Why Murdoch Doesn't Give a Toss About Trump

What rich irony that the defense against the latest assault by Trump on press freedom is now in the hands of old crocodile Rupert Murdoch, the very media owner whose Fox News gave us Trump in the first place. In 2020, such was Murdoch’s desire to curry favor with Trump and his glued-to-Fox base that the network’s election night editor who accurately called Arizona early for Biden (after getting approval from Rupert) was then fired, as a sacrificial lamb to the backlash that followed. The editor later wrote, “Me serving up green beans to viewers who had been spoon-fed ice cream sundaes for years came as a terrible shock to their systems.”

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But Murdoch’s ethos, if you can call it that, is different with his newspapers than with the anchor-driven bombast meted out on Fox. My bet is he won’t pay Trump a dime for the Epstein story. Even at a grumpy 94, Murdoch is still a tabloid man to his core. Nothing gets his juices going more than a sex scandal that beats the competition. The old-fashioned populist thrill of embarrassing those in power (and leveraging their fears) has been the six-decade blood sport of Murdoch's cash-cow newspaper empire. It’s the reason he will never dump the New York Post, which provides him with that reputation-smashing real estate of a jeering front page.

https://tinabrown.substack.com/p/why-murdoch-doesnt-give-a-toss-about