Donald Trump made a desperate bid to rebuild relations with the Wall Street Journal this week by inviting its leadership to dinner at the White House despite the paper continually calling the president “dumb.”
Trump, 80, was forced to swallow his pride to try to get the conservative newspaper back on his side. He hosted Emma Tucker, the Wall Street Journal’s editor-in-chief; Paul Gigot, the editorial page editor; and senior figures at News Corp, which owns the paper, including founder Rupert Murdoch and CEO Robert Thomson.
One person with knowledge of the dinner told Breaker that the evening was designed to “reset the relationship between the administration and The Wall Street Journal.”
Trump is suing the paper for $10 billion for reporting on a suggestive birthday letter he wrote to Jeffrey Epstein in 2003.
At the time of the initial filing last July, Dow Jones, the paper’s parent company, which is also part of News Corp, emphatically stood by the Journal’s report. “We have full confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our reporting,” a spokesperson said. “[We] will vigorously defend against any lawsuit.”
Since Trump’s inauguration, the Journal’s editorial board, which is separate from the newsroom, has repeatedly called out his “dumb” ideas. The editorial board last year called Trump’s tariffs on Canada and Mexico “the dumbest trade war in history.”
Trump was so incensed by the story that he admitted he would talk to Murdoch about it directly.
Despite that confrontation, the WSJ editorial board reiterated the point in August of this year: “It got dumber this weekend as Mr. Trump escalated with another round of border taxes on Canadian imports, a mere 10 weeks before midterm elections.”
The board also labeled as “dumb” the January subpoena of Jerome Powell, who was then chairman of the Federal Reserve, writing: “Picking a fight with the Fed—and the bond market—over an issue that voters will find confusing and irrelevant is lawfare for dummies.”
Additionally, Republicans would be “dumb” to agree to Trump’s demand to end the filibuster, it wrote last November.
Other topics where the Journal’s editorial board has criticized Trump include his attacks on Harvard, the ongoing Iran war, and the GOP’s never-passed voter ID legislation.
In May 2025, Trump lashed out at a Journal reporter, saying the publication had “truly gone to hell.”
Shortly after Trump took office, Gigot told the Associated Press about the board’s work.
“We are covering Trump like we do every president, and that means supporting his decisions when they warrant it, and criticizing them when that is deserved. It’s no more complicated than that,” he said.
On Wednesday,
Gigot and his bosses were at the dinner in the president’s residence on Wednesday along with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, News UK CEO Rebekah Brooks, and New York Post Editor-in-Chief Keith Poole.
Just 24 hours after the event, the Journal’s editorial board published a far more conciliatory piece titled, “The U.S. Economy Is Accelerating: Evidence keeps coming that investment and growth are picking up.”
“You’d be forgiven for thinking the U.S. is slouching toward recession based on the gloomy headlines,” the authors write. “But cheer up—the Commerce Department on Wednesday made an unusually large upward revision in its economic growth estimate for the first half of the year. Might rising yields on the 10-year Treasury reflect accelerating economic growth?”
The article concludes with a mention of “the Biden inflation.”
“So if the economy is good, why do Americans feel so glum? The likely answer is the hangover from the Biden inflation, which continues to erode wage gains and make it hard to save,” they argue. “Border taxes and higher gas prices haven’t helped. Yet despite the prophecies that the war in Iran would plunge the U.S. into a recession, the evidence is that America’s economic animal spirits are alive and well.”
The White House and News Corp did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the Daily Beast.
