This is a very interesting development. I was thinking that Fox News might be making its way back into the Trump corner because Ron DeSantis has been listing to starboard and taking on water lately. Evidently not.
I’m sure Rupert Murdoch has some kind of a game plan to salvage DeSantis, or maybe he’s looking for other “talent” on the GOP bench. Lots of luck with that. In all events, this particular stance on Trump hit the stands around 3:00 a.m. ET, by my reckoning, and this is on the very same day as Donald Trump’s kickoff rally in Waco, Texas Saturday night.
I see this as a declaration of war. I don’t see how Fox News is coming back into the Trump column after this. Of course, we live in a post-normal, post-reality day and age and anything is possible, but for the moment, that’s how I’m calling this shot. The title of this opus is, Trump won’t change and that shows he can’t win. The byline is New York Post Editorial Board.
This guy.
As some of his allies are trying to rewrite January 6 as an afternoon stroll, Donald Trump is having none of it.
In the face of a possible criminal case in New York, he screamed that “death and destruction” would follow any indictment.
He posed with a baseball bat aimed at the head of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
THIS is Donald Trump.
Let’s pause for a minute and parse through this. What’s being said here, is Trump has allies who are willing to rewrite history for him but he’s too damn stupid to take the cue and go along with that and act like a pacifist these days. No, dammit, he’s got to pour gasoline on the fire with more incendiary insanity! That’s my reading between the lines, in all events.
And as you read this editorial, notice the style. It’s all short talking points. There is no exposition here. My take on that is that the Editorial Board is taking their cue directly from the owner and their assignment is to take the basic points and stretch them out so that the argument is clear. In over half a century of reading editorials, I can tell you that stylistically, this is one of a kind in my experience.
But rather than seek his vindication in the courtroom, or even just make an impassioned speech, Trump wants to inspire a mob.
Time and time again, Trump’s responses have been unhinged, vindicative [sic]and self-defeating.
And don’t buy for a second when he says he’s “fighting for you.”
If you actually “rose up” and were arrested, Trump would abandon you, just as he has every ally who wasn’t useful to him anymore.
You see how every paragraph is one sentence? If you turned this in as a homework assignment in journalism class, I think you would receive a low grade. But here we have an editorial board of a major metropolitan newspaper doing it this way.
The message that is burning through, at least to me, is that, “this effing idiot has been given every chance in the book and then some and he’s too *%@$^ stupid to pick up the cues and help himself!” Again, my interpretation. And I can almost hear Murdoch cursing as he throws something across the room, while dictating this outline, “And after ALL that EYE did for him!” Dr. Murdoch-stein does not like it that his monster is now rampaging out of control. Not one bit.
Read the rest of the piece, how it goes on about Trump stewing at Mar-a-Lago and out for revenge. This is Murdoch-ese for, “The dumb son-of-a-bitch can’t keep his eyes on the prize, his eyes are on his own navel.” Again, me putting words in Murdoch’s mouth but I don’t think this interpretation is too far off the money.
And here’s the bottom line:
Less rage and more rational action to fix the problems facing our nation.
You want a leader who will fight for you?
Then you have to pick someone who can actually get elected.
Republicans can’t throw away their shot in 2024.
Wow. Hot diggity damn. The New York Post just came out and said that Trump can’t get elected in 2024 and the GOP can’t flush another election down the toilet.
I concur. I think that any rational thinker of either party feels this way, except of course for the hard core MAGAs whose magical thinking makes them believe that Trump will soon start walking on the Potomac and head straight back to Pennsylvania Avenue and put all his enemies in Guantanamo.
This is no small deal. This is a direct rebuke of Trump’s threats of death and destruction. Murdoch has had it. He’s clearly rallying his media empire against Trump. Meanwhile, as stated in an earlier piece on this site, the latest Morning Consult poll taken on March 21 has Trump polling at 54% to DeSantis at 26%.
