Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post didn’t waste a minute to tear Donald Trump down after he announced his 2024 presidential bid Tuesday night. Wednesday morning’s front page read in the lower bar, “FLORIDA MAN MAKES ANNOUNCEMENT,” and insultingly stuck the news on page 26 under the headline, “Been there, Don that.”
Former President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he will seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, despite his party asking him to hold off the launch of his campaign until after the Dec. 6 runoff for the Georgia Senate seat.
The twice-impeached former president aims to become only the second-ever commander-in-chief elected to two nonconsecutive terms.
“Hopefully TODAY will turn out to be one of the most important days in the history of our Country!” he posted on his Truth Social platform early Tuesday, teasing his formal announcement, which was littered with inaccuracies and conspiracy theories about everything from tariffs on China to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
The Post wasn’t having it. “With just 720 days to go before the next election, a Florida retiree made the surprise announcement Tuesday night that he was running for President,” the Murdoch-owned newspaper mocked.
“In a move no political pundit saw coming, avid golfer Donald J. Trump kicked things off at Mar-a-Lago, his resort and classified-documents library,” the article stated sarcastically, referring to the fact that the former president held more than 300 classified documents at the resort. The FBI seized 11,000 documents from the estate on Aug. 8 and the Justice Department has an ongoing investigation into the former president for mishandling confidential records.
The Post continued to cheapen Trump’s qualifications and mock his old age: “Trump, famous for gold-plated lobbies and for firing people on reality television, will be 78 in 2024.”
The article also stated that Trump’s “cholesterol levels are unknown, but his favorite food is a charred steak with ketchup,” before concluding the piece with, “Trump also served as the 45th president.”
This is Murdoch’s latest attempt to ruin the former president’s reputation and lessen support for his leadership in the Republican Party. Just this week, the Wall Street Journal, which is also Murdoch-owned, wrote an editorial tearing Trump down.
The op-ed spelled out two reasons why Trump announced his campaign early.
“The first is to try to clear the Republican field of potential competitors, especially Govs. Ron DeSantis and Glenn Youngkin, who have shown they can win in competitive states,” the piece stated.
“Mr. Trump also wants to get ahead of a possible Justice Department indictment. If Mr. Trump is already announced as a candidate seeking President Biden’s job, he figures he can portray an indictment by Attorney General Merrick Garland as political and rally Republicans to his side,” the Journal wrote, adding that the fate of his favored candidate in Georgia, former NFL player Herschel Walker, “is incidental to Mr. Trump’s ambition.”
The piece mentioned that Trump had “many policy successes” during his four-year term, but detailed that “his character flaws—narcissism, lack of self-control, abusive treatment of advisers, his puerile vendettas—interfered with that success.”
