During the election campaign, anchors on the opposition MSNBC often referred to Fox as “Trump TV” when the channel aired some of the more fawning clips from Fox’s news channel, but that never actually happened. . It’s all Murdoch TV. Thinking otherwise means holding Murdoch accountable by shifting responsibility away from him, which he is always happy to see.
As the campaign reached its final 21 days, Trump stepped onto his curved couch Fox & Friends And speak he plans to meet with Murdoch and ask Fox not to run any ads hostile to him for the rest of the campaign—“Rupert do it this way and then we will win for the people want it,” implying a level of influence that Murdoch would never admit in public or private. (Fox News continues to run negative ads about Trump.)
Perhaps it was a final act of homage to a man whom Trump truly knew he no longer needed.
Nothing in Murdoch’s long history as an influential media giant came to him after Trump descended the golden escalator. The combination of the Trump cult and Fox News serves both Trump’s and Murdoch’s agendas – a transaction in which Trump will gradually co-opt the Republican Party into a personal project abetted by a network from remove all rules to serve that purpose. In 2016, Murdoch finally got what he had long wanted but was denied—a president who would serve his views and interests.
In return, the humiliation of Fox News during the pandemic has been absolute. Murdoch showed no caution about Fox’s coverage of Trump’s handling of the crisis. This is the man can’t wait to get COVID vaccinations as soon as they become available in England, where he lives, while Fox News is demonize Anthony Fauci And give away next broadcast time Anti-vaccine rhetoriccreating a mindset that leads to the preventable deaths of thousands of people.
But that hug wasn’t enough to win Trump a second term in 2020. And on January 8, 2021, after watching the aftermath of the Trump-incited storming of the Capitol, Murdoch sent email a former Fox News executive: “Fox News is very busy pivoting…we want to turn Trump into something he isn’t.”
That has never happened. Although for a while, Fox News convert Its loyalty is to the governor of Florida Ron DeSantis as the most likely Republican successor to Trump, Murdoch finally recognized that there is only one Trump, and that Fox News and Trump have a common destiny. Until they didn’t.
We still don’t fully understand the political impact Musk is having. The resumption of the media ecosystem has happened almost invisibly. It’s unclear exactly how many young male voters were won leaned heavily to podcastseven though he did improve in this demographic (as well as several others). The only thing that is clear is that the Trump campaign, with the help of Musk’s bottomless pockets, has found the magic sauce somewhere.
In the 1980s, Murdoch redefined what it means to be a modern media mogul, by going global and finding the power and influence that comes with that business model—and inspiring for his sexually empowered version of himself as Logan Roy in Succession.
Claire Enders, a widely respected media analyst and long-time Murdoch watcher, told me: “Murdoch has had enormous influence over decades and in many countries, often through silent phone calls. perhaps offering advice, rather than explicit editorial opinions, although of course there are many such opinions. ”
Musk’s style couldn’t be more distinctive. He is ever present with Trump, accompanying him to Washington on Wednesday, where Trump met Joe Biden and congressional Republicans. Musk has been public support for Trump’s favorable positions on “Elon is not going home,” Trump said, half jokingly. How long Will that last??
It’s too early to write an epitaph; the battle for dynastic succession, between Rupert and his chosen successor, Lachlan Murdoch, and other members of the Murdoch family trust, headed by James Murdoch, is in limbo, awaiting a decision in an obscure courtroom in Reno, where the battle for control is going on.
There is speculation that if the original “irrevocable” family trust remained irrevocable, blocking Lachlan’s advancement at the time of his father’s death, James and the other siblings would have wanted clean up his inheritance by selling Fox News. Estimates of its value that I have heard from reliable sources are between $13 billion and $15 billion. In 2022, Musk paid $44 billion for Twitter. Buying Fox News would be attractive to him, as he could transform as a legacy media brand the way he transformed Twitter, as part of the new world order he seems to as if taking shape.
