Murdoch watchers are about to see in real life how Lachlan handles the dilemma his father regularly faced: how to choose between the political right (in this case, Trump) and the likely political winner (almost certainly not Trump).
It’s not just the polls, with averages currently showing Joe Biden up about 10%. It’s the perceptions leaking out of the Murdoch family bunker on New York’s Sixth Avenue — the same building that houses the headquarters of both Fox News and News Corp’s The Wall Street Journal and New York Post.
Those perceptions? Trump is heading for a loss in November. Earlier this month, Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman reported an inside source telling him: “Rupert thinks Trump is going to crash and burn. It’s a clear-eyed assessment, just based on just looking at the news.”
The Wall Street Journal is already testing the waters, with its editorial board opining on Trump last week: “He still has no second term message beyond his own grievances.” The paper’s lead opinionista (and former Reagan speechwriter) Peggy Noonan added: “He hasn’t been equal to the multiple crises. Good news or bad, he rarely makes any situation better. And everyone kind of knows.” Ouch!
Fox News is gentler with yesterday’s lead story headed: “Rough polling stretch has GOP operatives asking: Could Trump drop out?” I wonder how far from Sixth Avenue those particular operatives are based?
The relationship between those New York oligarchs, the Murdochs and the Trumps, has been an enduring sub-plot of the Trump presidency. In his 2018 book Fire and Fury, former Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff quoted Rupert calling Trump an idiot. In Wolff’s 2019 follow-up, State of Siege, Rupert says: “I can’t get the asshole off the phone.”
Number two son James Murdoch, says Wolff, told his father that the family had become collaborators and the company’s future was at stake. Last year, Sherman reported that Fox News commentator Sean Hannity told Trump the Murdochs hated the president.
Idiot? Asshole? Shrug.
Loser? Threat to the company? That’s dangerous. Just ask Malcolm Turnbull.
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As always, Trump can be expected to tweet the quiet parts out loud. Since April, he’s launched multiple threaded critiques of Fox, fulminating in a May 22 missive: “@FoxNews is doing nothing to help Republicans, and me, get re-elected on November 3rd.”
It’s long been a mixed relationship. The Murdochs were sceptical of Trump’s presidential bid, although his views aligned with the network’s long reputation for coded racism. They were dragged on board in part by network head Roger Ailes (as portrayed in The Loudest Voice) and in part by their audience.
Over the months between declaration and inauguration, Trump demonstrated that the Fox audience were his supporters before they were Fox viewers. Almost as a test, he forced the network to choose between him and its lead personality, Megyn Kelly. Driven by its audience, Fox chose Trump.
Over at News Corp’s US mastheads, support was more subdued, although Trumpists, such as Australia’s own Miranda Devine in the New York Post, continue to dominate columns and op-eds. But in mastheads, Trump’s home-town The New York Times matters more, even as an “enemy of the people” he can push back against.
As the leading cable news network, and as the voice of the populist right, Fox always mattered more to a television personality like Trump.
It matters more to the Murdochs, too, particularly the new generation. Family heir Lachlan draws his salary as Fox Corp executive chair with Rupert as non-executive co-chair. At News Corp, the roles are reversed.
Trump puts Fox in a bind. They share audiences and populist politics. Fox gives the Murdochs influence across the Republican party which, in turn, drives the company’s income. But where will a post-Trump Fox fit into a Democrat-run America where it’s targeted by campaigners like Sleeping Giants and Media Matters and confronted by the cultural reset driven by big trends from Me Too to Black Lives Matter?
At the same time, Trump may be planning to dump Fox before the Murdochs dump him. He’s embracing the alternate conservative cable voice, the One America News Network (OAN). With Trump’s support, OAN would bite into Fox’s audience, while his family is reported to be forming a consortium to buy the network — although the current owners say it’s not for sale.
Trump has promoted the more conspiracy inclined OAN, most notoriously by tweeting its theory that the 75-year-old BLM protestor pushed over by police in Buffalo was an Antifa activist seeking to grab communications equipment.
In Australia, the News Corp solution would be simple: gin up a party-room challenge. With the US system? That’s a lot harder, particularly when the audience may turn out to belong to Trump, not the Murdochs.
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Fascinating piece, Chris. Murdoch and Ailes saw the gap in the market back in 1996 and exploited it for all it was worth. As you say it isn’t just the increasingly unhinged presidency of Trump, so much has changed re sexual abuse and racism, so quickly. The normally glacially paced changes in American society are firing up so fast now the Murdochs cannot deal with it in their “normal” fashion. Thanks Chris.
“In bed with Rupert”?
How would that feel ….. if you weren’t a professional conservative of course?
[…. Does this mean Sheridan will stop :- “deploring” Trump in one breath and defending him in the next?]
Murdoch picking winners – since ’93 his Curry or Maul has pimped his Limited News Party in all but one federal election – the Rudd slide.
To resume hostilities asap after – devoting his out-house papers to white-anting the electorate’s perception of Rudd’s fitness to govern :- from Rudd’s tantrums (as if he was Pat Malone), Burke, the Utegate daisy chain of (Steve) Lewis-Grech-Abetz-Turnbull; to that “phone-call from Bush” ‘leak’.
I don’t think the rag has ever urged voting for Labor at the state level in that time.
If he’s going to hang Trump out, he’d better leave room on that gibbet for himself and his FUX News.
I note that the other soothsayer in the prediction of Trump-As-President, Michael Moore, is also betting against Trump winning this year.
The Anglo/Murdoch disease is firmly established in Australia, Britain and the United States.
The opinionated and unqualified humanities can pull the wool over scientific reality at will…….and Lachlan knows it also.
Biden, Trump. What’s the difference?
With Trump you will get the maintenance of the US corporate coupe d’etat, spiced with overt racism, tweets, bombastic behavior and possible war with China.
With Biden you will get the maintenance of the US corporate coupe d’etat, spiced with covert racism, bromides and possibly war with Russia.
Remember that it was Biden who was behind Clinton’s crime omnibus bill. The one that doubled the prison population in the US and has exacerbated the violence perpetrated on African Americans as well as their poor white brothers.
Not much of a choice at all.
If the Ugly Aussie rats on Trump then the egregious sycophants of Fox News will change sides, quick as a flash, with no shame at all.
“the Dirty Digger”?
A comparison well put, Robert, ‘tween Trump and Biden.
Just one suggestion, given rapidly developments in recent times.
If Trump was to get us war with China, it would be very likely it would be China and Russia.
Ditto, Biden getting us war with Russia.
Which, as the saner end of the US MIC already knows (given they haven’t been able to best the Chinamen in any of their ‘serious’ war gaming), that might just be our best hope of preventing the Doomsday Clock from covering its final 100 seconds to Midnight (it was ‘advanced’ earlier this year, and is now closer to ‘KABOOM!!’ than it has ever been before).
If I were American I’d probably try to get a postal vote and cast it for Biden. No way would I venture out into COVID infested streets to cast a vote. That might be Trump’s best hope if indeed he actually wants to be re-elected. But as an Australian and as a Muslim I see no advantage in replacing Trump with Biden. The War Party will win the election either way. However I’m sure the comparatively sane and competent villains who run Russia and China will not fight the US unless they are attacked. They’re not suicidal.