President Donald Trump was caught on camera reading a cover story from Rupert Murdoch’s The New York Post that mocks the sweeping universal tariffs he imposed on “Liberation Day.”
The photo, which was snapped Saturday morning by an Associated Press photographer, shows Trump digging into the piece, which highlights China’s retaliatory 34 percent tariffs on the U.S. and the trillions knocked off the stock market.
Emily Goodin, a White House correspondent for The Daily Mail, posted the image on X Saturday.
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The page of the story Trump is reading in the back of the presidential car has the headline “CHINA: YEAH? TRY” alongside a photo of Chinese President Xi Jinping wagging his finger.
Trump on Wednesday announced a shocking 10 percent baseline levy on all goods entering the U.S., with higher rates for certain trading partners. In the two days of trading since, the S&P 500, an indicator for the market’s overall performance, has tumbled more than 10 percent.
On Friday, Trump, who has taken the blowback to his tariffs in stride, raged over China’s matching import tax on the U.S. “CHINA PLAYED IT WRONG, THEY PANICKED - THE ONE THING THEY CANNOT AFFORD TO DO!” he posted to Truth Social.
The Post is owned by Murdoch, the 94-year-old conservative media tycoon who also owns Fox News and The Wall Street Journal. Compared to other newspapers, it has often taken a softer tone when characterizing Trump’s most outlandish actions.
In this case, however, the issue’s cover features a photo of Trump riding in a golf cart alongside the headline “What, fee worry?” A caption at the bottom of the page points out the market calamity, then observes: “Trump, spending time at a golf tournament (above), insisted it would all work out for the best.”
The president visited one of his golf courses in Florida on Friday as stocks crashed, drawing condemnation from Democrats. The same day, Trump claimed on social media that right now was a “GREAT TIME TO GET RICH, RICHER THAN EVER BEFORE!!!”
Murdoch, like other billionaires, has lost hundreds of millions from his net worth since Trump announced the tariffs on Wednesday.
The Post story also offers a bleak outlook for the economy’s future under Trump, highlighting Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s Friday warning that the tariffs could push inflation higher and slow economic growth.
Another of Murdoch’s publications, the Journal, wrote a scathing op-ed about Trump’s tariffs on Thursday, arguing that the move would benefit Washington lobbyists more than anyone else.
While Murdoch’s outlets tend to ideologically align with Trump more closely than other offerings, the president has still, on occasion, taken offense at certain of their headlines about him.
Trump reportedly called Murdoch a “piece of s---” after a Post cover summed his entrance into the 2024 presidential in a single line at the bottom of the page: “Florida Man Makes Announcement.”
Since the beginning of Trump’s second term, the Journal‘s center-right editorial board has published a slew of fierce rebukes to the president’s actions.
When Murdoch visited the Oval Office in early February, Trump called him out to his face, telling reporters that the pair would need to “have a talk” about a Journal editorial criticizing his tariff at the time.
