For the second day in a row, recriminations about Republicans’ unexpectedly weak performance on Election Day featured prominently on the pages and over the airwaves of Rupert Murdoch’s media. And the consensus was not kind to former President Donald J. Trump.
“Trump is the Republican Party’s Biggest Loser,” read a headline in a Wall Street Journal editorial on Thursday, accusing Mr Trump of having “flopped in 2018, 2020, 2021 and 2022.”
The New York Post cover on Thursday was just as brooding, if a little more ironic. It had a picture of Mr. Trump depicted as Humpty Dumpty. “Don (who couldn’t build a wall) had a big fall – can all the men of the GOP bring the party back together?” read the headline.
Inside, the Post had an op-ed by conservative writer John Podhoretz, a frequent critic of the former president, calling Mr. Trump “the most profound vote-rejection in modern American history.”
Fox News spent all day Wednesday with commentators blaming Mr Trump for bringing the entire party down, and the criticism continued into prime time. Laura Ingraham, one of the former president’s biggest boosters in conservative media during his four years in office, took what appeared to be a swipe at him.
“The populist movement is all about ideas,” Ms Ingraham said. “It’s not about one person. If the voters conclude that your own ego or your own resentment is more important to you than what is good for the country, they will look elsewhere, period.”
Her colleague Tucker Carlson was more lenient in his assessment of the election, saying Mr Trump had always been a “mixed blessing” to Republicans. “In this case, he is certainly not the sole cause of anything,” added Mr. Carlson up for it.
The two Murdochs who run the Fox Corporation and its newspaper businesses, Mr. Murdoch and his son Lachlan, are said to have soured Mr Trump lately, expressing concerns that he would hurt the Republican Party’s chances of winning big on Tuesday. Their discomfort with him, according to people who have spoken to both Murdochs, stems from his refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election.
In the spring and summer, Mr. Trump was barely present on the network, where he had once called almost overnight. Fox News did not air a single interview with him for more than 100 days.
This isn’t the first time Murdoch’s media assets have criticized the former president. Following the revelations of the commission investigating the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack, The Journal and the Post published blistering editorials condemning his inaction that day.
Of course, the pendulum can always swing back, as it has time and again over the course of the complicated, decades-long relationship between Rupert Murdoch and Mr. Trump. After angering the former president and his supporters — and quickly plummeting in the ratings — Fox News followed up on its election night prediction that Mr. Trump would lose Arizona in 2020 by promoting some of his false claims of widespread voter fraud. The network and parent company are now facing a $1.6 billion libel suit from Dominion Voting Systems over those false reports.
Mr Trump appears to have watched as Fox guests and anchors blamed him for Tuesday’s disappointing results. On Thursday, he lashed out on his social media platform Truth Social, writing, “For me, Fox News was always gone, even in 2015-16 when I started ‘my journey’.” He added: “But now they are really gone. Such an opportunity for another media outlet to make an absolute fortune and do good for America.
