Wall Street Journal defends running Trump letter, but calls his claims ‘bananas’

The Wall Street Journal defended running a letter to the editor from former President Trump that alleged widespread voter fraud in Pennsylvania, but called his claims “bananas.”

“The progressive parsons of the press are aflutter that we published a letter to the editor Thursday from former President Trump, objecting to our editorial pointing out that he lost Pennsylvania last year by 80,555 votes,” The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board wrote. 

“We trust our readers to make up their own minds about his statement. And we think it’s news when an ex-President who may run in 2024 wrote what he did, even if (or perhaps especially if) his claims are bananas,” they added.

The paper ran a letter Trump wrote that falsely alleges the 2020 presidential election was “rigged.” Trump’s letter to editor Matt Murray took issue with an assertion by the editorial board that President Biden won the Keystone State by over 80,000 votes. 

The editorial board originally published an op-ed in support of a GOP nominee for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, after the state’s high court greenlighted an exemption for mail-in ballots to be accepted three days after the 2020 election.  

In his letter, the former president also made a bulleted list of instances he characterized as voter fraud. 

State and federal elections officials have stated that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud. 

In The Wall Street Journal’s defense of publicizing the letter, the outlet dispelled some of the claims the former president made, although it said  “it’s difficult to respond to everything, and the asymmetry is part of the former President’s strategy.”

“Mr. Trump is making these claims elsewhere, so we hardly did him a special favor by letting him respond to our editorial. We offer the same courtesy to others we criticize, even when they make allegations we think are false,” the outlet stated.

The Wall Street Journal also jabbed at critics who said the outlet should not have given a platform to Trump’s false allegations.

“As for the media clerics, their attempts to censor Mr. Trump have done nothing to diminish his popularity. Our advice would be to examine their own standards after they fell so easily for false Russian collusion claims. They’d have more credibility in refuting Mr. Trump’s,” the board stated.