Washington: Donald Trump suffered some blows in the aftermath of last year’s US midterm elections, but the most damaging punches have arguably come from one of his former top backers: Rupert Murdoch and his conservative media empire.
First, there was the jab from the New York Post, which ran a front page cover declaring Florida governor Ron DeSantis as “DeFuture” of the Republican Party after many of Trump’s hand-picked candidates failed to win their seats in November.
At odds: Rupert Murdoch and Donald Trump.Credit:Reuters/AP
Then there was the upper cut that followed, this time in the form of another Post cover depicting the former president as “Trumpy Dumpty” with an accompanying story referring to him as “perhaps the most profound vote repellent in modern American history”.
And this week, came the latest hit: in a $1.6 billion dollar lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News and its parent company, Murdoch revealed that network presenters had “endorsed” Trump’s lies of a stolen election, and that company executives could have intervened to prevent those lies from being aired.
Not surprisingly, Trump was furious by the stunning admission.
“Why is Rupert Murdoch throwing his anchors under the table, which also happens to be killing his case and infuriating his viewers,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social online platform on Tuesday. “There is MASSIVE evidence of voter fraud & irregularities in the 2020 Presidential Election.”
By Wednesday, the former president was doubling down.
“If Rupert Murdoch honestly believes that the Presidential Election of 2020, despite MASSIVE amounts of proof to the contrary, was not Rigged & Stollen [sic], then he & his group of MAGA Hating Globalist RINOS should get out of the News Business as soon as possible, because they are aiding & abetting the DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA with FAKE NEWS,” Trump wrote.
The angry tirade was further evidence of the fallout between Trump and Murdoch, the Fox Corporation chairman whose media outlets propped up the former president for years – even to the point, it would seem, of deluding the audience about his baseless lies. But Trump’s rise was also undeniably good for Murdoch’s business, boosting Fox’s profits, audience share and broader influence.
So as the race for the 2024 US election heats up, it begs the question, is the bromance truly over? Or does Trump still need Murdoch and does Murdoch still need Trump?
The front pages of the New York Post from November 9 and November 10.
A.J. Bauer, a professor at the University of Alabama who researches and analyses trends in conservative media, says he can’t see Murdoch wanting to support Trump unless he was profitable or useful. Right now, that’s debatable.
If anything, Bauer says, Trump’s insistence that the election was stolen is costing Murdoch, both in terms of legal fees to defend the Dominion case and the possibility of hefty fines should Fox lose, which appears likely.
And even if Trump were to somehow secure the Republican nomination, his campaign rallies and cable news interviews would inevitably regurgitate the same argument: that he was cheated out of the last election. Should that happen, Bauer says, Murdoch and Fox executives would face a conundrum: “are we willing to get burnt again to benefit Trump?”
Those close to Trump take a different view. Campaign adviser Jason Miller cites Trumps’s run in 2016, noting that “everybody was against him, but he connected with the people.”
“You had the mainstream media against him, you had the conservative media, you had the Washington insiders,” Miller recently told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. “So are there going to be news outlets who will be less supportive than others in 2024? Of course – but that’s been the case for his entire career.”
The rift between the pair is being watched closely in political and media circles given the influence of Fox News and other Murdoch-owned media entities owned in potentially shaping the race for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.
But if the last few months are any guide, Americans are more likely to see a concerted effort to bolster DeSantis’ chances of succeeding in the party’s primaries, should the Florida Governor declare his candidacy as expected.
Fresh signs of this emerged on Thursday morning (US time), when DeSantis appeared as a guest on Fox’s America’s Newsroom morning program – hours after Trump’s Truth Social rant – to talk up his new book, his state legislative wins and his prospects for running against for the Republican nomination.
He didn’t give much away regarding his national ambitions, but the soft-ball interview with hosts Dana Perino and Bill Hemmer was notably fawning.
Yet, while the Murdoch empire clearly views DeSantis as the future of the party, observers note that the landscape can always shift. After all, the Trump-Murdoch union was a slow burn: in July 2015, one month after the Apprentice reality TV star announced his candidacy, Murdoch tweeted: “When is Donald Trump going to stop embarrassing his friends, let alone the whole country?” One year later, after Trump secured the nomination, Murdoch was firmly in his corner.
Murdoch’s deposition in the $1.6 billion Dominion defamation case also provides a telling insight into Trump’s ongoing hold over the Fox audience, as well as Murdoch’s attempt “straddle the issue” of election fraud without angering the president or his supporters.
For instance, when a former Fox executive told Murdoch in the aftermath of the January 6 capital attack that “Fox News needs a course correction” on Trump, Murdoch replied that the company was “busy pivoting” and “we want to make Trump a non-person.” But he also later acknowledged that this was easier said than done.
“Right now Trump needs Murdoch more than Murdoch needs Trump.”
“Nobody wants Trump as an enemy,” Murdoch said. “We all know that Trump has a big following. If he says, ‘Don’t watch Fox News, maybe some don’t.’”
Behind the scenes, similar concerns were playing out among primetime presenters and other executives. Sean Hannity, a longstanding Trump ally, had been “privately disgusted by Trump for weeks, but was scared to lose viewers.” Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert’s son, said in his testimony that a ratings drop would “keep me awake” at night.
And presenter Tucker Carlson privately acknowledged that the claim of rigged Dominion voting systems were “absurd.” Yet when Fox’s White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich tweeted that “there is no evidence that any voting system” altered the votes, Carlson suggested to Hannity she should be fired.
“It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke,” he added.
Since its creation in 1996, Fox has enjoyed a virtual monopoly when it comes to US conservative cable news viewers. But this began to shift in the aftermath of the 2020 election as Trump supporters sought out news stations seemingly more willing to push his false claim that Joe Biden had stolen the election.
While Trump’s frustration towards Fox had been brewing for months before the poll, tensions spilled over on election night when the independent analysts on Fox News’ decision desk projected Biden as the winner of Arizona, ahead of many other networks. In line with Trump’s instructions, some viewers later defected to right-wing news channels such as OANN or Newsmax, in line with Trump’s instructions.
But despite the inside jitters, Fox still dominates the market and last month the network marked two consecutive years as the number one primetime cable network, with 1.4 million total in February. MSNBC finished second with 711,000 average viewers, followed by ESPN, HGTV and CNN.
“Right now Trump needs Murdoch more than Murdoch needs Trump,” says Gary Nordlinger, a professor of politics at George Washington University and a former political and communications strategist. “But if it comes down to Trump versus Biden, I think he’ll try his best to put his finger back on the scale for Trump.”
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