Rupert Murdoch is reportedly tired of Donald Trump’s whining about Fox News’ coverage of him, thinks Trump has blown his own re-election chances and “after all that has gone on, people are ready for Sleepy Joe.” But that hasn’t stopped him from allowing his NY Post to concoct a bogus Hunter email “scandal” that Fox News is endlessly hyping.
From The Daily Beast:
The Australian-born billionaire is disgusted by Trump’s handling of COVID-19, remarking that the president is his own worst enemy, that he is not listening to advice about how best to handle the pandemic, and that he’s creating a never-ending crisis for his administration, according to three people who have spoken with Murdoch.
In response to an email inquiry for this report asking him if he believes Biden will win in a landslide and his thoughts on Trump’s handling of coronavirus, Murdoch responded, “No comment except I’ve never called Trump an idiot,” referring to a 2018 report that the media mogul called the president a “fucking idiot” following a chat about immigration.
While Murdoch believes the outcome of the election is a fait accompli, his New York tabloid has been doing everything in its power to help Trump’s re-election chances, publishing a screaming page 1 story on Wednesday under the headline, “Biden Secret E-Mails.” The supposed “smoking gun” emails purported to show that Hunter Biden had introduced his father to a Ukrainian businessman when he was vice president, though the Post relied on unverified documents given to them by Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani. (Biden’s team denies that such a meeting took place.)
Murdoch had long prized having unfettered access to the White House, much like the direct line he has enjoyed to leaders in Australia and the U.K. But people familiar with the matter say the two men have not spoken in several weeks after Murdoch grew tired of Trump’s endless complaints about what the president viewed as negative coverage on Fox News.
…
[H]e is now firmly of the mindset that the next president will be Biden, telling one associate, “after all that has gone on, people are ready for Sleepy Joe.”
Sad for Trump!
Except that Murdoch properties are still trying to help Trump by cooking up Biden scandals, the latest being Hunter Biden emails.
From Media Matters:
If you get your news solely from Fox, you are almost certainly unaware that a story the network had trumpeted as evidence of alleged criminality at the highest levels of the Obama administration had fallen apart. The [Washington] Post’s report that the Justice Department had ended its “unmasking” probe hasn’t been mentioned by Hannity, or Carlson, or the Fox & Friends crew. In fact, it’s been discussed just three times on Fox, garnering one full segment on “straight news” broadcast The Story, less than a minute of discussion during a broader segment on the “straight news” broadcast Special Report, and a brief mention by Juan Williams on the panel show The Five, according to a review of the network’s transcripts.
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Instead, all the same Fox propagandists who touted “unmasking” to their audiences have moved on to a new purported tale of Democratic criminality: the New York Post’s Wednesday report which falsely suggests that Joe Biden had corruptly sought the removal of a Ukrainian prosecutor in order to bolster Hunter Biden’s business interests. The central premise of that story is wrong, and the emails it is based on don’t say what the Post says they do and were allegedly obtained through a remarkably sketchy and potentially illegal chain of events involving the president’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, a known conduit for Russian disinformation who Fox’s own “Brain Room” says is unreliable.
But no matter -- Fox has already flooded the zone with more than three dozen segments talking up the Post’s findings. Hannity claimed on Wednesday night that the paper had uncovered “an avalanche of damning information” detailing the “corrupt practices” of the “Biden family business.” For Carlson, the story was “entirely accurate” and “damning,” and he went on to speculate that Joe Biden may have become a “rich man” by taking payoffs from foreign governments.” On Fox & Friends, they're complaining that lack of similarly screaming coverage from the rest of the press shows “disdain” for viewers, and demanding that ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos ask Biden about the story at Thursday night’s town hall.
On Fox, it’s the biggest and most damning story ever -- at least until the next one.
If Murdoch had any decency, he’d do his part to make sure his outlet reports true and reliable news, instead of promoting what is likely Russian disinformation, especially when Russia was already known to be meddling in our elections.
As for COVID-19, Murdoch’s TV network cheerleads Trump's handling of the pandemic and just about everything else he does.
As far as I’m concerned, Trump’s failures can be laid at Murdoch’s feet almost as much as at the Superspreader in Chief's.
(Murdoch image via screen grab)
