The Las Vegas Review-Journal has become the first major American newspaper to endorse Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. They’ve chosen do to so just two weeks away from the election in the key battleground state of Nevada.
The daily newspaper, which has a circulation of nearly 200,000 readers, described Trump as the answer to American “frustration and disillusionment today with the political institutions that govern the nation.”
“They clamor for an alternative to the incestuous and pernicious atmosphere dominating the capital,” the editorial board wrote. “They see a vast array of lobbyists, elected officials and entrenched interests manipulating the levers of power for their own enrichment at the expense of ordinary citizens.”
Unsurprisingly, Trump was pleased with the supported.
“Thank you Las Vegas Review Journal!” he tweeted.
Red papers turn blue
Throughout 2016, Trump campaign has attempted to allure such disenfranchised voters by subtly stoking xenophobic fears amid calls to “Make America Great Again.”
In the face of the offensive remarks, as well as a lack of understanding on some political issues, major US newspapers have steered clear of backing the billionaire baron. The newspapers who endorsed Mitt Romney in 2012 but are now siding with Clinton include the Houston Chronicle, Dallas Morning News and the Arizona Republic.
AL.com’s editorial board, which had picked every Republican since Ronald Reagan for endorsement, backed Clinton as a last resort to Trump. They believe he’s unfit for the Oval Office.
“He is a narcissistic, childish bully who has mocked women, Americans with disabilities, veterans, Gold Star families, judges, immigrants, the working poor, people of faith, Muslim Americans, Jewish Americans, refugees, people with weight issues and any other group that challenges his inflated view of himself,” the AL.com editorial board wrote this month.
“A Trump presidency could send the Republican Party down a dark, exclusionary path, that would be tough to recover from. He is both privately and publicly at odds with much that Alabamians value.”
The Cincinnati Enquirer’s board, in backing its first Democrat since Woodrow Wilson in 1916, simply titled its endorsement: It has to be Hillary Clinton.
Until now only a handful of small newspapers–including the St. Joseph News Press, the Waxahachie Daily Light, and the Santa Barbara News-Press–had endorsed Trump.
Trump backer owns Las Vegas Review Journal
In December 2015, the Las Vegas Review-Journal was sold to owners who originally wanted to remain anonymous.
After initially denying his purchase, Republican casino mogul Sheldon Adelson revealed that he bought the paper in the secretive $140 million deal.
The arrangement caused major concerns among newsroom staffers who were worried about the owner’s plans for the paper. Numerous journalists either quit or were fired in the months after the purchase.
This past spring the billionaire owner of the newspaper had already personally endorsed Trump because he believe he would “be good for Israel.”
Paper: Clinton offers ‘worst’ of the ‘left’
The Las Vegas Review-Journal’s endorsement described Trump as a responsible business leader who would offer Nevada residents “a corporate sensibility and a steadfast determination to an ossified Beltway culture.”
At the same time, the editorial board deemed Clinton as someone who would carry out “the worst instincts of the authoritarian left” by driving the nation further into debt, weakening the right to bear arms, and raising taxes against the rich.
Therefore, the editorial board pledged that Trump, despite some of his flaws, would do a better job than Clinton in challenging the status quo in Washington D.C.
“Mr. Trump represents neither the danger his critics claim nor the magic elixir many of his supporters crave,” the editorial board wrote. “But he promises to be a source of disruption and discomfort to the privileged, back-scratching political elites for whom the nation’s strength and solvency have become subservient to power’s pursuit and preservation.”
