NEWSWEEK
Donald Trump has targeted billionaire philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, over The Atlantic.
The former president took aim at the magazine, which Powell Jobs’ company owns a majority stake in, in a post on his Truth Social platform on Saturday.
“It’s so good to see how badly the THIRD RATE MAGAZINE, The Atlantic, is doing,” Trump, who is leading the race for the Republican presidential nomination, wrote. “It’s failing at a level seldom seen before, even in the Publishing Business. False and Fake stories do it every time!”
Powell Jobs, one of the wealthiest women in the world, is worth at least $13 billion, according to Forbes. She inherited her fortune mostly through shares of Apple and Disney from Jobs, who died in 2011.
She founded the Emerson Collective, an organization that focuses on education, immigration reform, environmental causes, media and journalism, as well as other issues. The company bought a majority stake in The Atlantic in 2017.
Trump did not specify which article in the magazine had prompted his statement, but Peter Wehner, a Trump critic who served in the administrations of three Republican presidents, wrote an op-ed earlier this week that described Trump’s rhetoric as “clearly fascistic” and noting that he is “becoming frighteningly clear about what he wants.”
Wehner also criticized Christians who support Trump in the piece, saying they “are not only betraying their humanity; they are betraying the Lord they claim to love and serve.”
Trump’s post went on to say that The Atlantic has “a rich person funding the ridiculous losses, but at some point, rich people get smart also.”
He added: “Steve Jobs would not be proud of his wife, Laurene, and the way she is spending his money. The Radical Left is destroying America!”
Newsweek has contacted a Trump spokesperson and Powell Jobs, through the Emerson Collective, for comment via email.
Trump previously attacked Powell Jobs in September 2020, days after a report in The Atlantic by the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, that said he had made multiple disparaging comments about U.S. troops, including calling the war dead “losers” and “suckers.”
“Steve Jobs would not be happy that his wife is wasting money he left her on a failing Radical Left Magazine that is run by a con man (Goldberg) and spews FAKE NEWS & HATE,” he wrote in a post on X, then known as Twitter.
Trump also urged his followers to “call her, write her, let her know how you feel!!!”
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
