Trump Cheers Closure of 'Pathetic and Dishonest Weekly Standard'
The demise of The Weekly Standard was met with glee from President Donald Trump, who chortled on Twitter that the conservative magazine that pilloried him throughout the 2016 campaign was folding.
“The pathetic and dishonest Weekly Standard, run by failed prognosticator Bill Kristol (who, like many others, never had a clue), is flat broke and out of businessm” Trump tweeted Saturday.
“Too bad. May it rest in peace!”
The pathetic and dishonest Weekly Standard, run by failed prognosticator Bill Kristol (who, like many others, never had a clue), is flat broke and out of business. Too bad. May it rest in peace!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 15, 2018
The announcement was made Friday by Ryan McKibben, the chief executive and chairman of Clarity Media Group, a media holding company.
“For more than twenty years The Weekly Standard has provided a valued and important perspective on political, literary and cultural issues of the day,” McKibben said in a news release, according to CNN.
“The magazine has been home to some of the industry’s most dedicated and talented staff and I thank them for their hard work and contributions, not just to the publication, but the field of journalism,” the release said.
McKibben said that The Weekly Standard “has been hampered by many of the same challenges that countless other magazines and newspapers across the country have been wrestling with,” according to the release, as reported by Fox News.
“Despite investing significant resources into the publication, the financial performance of the publication over the last five years — with double-digit declines in its subscriber base all but one year since 2013 — made it clear that a decision had to be made. After careful consideration of all possible options for its future, it became clear that this was the step we needed to take,” the release said.
Weekly Standard subscriptions will now be fulfilled by the new Washington Examiner magazine.
Staffers had suspected MediaDC didn’t want to sell The Weekly Standard to a new buyer because it wanted to use its subscribers to help launch its new WaEx mag https://t.co/ddTXTUesGc pic.twitter.com/VtNwcHxa1U
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) December 14, 2018
Editor Stephen Hayes sent a note to the staff Friday, which was obtained by CNN.
“This is a volatile time in American journalism and politics,” Hayes wrote in the note. “Many media outlets have responded to the challenges of the moment by prioritizing affirmation over information, giving into the pull of polarization and the lure of clickbait.”
“I’m proud that we’ve remained both conservative and independent, providing substantive reporting and analysis based on facts, logic and reason,” the note said
All good things come to an end. And so, after 23 years, does The Weekly Standard. I want to express my gratitude to our readers and my admiration for my colleagues. We worked hard to put out a quality magazine, and we had a good time doing so. And we have much more to do. Onward!
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) December 14, 2018
In writing about the magazine’s demise on Breitbart, Editor-at-Large John Nolte saw things differently.
“To those who once considered the Weekly Standard an important voice in the conservative movement, that opinion was flipped on its head during the Trump era when the magazine morphed into something unrecognizable: a hysterical voice of pompous bitterness directed towards those who dared not share its desire to hold on to its failed ideas about Middle East wars, immigration, trade, and rolling over for the establishment media,” he wrote.
“While Trump brought fresh ideas to the Republican Party, T^he Weekly Standard held on to its old ones and got left behind by an electorate tired of war, the ravages of illegal immigration, trade deals that decimate the working class, and playing nice with a media that want everything we hold dear destroyed,” he wrote.
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