Mike Lupica Sure Looks Like He's Been Stumping For Donald Trump For Last Nine Months

[Photo Illustration: The Big Lead]

Mike Lupica has been covering the Presidential campaign trail. Well, actually hopping on the campaign bus probably falls under “I don’t do windows.” It would be more accurate to say Lupica has been monitoring developments from Connecticut.

The New York Daily News columnist has devoted ample column space to the 2016 Presidential Campaign. Reading those columns together raises an interesting fact. Lupica does not criticize Donald Trump. In fact, one could argue Lupica is quietly stumping for him.

Lupica has praised Trump while offering at best tepid criticism. He has trashed Trump competitors at vital moments, criticized other Republican candidates while ignoring similar Trump statements, and censured Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama using Trump-like rhetoric.

Here’s a recap of Lupica’s Presidential campaign writing over the last nine months.

June 8, 2015

Lupica addresses Trump’s pending announcement about his Presidential ambitions. Lupica writes that he supported Trump running for the same reason he told Trump to his face in Florida to run for New York Governor in 2014: he would be interesting to write about. Lupica predicts Trump would not run.

"In the past Trump has successfully grown his brand by NOT running. The guy who wrote “Art of the Deal” has practically turned not running into an art form in itself. There’s no good reason to stop now. And he really does have a better job than President already, no matter how much he likes to play golf."

July 13, 2015

Lupica writes that Trump and Bernie Sanders have “cracked a code” in American politics. Being loud is the way to get attention.

"Suddenly, though, it is no joke, across the state line in New Hampshire or in Iowa or Wisconsin or anywhere else Bernie Sanders draws big crowds. And Trump draws big crowds of his own as he gets you thinking that he doesn’t just want to keep our border safe from Mexico, but maybe invade it one of these days with a caravan of black Escalades. But he is loud and famous, and that is all it takes these days for him to suck up all the oxygen in the Republican race. Trump wants to talk about all the money he’s made and what he’s worth, at least before he is forced to open the books on his personal fortune. Bernie wants to talk about all the money he wants to take away from guys like Trump. For now, coming at this thing from opposite ends of ideology and maybe opposite ends of the solar system, they make up the oddest couple that Presidential politics has produced in a long time, and maybe ever."

Lupica references Trump’s immigration comment and potential lying about his net worth. No condemnation.

August 12, 2015

Lupica writes about how Trump is winning, albeit in a Charlie Sheen sense, and praises him for being “a real ringmaster” and unbeholden to Super PACs.

"Only now it has a real ringmaster, spending his own money instead of hiding behind super PACs, acting like the loudest, richest populist in all of recorded history. Months before there are real caucuses and primaries and real votes counted, Trump is duh-winning the early innings of the campaign by making everybody else play by his rules. That wasn’t a debate last week, it was “The Real Candidates of Quicken Loans Arena.” It was a show. And whether you love Trump or hate him, you have to know he knows how to do big, showy shows."

Lupica addresses Trump attacking Megyn Kelly. Actually, he praises Trump’s masterful handling of the situation.

"I’ve known Trump a long time, too, and like him. It doesn’t mean I like everything he says or does. Only he does. But he can’t say all the things he’s said about people and then act as if Megyn Kelly is picking on him because of a question he doesn’t like. Still: So much of what he is doing these days with the media happens to be brilliant, as he continues to make every news cycle all about him. He says what he says about John McCain’s status as a war hero. Then almost in the next breath, Trump is talking about McCain’s record helping veterans, as if that was the subject in the first place, even though it wasn’t. He gets attacked by people who decided he was making a menstrual-cycle reference about Kelly, but by Sunday morning’s talk shows was attacking Jeb Bush for something Bush said about the funding of women’s health issues. Along the way, of course, anybody who crosses him is some loser, lightweight tool of political correctness."

September 14, 2015

Lupica takes on Hillary Clinton. He writes that she, unlike Trump, is not fit for the presidential race. Her campaign is a “hot mess” per Lupica. He compares her apology to that of an athlete in trouble. Trump, he writes, looks like the seasoned politician.

Clinton is quoted twice in the column, out of context, for a total of eight words. Trump is quoted five times for a total of 258 words. Trump’s quotes provide 31 percent of the words in Lupica’s column.

September 17, 2015

There were reports Mike Lupica was out in the Daily News cuts. Donald Trump tweeted that Lupica is “a wonderful and talented guy!” and it would be “really bad” if he left the Daily News

October 11th, 2015

Lupica writes about Republicans adding to the ignorance in debate on gun laws. He attacks GOP candidates John Kasich, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Ben Carson by name. Lupica makes no mention of front-runner Donald Trump.

