The Donald Trump-Rupert Murdoch-Ron DeSantis unholy triad is unfolding before our eyes. Trump was enraged when Murdoch’s The New York Post wrote a full profile of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R). So the ex-president came down hard on America’s top tabloid, especially given the governor has been doing better than the previous POTUS in the 2024 presidential polls.
Murdoch’s tabloid favorably compared DeSantis to Trump:
‘Now, he is giving Trump a run for his money in nearly every national and state poll about a possible presidential run. He is also leading over Biden in a head-to-head match-up.’
So Trump lit up his Truth Social comment and rocketed it across the internet:
‘In writer Salena Zito’s Fake News “puff piece” about DeSantis, which supposedly appeared in the dying New York Post, which is way down in readership just like Fox News is way down in Ratings, why doesn’t she mention that he wants to cut Social Security & Medicare, loves losers like Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan, and Karl Rove, and it getting CLOBBERED in the polls by me. DeSantis is a RINO who is trying to hide his past. I don’t read the New York Post anymore. It has become Fake News, just like Fox & WSJ!’
The billionaire newspaper owner has been expressing his displeasure with Trump in less than subtle ways. After all, DeSantis did hit a home run in the 2022 midterm elections. Murdoch’s headline the next day read “DEFUTURE.”
So Trump rushed to announce his candidacy in the 2024 presidential election. Murdoch hid the event inside of the paper’s pages. The New York Post only small headlined the previous president’s announcement on the front page, even leaving out Trump’s name:
‘Florida man makes announcement.’
Ouch. The New York Post continued, highlighting the governor’s agenda:
‘And he is thinking about a national agenda, especially the idea of moving federal government departments outside of Washington, DC, to help drain the swamp.
‘Too much power has accumulated in DC and the result is a detached administrative state that rules over us and imposes its will on us,” De Santis said. “While there are a host of things that need to be done to re-constitutionalize government, parceling out federal agencies to other parts of the country could help reduce the negative effects of this accumulation of power.’
The paper even gave DeSantis’ book a plug:
‘Now, the 44-year-old, whose memoir, “The Courage to Be Free,” is out Feb. 28, is under intense scrutiny for any sign he is going to throw his hat into the ring for the Republican nomination. DeSantis is not ready to say if he is running for president — only that he is focused on the current legislative session in front of him, and he wants to get done the things that he promised.’
Along with a cluster of DeSantis photos, the tabloid freely quoted the governor:
“I don’t promise things I can’t deliver,” DeSantis said, referencing his recent education reform. It includes fighting for “education, not indoctrination” by curbing ideology: requiring state universities and colleges report resources devoted to critical race theory and blocking an AP high-school course on African-American history that, his administration has said, “runs contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value.”‘
It will be interesting to watch the face-off uncoil.
