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The Washington Submit’s Sarah Ellison is out with a fascinating profile of Mathias Döpfner, the CEO of Axel Springer, the German media firm which final yr offered Politico for more than $1 billion.
Döpfner, whose portfolio of publications includes proper-leaning German papers Bild and Die Welt, has said he wants to position Politico as a leading nonpartisan e-newsletter.
“We need to show that being nonpartisan is in reality the more successful positioning,” he informed the Submit, a strategy he known as his “greatest and most contrarian wager.”
However Ellison received an e-mail Döpfner despatched to shut executives praising former President Donald Trump ahead of the 2020 election.
“Will we all need to get collectively for an hour within the morning on November three and pray that Donald Trump will again become President of america of The united states?” Döpfner stated within the e-mail.
In step with Ellison:
His e mail used to be inspired via a news story he shared in regards to the government’s plans to sue Google for abuse of market dominance, an animating issue of his for years. But Döpfner went on to argue that Trump had made the appropriate strikes on 5 of what he deemed the six most important problems with the last half century — “defending the free democracies” towards Russia and China, pushing NATO allies to up their contributions, “tax reforms,” and Heart East peace efforts, in addition to challenging tech monopolies — if falling brief, he implied, on climate exchange.
“No American administration within the remaining 50 years has completed extra,” Döpfner concluded.
Ellison asked Döpfner about the e-mail, and he denied ever sending it.
“That’s intrinsically false,” he instructed the Publish. “That doesn’t exist. It has never been sent and has by no means been even imagined.”
When Ellison confirmed Döpfner a print-out of the email, he stated he would possibly have sent it “as an ironic, provocative observation within the circle of people that hate Donald Trump.”
“That is me,” he stated. “That could be.”
Döpfner’s politics are in any other case rather inscrutable. Consistent with the Submit, Axel Springer staff are required to signal a structure of varieties “committing to ideas that embrace a disavowal of racism, sexism and political or religious extremism; but additionally reinforce for a united Europe, Israeli statehood and a free-market economic system.”
In an interview with the Post, Döpfner denied ever assisting Trump, and commonly described his politics:
Regardless of his 2020 electronic mail to colleagues, which he describes as flippant, Döpfner insists he has never been a supporter of Trump. In an interview with The Post, he describes his own views as eclectic, calling himself a “non-Jewish Zionist” with “small-L liberal” dispositions, deeply fascinated about racism and homophobia. He additionally concerns about what he sees as cancel culture, and in non-public conversations, friends say, he gripes about identification politics.
Read the whole Put up profile right here.
The publish Politico’s New Owner Denies Sending ‘False’ Electronic mail Praising Trump Ahead of Admitting He ‘Could Be’ the Sender first regarded on Mediaite.
