But as I’ve written before, Murdoch has time and time again failed to elect a president of his own choosing. In the 2016 campaign, he opposed Trump, tweeting in July 2015, a month after Trump announced: “When will Donald Trump stop embarrassing his friends?let alone the whole country? Trump was so furious with Fox’s coverage at one point, and with then-anchor Megyn Kelly, that he retaliated. skipping the Fox primary debate. In addition, Murdoch took issue with Trump’s signature positions on immigrantshe muslim ban other trade. Only after Trump had paved a sure path to the nomination did Murdoch begin to fawn over Trump, and do so with force.
The Trump-Fox feedback loop benefited both parties, as Fox meddled for Trump during his presidency and Trump filled Fox’s schedule with the meat of his personality. By July 2019, Trump had given 61 interviews to Fox channels compared to 17 for ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC/CNBC combined. The disadvantage of grabbing a tiger by the tail, as we all know, is how to let go of the tail when the movement slows down or the tiger is hungry. Murdoch likely thought dismounting would be an easy process once Trump lost the 2020 election and sank into political oblivion.
But it wasn’t that easy. When other news networks called the choice of Joe Biden ahead of Fox, Murdoch expressed his relief in an email to his son and fellow Fox executive, Lachlan. “We should and could have gone first, but at least being second saves us a blast from Trump!” Fox was saving the immediate blast from Trump, but it finally came when the network failed to toe Trump’s line in his election lies. He savagely attacked the network on Twitter, writing: “@FoxNews during the day it’s practically unwatchable, especially during the weekends. Look at @OANN, @newsmax or just about anything else.” viewers deserted as instructed to the upstart news channels, which were flooding their schedules with comprehensive coverage of the stolen electoral line. Now, in addition to Trump’s fury, Fox was worried about viewer anger, and inside Fox, everything was in chaos. In testimony from him, Lachlan Murdoch said falling ratings would “keep me up” at night.
The day before the January 6 riots on Capitol Hill, Murdoch and Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott planned for Fox primetime hosts Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham to explain the choice of Biden to viewers who had not gotten the message. “Privately, everyone is there,” Scott told Murdoch, according to the court filing, but “we have to be careful about using the shows and angering viewers.” As the New York Times reports, “No such statement was made on air..”
Murdoch’s fear of a trump’s tantrum it became palpable after the riots on Capitol Hill, as witnessed by an email exchange between Murdoch and former Republican House Speaker and Fox Corporation board member Paul D. Ryan. In it, Murdoch claims that Hannity, a Trump stalwart, had been “privately disgusted by Trump for weeks, but was afraid of losing viewers.” It’s obvious here that Murdoch was assigning his fear of losing viewers to Hannity, as a single instruction to the host to tell the truth about Trump’s claims would have cleared things up.
When a former Fox executive told Murdoch in a January 8, 2021 email that “Fox News needs a course correction” on Trump, Murdoch responded: “Fox News is too busy spinning. … We want to make Trump a non-person.” A few days later, Murdoch expanded on another email to his son. The network was “getting as fast as possible” from Trump, but after four years of conditioning his audience to worship the president, Murdoch knew the unconditioning process would be hairy. “We have to guide our viewer, which is not as easy as it sounds,” Murdoch wrote.
“No one wants Trump as an enemy,” Murdoch said in a statement, still bruised from his tiger ride. “We all know that Trump has a large following. If he says, ‘Don’t watch Fox News, maybe some won’t.
Fox’s “pivot” away from Trump eventually came, everything but ban it from the network, even if some of its hosts still spoke highly of it. Trump continues to intimidate Fox from his position on social media, recently calling him the “RINO network”, but he still has to face his former ally. Who among us would prevent a meeting in 2024, with Trump pulling Murdoch’s strings yet again if Trump wins the presidential nomination?
Murdoch’s quest for power and money, and his skillful combination of the two, has always been a naked secret to those who be careful to ask. These latest court filings only remove the top layer of epidermis from his skin and expose his venal essence. As of January 26, 2021, Murdoch was still so afraid of Trump that he had not executed the pivot and was still allowing stolen election wacko (and loyal Fox announcer) Mike “MyPillow” Lindell a platform on the net. . tucker carlson tonight show. Why allow it? She asked Murdoch. Presumably cashing Lindell’s fat checks in his mind, Murdoch replied: “It’s not red or blue, it’s green.”
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