As late as just yesterday, the Guardian reported that Rupert Murdoch had told Trump that Murdoch’s media empire would not support another Trump political run. Despite the fact that Hannity, Hegseth, Hutchinson, and others slobbered all over themselves last night about the greatness of Trump’s speech, the New York Post took a different tact. The NY Post largely ignored the announcement but with just enough coverage to humiliate Trump in a Post sort of way.
Florida Man Makes Announcement —Page 26
New York Post doesn’t give Trump front page 👇🼠pic.twitter.com/sZCQ2WcFR0
— Outspokenâ„¢ï¸ (@Out5p0ken) November 16, 2022
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
The morning crew on CNN had quite a laugh about the intentionally direct message. Transcript:
DON LEMON: So, boy, how things have changed. Let’s bring in now CNN political analyst and senior political correspondent for The New York Times, Maggie Haberman. She’s also the author of Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. This says everything!
MAGGIE HABERMAN: There is nobody who knows better than Rupert Murdoch that the way to upset Donald Trump is not to say his name. And so it isn’t just that he is not the full front page, that he is the banner on the bottom.
It’s that he’s identified as Florida man and they’re not trumpeting him
There is a move away from Trump. I don’t want to overstate this. He is still the frontrunner. He is still the establishment. He is still a former president. But there are a number of people in the Republican Party who are going to start making clear that they think he is really bad for the party in ways that I think they couldn’t quite articulate the same way in, say, 2016 because he didn’t have a record. January 6 hadn’t happened. We haven’t seen all the election denialism of the last 20 months. And so I think all of that becomes a compelling factor.Â
Wow. Maggie Haberman is rarely that “off” the mark regarding Trump and the reason that the GOP isn’t lining up behind him.
The GOP’s sudden resistance to Trump (Even Lindsey Graham withheld his endorsement) isn’t based upon Trump’s record or January 6th. No, the reason that Murdoch and the Republican “establishment” (Murdoch and the U.S. Senate) are staying away is that the GOP just got hammered in a midterm that, by all rights and historical trends, they should have won with a House pickup of 30 to 50 seats and taking the Senate with perhaps a 52 to 54 seat majority. Instead, had DeSantis not eviscerated five blue districts, the Democrats would likely have held a House. As it is, the GOP will probably control the House with a three to five-seat majority, and the Democrats not only kept the Senate but are on track to gain a seat.
The GOP would look and act quite differently toward Trump had they rolled through the midterms. Having lost, many are pointing the finger right at Trump, including Murdoch’s Post, where famed conservative op-ed columnist John Podhoretz wrote a week ago:
After three straight national tallies in which either he or his party or both were hammered by the national electorate, it’s time for even his stans to accept the truth: Toxic Trump is the political equivalent of a can of Raid.
What Tuesday night’s results suggest is that Trump is perhaps the most profound vote repellent in modern American history.
“Voter repellant.” That is the only real cause one need point to in order to explain the Senate’s refusal to endorse Trump and the humiliating “Florida Man” front banner. The only reason these Senators and Murdoch supported Trump in the first place was “power” and “winning.” Trump is no longer winning and will likely not see “power” ever again.
@JasonMiciak believes a day without learning is a day not lived. He is a political writer, features writer, author, and attorney. He is a Canadian-born dual citizen who spent his teen and college years in the Pacific Northwest and has since lived in seven states. He now enjoys life as a single dad of a young girl, writing from the beaches of the Gulf Coast. He loves crafting his flower pots, cooking, and currently studies philosophy of science, religion, and non-math principles behind quantum mechanics and cosmology. Please feel free to contact with any concerns.
