According to a report, the new German owner of Politico sent an email to his closest executives asking if they should meet up to pray for Donald Trump’s re-election. According to The Washington Post, Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner sent the message in the weeks leading up to the 2020 presidential election, a year before his company’s acquisition of Politico in October 2021.
“Do we all want to get together for an hour in the morning on November 3 and pray that Donald Trump will again become President of the United States of America?” Döpfner wrote, inspired by an article about the Trump administration taking legal action against Google for abuse of market dominance. Döpfner argued that Trump had made the right call on five of the six biggest issues of the last century—including pursuing peace in the Middle East and “defending the free democracies” from Russia and China—only falling short on climate change. “No American administration in the last 50 years has done more,” he added.
When asked about the message, Döpfner initially denied it existed, going so far as to say: “It has never been sent and has never been even imagined.” When confronted with a printout of the email, he explained that he may have sent it “as an ironic, provocative statement in the circle of people that hate Donald Trump.” “That is me,” he added. “That could be.”
