Murdoch’s New York Post Blasts President’s Fraud
Claims
With a scathing front-page editorial, the
Trump-friendly tabloid joined another of Rupert Murdoch’s papers, The Wall
Street Journal, in attacking the president’s attempts to undo the election
result.
Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post put more distance
between itself and President Trump with a blistering front-page editorial on
Monday.
Marc Tracy
By Marc
Tracy
Dec. 28,
2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/28/business/media/new-york-post-trump-editorial.html
“Give it
up, Mr. President — for your sake and the nation’s.”
In a blunt
editorial, Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, a tabloid that promoted Donald J.
Trump long before he went into politics, told the president to end his attempts
to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election.
The Monday
front page showed a downcast president and the all-caps headline “Stop the
Insanity.” The publication’s website also featured the editorial, written by
The Post’s editorial board, at the top of the home page.
“Mr.
President, it’s time to end this dark charade,” began the editorial.
It blasted
Mr. Trump’s suggestion that the House and Senate try to disrupt the tallying of
Electoral College votes on Jan. 6. It also ridiculed Sidney Powell, a former
lawyer for the Trump campaign who pushed conspiracy theories about a Venezuelan
plot to rig voting machines in the United States. And it said a suggestion by
Michael T. Flynn, the former lieutenant general who served as Mr. Trump’s first
national security adviser, to impose martial law was “tantamount to treason.”
“You have
tweeted that, as long as Republicans have ‘courage,’ they can overturn the
results and give you four more years in office,” the Post editorial said.
“In other
words,” it continued, “you’re cheering for an undemocratic coup.”
The Post
helped make Mr. Trump a New York celebrity decades ago, and it was an early
backer of his political ambitions, endorsing him in the Republican primary race
ahead of the 2016 election.
In January
2019, as Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign was underway, the paper brought back
its former longtime editor in chief, Col Allan, an Australian tabloid wizard
who was once seen wearing a Make America Great Again cap in the newsroom. Mr.
Allan, in the role of newsroom adviser, helped shape the paper’s election
coverage, and The Post’s editorial board gave Mr. Trump its endorsement in a
front-page editorial on Oct. 26 headlined “Make America Great Again, Again.”
In an
interview with The New York Times shortly after Joseph R. Biden Jr. emerged as
the winner of the presidential election, Mr. Allan said he was calling an end
to his four-decade career at Murdoch papers in the United States and Australia.
And on Nov. 7, The Post’s editorial board published some tough-love advice to
Mr. Trump: “President Trump, your legacy is secure — stop the ‘stolen election’
rhetoric.”
The
conservative editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, another paper
controlled by Mr. Murdoch’s News Corp, has taken a similar line. “President
Trump accomplished a great deal in four years, but as he leaves office he can’t
seem to help reminding Americans why they denied him a second term,” began a
Dec. 20 editorial headlined “Trump’s Bad Exit.”
It
concluded: “Mr. Trump doesn’t want to admit he lost, and he can duck the
inauguration if he likes. But his sore loser routine is beginning to grate even
on millions who voted for him.”
Television
personalities in the Murdoch media empire have also changed their tune.
Maria
Bartiromo and Lou Dobbs, of Fox Business, and Jeanine Pirro, of Fox News,
seemed to back attempts by the president and his acolytes to undo the election
results — until recently. This month, the programs hosted by the three anchors
included three-minute segments intended to debunk on-air claims that the 2020
vote had been rigged. The segments ran after Antonio Mugica, the head of the
election technology company Smartmatic, threatened legal action against media
companies that had broadcast statements suggesting that the company had a role
in the vote fraud.
In its
front-page attack on Monday, The Post’s editorial board, run by its longtime
editor, Mark Q. Cunningham, appealed directly to Mr. Trump.
“We
understand, Mr. President, that you’re angry that you lost,” it said. “But to
continue down this road is ruinous.”
“Democrats
will try to write you off as a one-term aberration and, frankly, you’re helping
them do it,” the editorial continued. “The King Lear of Mar-a-Lago, ranting
about the corruption of the world.”
In
conclusion, it said: “If you insist on spending your final days in office
threatening to burn it all down, that will be how you are remembered. Not as a
revolutionary, but as the anarchist holding the match.”
Marc Tracy
covers print and digital media. He previously covered college sports. @marcatracy
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