have not been forced to choose between security and integrity.

Almost all of them have taken the path of least resistance, opting for security. But not Michael Medved. If self-respect came free of charge, everyone would have it. He must pay the price:

“I’m working with a syndicator that is enthusiastically pro-Trump and where all of the other syndicated hosts are pro-Trump,” Medved said. “Some more enthusiastically than others. But all pro-Trump. And it’s an awkward and uncomfortable position to be unable to board the Trump-train.”

Shortly after the Republican conventions, Medved’s show — which normally airs live in the afternoon hours around — was moved to the unenviable slot of 12 a.m. to 3 a.m. on 660 AM The Answer, the Salem affiliate in the prime Dallas market. Host Larry Elder took his slot.

Elder is not the sharpest tool in the shed. But what matters is that he enthusiastically endorses Trump.

Medved has been kicked off the lineup in Greenville, South Carolina, and also from Salem’s Decision 2016 national tour.

[A] former radio syndication executive who maintains client relationships with radio stations in several markets, said radio hosts with Salem have been threatened by executives that their schedules would be changed, or syndication deals altered, if they didn’t, at minimum, say they wanted Trump to win.

The opinion that in the long run both the conservative movement and the Republican Party will be in far better shape if Trump’s hijacking of the GOP for his own personal purposes fails is not welcome.

In a USA Today column from last month, Medved noted that his position has “generated primarily anger from our syndicator, many of our 300 local affiliates and thousands of indignant listeners.”

No doubt he has been subjected to staggeringly idiotic accusations that he likes Hillary, that he is getting paid by Hillary, that he has taken his stand to increase his audience, et cetera.

Swimming against the current is never easy. Making headway against a stampeding herd is harder still.

In contrast, Trump supporters have been rewarded:

“Year to date my audience is up just under 30 percent. The business side is great. The show has never been as booming as it is this year and I know it’s because I got this one right,” Gallagher said…

If you prefer loyal bumper sticker slogans shouted by simpletons like Hannity and Gallagher to independent voices like Medved’s, congratulations — everything is going your way.

On a tip from Varla.