Republican Donald Trump is on track to go down in history as the major presidential nominee with the fewest daily newspaper endorsements. He just received his first one late last week. But as MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow revealed, it wasn’t much of a recommendation.
Maddow has been tracking the candidates’ endorsements. On Friday, October 14, 2016, she said that it had been unprecedented for a major candidate to have no endorsements from a daily newspaper so soon before the general election. But that changed on Friday, when Maddow announced that Trump finally had scored one:
“This is legitimately big news … think we finally hit pay dirt … The Santa Barbara News-Press will now be famous for this.”
Unfortunately for Trump, this is not the kind of endorsement that gives him anything to brag about. For one thing, the Santa Barbara News-Press is not exactly known for its journalistic excellence.
Maddow continued:
“Before now, the only thing this paper was famous for was the mass resignation of their entire editorial staff when a new, rich owner took over the paper in 2006. The staffers who quit got a big journalism award that year for standing up for their journalistic integrity against the new owner.”
Maddow was curious to know the paper’s rationale for its endorsement. So her show sprang for the $10 to go behind the paywall to see the paper’s argument. But there was none. There was only the name of the candidate:
Maddow tried to get more information:
“We wrote to the publishers, we called the newsroom. Nothing.”
Since then, at least one more paper has come out for Trump, the St. Joseph News-Press of St. Joseph, Missouri.
That makes two for Trump, as of yesterday. As of Friday, Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson, who is probably even less qualified than Donald Trump, had six endorsements.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNT-r90fP-g&ab_channel=MSNBCWorldNews
Featured image: Screenshot via MSNBC video.
