Donald Trump has fought The New York Times for the better part of a decade.
The paper keeps poking at him. Trump keeps swinging back harder every single time.
And this time the President handed the Gray Lady a forecast about its own future that nobody in that newsroom wants to hear.
A Crowd Story Lit the Fuse
It started with a crowd count.
The New York Times reported that the venue for a recent Trump rally in Alabama “was not full.” The paper apparently thought that line would land as a small jab. It landed more like a match tossed onto a pile of dry leaves.
Trump took to Truth Social on October 5, 2026, to set the record straight. In that first post he tied the paper’s claim to his rally in Ohio rather than the Alabama event, but the message came through loud and clear.
“There are no empty seats, there haven’t been for years, and there never will be,” Trump wrote in part. “The Rallies are ‘HOTTER’ than ever.”
He didn’t stop there. Trump described the events as “happenings” and said they “will never be duplicated again.”
Anybody who has watched a Trump rally on television knows what he means. People line up hours ahead, sometimes overnight, in parking lots across the country. Love him or hate him, no other politician in modern memory draws crowds like that for a stump speech.
Third Rate Reporters and a Blackened Facade
A few hours later, Trump fired off a second post. This one went after the paper’s coverage of his Miami golf resort, and it got personal.
According to Trump, the Times ran a story about Trump National Doral with a photo in which the building’s facade looked “blackened and denigrated.” Trump claimed the paper did this to make his property look “shoddy, filthy, and just plain BAD,” and he posted what he said was the real facade alongside it for comparison.
He also accused the paper of wanting world leaders to see the darker image. Trump praised the resort’s Blue Monster course, calling it “one of the Best, and Toughest, anywhere in the World!”
Then he turned his fire on two of the paper’s best-known White House reporters, Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman. Trump called them “Third Rate Reporters” and said he hasn’t spoken to either of them in years, even though they “write about me constantly, never fact checking, or caring, about whether or not their story is true.”
But the line that grabbed everyone’s attention came at the very end.
“Some day in the not too distant future The Times will be forced to close its dirty doors, and that will be a Great Day for America!” Trump wrote.
Trump also claimed the paper’s “numbers are way down due to lack of credibility” and branded the whole operation a “CROOKED outfit.” He coined a new label for the coverage too, calling it “Artificial News!”
CNN and Politico Got Caught in the Crossfire
The Times wasn’t the only outlet on the receiving end that day.
The White House refused to let Politico aboard Air Force One, according to Mediaite. Hours later, CNN’s Kristen Holmes asked Trump about his poll numbers among Latino voters, and the President let her have it.
“You’re fake news!” Trump told her. “My poll numbers are great, and all you have to do is look at the crowds we’re drawing.”
He went on to say that candidates he campaigns for start out losing and end up winning by the time he leaves town. And he wasn’t finished with CNN either. “No, CNN poll numbers are fake, and your whole outfit is fake, and so are you,” Trump said.
Mediaite, which reported the episode, described the Truth Social post as “ominous.” Funny how the press reaches for words like that when a President predicts a newspaper might go under, yet those same outlets spent years cheerfully forecasting the end of Trump’s political career. They got that one wrong more than once.
Why the Gray Lady Keeps Losing This Fight
Here’s what the media crowd never quite grasps. Trump didn’t threaten to shut the Times down by force. He predicted that readers would do it for him by walking away.
That’s a market forecast, not a decree.
And plenty of Americans would argue the paper earned every bit of that skepticism. The Times shared a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for its coverage of the Russia collusion story. Then Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation failed to establish that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia. The paper never handed the prize back.
Millions of readers remember that. They remember how much of the press establishment treated the Hunter Biden laptop story as a foreign plot in the weeks before the 2020 election. They remember wall-to-wall coverage of one Trump “scandal” after another that fizzled out by the following news cycle.
But the Times didn’t change course. It doubled down.
So when the paper runs a line about some empty seats at an Alabama rally, Trump supporters don’t read it as neutral reporting. They read it as one more brick in a wall the paper has been building since 2016. Whether the venue had a few open chairs in the back hardly matters. The choice to make that the story tells readers everything about the priorities in that newsroom.
There’s also something worth noticing about the Doral photo dispute. Trump says the paper made his property look worse than it does. The Times may well dispute that, and readers can compare the two images Trump posted and decide for themselves. Still, the fact that so many Americans instantly believe the worse version of the story about the paper, rather than about Trump, says a lot about where the Gray Lady’s credibility stands with half the country.
Maybe that’s the real problem for the old guard of American journalism. They used to set the agenda. Now a President with a phone and a Truth Social account can answer them in minutes, and his audience dwarfs theirs on a good day.
And Trump shows no sign of easing up. Barring Politico from Air Force One, sparring with CNN in front of the cameras, and now openly forecasting the end of the Times all point in the same direction. The President has decided the legacy press doesn’t get a free pass anymore, and his voters cheer him on every time he says it.
Whether the Times actually closes its doors is anybody’s guess. Big institutions can limp along for a long time on old money and old prestige.
But the paper keeps handing Trump fresh ammunition. Sooner or later, readers notice which side keeps getting the story wrong.
Sources: Mediaite, “Trump Ominously Says The New York Times ‘Will Be Forced To Close’ in ‘Not Too Distant Future,'” Michael Luciano, October 5, 2026; President Donald Trump, Truth Social posts, October 5, 2026.