This was the headline of the Newsweek story on Oct. 25, 2017.
WHY DOES PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP HATE DOGS?
Yes, in all caps.
The dog is famously man’s best friend—but it is not this president’s.
Not only is President Donald Trump the first White House resident in generations to not have a first pooch, but the very word “dog” is the root of so many of the Tweeter in Chief’s favorite insults.
“Couldn’t get elected dog catcher in Tennessee” the president said of arch-rival Republican Senator Bob Corker. He used the exact same term to describe former New York Governor George Pataki and former New Hampshire Governor John Sununu in 2015.
Yes, with everything going on in the country and the world — and with the case of Russian collusion against President Trump melting away and being replaced with stories about Hillary Clinton’s connections to a salacious dossier covered with Russian fingerprints — Newsweek went with “Trump Hates Dogs.”
Newsweek was launched as “News-Week” back in 1931. The magazine rose in prominence over the years and was bought by The Washington Post in 1961. Throughout the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, the magazine was on every news stand across America, and in every airport, where it competed with another big mag, Time.
But its circulation plunged from 3.1 million in 2009 (4 million worldwide) to 1.5 million in January 2010, and The Post reported the mag lost $20 million in the first quarter alone.
It was all downhill after that. Newsweek merged with The Daily Beast, was redesigned in 2011 and went out of the print business in 2013. It returned to print in 2014, and the New York Post reported in 2015 that its circulation was just 100,000.
On Nov. 8, 2016, Newsweek released an edition commemorating Hillary Clinton’s election as president. “Madam President,” said the headline over a picture of a smiling Hillary. Turns out she lost. By a lot.
While Newsweek once helped set the conversation in America, now it does stories on Trump hating dogs.
But Trump’s legacy, other than the occasional dog-related insult, may exclude the beloved canines, after all.
“Donald was not a dog fan,” Ivana Trump wrote about her former husband in her memoir, Raising Trump. When she brought a poodle named Chappy into their home, Trump fought back. But Ivana’s love of dogs would not be quashed: “It’s me and Chappy or no one!” she told him. And he eventually acquiesced—but never seemed to grow all that fond of that poodle.
The feeling was mutual: When the president went near Ivana’s closet, “Chappy would bark at him territorially,” she wrote.
But for now, “There are no plans” to add a pet to the household, a White House spokesperson told CNN.
Now that’s some hard-hitting journalism right there.