"“You have to prepare (at schools). You have to harden. The guns are not the problem,” Kasich said, apparently throwing in with the people who think that more college professors with automatic weapons will stop the next Rambo in a place like Roseburg, Ore. When the incredible shrinking Jeb Bush is asked about Roseburg, he says “stuff happens.” Ben Carson actually stands up and wants to tell everybody how brave and heroic he would have been if the shooter in Oregon had stuck a gun in his ear. It is nothing more than the usual discourse on guns from the righteous liberty-lovers on the right, most of them sounding as enlightened as hamsters."

Trump, in the wake of the Oregon shooting blamed the issue on the “mentally ill,” and asserted that gun laws would have no effect. After reading the Second Amendment at a rally, Trump advocated arming teachers. “If you had teachers with guns you would’ve been a hell of a lot better off,” Trump told the crowd.

Those comments happened more than a week before Lupica’s column.

November 9, 2015

Ben Carson had overtaken Trump in national polls. Lupica bashes Carson in a column. He laments that Trump is being made “the clown in this race” when the real crazy figure was Carson, who he asserted had a “screw loose,” while comparing Carson to the dreaded Alex Rodriguez.

"Trump gets banged around constantly for coming at things as loud and flamboyantly as he does. But right there with him at the top of the polls — for now — is Carson, the O.R. whisperer. The problem is that when he finally speaks up, he often sounds like somebody with a screw loose, right before blaming the media for his problems. When he does raise his voice, he’s another guy who got caught blaming the whole thing on a witch hunt. Alex Rodriguez was the last phony to try that."

The column came a day after Trump did a barrage of interviews asserting Ben Carson had “a pathological disease.”

November 22, 2015

Lupica wrote about President Obama’s reaction to the attacks in Paris. He panned Obama for being weak and failing to lead the international community against ISIS. When the situation called for “a Churchill,” Obama was scoring petty political points.

"If Barack Obama wants to be remembered as a better President than he was a candidate, he needs to stop running now. He also needs to stop acting as if it is somehow our fault that his response to the Paris slaughter made him sound weak, when the civilized world wanted, and needed him to sound stronger than ever before."

The column came two days after Trump criticized Obama for soft-pedaling ISIS and not taking a leadership role with the international community.

Trump wondered “what’s with” Obama and his inability to “talk about Islamic terrorism, pledged he would take a more assertive leadership role, and advocated a very Churchillian response: “bombing the hell out of ’em.”

December 9, 2015

Lupica writes a column about how this is “The Worst Presidential Race in History.” He asserts there “has never been a lower point than this in modern presidential politics.”

Which Trump example did he use to illustrate this point? None. Trump, per Lupica, did not engender this phenomenon. He is just “the biggest bullhorn.”

"Donald Trump is the angry face of it all, able to out-talk everybody on radio and television, and out-tweet them, and shock the world with his theories about Muslims. But Trump isn’t alone. He’s just the one with the biggest bullhorn, able to out-shout even the bullhorn media."

Lupica compares Ted Cruz, “whose only active service was on the debate team,” to General Curtis LeMay, ripping him for, in Lupica’s words, threatening to “Go over to Syria and blow all the bad guys to kingdom come.” Somehow Trump’s previous pledge to “bomb the hell out of ’em” missed the column.

Lupica also criticizes Hillary Clinton for “making it seem as if all the Republicans share the same feelings about Muslims and immigrants, as if they are all working off the same playbook when she knows they are not.”

We kept Lupica’s original hyperlink in there. In that article, Clinton is quoted once from a Tweet where she said “This is shocking rhetoric. It should be denounced by all seeking to lead this country,” The Tweet referred to Trump threatening to implement a database to track Muslims. Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz and pretty much everyone else concurred with their disagreement.

Maybe someone added the wrong link?

January 15, 2016

Ted Cruz emerged as the biggest threat to Donald Trump in Iowa. Lupica lit into Cruz over his “New York Values” jibe at Trump, referencing the heroes 9/11.

"New York values? New York values are the ironworkers who carried their tools in backpacks and gym bags and, by God, walked over the Brooklyn Bridge on the night of Sept. 11, 2001, or all the way downtown from all the way uptown. One of them I know simply said to a cop who didn’t want to let him get close to where the towers had been. And the guy said, “They need me. I cut steel.”"

