Though real-estate magnate Donald Trump announced this week that he is forming an exploratory committee for president, the Huffington Post made an apparent vow not to give serious coverage to his potential candidacy.
“Let me assure you: We do not plan to take it even a little bit seriously,” Jason Linkins, an editor at the Huffington Post, wrote on Wednesday. “We could, if we wanted to, go on at great length about the numerous reasons why nobody should take a Donald Trump campaign for president seriously. But you’d have to take it a little bit seriously to do so. We don’t, so we won’t.”
The right-leaning Breitbart News website picked up Linkins’ article, calling it a “childish” decision.
Asked by the Washington Examiner media desk if he was speaking for himself or for the entire publication, Linkins said it was for himself and his “Eat the Press” blog hosted at the Post. “No, I don’t yet have the authority to set editorial guidelines beyond the Eat The Press blog,” he said. “And if I did, I’d spend my political capital on Oxford commas.”
Trump gained notoriety for teasing a possible run for the White House in 2011, all the while promoting his real estate projects and his reality game show “The Apprentice” on NBC. He eventually said he would not run for president after months of suggestion that President Obama may not have been a natural-born U.S. citizen.
Trump recently told the Examiner that it’s “looking like” he will end “The Apprentice” to make a serious run for president.
A spokeswoman for Trump said he is interested in responding but that Friday is his son’s birthday and he will have to comment on a later date.
