(New York) There was no Republican wave in the American midterm elections and it was Donald Trump’s fault, the headlines of the powerful conservative media group of the Murdoch family pounded, a new episode of a relationship of ups and downs.
Posted at 6:46 p.m.
“Trump is the biggest loser of the Republican Party”, headlined Thursday in the columns of the wall street journal the editorial board of the business daily owned by News Corp, the group of Australian-American media mogul Rupert Murdoch, 91.
The content is not more flattering: “Since his unexpected victory in 2016 against the very unpopular Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump has a perfect record of electoral defeats”.
“He led the Republicans from fiasco to fiasco”, still asserts the “WSJ”, pointing out that several of the candidates he supported “failed at the polls in states that were clearly winnable”, such as Pennsylvania or New Hampshire.
DeSantis
It is not the first time that the media of the Murdoch family group has distanced itself from the former president and Republican billionaire. He had already been much criticized in the wall street journal after the violent assault by his supporters on the Capitol in Washington, January 6, 2021.
But this time, “it’s time for Trump to abandon politics,” writes a columnist for the New York Postthe New York tabloid of News Corp, as severe with Donald Trump as with the Democrats he pounded every day.
The one of Post caricature of the former president about to fall from a brick wall, a reference to the wall he had promised to put up on the border with Mexico to prevent immigration and “which he did not build “.
The day before, the newspaper had put on its front page Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, re-elected Tuesday evening, with this title: “DeFUTURE”. Sparkling support for Donald Trump’s strongest potential opponent in the race for the 2024 Republican nomination.
More mixed feelings on Fox News, one of the most watched channels in the United States, also owned by Rupert Murdoch.
For one of his figures, Tucker Carlson, “Trump has always had his good sides and his bad sides politically. […], but in this case it is certainly not the only factor in anything”. Another columnist, Liz Peek, clearly sided with Ron DeSantis.
Murdoch-family outlets like Fox News have a prominent place among American conservatives and could make it harder for the former president on the road to a new candidacy in 2024.
” Common interest
But since his defeat in 2020, Donald Trump, who promised a “very big announcement” on November 15, has remained a key figure for Republican activists.
“Despite my choice of so many winners, I have to put up with ‘fake news’. For me, Fox News has always been lost,” he wrote on his social network, Truth Social.
“It’s like in 2015 and 2016, an attack by the media (a collusion!); when Fox News fought me to the death until I won, then they became the nicest and the best supporters, ”added the former president in a furious statement.
Donald Trump also accuses News Corp of now rolling for Ron DeSantis, whom he nicknamed “Ron-la-Morale”.
In fact, for Mark Feldstein, professor of journalism at the University of Maryland, “relationships between Trump and the conservative media, especially those of the Murdoch empire, have had many ups and downs”.
He recalls that the billionaire has already gone to war against the channel, in 2016 when “Fox News hosts asked aggressive questions during the first televised debate of the Republican primary”, or during the 2020 presidential election when “Fox News rightly attributed the victory to Joe Biden in Arizona”.
“In both cases, the two ended up reconciling because it was in their interest,” he explains.
In his eyes, the audience and the profit will weigh more than the ideology for the channel. If Ron DeSantis “captures the imaginations of Fox (News) viewers, the network will promote him as much as they can,” to the detriment of “an overexposed old warhorse like Trump repeating his tired old mantras.”
But “of course, if Trump comes back in force, Fox [News] will take the bandwagon,” he warns.