He makes no mention of Trump asserting that “thousands and thousands” of Jersey City Muslims celebrated the toppling of the World Trade Center.

Lupica concludes that “Cruz is a lightweight.”

"Cruz is a lightweight. He always has been, however well he is doing in caucuses in the heartland. He may do well there. He is just out of his class here. It is the other party that has a donkey as its mascot. But Cruz is the one who’s a career jackass."

January 18, 2016

Lupica writes his second column in four days about Ted Cruz, claiming Cruz is one of the “great phonies to ever run for president.”

"Ted Cruz, one of the great phonies to ever run for President, the great pretender of the current political season, says that he is the candidate best suited to unify the country. He can only hope to unify it the way he already has his own party, which hates him more than it hates the President."

February 1, 2016

The day of the Iowa caucus. Lupica praises Donald Trump for “gaming the system” and “playing the game better than anybody else.” He defends Trump from purported “church-lady pundits” complaining about “how crass and course” the campaign has been, such as Mike Lupica less than two months before.

"There has been, and continues to be, all this hand-wringing from the church-lady pundits of the media about how crass and coarse this has all been, and what a mockery Trump has made of the system we have for picking these candidates, as if he’s the one who’s done that, and not the Koch brothers and super PACs and more dirty money in politics than there is dirty water in Flint, Mich. You know what Trump has done? He’s gamed the system. He’s played the game better than anybody else, even Bernie. He’s not a serious candidate, you still hear that all the time. As if a grifter like Cruz is. Are you kidding? The way Cruz does business makes the New York real estate business that produced Trump look like church in comparison."

February 2, 2016

Trump loses the Iowa caucus to Ted Cruz. Lupica writes about Ted Cruz again, declaring he would make a worse president than … wait for it … Penelope Cruz.

Lupica rattles off the list of fringe candidates who have done well in Iowa to dismiss the caucus, a day after posing it as a litmus test for Trump’s campaign. He attributes Cruz’ victory to convincing “slow thinkers” in the Carson camp he was dropping out of the race.

Feb 21, 2016

Lupica writes a column criticizing Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio for spinning victories after Trump won the South Carolina primary. He also ridicules the notion of elitist media belittling Trump voters.

"You know that the big story continues to be just how angry voters, at least the ones who have voted so far, are with the way Washington is being run, in Congress and from the White House. And that story, more than anything else, continues to inform the rise of Donald Trump, whatever you think about his positions on Muslims or Megyn Kelly or even the Pope. Somehow there is this notion that only people not smart enough to understand the issues are the ones voting for Trump. Sure, go with that, as if we in the media are the only ones who understand what matters in this country, or what voters should be angry about."

March 3, 2016

Mitt Romney laid into Donald Trump, in a late bid to stave off an all but inevitable Trump nomination. Lupica wrote a column trashing Romney and portraying Trump’s rise as a product of the Republican establishment and ridiculed that establishment for “turning on one of their own.”

"But the party that Romney says he has to save from Trump — that party produced Donald Trump. All the anger that is fueling Trump’s supporters, Mitt Romney’s Republican Party has been stoking that exact same anger since so many of the party leaders began talking about making Obama a one-term President before he’d even taken his hand off the Bible at his first inauguration. You know what Mitt Romney and all the hand-wringers from the right — including all these bullhorn tough guys in the media who think these elections run through them, and then couldn’t stop Obama from getting elected twice — really need to do: They all need to take a long look at themselves. Trump is them on steroids."

To Recap…

Donald Trump has put forth some of the most jarring, odious ideas to ever make it into serious American political discourse. He has made derogatory, insulting, racist, and sexist comments. He has done it to the point where mentioning this is almost redundant. Lupica, no stranger to the moralizing column, has railed against none of this in print.

After arguing for Trump’s entry to write about him, Lupica delivered his “sternest” criticism of Trump or any of his proposals on August 12th, when he argued Trump “could be going about this better” when under fire from Megyn Kelly or others.

Scathing.

Lupica has written multiple columns praising Trump as a politician. He has argued against dismissing the interests of Trump voters out of hand.

Lupica has written columns trashing each of Trump’s rivals and critics, often at profoundly convenient times given the polling (Carson – November, Cruz – January, Romney – March).

Lupica has written columns about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, either filled with comments from Trump or echoing comments Trump made days previously.

It’s not hard to see why Donald Trump believes Lupica is “a wonderful and talented guy!”