Trump fumes about Wall Street Journal with Rupert Murdoch right next to him

President Donald Trump welcomed Rupert Murdoch to the Oval Office on Monday to witness him sign an executive order establishing a sovereign wealth fund. The president then proceeded to trash Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal while the right-wing media mogul looked on.

With Oracle founder and conservative megadonor Larry Ellison also on hand, the president declared that the executive order could help initiate the purchase of TikTok from the Chinese-based ByteDance. “I think it’s about time that this country had a sovereign wealth fund,” said Trump, who wants the U.S. to own a portion of the social media platform.

Speaking to reporters after the EO signings, Trump insisted that the presence of Ellison and Murdoch was unrelated to the orders but still made sure to heap praise on the billionaires. According to the president, Murdoch — who launched the conservative cable news powerhouse Fox News — was “an amazing guy” and “in a class by himself.” At the same time, he continued his criticism of the Journal that had reached a fever pitch over the weekend.

While Fox News continues to give Trump overwhelmingly positive coverage, the Wall Street Journal has taken a much more critical approach to the president’s chaotic early weeks in office. Despite its conservative bent, the Journal’s editorial board has pushed back against Trump’s blanket pardons of January 6 rioters, his “dangerous” appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead HHS, and the “remarkably poor judgment” Trump showed by launching his own crypto coin.

And on Friday, the board penned an editorial blasting the president’s tariff threats against Canada, Mexico and China, describing it as the “dumbest trade war in history.” Over the weekend, the president raged on Truth Social that the “Globalist” paper was head of the “Tariff Lobby,” adding that the Journal was “always wrong.”

Asked by a reporter on Monday whether the deal with Mexico to pause the tariffs for one month was “partially related to the market reaction and a criticism from Mr. Murdoch’s newspaper,” Trump joked that he would discuss the matter with Murdoch later. “I’m gonna have to talk to him about that,” the president quipped to laughs. He then decided to let the press know how he really felt about the op-ed.

“I’ve been right over the Wall Street Journal many times, I will tell you that,” Trump declared. “I don’t agree with him on some things. Not only is it not dumb, you’re going to see, you’re going to see. Every single one of those countries is dying to make a deal.”

After saying other countries are “ripping us off really badly,” Trump added more criticism of the paper. “So the Wall Street Journal is wrong because, very simply, every single country that you’re writing about right now is dying to make a deal because the deals they have right now are so good, and so good for them, and so profitable for them.”

In recent years, Murdoch and Trump have had something of a love-hate relationship. Following Trump’s disgraceful exit from the White House after his first term, the 93-year-old Fox News owner distanced himself from Trump while attempting to use his media outlets to anoint a new GOP successor ahead of the 2024 presidential race, to no avail.

Trump, meanwhile, took exception to Murdoch not only backing away from him but also saying that Trump’s 2020 election lies were “false,” raging that it made Murdoch look “weak and ineffective” in the face of the Dominion lawsuit — which Fox News eventually settled for a whopping $787.5 million. The then-former president even went so far as to tell Murdoch to “get out of the news business” for not embracing the baseless election conspiracies, claiming he was “aiding and abetting the destruction of America with fake news.”

And after the WSJ released a poll asking about Trump’s age and cognitive fitness in late 2023, Trump challenged Murdoch – along with the “Globalists at Fox & the WSJ” – to take an “acuity test,” adding that he had “aced” his own.