Former President Trump falsely claimed Wednesday that decisions by the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post not to endorse any candidate in the presidential race reflected a poor opinion in the newspapers of Vice President Kamala Harris and a favorable opinion of him.
“Do you know what they're really saying? Because they only support Democrats,” Trump said at a campaign rally in North Carolina. “They are saying this Democrats are not good. They are not good. And they think I'm doing a great job. “They just don’t want to say it.”
The editorial boards of both newspapers have been staunchly anti-Trump for years, and both had planned to endorse Harris before the billionaire owners of the newspapers prevented them from doing so.
And none of the owners criticized Harris or praised Trump in explaining their decisions.
Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong has said he feared that choosing one candidate over another would only exacerbate already deep divisions in the country.
In an interview with The Times last week, Soon-Shiong said she thought voters could make their own decisions. On the social media platform
The editorial board endorsed candidates in many other 2024 elections without incident.
Three members of the editorial board, who had proposed endorsing Kamala Harris, resigned in protest of the decision and Soon-Shiong's characterization of her and her response.
“How could we spend eight years railing against Trump and the danger his leadership poses to the country and then not support the perfectly decent Democratic challenger, whom we previously endorsed for the US Senate?” Editorials editor Mariel Garza wrote in her resignation letter to Times executive editor Terry Tang.
Soon-Shiong has also said that the decision was not based on American justifications for the war in Gaza, as her daughter claimed last week in a statement to the New York Times. He said she “has no role at the LA Times.”
The editorial board is separate from the Times' news operation. The latter has provided independent coverage of both candidates on an uninterrupted basis.
Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, owner of the Post, has similarly said his decision to block that newspaper's planned endorsement of Harris was a “principled” decision based on a desire to restore public trust. public in the newspaper. He wrote that, over the years, the endorsements have helped “create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence.”
Other newspapers have also recently said they will not endorse, including USA Today, which Trump also mentioned at his rally.
Both The Times and the Post have lost thousands of subscribers due to the decisions of their wealthy owners. Harris also criticized the decisions, calling them “disappointing” in a podcast with Charlamagne tha God.
“They are billionaires in Donald Trump's club,” he said. “That's the one in your club. That's who he dates, that's what he cares about.”
