Donald Trump Lashes Out After Rupert Murdoch-Owned Media Outlets Pin Blame On Him For Midterm Mess, Claims They Are “All In” For Ron DeSantis — Update

Ted Johnson
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UPDATE, 3:10 PM: Donald Trump groused that the “no longer great” New York Post and The Wall Street Journal are “all in” for Ron DeSantis, his potential rival for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.

Trump also bashed DeSantis, labeling him as “Ron DeSanctimonious” and as an “average REPUBLICAN Governor with great Public Relations.”

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“Ron came to me in desperate shape in 2017—he was politically dead, losing in a landslide to a very good Agriculture Commissioner, Adam Putnam, who was loaded up with cash and great poll numbers,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Ron had low approval, bad polls, and no money, but he said that if I would Endorse him, he could win. I didn’t know Adam so I said, “Let’s give it a shot, Ron.” When I Endorsed it was as though, to use a bad term, a nuclear weapon went off.”

He took further credit for DeSantis’ victory in 2018, claiming that he “stopped his election from being stolen.”

Trump wrote that in 2018, “when votes were being stolen by the corrupt Election process in Broward County, and Ron was going down ten thousand votes a day, along with now-Senator Rick Scott, I sent in the FBI and the U.S. Attorneys, and the ballot theft immediately ended, just prior to them running out of the votes necessary to win.” It’s unclear what Trump was referencing. The 2018 race between Democrat Andrew Gillum and DeSantis was so close that it ended in a recount.

“And now, Ron DeSanctimonious is playing games! The Fake News asks him if he’s going to run if President Trump runs, and he says, ‘I’m only focused on the Governor’s race, I’m not looking into the future.’ Well, in terms of loyalty and class, that’s really not the right answer. This is just like 2015 and 2016, a Media Assault (Collusion!), when Fox News fought me to the end until I won, and then they couldn’t have been nicer or more supportive.”

“We’re in exactly the same position now,” Trump wrote.

Trump also lashed out at Paul Ryan, the former House Speaker and Fox Corp. board member, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, while suggesting, with no evidence whatsoever, that Dr. Oz’s loss to John Fetterman in the Pennsylvania U.S. Senate race was due to vote corruption. According to the latest vote totals via the AP, Fetterman has opened up a more than 200,000 vote lead over Oz, 51% to 47%. Oz also has conceded the race.

Trump also claimed credit for Fox News’ ratings, as well as for Twitter and Facebook.

“If CNN were smart, they’d open up a Conservative network, only have me on, and it would be the most successful network in History,” he wrote. “Fox only made it because of me, Twitter only made it because of me, and even Facebook is now in the tubes, having lost almost $90 billion…”

PREVIOUSLY, 9:39 AM: Donald Trump very unsurprisingly lashed out at “fake news” and “enemy of the people!” in a series of post-midterm, middle-of-the-night and early morning posts, but his responses differed a bit in that they were coming as some Rupert Murdoch-media outlets were making him the culprit for Republicans disappointing results.

“Trump Is The Republican Party’s Biggest Loser,” read the headline of the Wall Street Journal editorial board. “What will Democrats do when Donald Trump isn’t around to lose elections?” the editorial read.

The New York Post featured Trump as “Trumpty Dumpty.” The subhead was, “Don (who couldn’t build a wall) had a great fall — can all the GOP’s men put the party back together again?”

On Fox News, there was considerable attention to Ron DeSantis’s lopsided victory in Florida, a further irritant to Trump who already has gotten in a few digs to his potential rival for the GOP nomination in 2024.

On her primetime show on Wednesday, Laura Ingraham cited DeSantis’ victory, referring to the strategy for winning as the future of the GOP. She said that the GOP in 2024 has to be focused on winning and “not just making a point or settling a score.” She also said that if voters “conclude that you are putting your own ego or your own grudges ahead of what’s good for the country, they’re going to look elsewhere.” She didn’t specifically name Trump as that person, but the point seemed to be pretty clear.

On his social media platform Truth Social, Trump, as he has done before, called for another media outlet to go pro-Trump. He wrote, “Despite having picked so many winners, I have to put up with the Fake News. For me, Fox News was always gone, even in 2015-16 when I began my ‘journey,’ but now they’re really gone. Such an opportunity for another media outlet to make an absolute fortune, and do good for America. Let’s see what happens?”

Trump reportedly was looking to next week to announce a 2024 presidential campaign, but some of his own former advisers have suggested that he delay it until after the Georgia runoff, which will feature one of his endorsed candidates, Herschel Walker, face off with Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA).

Although Trump has touted the number of wins by his endorsed candidates, many of them were in solidly red districts. Perhaps the biggest sting was that of Mehmet Oz, who lost to Democrat John Fetterman in the cycle’s most expensive and highest profile Senate race.

Trump wrote of the Oz race by giving him some praise, but also distancing himself from him.

Trump wrote, “There is a Fake Story being promulgated by third rate reporter Maggie Hagaman of the Failing New York Times, that I am blaming our great former First Lady, Melania, and Sean Hannity, that I was angry with their pushing me to Endorse Dr. Oz. First of all Oz is a wonderful guy who really worked hard and was a very good candidate, but he WAS LONG IN THE RACE before I ever Endorsed him, they had NOTHING to do with it, he was not a ‘denier’ (his mistake!), & I was not at all ANGRY. Fake News!”

If Trump goes forward with an announcement next week, he’ll be competing not only with all of the attention paid to DeSantis but to his former vice president, Mike Pence, who is publishing his memoir ahead of a potential presidential run, with interviews scheduled with ABC News anchor David Muir and a town hall on CNN. The Journal published an excerpt of the book on Thursday, in which Pence confirms that Trump said he would be a “wimp” if he didn’t move to block the electoral vote count on January 6, 2021. “You’re too honest,” Trump griped to Pence during one testy exchange as the then-president pressured him to take such action.

The big caveat to the notion that media figures on the right are about to drop Trump in favor of some other figure is that it is a bit of deja vu.

As Noah Schachtman, editor in chief of Rolling Stone, noted, Trump has been written off many times before, even from Murdoch owned media.

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