So what’s a media mogul to do? The Republicans polled came down in Trump’s camp decisively. Murdoch is saying that the GOP can’t afford to lose another election. That’s true enough. On these facts, it looks like a Mexican standoff. Maybe Trump and DeSantis should put on black and white hats and see who can beat whom to the draw on Main Street.
I have no idea how what this fundamental disconnect between the way the party is polling and Murdoch’s fervent desire to be rid of Trump is going to work out. But I can say with assurance, that Murdoch is hell bent to shut down Trump. That’s glaringly obvious.
And consider the paradox here: the mouth organ of the Republican party seeks to put down the frontrunner of the Republican party? Say whut? Yes, wrap your head around that one.
Let’s see what this new editorial slant looks like on Fox News. This is starting to get good. And let’s see the more erudite and polished version of these views in the Wall Street Journal. I’m keeping my eye peeled for that.
The first sentence of your final paragraph is the key point to watch. Quite literally. The typical MAGA goobers out there don’t read the Wall Street Journal, or even the NY Post. They mostly get their (mis)information from Fox. Oh, some of them pay attention to OAN, Newsmax and other media outlets if they can find them but Fox is still the giant hog in the pig stye that is the right-wing TV world of what they call news. Murdoch floats trial balloons now and then via the Wall Street Journal and NY Post, and even a tiny “road flare” on Fox with the morning show or Ingraham (the woman of course is the one tasked with ever so slightly being less than completely worshipful of Trump to gauge viewer reaction) but unless and until both the morning couch crew and the evening “Three Hour White Power Hour” trio give Fox viewers a day-in and day-out dose of this kind of talk it’s still nothing more than Near Beer. (If you’ve never tried Near Beer don’t bother. It’s awful, and of course without alcohol has no “kick”) Speaking for myself, and going back to my time as a jarhead grunt this is nothing more than a probe to see if there’s any weakness in a defensive position, but not an actual attack. Only if the TV personalities directly take on Trump like this will I believe Murdoch/Fox has decided to go to “war” and destroy Trump.
If someone stated the magats were all functionally illiterate, I would have an extremely hard time refuting it. I doubt many of them read anything at all-maybe f.b. posts which are not only sent to them according to their warped views, but also based on their lack of anything approaching intelligence.
As for murdoch’s little jab, I imagine the magats now think being called bat shit crazy is a badge of honor. I reckon they all have been labeled as such over the years and now that their turd emperor wears the same label…hell, they’re pleased as punch.
They read Breitbart and a couple of other fringe nut job websites. Most don’t live in cities,, and even the Post is suspect because it is the NY Post, and they hate NY
You could be right, Denis. But consider this: Murdoch and Fox News is the mouthpiece for the GOP and that’s been the case for 26 years now. If he seriously does not want the GOP to nominate Trump, then he’s going to have to do something. So maybe this is just a trial balloon but it seems intense for a trial balloon.
I think, just in common sense terms, that the way to put Trump behind is to put somebody else first and I guess that would be DeSantis. Maybe Fox News will soon be all Ron, all the time. That will be an interesting look.
“Maybe Trump and DeSantis should put on black and white hats and see who can beat whom to the draw on Main Street.”
Trump would hire a replacement and then stiff them on payment. He would never do anything to personally endanger himself.
You write that as if DeSantis would actually show up in person.
He’s got as much (or as little) of a spine as Trump. I don’t know what he’s got on the Florida legislators or Supreme Court justices who’ve effectively let him take over their jobs but he’s a coward at heart (as well as a bully–but, then again, bullies are generally cowards when faced with someone who’ll actually stand up to them).
You know him well.
Funny how it’s only NOW that the folks at the Post see Trump for the violent idiot he is instead of that time when he literally said that he could kill someone in Times Square and get away with it.
