On September 21, 1936, newspaperman William Randolph Hearst attacked FDR in his newspaper, The New York American. He accused the President of being a Socialist, Communist, and Bolshevik and wrote that FDR was carrying out a Marxist agenda.

William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951) was a newspaper magnate whose political influence on American media greatly affected FDR’s presidential campaigns and popular perceptions of the New Deal. At its peak in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Hearst’s newspaper and magazine business was the largest in the world. His papers sensationally supported FDR’s first campaign and championed burgeoning New Deal programs, but by 1935 Hearst’s endorsements of Roosevelt had waned largely over divergent labor and foreign policy agendas.

A divisive figure in American history, Hearst is both praised for journalistic excellence and criticized for personifying yellow journalism. He is credited with transforming graphic design in the news world and for spearheading the advent of the newsreel film. He is also widely known for inventing stories, distorting facts, and even inciting mayhem. This multimillionaire’s tumultuous personal and political life inspired Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, the infamous 1941 film whose release Hearst tried unsuccessfully to prevent. Hearst died in Beverly Hills, CA in 1951.