Against Trump the media of the Murdoch group after the US elections

There was no Republican surge in the midterm elections, and that’s Donald Trump’s fault: the Murdoch family’s conservative media headlines leave little doubt that a new chapter has begun in a relationship that has experienced its ups and downs.

“Trump is the Republican Party’s Biggest Loser,” was the headline of the lead article in the Wall Street Journal, a financial newspaper owned by News Corp, the conglomerate of Australian-American media magnate Rupert Murdoch, 91.

As for the content, it was not more flattering. “After his surprise victory in 2016 against the very unpopular Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump has a record of electoral defeats alone.”

“He led the Republicans from fiasco to fiasco,” according to the same venomous WSJ commentary, which pointed out that the candidates he publicly supported “failed at the polls in states the GOP clearly could win,” such as Pennsylvania or New Hampshire.

Ron DeSandis

It is not the first time that the media of the Murdoch family have distanced themselves from the former president and real estate tycoon. He had already been heavily criticized by the Journal after his followers’ bloody attack on the federal Capitol in Washington on January 6, 2021.

But this time, “it’s time for Trump to quit politics,” snarled a columnist for the New York Post, the News Corp. tabloid newspaper that has been taking down Donald Trump almost as much as the Democrats he hammers every day.

The Post’s front page on Thursday featured an entire caricature of Mr. Trump about to fall off a brick wall, a reference to the wall he promised to build on the Mexican border to stop illegal immigration but “didn’t build.”

A day earlier, the newspaper carried on its front page a photo of Florida Governor Ron DeSandis with a daughter in his arms and the headline “DeFUTURE”. Openly lending support to what is seen as Donald Trump’s strongest potential challenger in the race for the Republican nomination ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

The same feeling, albeit somewhat more tempered, was obtained by watching Fox News, a conservative television network with one of the highest ratings in the US, also owned by Rupert Murdoch.

For one of his best-known figures, Tucker Carlson, “Trump has always had his good and bad sides politically”, however in this case “it was certainly not the only factor” that the “red wave” did not come. Liz Peake, another presenter of the channel, preferred to position herself, much more clearly, in favor of Mr. DeSandis.

The Murdoch family’s media outlets, such as Fox News, have a dominant position in informing the American conservative audience, and it is possible that they will greatly complicate the former president’s path to his 2024 election candidacy.

common “interests”

Despite his defeat in 2020, Donald Trump, who promises to make a “very big announcement” on Tuesday, November 15, has remained a hugely influential figure among the party’s base and ranks.

“Despite picking so many winners, I have to put up with ‘fake news’. To me, Fox News has always been a lost cause,” the insider gushed on the social networking site he created, Truth Social.

“It’s like 2015 and 2016 when I was attacked by the media (collusion!), when Fox News fought me to the end and after I won, they couldn’t have been nicer and more supportive,” he added. , with obvious anger, the former president.

Mr Trump also accused News Corp of apparently now choosing to support Ron DeSandis, whom he calls “Ron DeSanctimonious” others).

For Mark Feldstein, a professor of journalism at the University of Maryland, “the relationship between Trump and the conservative media, especially that of the Murdoch empire, has seen a lot of ups and downs.”

He recalled that the billionaire had repeatedly declared war on the network, such as in 2016, when its hosts asked Mr. Trump “aggressive questions in the first televised Republican nomination debate,” or in 2020, when ” Fox News reported, correctly, that Joe Biden won in Arizona.”

However, “in both cases, the two parties ended up reconciling because it served their interests,” he explained to AFP.

In his view, ratings and profit weigh far more than ideology for the television network. If Ron DeSandis captivates his viewers, Fox News will “promote him as much as it can,” at the expense of the “overexposed old horse” Mr. Trump, who “repeats his old trite clichés.”

Still, if Mr. Trump comes back tougher, Fox News will “get back on the train,” he warned.

RES-EMP

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