The conservative magazine National Review took credit for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s second-place finish in the Iowa caucuses, saying that a recent cover story critical of the billionaire businessman helped stir up opposition to his White House bid.
The current issue of the biweekly magazine, which hit newstands last week, features a symposium of conservative figures explaining why Trump is not part of the conservative movement and doesn’t deserve right-leaning voters’ support.
Trump, who had earlier lead in most Iowa polls, finished second Monday with 24 percent of the vote, behind Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who received 28 percent.
In an email to readers Wednesday, National Review Publisher Jack Flower said the magazine’s “bold and intelligent” stand “evidently” resonated with Iowa voters.
“The last few days, [editor in chief] Rich Lowry and I and our colleagues have received numerous calls, e-mails, tweets, and the like, commending us for publishing ‘Against Trump,’ and for its impact on the Iowa caucuses,” Fowler said.
He said hundreds of people bought subscriptions in an act of “support and admiration” for the anti-Trump stance and that the magazine received “nearly a thousand” other financial contributions as well.
Many media outlets stepped up their criticism of Trump leading up to the Iowa caucuses, including the Washington Examiner, which published six consecutive editorials against him.
Trump responded shortly after the National Review article was published online by slamming the magazine as a “dying paper.”
“Its circulation is way down. Not very many people read him anymore. People don’t even think about the National Review,” he said. “I guess they want to get a little publicity. But that’s a dying paper. I got to tell you, it’s pretty much a dead paper.”
Fowler responded to that Wednesday by saying that other critics had been making the same claim for a long time.
“Friends, we have been ‘dying, dying’ for 60 years. And we intend to keep on dying for another 60. And as we die, we shall stand athwart history, yelling ‘stop!’ — whether we are yelling it at multicultural social engineers, leftist bureaucrats, Communist tyrants, or, as [National Review’s late founder] Bill Buckley described Trump, a ‘narcissist’ presidential contender whose political triumphs would do great harm to the conservative principles we espouse,” he said.
