Murdoch's Succession Battle and the Fight for Fox News

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Speaker 2 Hi there, welcome to The Rest is Politics. It's Alastair here and this week is the finale of our series on Rupert Murdoch.
And today it's all about da-da-succession. It's not just squabbling children.

Speaker 2 We're looking at the politics behind this squabble, the disagreements over the way he backed Donald Trump, and what it all means for Rupert Murdoch's legacy.

Speaker 2 If that sounds interesting, here is a clip from that episode. And so we left the last episode with Murdoch kind of regretting, in a way, his

Speaker 2 help via Fox News and Donald Trump's rise to power, and in particular regretting them buying into the Trump conspiracy theory of the stolen election, which ended up in a court case which cost Murdoch almost a billion dollars.

Speaker 3 I think it's larger than just regret, too. I think it's a kind of a,

Speaker 3 you know, moving into the territory of a bitter ending for him. You know, his dream was always to elect a president of the United States.
And the

Speaker 3 bitter irony is that that turned out to be Donald Trump, a man he detests, who he believes is unfit and unworthy, or in brief, as he says, an asshole.

Speaker 2 And whose children have similar views about Trump and who are now, because Rupert Murdoch is, as you say, getting towards his final chapters,

Speaker 2 he's now 94,

Speaker 2 they really are now beginning to think about succession. But let's just get back to that post-election period.
Because as you say, Murdoch despises Trump. He goes around, he calls him crazy.

Speaker 2 Jerry Hall, his new wife, keeps shouting at him and saying, well, you know, you helped put him in president, so do something about it. He's kind of thinking, how can I redeem myself here?

Speaker 2 And he has this

Speaker 2 unbelievable idea, perhaps born of something that we referred to in an earlier episode when he miraculously turned Ed Koch into a charismatic figure and he went on to become New York mayor.

Speaker 2 And now Murdoch decides to put his weight behind one Ron DeSantis.

Speaker 3 Certainly Certainly in hindsight, it's unbelievable. I mean, the least ready-for-prime time candidate there could be.
I mean, a completely uncharismatic candidate to run against

Speaker 3 arguably the most charismatic. I use the word in the MAGA sense of charisma.
But the idea that Ron DeSantis, the governor of

Speaker 3 Florida, could run against Donald Trump is certainly in hindsight absolutely ridiculous. But Murdoch goes all in.

Speaker 3 I mean, his declared policy, Fox is going to not only support Ron DeSantis on the air, but keep Donald Trump off the air.

Speaker 3 And it is going to be the test, the ultimate test. Who's stronger, Fox or Trump? And we now know.

Speaker 2 Trump won. When he's doing this stuff about, so like, we used to have Roger Ailes kind of sending out these morning memos, you know, hit this point, Obama is this today, this is the line to say.

Speaker 2 And I remember once watching this thing where

Speaker 2 one of the media monitoring organizations put together a thing where Roger Ells had given them a phrase to use on that particular day.

Speaker 2 And you then saw every single network anchor and every single two-way as the day went on. It came out of their mouth at some point.
Murdoch is kind of trying to do something similar here.

Speaker 2 But he's getting pushback.

Speaker 3 Well, he is, because remember, to survive at Fox, you need ratings. And I'm going to tell you, Ron DeSantis ain't going to give you ratings compared to Donald Trump.
Although that's the policy.

Speaker 3 I mean, they really, really, really

Speaker 3 keep Trump off the air. So it's a problem for everyone.
And then when DeSantis is wiped out, which is relatively early in the 2024 process, Trump

Speaker 3 starts to creep back in and by

Speaker 3 certainly by the summer 2024 is back as the Fox guy. Murdoch effectively gives up.

Speaker 2 Trevor Burrus, the two big, big stars of Fox, Hannity and Tucker Carlson, what was the consequence for them of the Dominion voting systems court case with which we ended the last time.

Speaker 3 Well, curiously, Hannity, who was really guilty here, I mean,

Speaker 3 he's the one who pressed this Dominion conspiracy business. There are no consequences, quite the opposite.

Speaker 3 He continues to rise.

Speaker 3 But Tucker Carlson is actually as a kind of side agreement in the Dominion case. The Dominion case

Speaker 3 wants the money, but they also want some pound of flesh. And the pound of flesh that they kind of agree with on the side is that Tucker Carlson will be fired.
You know, another irony that

Speaker 3 Carlson was probably the least

Speaker 3 implicated in the Dominion conspiracy mongering stuff.

Speaker 3 But on the other hand, he's the most prominent MAGA person on the network.

Speaker 2 And of course, he's a big enough brand to go out and do, he still

Speaker 2 remains a player.

Speaker 3 A very, very significant player and

Speaker 3 a potential Republican candidate in the future, yes.

Speaker 2 And you think that's still the case today?

Speaker 3 Oh, very much. Okay.

Speaker 2 And then, meanwhile, the family remain divided. As I say, Murdoch's now into his 90s.
they're really starting to think about

Speaker 3 beyond the division

Speaker 3 is putting it lightly. I mean, it's armed camps.
The idea that the Murdoch family

Speaker 3 would receive this legacy and march arm in arm into the future has,

Speaker 3 to say the very least, crumbled.

Speaker 3 This family falling apart is,

Speaker 3 you know, Donald Trump is at the center of this.

Speaker 3 I mean, this is really a political,

Speaker 3 it's a political falling apart.

Speaker 3 So it's one of the, you know, again, the chickens come home to roost for Rupert Murdoch, who has wanted nothing more than this legacy for his family, but who has politicized so many things that

Speaker 3 it turns out also has compromised his family's future. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And so very conveniently, so we've got the convenient fact of this program about this new drama series about phone hacking that coincides with us recording.

Speaker 2 And also very inconveniently, we'll come to this at the end, this succession issue has kind of been resolved. But before we get to that, let's just go through the four,

Speaker 2 the four children,

Speaker 2 the four older children, Prue, Lachlan, James, and Elizabeth. Let's go through them one by one.

Speaker 3 Okay, and let's not exclude, because it's going to be a factor to

Speaker 3 the two younger children.

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