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IN BLACK AND WHITE

Murdoch Paper Goes Nuclear on Trump Over Jaw-Dropping Defeat

The WSJ blasted Trump as “erratic” and “self-indulgent.”

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch looks on as President Donald Trump speaks.

The Washington Post/The Washington Post via Getty Im

Rupert Murdoch’s conservative newspaper The Wall Street Journal has launched a blistering attack on Donald Trump after the GOP’s midterm election rout.

In an editorial Wednesday morning, as Democrats swept to victory in House and Senate races to claim control of Congress, the paper laid the blame for the defeat squarely at Trump’s feet.

“True to form, President Trump is already blaming everyone else, but he is the main architect of this rout,” wrote the editorial board.

U..S. President Donald Trump speaks at the site of ongoing construction of the planned White House ballroom in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 19, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

U..S. President Donald Trump speaks at the site of ongoing construction of the planned White House ballroom in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 19, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Kevin Lamarque/REUTERS

“The President’s erratic and self-indulgent second-term governance has alienated much of the coalition he assembled in 2024,” it said, as voters, even in many traditionally red states, abandoned the Republicans.

The WSJ directly blamed Trump for endorsing flawed, defeated candidates in Senate races in Texas, North Carolina, and Georgia, and said his policies had been sweepingly rejected at the ballot box.

It pointed to his tariff regime and the Iran war, which have driven up prices for millions of Americans, as key reasons for the defeat.

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“The Iran war added to the cost problem on fuel prices in particular. But the bigger trouble with the war is that Mr. Trump has never explained his strategy or been consistent in his war aims,” it said.

“Voters also rebelled against Mr. Trump’s seeming preoccupation with his pet personal causes—the ballroom, the arch—and how he and his family have grown richer during the second term,” it said, criticizing the president’s fixation with Washington, D.C. vanity projects, and the corruption allegations that beset his second term and tanked his popularity.

Trump has long had a complex relationship with Rupert Murdoch’s U.S. media empire. Fox News, the cable network owned by the Australian, has vociferously championed the president, but the WSJ has taken a different approach, criticizing the president’s policies at times throughout his second term.

The paper has shredded the president for his warm relationship with Vladimir Putin’s Russia, his hate campaign against Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, and for banning media outlets from the White House.

Trump described the paper as having “one of the worst and most inaccurate “Editorial Boards” in the World," after it criticized him for prematurely declaring victory against Iran in April.

The New York Post, the tabloid owned by Murdoch, was also critical of Trump after Tuesday’s midterm wipeout, depicting the president engulfed in a blue tsunami on its Wednesday morning front page.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the WSJ’s latest editorial.

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