The Thursday cover of the New York Post, a publication owned by the Rupert Murdoch-led News Corp., tore into former President Donald Trump’s record after the Republican Party majorly fumbled what some observers predicted should have been an easy round of success in this year’s midterm elections.
“Trumpty Dumpty,” the cover proclaims alongside an image of Trump fashioned to look like the character known as Humpty Dumpty. “Don (who couldn’t build a wall) had a great fall — can all the GOP’s men put the party back together again?” a caption asks. Coverage accompanying the cover includes an article from conservative writer John Podhoretz, who explicitly insisted in an article trumpeted by the publication — including with an apparent reference on the cover — that Donald should leave politics behind. Podhoretz’s article, which is also available online, recaps some of the abject failures of candidates behind whom Trump threw his support, like Congressional candidate John Gibbs and Senate contender Dr. Oz, who lost in Michigan and Pennsylvania during this week’s elections. In Gibbs’s race, Democratic victor Hillary Scholten will be providing the first Democratic representation in the House for the city of Grand Rapids since the 1970s, although redistricting also apparently boosted Democratic hopes.
In Pennsylvania, polls suddenly showed a closer race between Oz and his Democratic challenger John Fetterman with weeks left until the election — and Fetterman was ahead by four percent in results available Thursday. Republicans have been successful in statewide elections in Pennsylvania in recent years, including in the 2016 presidential race when Trump won in the state, and in 2020 Biden won by less than one and a half percentage points, suggesting the state remained very much available for further Republican success — and Oz lost.
The article from the Post written by Podhoretz highlights how several key races featured perceptibly more levelheaded contenders in the primary, but Donald opted for candidates who supported or were at least open to his false claims about the 2020 election — a key consideration for Trump, who backed a successful primary challenge against staunchly conservative Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) after she dared oppose him on the issue. Gibbs, who held a post in the Trump administration, accused prominent Democrats of Satanism and in an earlier primary face-off defeated the now outgoing Republican Congressman Peter Meijer, who joined those supporting Donald’s impeachment after January 6.
“Independents made the difference then and they made the difference on Tuesday,” Podhoretz wrote. “They didn’t want to keep hearing about voter fraud that didn’t exist, or about how the world had done wrong to a multibillionaire boo-hoo whiner who lost his re-election bid due to his own incompetence. Voters have their own problems. This election was about them, not Toxic Trump’s pathological inability to accept his own failure — and his desperate need to elevate cringe-inducing boot-lickers while punishing politicians capable of an independent thought… Yo, Toxic Trump: Scram.”
The Post also published and promoted an article from conservative commentator Piers Morgan calling for a replacement of Trump at the helm of the GOP with Ron DeSantis, the GOP governor in Florida who crushed his Democratic opponent during this year’s elections by some 20 percent. “Ron DeSantis has now proved he’s got what it takes to drive the Republican Party forward, right at the moment Donald Trump’s now proved all he’s got is bitterly dragging the party back to past failures and a democracy-denying state of unelectable inertia,” Morgan told Post readers. Will all of this mean Trump could actually lose the next GOP presidential nod to DeSantis, who has been widely floated as a potential contender? Time will tell.
Today's cover: Here’s how Donald Trump sabotaged the Republican midterms https://t.co/YUtDosSGfp pic.twitter.com/vpI94nKuBh
— New York Post (@nypost) November 10, 2022
