The Memo: Trump-Murdoch story takes dramatic new turn with WSJ lawsuit
The tangled and tumultuous relationship between President Trump and media mogul Rupert Murdoch has taken a new, dramatic turn.
Trump is suing Murdoch, his company News Corporation and the Wall Street Journal’s parent company. The suit was filed on Friday, following through on earlier social media postings from the president.
Trump being Trump, he had put the earlier threats in colorful terms.
“I’m going to sue his ass off, and that of his third rate newspaper,” Trump warned, regarding Murdoch, in a social media post on Thursday evening.
On Friday morning, he followed up with another post: “I look forward to getting Rupert Murdoch to testify in my lawsuit against him and his “pile of garbage” newspaper, the WSJ. That will be an interesting experience!!!”
The core of the dispute is a story the Journal published on Thursday about Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the wealthy financier and sexual predator who died in 2019, seemingly from suicide, while facing sex trafficking charges.
The Journal uncovered a birthday album that had apparently been put together for Epstein’s 50th birthday, in 2003, by Ghislaine Maxwell. Maxwell, at one time Epstein’s girlfriend, was ultimately sentenced to 20 years in prison for conspiring in his abuse of minors.
The birthday album, the Journal reported, included a “bawdy” letter “bearing Trump’s name.” The newspaper wrote that the letter included a hand-drawn outline of a naked woman, and some lines of text concluding “Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret.”
Trump contends the letter is a fake, contending in one post, “These are not my words, not the way I talk. Also, I don’t draw pictures.” There has, however, been at least one example of a Trump picture – a basic sketch of the New York skyline – being sold off for charity.
Trump's lawsuit contends that "the supposed letter is fake and the Defendants knew it when they chose to deliberately defame President Trump."
Trump has been forthright about the fact that he contacted Murdoch directly to try to get him to stop publication of the story before it appeared.
And it is true that Trump and Epstein have a history.
There is footage of the duo partying together in the 1990s and, in 2002, Trump paid tribute to Epstein as a “terrific guy” in a New York magazine profile of the financier.
Trump’s quote in the magazine profile also included the observation that Epstein had an eye for women “and many of them are on the younger side.”
Trump and Epstein later ceased contact, though the cause of their falling-out has never been definitively established.
In any event, Trump is now embroiled in litigation with Murdoch, having just five months ago praised the media magnate as “in a class by himself” and “an amazing guy” in the Oval Office.
The court clash creates risks for both men.
For Trump, Murdoch is a dangerous enemy. The real peril rests in the possibility of hard jabs being thrown in his direction by Fox News.
The cable news channel is a far more powerful conduit to the Trump blue-collar base than the Journal, which has a more upscale audience and has long functioned, in its editorial pages, as a strong advocate for business-friendly, free market policies.
Journal editorials have already been critical of Trump’s stances on tariffs and his clemency toward people convicted of January 6-related offenses, among other things.
But any turn by Fox to offer pointed criticisms of the president could be more electorally damaging for Trump.
The reverse is also true, however.
Any such shift from Fox would contain massive potential pitfalls for Murdoch as well. Put simply, a prolonged conflict with Trump is just as likely to see Fox get hurt by a loss of viewers as it is to wound Trump.
There is precedent here.
After the 2020 election, there was serious concern at the network about a loss of viewers to networks further to the right, such as Newsmax. Those concerns were laid bare in the discovery process for the defamation case that Dominion Voting Systems took against Fox over false suggestions of fraud and other chicanery aired by guests on the network. The case was ultimately settled for more than $700 million.
In broad terms, viewers loyal to Trump appeared to leave the network because its initial coverage affirmed the validity of President Biden’s victory. Critics say internal panic over this dynamic caused Fox to give overly credulous coverage to false claims of election fraud.
The Dominion case also revealed Murdoch’s hope that the Capitol riot of Jan. 6 had ended Trump’s political career. In one email from that period, Murdoch wrote, “We want to make Trump a nonperson.”
Such a shift would have been striking since Fox was to the fore in giving Trump a regular platform in the years when he began his transition into politics. The network’s “Fox and Friends” show had a weekly “Monday mornings with Trump” segment that began in 2011.
It is, of course, possible that tempers will cool between Trump and Murdoch, or that some settlement may be arrived at.
But if they keep on their current collision course, sparks are guaranteed to fly.
The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.