by Sharon Rondeau
(Nov. 10, 2022) — Over Wednesday and Thursday, 45th President Donald J. Trump refuted media reports that he is “angry” about the results of Tuesday’s midterm elections and specifically called out Fox News and The New York Times, amid the greater “Fake News Media.”
On Wednesday, he opined that the election proved “A GREAT EVENING,” claiming the “Fake News Media, together with their partner in crime, the Democrats, are doing everything possible to play it down.” “Amazing job by some really fantastic candidates!” he wrote.
The final results of the congressional elections are as yet unclear, with three U.S. Senate seats and a greater number of House seats as yet undecided. While it appears Republicans will gain the majority in the House, the Senate, which has 100 seats, currently stands at 49 Republicans and 48 Democrats.
On Wednesday, Fox News’s “Your World with Cavuto” host Neil Cavuto hosted New Hampshire fourth-term governor-elect Chris Sununu and on Thursday, Virginia Lieutenant Gov. Winsome Sears, both of whom called upon Trump to exit the limelight and make way for another Republican Party “leader.”
In New Hampshire, gubernatorial elections are held every two years.
In his numerous comments on TruthSocial, Trump denied the claims in a New York Times article co-authored by Maggie Haberman that, “at his home in Florida, Trump was privately spreading blame, including to Fox News host Sean Hannity and casino mogul Steve Wynn, for his endorsement of Dr. Mehmet Oz, the defeated Pennsylvania Senate candidate. He included his wife, Melania, among those he complained had offered poor advice, according to several people familiar with the discussions.”
“There is a Fake Story being promulgated by third rate reporter Maggie Hagaman [sic] of the Failing New York Times, that I am blaming our great former First Lady, Melania, and Sean Hannity, that I was angry with their pushing me to Endorse Dr. Oz,” Trump wrote on Thursday. “First of all Oz is a wonderful guy who really worked hard and was a very good candidate, but he WAS LONG IN THE RACE before I ever Endorsed him, they had NOTHING to do with it, he was not a “denier” (his mistake!), & I was not at all ANGRY. Fake News!”
Haberman had written numerous articles during Trump’s White House term expounding on the “Russia-collusion” narrative which proved false but for which The Times earned a Pulitzer prize for journalism.
Trump endorsed Oz, who reportedly lost to Democrat John Fetterman Tuesday, in April; Oz declared his candidacy last November.
Further to Pennsylvania’s results, Trump opined later Thursday that “Pennsylvania is a very corrupt State with voting, but nobody ever wants to check that. How does Oz (smart guy!) lose to a guy who can’t string together two sentences? They don’t want to check, because they don’t want to make me right. It happened to me in 2020, I lost one million votes with possibly one of the biggest drops in History, happening in the middle of the night.”
In May Fetterman suffered a severe stroke from which he is still recovering, having the need of an assistive device to comprehend the spoken word. Following the only debate and and Oz had on October 25, some polls showed Oz had pulled ahead of Fetterman.
Trump’s reference to Oz’s “mistake” in not having been a “denier” is to Trump’s claimed victory in the 2020 election, including in Pennsylvania. The term, now a pejorative, has since been applied to those who agree with Trump on that claim, along with that of “conspiracy theorist.”
On Thursday, BizPacReview turned the term on CNN commentator Ana Navarro, who claimed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who reportedly won re-election by approximately 20 points over his Democrat challenger, Charlie Crist, “’gamed the system’ and suppressed the Democratic vote.”
Since Tuesday’s election, many in the Republican Party have reportedly opined, under condition of anonymity, that the party no longer supports Trump, holding him responsible for what is seen as a less than stellar, or even “disastrous,” performance Tuesday. Some appear to believe that DeSantis could emerge as a frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
At 7:12 p.m. EST, Fox News host Jesse Watters read a more recently-issued Truth Social post from Trump calling out DeSantis for allegedly becoming “sanctimonious.”
Trump then alleged previously-undisclosed details about DeSantis’s 2018 gubernatorial campaign:
In another statement excoriating NewsCorp, which owns The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post and Fox News, Trump wrote, “…They will keep coming after us, MAGA, but ultimately, we will win. Put America First and, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