Back then, that was just “folksy exaggeration” and nothing that any “rational” person should be concerned about. (Kind of like how no one on that side asked what “Make America Great Again” really meant. If a Democratic candidate had adopted that as a campaign phrase, he or she would’ve been eviscerated by the right-wing media for daring to suggest that America had ever NOT been “great.” But Trump said it and the right-wing let it slide without so much as a sigh.)
To paraphrase Emerson: a man is usually more concerned with his pocketbook than his principles. In America, given our tv/media addiction, and the dwindling of true education, we’ve become a school of fish, darting around, driven by the lust for material comfort and driven by fear. That’s how a career criminal huckster could create a fake persona on a reality TV show, and the country bought it, albeit with putin’s thumb on the scale. We’ve apparently become a rudderless ship of fools, allowing the billionaire class to make the rules that enrich their destructive greedy pockets. Consequences be damned. Then we allow war criminals,(bush), and domestic criminals,(nixon/trump), to have ultimate political power to the destruction of us all. Just look at one example: the cannabis laws put in place contrary to known facts, by Nixon, to lock up protesters and civil rights activists in the late sixties and early seventies. The Laguardia report in 1944, paid for by taxpayers, clearly indicated there was no proof of harm or danger to the citizens. At the same time the military handed out cigarettes to troops with the most addictive substance known, nicotine. The tobacco companies lied, denied, and hid the evidence showing the medical risk of a smoking habit, just as the fossil fuel industry hid the effects of burning fossil fuel. These remain legal although millions die yearly around the globe due to effects of smoking, climate change, etc. Yet the cannabis laws remain, criminalizing millions for no good reason, while the criminals profiting off of actual dangerous products walk. What’s the cost? Immeasurable. We give the military close to a trillion dollars a year, more than the next nine nations combined, while children go hungry, homeless, and uneducated. What’s the cost? Immeasurable. The examples are endless. Yet the voters have gone along, continuing to allow these things to be law. Our time is running out for our collective stupidity, indifference, and selfishness. Now we’re on the precipice in a number of ways. Blend in our cultural apathy and acceptance of hypocrisy, and you have a perfect storm of evil. Darwin outlined how this works. Survival depends on adapting. We either change our ways, or we will go the way of all the species WE destroyed. Fact. Planet don’t lie…people do. Lies have a cost. Oh, and if any believe some divine force will step in and save us…as a Religion major from the oldest state university, I must point out the evidence doesn’t support that magical thinking. Just ask the 23 people just wiped out in Mississippi by a tornado. What makes you more special than them? Nothing. Time to grow up!
The gullibility of people nowadays stuns me. What happened to good, old fashioned American horse sense?
Went by way of the dinosaur.
That picture is a direct threat! One more criminal charge for Traitor Tot!
I was sort of wondering if threatening a public official had suddenly become legal.
Traitor Tot tries to look like a bada$$ in that picture, but let him take a swing at me! I am an old man who has to walk with a walker (balance issues with neuropathy in my feet and legs) but I will have him on the floor picking his teeth out of the carpet within seconds!!
A sight I would love to see, believe me. :))
Those one sentence paragraphs appeal to short attention spans. They are basically bullet points, the way in which the U.S. military writes. (Jim Wright of Stonekettle Station uses that style. )Think of it as a great example of the KISS principle in action: short and sweet.
I cannot disagree with the Post’s conclusion though. Trump is batshit crazy, vindictive, stupid, impulsive,,and incapable of admitting mistakes,and learning from them.
I guess you’re right. Short attention spans and the inability to read about a topic in depth.
I can’t wait to see what the Wall Street Journal comes up with.
I blame his cult too. Most would know he’s bat S…. crazy, but I don’t think they care, because in their hearts they are just as mean as he is. Why else would they excuse crazy, vindictive behavior like that? Let’s be honest. They wouldn’t.
They think that Trump is going to tear it all down and life will be good for people like them. Trump hates people like them. He only wants their small dollar donations. And for them to buy his digital trading cards and NFTs. That’s it. He has zero interest in making their lives better. That’s just the pitch and they buy it because they’re suckers.