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A former publisher of the New Hampshire Union Leader, a 161-year-old conservative newspaper, criticized Donald Trump ahead of the New Hampshire primary election, calling the former president a "dangerous man."
Trump, the frontrunner in the 2024 GOP presidential primary who won the Republican Iowa caucus on Monday, is leading in New Hampshire with 48.9 percent of voter support, according to poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight, just days before voters in the Granite State cast their ballots on Tuesday.
The former president has maintained a loyal base of supporters called MAGA, from his Make America Great Again campaign slogan, despite facing 91 charges across four criminal cases. Trump has plead not guilty to all charges and maintained that the cases are politically motivated.
Trump may have won the endorsement of his former GOP rivals, biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, ahead of New Hampshire's primary, but he won't win the support of Joe McQuaid, the former publisher of the Union Leader.
McQuaid worked as the publisher of the newspaper for 20 years before his son Brendan took over in 2020. Back when Trump first ran for president in 2016, McQuaid refused to endorse him, previously writing that Trump was "a crude blowhard." Speaking to Politico this week, the ex-publisher recalled Trump calling him a "liar" and a "loser" when he didn't endorse him. During Trump's failed reelection campaign in 2020, the Union Leader endorsed Joe Biden.
In the Politico interview published on Saturday, McQuaid said the Union Leader never backed down from its view of Trump.
"He has no business being president of the United States," McQuaid said of Trump. "He's a dangerous man and he has a lot of sycophants, and he has a party which looks at the world today in the political landscape and has determined that they must say nice things about him or they're not going to get elected."
Newsweek reached out to McQuaid and Trump's campaign via email for comment.
While McQuaid explained that it's his son Brendan's job to pick a candidate, if any, for the newspaper to endorse, if it were up to him, he'd pick Nikki Haley, former South Carolina governor and ex-U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Haley is seen as Trump's biggest threat in New Hampshire. She is currently trailing Trump in the New Hampshire polls by about 15 points with 33.8 percent of voter support, according to FiveThirtyEight.
"I would endorse Nikki Haley," McQuaid said. Although he admitted she is "not my idea of a perfect or close-to-perfect candidate," he said supporting her "would be a no-brainer because Trump, for the good of the country, needs to be stopped."
McQuaid also picked on Biden accusing him and Trump of being "selfish" for running again.
"I think [Trump] and Biden are the two most selfish guys in America for doing this. They should let somebody living and breathing with some command of sanity rule. They're not going to," McQuaid said. The age and fitness of Biden, 81, and Trump, 77, have been a major talking point this election cycle.
McQuaid added: "So this is the one place where somebody can stop [Trump] and that person is clearly Haley." However, the ex-publisher told Politico he "wouldn't be at all surprised" if the Union Leader decided not to endorse any candidate in this election.
Newsweek reached out to Haley's and Biden's campaigns via email for comment.
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About the writer
Rachel Dobkin is a Newsweek reporter based in New York. Her focus is reporting on politics. Rachel joined Newsweek in ... Read more