Following the US Midterm elections, significant media outlets owned by Rupert Murdoch are turning on Donald Trump. It comes as the former President is expected to announce that he will be running in the 2024 race for the White House.
There is a brutal editorial in the Wall Street Journal. Entitled “Trump Is the GOP’s Biggest Loser” it asks:
What will Democrats do when Donald Trump isn’t around to lose elections?
It noted that “Trumpy Republican candidates failed at the ballot box in states that were clearly winnable” and “since his unlikely victory in 2016 against the widely disliked Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump has a perfect record of electoral defeat.”
A similar theme was owned in the Murdoch-owned tabloid the New York Post.
The front page from the day before also backed Republican rival Ron DeSantis:
Elsewhere, a piece on the New York Post‘s website hit back at the former President’s criticism of the media, which he branded “the enemy of the people“. I have not tuned into Fox News, but Trump was nowhere to be seen on the homepage or the politics page of its website when I was writing this post. (The Georgia Republican was endorsed by Trump, a decision criticised in the aforementioned WSJ editorial.)
This is not the first time Murdoch’s outlets have turned on Donald Trump. It is perfectly possible they will swing in behind him again, although the apparent backing of DeSantis does, to someone outside the US, seem rather significant.
One thing is for sure though. Rupert Murdoch does not like a loser.