The New York Post directly addressed one of its most loyal readers, Donald Trump, in an editorial urging the president to bow to reality and “end this dark charade” of election denialism. “If you insist on spending your final days in office threatening to burn it all down, that will be how you are remembered. Not as a revolutionary, but as the anarchist holding the match,” read the Post editorial, which jumped off Monday’s front page. Praising the president’s legacy in an apparent attempt to get him to preserve what’s left of it, the Post editorial board asked Trump to consider how he “came out of nowhere to win the presidency” and “took on the elites and media who had long lost touch with average working people. You changed politics, which is something few in American history can say.”
Such an achievement, the Post notes, hangs on the twin Georgia Senate runoffs scheduled for January 5, what will be a defining moment of Trump’s tenure, according to the tabloid. “Securing the Senate means securing your legacy,” the Post writes, telling Trump to “channel your fury into something more productive” and “use your considerable charm and influence” to rally support for Republican Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. “Focus on their success, not your own grievances, as we head into the final week.”
The editorial is a striking departure for the tabloid, which has long been supportive of the president and is widely regarded as his paper of choice. The Post, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, was one of the few publications to endorse Trump for reelection, and just before Election Day helped advance the Trump campaign’s hopes for a so-called “October surprise” by pushing a fishy story about Hunter Biden, a supposed “smoking gun” article suggesting that Joe Biden used his office as vice president to help his son’s business interests. Almost immediately after the front-page exclusive was published—an article at least two Post journalists reportedly refused to attach their name to—the credibility of it was called into question, with multiple staffers raising concerns about the reliability of the paper’s sourcing and its timing.
While urging the president to accept his decisive loss to Joe Biden, and join the rest of the world in moving on, the Post editorial features an ample dose of flattery. Still, the piece—which notes Trump’s efforts to investigate the election “have found nothing” to support his baseless fraud claims—is perceived as a message from Murdoch, even though others in his media empire continue to pay lip service to Trump’s attack on the democratic process. The president still has some prominent voices on Fox News and Fox Business in his corner, even as he has blasted the network for calling the race for Biden on November 7.
Trump, having essentially exhausted his legal options and reportedly flirting with even more democracy-rattling paths for staying in power, has sounded a new kind of alarm among aides and advisers during his waning weeks in office. He is apparently clinging to January 6, when Congress meets in a joint session to certify the Electoral College results, as his remaining chance to overturn the election results. Some House Republicans have backed the idea of contesting Biden’s win during the official tallying of state electoral votes, though Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has urged Republican senators against joining House members in the futile campaign. “You’re cheering for an undemocratic coup,” the Post editorial board wrote of Trump’s support for the long-shot effort—the “last stand,” as the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman put it, pointing out that Vice President Mike Pence, who is scheduled to preside over the official count, lacks the power to do what the president is encouraging him to. “Pence’s role is procedural, not that of a Chief Justice,” Haberman noted.
During an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday, Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, one of the few Republican lawmakers to vigorously oppose Trump’s anti-democracy crusade, highlighted the fruitlessness of ongoing efforts to contest the election outcome. “The reality is there is no impetus to overthrow an election,” Kinzinger said, adding that even if there was, there is no constitutional process for doing so after states have formally certified their presidential election results, Politico reports. Challenging electoral votes on January 6, he said, “is a scam and it is going to disappoint the people that believe this election was stolen, that think this is an opportunity to change it.”
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