DANIEL BONGINO

Former President Donald Trump reached just under 700,000 measurable TV viewers over the weekend in his return to the stage at a North Carolina political event.

Multiple people who have spoken with Donald Trump and his team in recent weeks say they sense a shift, with the former president increasingly acting and talking as though he plans to mount another White House bid.

Popular commentator Dan Bongino will be getting a weekly Saturday night program on Fox News Channel starting on June 5.

FILE - Dana Loesch, spokesperson for the National Rifle Association, speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), at National Harbor, Md., on Feb. 22, 2018. Radio America announced Tuesday that it had signed Loesch to a multi-year contract extension. She's been doing a show in the same afternoon time slot that Limbaugh occupied since 2014, and is now on about 200 radio stations. On her show, which airs in nearly 200 radio stations, Loesch said she didn't want listeners to feel like they're being lectured to or yelled at. AdRadio America says it has added a handful of stations for Loesch since Limbaugh's death.

FILE - Radio personality Rush Limbaugh introduces President Donald Trump at the start of a campaign rally on Nov. 5, 2018, in Cape Girardeau, Mo. Limbaugh's radio syndicators say they plan to keep his voice alive. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson, File)NEW YORK – The replacement for Rush Limbaugh is... Rush Limbaugh, at least in part. “No one can replace Rush Limbaugh, and Premiere Networks will continue to provide millions of loyal listeners with the voice of Rush for the long term,” said Rachel Nelson, company spokeswoman.

FILE - Conservative commentator Dan Bongino speaks at the Conservative Political Action Committee annual conference in National Harbor, Md., on March 6, 2014. Bongino has been tapped to host a radio show in the same afternoon time slot as the late Rush Limbaughs radio show, Cumulus Medias Westwood One announced on Wednesday. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)NEW YORK – Conservative commentator Dan Bongino has joined a scramble to inherit the radio talk show mantle left behind by the death of Rush Limbaugh. Cumulus Media’s Westwood One said Bongino will begin a new three-hour radio program from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. Eastern, the same time slot Limbaugh occupied before his death due to lung cancer in February. “I’m excited to embrace the immense power of radio to connect with my listeners live for three hours every day,” said Bongino.

“As conservative media proliferated, it put a lot more pressure on the hosts to move to the right and embrace warfare politics,” Rosenwald said. This is a business.”Hemmer said she expects the Electoral College vote will begin to shift the narrative from “the election is undecided" to “the election was stolen.”The difficulty of that transition was evident in coverage of the Electoral College voting. With Congress meeting Jan. 6 to formally count the Electoral College vote, Kelly said, “the way I read it, we won't have a president-elect until then.”CNN treated it like a second election night, keeping a running tally of Electoral College votes on the screen. The Electoral College vote led Bret Baier's newscast, which was not a given considering COVID-19 vaccinations began Monday. Meanwhile, daytime anchor Bill Hemmer's hourlong newscast didn't even mention the Electoral College.

FILE- People pass the News Corporation headquarters building and Fox News studios in New York on Aug. 1, 2017. Several Fox News Channel executives and on-air personalities were exposed last week to a person on a private plane who later tested positive for COVID-19. It has led to some restrictions at the network. Anchor Bret Baier said Monday that he's tested negative three times in the wake of the flight and will be doing his nightly news show from home this week. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

FILE- People pass the News Corporation headquarters building and Fox News studios in New York on Aug. 1, 2017. Despite intense pressure from Trump's team, Fox's decision team has stood fast with its election night call of Arizona for Biden. Fox has Biden with 264 electoral votes, and if Fox calls either Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada or North Carolina for the Democrat, that would give him enough to win the presidency. Trump’s campaign has legal observers watching the vote count in Philadelphia and several key Pennsylvania counties. Bill Hemmer, who has been closely monitoring the vote count on Fox, told viewers that “we'll see” if that call needed to be adjusted.

Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, arrives to watch Amy Coney Barrett take the Constitutional Oath on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Monday, Oct. 26, 2020. Ginni Thomas is using her Facebook page to amplify unsubstantiated claims of corruption by Joe Biden. She is a longtime conservative activist who asked her more than 10,000 followers Oct. 26, 2020, to consider sharing a link focused on alleged corruption by Biden and his son, Hunter, as well as claims that social media companies are censoring reports about the Bidens. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, arrives to watch Amy Coney Barrett take the Constitutional Oath on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Monday, Oct. 26, 2020. Ginni Thomas is using her Facebook page to amplify unsubstantiated claims of corruption by Joe Biden. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)WASHINGTON – The wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is using her Facebook page to amplify unsubstantiated claims of corruption by Joe Biden. On Oct. 12, she linked to a video by conservative commentator Dan Bongino asserting that Biden is suffering from dementia. A few hours earlier, Thomas complained about apparent collusion between the media and the Biden campaign to shield the candidate from tough questions.

But when it comes to the sexual assault allegation leveled against Joe Biden, his Democratic rival, the president has been unusually reticent. And maybe it is a false accusation. But in resisting the urge to seize on Reade's allegation, Trump is acknowledging the bind he's in with women, who could help decide the election. “In a dramatic shift, Biden now says ‘believe women’ doesn’t actually mean ‘believe women.’”It's a message the Trump campaign is reinforcing to supporters. For its part, the Biden campaign has sometimes struggled to respond to the Reade allegation.

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Betty Gilpin in a scene from "The Hunt." (Patti Perret/Universal Pictures via AP)NEW YORK, N.Y. – Last fall, the violent satire “The Hunt” became ensnarled by some of the very politics it so playfully parodies. Universal Pictures pulled “The Hunt” from release after a series of deadly shootings and wave of right-wing criticism, including from President Trump. It’s a heightened, bipartisan farce that puts the red-vs-blue vitriol of social media into a bloody action-movie blender. “We were living through a version of what happens in ‘The Hunt,’ in a way,” says Zobel.