Politico's new owner pledges 'nonpartisan' coverage — but a leaked email is raising eyebrows
Politico's new owner has publicly pledged to avoid partisan bias in the website's coverage but a leaked email regarding Donald Trump is raising some eyebrows
German publishing giant Axel Springer purchased the fast-growing political journal last year for more than $1 billion, and its CEO Mathias Döpfner has expressed concern that legacy newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post have drifted too far to the left while conservative media traffics in "alternative facts," reported the Washington Post.
“We want to prove that being nonpartisan is actually the more successful positioning,” Döpfner told the newspaper.
However, the Post obtained an email showing that Döpfner invited his closest executives to pray for Trump's re-election shortly before the 2020 election.
“Do we all want to get together for an hour in the morning on November 3 and pray that Donald Trump will again become President of the United States of America?” the email reads.
The email was prompted by a report he shared about the government's plan to sue Google for allegedly abusing its market dominance, which has angered him for years, and he told colleagues that Trump had successfully tackled all of the most important global issues.
“No American administration in the last 50 years has done more,” Döpfner told the executives.
Döpfner initially denied sending the email.
“That’s intrinsically false,” he said. “That doesn’t exist. It has never been sent and has never been even imagined.”
But Döpfner admitted it was possible that he sent the message after he was shown a printout of the text by a reporter, saying it might have been "an ironic, provocative statement in the circle of people that hate Donald Trump."
“That is me,” Döpfner said. “That could be.”
Döpfner said that he has never been a supporter of Trump. He told the Washington Post that he views himself as a "non-Jewish Zionist" with "small-L liberal" tendencies, who is deeply concerned about racism and anti-gay attitudes.
(Correction: This article previously stated that Mathias Döpfner was a passionate supporter of Donald Trump.)
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