Donald Trump Was Just Destroyed by His Favorite Newspaper

The New York Post has fully turned its back on Donald Trump following the Republican Party's faltering performance in the midterms, describing the former president as a "toxic" influence who has "sabotaged" the party.

The day after the GOP failed to see the predicted "red wave" in the House, with a chance the Democrats could still control the Senate, The Post—which Trump once declared his "favorite newspaper"—ran a front page depicting the former president as Humpty Dumpty sitting on a wall with the headline "Trumpty Dumpty."

For live updates on the midterms, head over to Newsweek's Live Blog: Who Won the Midterm Elections 2022?—Senate, House, Governor Results.

The front page also mocks Trump's failure to live out his key 2016 presidential campaign promise to build a wall across the U.S.-Mexico border. It picks on his failure to fill the House and Senate with his MAGA and election-denying candidates on November 8, ultimately leading to the GOP's poor performance.

"Don (who couldn't build a wall) had a great fall—can all the GOP's men put the party back together again?" The Post's standfirst said.

The former president is further attacked in a column by The Post's John Podhoretz entitled "Here's how Donald Trump sabotaged the Republican midterms."

In the opinion piece, Podhoretz said that the 2022 midterms are now the third straight national election—following the 2018 midterms and the 2020 presidential election—in which either Trump, the GOP or both, were "hammered" by the electorate.

"It's time for even his stans to accept the truth: Toxic Trump is the political equivalent of a can of Raid," Podhoretz wrote in reference to the bug-repellent spray.

"What Tuesday night's results suggest is that Trump is perhaps the most profound vote-repellent in modern American history. The surest way to lose in these midterms was to be a politician endorsed by Trump. This is not hyperbole."

Podhoretz adds that Trump's tactic of encouraging voters to support his MAGA or extremist candidates who back false claims that the 2020 election was rigged failed spectacularly, except for in deep-red states where a "Republican corpse would have beaten a Democrat."

As a result, swing voters or moderate voters in races across the country "took one look at Trump's hand-picked acolytes and gagged."

Podhoretz singled out John Gibbs as one example of Trump's "monomania" that ended up harming the GOP on election day.

Trump had endorsed Gibbs, an election denier who had spread conspiracy theories that Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign officials took part in Satanic rituals, to unseat Representative Peter Meijer in the GOP primary for Michigan's 3rd district as Meijer was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump in 2021.

Gibbs went on to lose the national midterm election to Democrat Hillary Scholten.

"In almost every place a Trumpster lost, there had been a regular Republican who could and should have been the party's nominee — a nominee who could have taken advantage of the uniquely horrible facts and fundamentals confronting Democratic candidates in 2022," Podhoretz wrote.

"But then Toxic Trump came into these races, picking the candidate who bowed lowest—or, as in Pennsylvania, went for a snake-oil doctor salesman because, it seems, his wife enjoyed watching Mehmet Oz carny-bark on afternoon TV."

Podhoretz also lists a number of other "losers" from the midterms vote who Trump had publicly vowed for, inducing far-right Pennsylvania Secretary for State candidate Doug Mastriano, Michigan gubernatorial hopeful Tudor Dixon and John Bolduc, who lost the New Hampshire Senate race to Democrat Maggie Hassan.

"The British political figure Oliver Cromwell once said about other British politicians who had overstayed their welcome and were ruining the country, 'In the name of God, go,'" Podhoretz wrote.

"Yo, Toxic Trump: Scram."

The morning after the midterms polls opened, The Post featured Ron DeSantis on its front page after the Florida governor's election win, along with the headline "DeFuture."

Bernard Tamas, associate professor of political science at Valdosta State University in Georgia, told Newsweek that the image of Trump as a "political heavyweight has taken a hit," following the midterm results.

"His choice of candidates have had mixed success, and more importantly, lost critical elections that the Republicans had clearly expected to win," Tamas said.

"It is clear that, while a Trump endorsement may help a candidate in the Republican primary, it is at best of little value when it comes to the general election."

Newsweek has contacted Trump for comment.