Who Remembers Hearst's Jihad Against FDR In 1936?
Born into great wealth, William Randolph Heart dropped out of college— actually he was expelled— to run his father’s newspaper, the San Francisco Examiner, in 1887. The master of yellow journalism, he built the largest newspaper and magazine publishing operation in the world.
His father was an appointed U.S. senator (a California Democrat) and William wanted to follow him into politics. He was elected to Congress from NYC twice but was defeated when he ran for president (1904), mayor of New York (1905 and 1909), governor of New York in 1906 and U.S. Senate in 1922. Initially he put on the veneer of a progressive Democrat but he drifted into run-of-the-mill conservatism as he got older and became a full-fledged Nazi when Hitler took over Germany, even ordering his journalists to give the Nazis favorable coverage. His papers ran columns by Hitler, Goring and Mussolini and he went to Germany to interview Hitler himself. Journalists who refused to give fascism a favorable slant in their reporting were fired.
He opposed Roosevelt’s presidential bid in 1932, seeing him as a socialist but settled on tepid support after Roosevelt won the nomination. That lasted for a year and he quickly became the most prominent right-wing FDR-hater in America, especially after he figured out that the New Deal would mean higher taxes for the richest oligarchs in the country, at which point Roosevelt went from being merely a socialist to a full-fledged communist.
In 1936, Hearst was all in for Republican candidate Alf Landon. All of his media properties pounded Roosevelt daily. The result was a massive landslide for FDR, 60.8% to 36.6% with Roosevelt carrying every state but Maine and Vermont. Why bring this up now? History Professor David Nasaw wrote the definitive book on Hearst, The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst (2000) and has recently been comparing Hearst's jihad against Roosevelt to Elon Musk’s badly backfiring campaign against Kamala, predicting that Musk will hurt Trump as much as Hearst hurt Landon.
Seth Harris, a former labor policy adviser to President Joe Biden and a senior fellow at the Burnes Center for Social Change at Northeastern University, said he believes Trump wants to be ambiguous on the subject of labor unions, a goal that he said is now much more difficult.
“Elon Musk created the opportunity that Donald Trump took to unmask himself as rabidly anti-union, and he did that by praising Elon Musk’s anti-union, union-busting perspective and endorsing the idea of illegally firing striking workers,” he said.
Harris, who is not related to Kamala Harris, said he views Musk’s endorsement as a net negative.
“No one views Elon Musk as a voice of the middle class,” he said. “Musk is a rapacious corporate overlord who did everything in his power to destroy organizing efforts at Tesla and also at SpaceX.”
David Nasaw, the author of books on business magnates such as William Randolph Hearst and Andrew Carnegie, questioned Musk’s ability to sway voters: “Even those who think he’s a genius with regard to AI and tech and space travel, that doesn’t translate into presidential campaigns.”
“I’m trying to think of the demographics that are going to be swayed by Musk repeating Trump’s attacks,” he added. “If they don’t believe Trump, are they going to suddenly come to his side because Musk says he’s right?”
Nasaw said he sees a parallel with Hearst, a newspaper and radio baron who tried and failed to defeat President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936 and 1940 by using his media empire to stir up opposition. Musk showed similar aspirations in 2022 when he bought X, and he frequently uses the app to attack Harris and Biden.
“When it came to elections, nobody really trusted Hearst and there was no reason to trust Hearst. I think the same is true with Musk,” he said.
“Once upon a time there was this legion of Musk bros who hung on his every word— who believed he was not only a genius but a genius who was dedicated to saving the planet,” he said. “I don’t think that’s the case anymore.”
Nasaw said he believes Musk has become “too far out there” to attract widespread support, citing Musk’s antisemitic statements and his views about birth rates.
During the time that Musk has been failing at making friends and influencing people, he’s lost billions of dollars for the folks he talked into investing in Twitter. Faiz Siddiqui reported that “Under Musk, Twitter’s valuation has cratered— as Musk has acknowledged— leaving it worth as little as half of what he paid. Since late last year, Fidelity has consistently valued the Twitter stake in one of its funds 70 percent below the purchase price… Figures released Friday show that Fidelity now values that stake about 72 percent lower than when Musk took over Twitter, taking its overall portion of the company from a valuation of around $316 million to $88 million… [T]he eight largest initial investments that were reported to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission or otherwise publicly disclosed are worth about $5 billion less than when Musk bought Twitter. His and his partners’ overall stake has shed $24 billion in value— a vaporization of wealth that has little parallel outside the realm of economic or industry-specific crashes, or devastating corporate scandals.”
“Elon’s done a tremendous amount of wealth destruction since he’s purchased Twitter,” said Ross Gerber, who said he invested less than $1 million, a stake he now considers worthless.
“For the people who put capital into him for any amount,” Gerber said, “ … trying to explain to people how he lost” so much money “is not a fun conversation.”
Among top investors, [Twitter founder Jack] Dorsey— whose stake has lost an estimated $720 million— has made his displeasure known. Last year, he said Musk shouldn’t have purchased Twitter after all, posting on social media that he didn’t think Musk “acted right after realizing his timing was bad.”
“It all went south,” Dorsey said.
…Because Musk turned Twitter into a private company, it’s hard to know its up-to-the-minute valuation. But some things about its financial picture are clear: Advertisers, its key source of revenue, fled after controversies— some caused by Musk himself. Some advertisers were also put off by his decision to gut content moderation while restoring thousands of accounts previously suspended for breaking the site’s rules.
The deal has also faced scrutiny. The SEC has an active fraud probe into Musk’s purchase of the site, examining his early accumulation of Twitter shares without disclosing his investment— a move that could have affected the share price. Some investors have received subpoenas as part of the probe.
These are the losses for the biggest initial share holders, mostly right-wing criminal billionaires:
Elon Musk- down $24.12 billion
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal (and Kingdom Holding Co.)- down $1.3 billion
Jack Dorsey- down $720 million
Larry Ellison- down $720 million
Sequoia Capital- down $576 million
Vy Capital- down $504 million
Binance- down $360 million
Andreessen Horowitz- down $360 million
Qatar Investment Authority- down $270 million
Crypto-criminal operation Binance, which is complicit in funding terrorism, Russia’s war against Ukraine, Hamas’ attack on Israel and numerous drug cartels, is under investigation by multiple governments and has been convicted in the U.S. of violations of the Bank Secrecy Act, money laundering schemes, unlicensed money transmitting and sanctions violations. As part of the plea deal, the company agreed to pay $4 billion in fines, and founder Changpeng Zhao, Canada’s richest citizen, stepped down as CEO with a $50 million fine. Last April, Zhao was sentenced to 4 months in prison on money-laundering charges as part of a sweetheart plea deal. Currently, he’s an inmate of the Long Beach Residential Reentry Management field office. Binance had invested half a billion dollars in Twitter and Zhao, then CEO, tweeted, in May, 2022: “We’re excited to be able to help Elon realize a new vision for Twitter.”
you erased another truth, which will be proved should your side fail to lose. what's worse, you know this but erased it anyway.
Its pretty clear now that Musk bought Twitter for political purposes, not investment purposes. He gained a very loud mouth for anti democracy politics and that’s what he aimed for. He’s ok with the money loss as he chose it. When it comes to workers and unions, however, he’s a skin flint. Go figure. An evil figure just like Hearst.