The last thirty-six hours have not gone great for Donald Trump and despite being famously detached from reality, he seems to know it, if reports of him lashing out and blaming everyone around him for the midterm results are anything to go by. Yet while a sad Trump could once turn to the warm embrace of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire to make him feel better about himself, that metaphorical bosom—or, more accurately, team of professional fluffers—is no longer. In fact, it appears that an unofficial memo has gone out to Murdoch-owned properties that the ex-president is only to be referred to as a has-been loser who, at this point, couldn’t win an election for deputy director of the Mar-a-Lago Parks and Recreation Department.

Take The Wall Street Journal. On Wednesday, there were no fewer than six anti-Trump op-eds, with one of them literally headlined “Trump Is the Republican Party’s Biggest Loser.” That piece, written by the Journal’s notoriously conservative editorial board, noted that Trump “has now flopped in 2018, 2020, 2021 and 2022,” and has “led Republicans into one political fiasco after another.” It suggests this week’s shellacking should be a wake-up call to the GOP “before 2024” (i.e., the party should oppose his much-teased third run for office).

Then there’s the New York Post. On Wednesday, Trump’s hometown tabloid ran a cover declaring his current archnemesis, Ron DeSantis, the future of the Republican Party. Apparently, though, that was just a warm-up for what they had in store today, which was a cover depicting Trump as the anthropomorphic egg Humpty Dumpty, naturally headlined “Trumpty Dumpty.”

The accompanying story referred to the 45th president as “Toxic Trump,” dubbed him “perhaps the most profound vote repellent in modern American history,” and told him to “scram.” Another piece, written by his one-time pal Piers Morgan, noted:

There’s no getting away from the cold, hard political reality that it was a surprisingly better night for the Democrats and President Biden than anyone, including them, expected. And the reason for this had little to do with anything they did, other than correctly bet that the issue of abortion rights would be a vote-energizer for them—and everything to do with Trump’s toxic stranglehold on the GOP.

He can try, as he is, to ludicrously spin it as some kind of pyrrhic victory, but last night’s biggest loser was the permanently whining, fuming former president, and he has only himself to blame. Make no mistake, these results represent a crushing political smackdown for Trump…. If they want to win in 2024, it’s time the GOP dumped Trump the Grump.

And then, of course, there’s Fox News, whose rejection must sting the most given that it effectively served as state television during Trump‘s time in the White House. On Wednesday, FoxNews.com ran a story quoting conservatives who said the ex-president has “never been weaker” and that the midterm results show it’s “time to move on” from Trump. The same day, one of his biggest cheerleaders, Laura Ingraham, seemed to refer to him when she told her viewers: “The populist movement is about ideas. It is not about any one person. If the voters conclude that you’re putting your own ego or your own grudges ahead of what’s good for the country, they’re going to look elsewhere, period.” The beatings continued on Thursday when a panelist on Fox’s Outnumbered flat-out told Trump not to run in 2024. (The panelist quickly apologized to cohost Kayleigh McEnany, who joined the Trump White House in April 2020 and spent months telling lies on Trump’s behalf, but the former Trump administration flack responded, “You don’t have to apologize to me. To be clear I haven’t declared I’m voting for any one person.”)

Trump, who is addicted to his own press, appears to have noticed the vibe shift in Murdoch-land, and spent Thursday morning in meltdown mode on Truth Social, where he screeched, among other things, “For me, Fox News was always gone, even in 2015-16 when I began my ‘journey,’ but now they’re really gone.” He also told people to “remember” that he is a “Stable Genius,” which you know is true because he inexplicably capitalized both words.

In any case, it remains to be seen just how long the Murdoch empire’s new anti-Trump stance lasts. While the Journal, the Post, and Fox News all seem to have gotten behind DeSantis as the new de facto leader of the Republican Party, it’s all but certain that they‘ll line up to support Trump should he win the 2024 GOP nomination, at which point they’ll probably have a case of convenient amnesia about declaring him a radioactive loser.

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To be clear, despite its rejection of Trump, Fox News remains an abomination

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How Fetterman flipped Pennsylvania (CNN)

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AOC says Musk’s Twitter verification plan is “ripe for targeted harassment” of women (NYP)

Musk’s foreign investors in Twitter are “worthy” of review, Biden says (Politico)

At Last, Some Good News on Inflation (New York)

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