Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal is warning President Donald Trump that his habit of backstabbing loyalists could backfire on his own movement.
The influential paper sounded the alarm after New York Rep. Elise Stefanik—one of Trump’s most devoted supporters—suddenly dropped her bid for New York governor after the president declined to endorse her despite having encouraged her to run.
In a critical column headlined “Elise Stefanik Gets the Trump Treatment,” the Journal’s editorial board warned that even Trump’s biggest supporters run the risk of being discarded.
The column walks through how the 41-year-old “ultra-MAGA” New Yorker had been told by the president to run for governor, only to watch him stand aside when 70-year-old Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman jumped into the race. The saga has led to Stefanik dropping not only her gubernatorial bid but also giving up her seat in Congress.
But the governor’s race wasn’t the first time Stefanik had been bamboozled by Trump. After he nominated her for U.N. ambassador earlier this year, she gave up a House leadership role only to see her nomination pulled to preserve her vote for the president’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” package.
She then jumped into the governor’s race, raising $12 million and aiming to tie Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul to socialist mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani—until Trump staged a cordial Oval Office moment with Mamdani that undermined Stefanik’s plan.
The final blow, the paper says, came when Blakeman declared for governor this month, and Trump offered a non-committal, “They’re both great people” rather than the clear primary-free path Stefanik believed she’d been promised.
Facing a brutal intra-party fight that would likely only benefit Hochul, Stefanik dropped out and announced she would also leave Congress at the end of her term.
Beyond serving as a reminder of Trump’s penchant for double-dealing, the editorial board wrote, Stefanik’s experience is also “one reason his political coalition may not have the staying power he imagines.”
The Journal’s warning continues the trend of Murdoch outlets publicly breaking with Trump and his movement.
In November, an editorial by the Murdoch-owned New York Post tore into the administration for its allegedly lavish treatment of Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, demanding an end to what it called her “five-star experience” in prison and urging Trump not to grant clemency, in a rare open revolt from the MAGA-friendly tabloid.
The same paper last week ripped into Trump’s continued backing of anti-vax Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s vaccine policies, which it said would lead to more dead children.
Earlier this month, the Journal condemned Trump’s push to punish Afghan evacuees en masse after a fatal ambush on National Guard members, blasting his plan as “collective punishment” and warning it would damage U.S. credibility with future allies.
The paper also triggered Trump’s fury with a string of Journal pieces that shredded his AI chip deal with China and questioned U.S. tech dominance. These prompted the president to rage that the paper was ‘WRONG, as usual!’ on Truth Social.
Murdoch, 94, has long had a transactional relationship with Trump, backing his rise through Fox News, the Post, and the Journal.
Reporting across multiple outlets has described their bond as one of mutual benefit punctuated by bouts of open hostility—most notably in Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit that accuses Murdoch’s Journal of defamation over a report claiming he sent a sexually suggestive birthday greeting to Epstein in 2003.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
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