MURDOCH, HE WROTE

Murdoch Paper Shreds Trump Over Humiliating Putin Snub

Putin has already reneged on his promise to Trump.

Rupert Murdoch’s flagship newspaper has ripped into President Donald Trump’s failed attempt to suck up to Vladimir Putin.

The 80-year-old dropped jaws on Friday when he announced a deal to purchase Russian diesel in a desperate bid to lower fuel prices ahead of the midterms on Nov. 3.

It involved lifting a tranche of sanctions Washington, D.C., has imposed on Moscow since it invaded Ukraine in 2022, and came alongside Trump bragging that he had brokered an energy ceasefire between the warring countries.

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Putin has already trashed that agreement with strikes on power stations in Kharkiv and the capital, Kyiv, as well as the electricity network in Izyum. Ukraine has refrained from retaliating in kind so far.

“Mr. Trump made a major concession Friday with a pause on diesel sanctions that will allow Russian energy companies to rake in some $4.5 billion,” the Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board wrote in a scathing leader. “Yet Mr. Putin is giving him nothing we can see in return. The Russian refusal to accept an energy cease-fire is the latest evidence that Mr. Trump’s courtship isn’t working.”

Trump has made clear his soft spot for the 73-year-old dictator, reportedly coming up with the new plan to import Russian diesel after a phone call with him on Friday.

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He has also blamed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s attack on Russian oil refineries for higher gas prices in the U.S., saying he “wants to make problems for the world” and declaring “it’s time for Ukraine to get a new president.”

“He’d better damn well stop,” Trump told reporters outside the White House on Saturday, referring to Ukraine’s attacks on Russian energy infrastructure deep behind the frontline, before saying the besieged country should “get a new leader who can make a deal.”

During his remarks about gas prices, Trump has steered away from discussing the war he started with Iran, which has since spilled over to encompass Saudi Arabia and Houthi rebels in Yemen. It has disrupted two major shipping lanes: the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab al-Mandab Strait.

It was a detail the Murdoch-employed board pounced upon.

“Mr. Trump is scapegoating Ukraine for rising diesel prices, and on Saturday he said Kyiv ‘better damn well stop’ its strikes on Russian refineries,” it said.

“But is Ukraine supposed to sit back and take the Russian blitz? Oil and gas exports fund Mr. Putin’s military, and Russian energy production is a legitimate war target.”

Ukraine has stunned Russia with its capability to strike targets deep inside Russia. E-commerce and oil refining facilities have been at the top of its target list, with some estimates putting Russia’s refined fuel output down by around 50 percent since the blitz began.

Still, Trump’s lifting of sanctions has raised fears that he will effectively pour around $4.5 billion into Russia’s war chest used in the fight against Ukraine.

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Friday’s call between Trump and Putin was apparently so cozy that Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov said that “Neither wanted to be the first to hang up. They hung up simultaneously, literally at the same time,” the Huffington Post reports.

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.

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