McKay Coppins
Appearances
Apple News Today
Speaker Johnson has a roommate — and he has a big agenda
But I think that one of the hard things for his kids to wrap their heads around is that at the end of the day, in the family media empire, Rupert has always prioritized the empire over the family. That's what he cares about most.
Apple News Today
Speaker Johnson has a roommate — and he has a big agenda
I remember asking James at one point about actually a family counseling retreat that Rupert summoned all the kids to in Australia in 2010. And I said, so was the idea that you were going to work out business stuff or personal stuff? And he said, in this family, there's no difference.
Apple News Today
Speaker Johnson has a roommate — and he has a big agenda
You could see big changes at places like Fox News. You could see new executives being brought in to modernize, professionalize, change the culture. You could also see a scenario where there's a dismantling of the empire, that basically the outlets are sold off in pieces to various other companies and that the Murdoch media empire is no more.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
Right. Well, Rupert flew to London amid the controversy. And while James was kind of in damage control mode with his executives, Rupert increasingly started to, you know, freelance, right? He was kind of shuffling around London, answering shouted questions from reporters. You know, he paid a visit to the family of one of the victims who was hacked.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
He gave a not very helpful interview to The Wall Street Journal where he said he was getting annoyed with all the negative coverage. And, you know, a lot of what Rupert seemed to be doing was only exacerbating the issue. As the public outrage intensified, it became clear to Rupert.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
that somebody in the family was going to have to take the fall for this, that the public outrage basically wouldn't be satisfied with just a lower-level executive being fired. It would have to be a Murdoch who was kind of offered up as the sacrificial lamb. And amid all of this, I report that Liz went to her father and basically made the case that it should be James.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
She said, look, James is the executive who is technically over all these papers, even though the hacking had taken place before he got there. He was also planning to eventually move back to New York anyway for what was being presented as a promotion. But she said, maybe we could recast this as kind of a mea culpa. His resignation could be seen as like his taking the blame.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
And we can move past this scandal. And there's this remarkable moment where Rupert says, OK, let me think about it. He comes back the next day, tells Liz, I think it's a good idea. We should do it. And then tells Liz, go tell him. And basically has his daughter walk down the hallway and try to fire her brother.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
And James does not react well to this, actually tells her, you know, if dad wants to fire me, he can do it himself and throws her out of the office. And their relationship actually did not recover for many years. They barely spoke to each other. They were constantly suspicious of each other, kind of making moves. And I think it's kind of an example of how Rupert's insistence on making
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
Making his kids compete for his approval and for position in the family empire really drove a wedge between them.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
Yeah, I think it was really disillusioning for him. You know, he had always had different political views than his dad, and he knew that. But what he told me is that he'd always assumed that his dad had political views, that he had a political ideology. Yes, Rupert was kind of this puckish, anti-establishment figure. Yes, his media outlets often kind of delighted in needling the establishment.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
But he believed that beneath all the kind of mischief-making was a set of real beliefs. He thought his dad was a devoted free marketeer, an internationalist who supported American global power. He had heard his dad talk about immigration as a source of industry and ingenuity in America. And in a lot of ways, Rupert's brand of conservatism was miles apart from Trump's.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
And yet, as soon as Rupert realized that his audience loved Trump, he pivoted. And immediately, his outlet started to support Trump. The Wall Street Journal even started running editorials defending his policies. The New York Post was running covers celebrating Trump. And it dawned on James that there actually were no ideas at the center of all these media outlets, right?
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
Yeah. So this was last year James showed up for a deposition. The lawyer sitting across from him was this kind of well-known lawyer in the estate legal world and was kind of firing, you know, pretty aggressive and withering questions at him. What was remarkable about the moment, because that's not totally unusual in a deposition. Sometimes these depositions can be hostile.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
It was really all about accumulating power and profit. And I think for James, who had grown up hearing his dad sermonize about how important it was for the media business to take their role seriously, this was profoundly discouraging and also eye-opening.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
Yeah, well, this is the other thing that surprised James during Trump's rise was how quickly Loughlin kind of got on board. He said that he had always thought of Loughlin as sort of affable and dilettante-ish and friendly and not really that interested in politics at all. But James told me that while Trump was running for president in 2016 and when he would do something –
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
James considered outrageous, he would say, you know, bring it up with Lachlan, for example, his proposed Muslim travel ban. And he would expect Lachlan to say, oh, yeah, that's terrible. But instead, he would kind of retreat to this knee jerk anti-Hillary stance. And
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
Over time, James started paying more attention to Loughlin and found that his older brother was willing to indulge in pretty reactionary and even, in his words, white nativist ideas. And I should note that a spokesperson for Loughlin pushed back against this characterization, called it false.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
But I think it's safe to say that the Trump era was one of several wedges at this time that was driven between James and Loughlin as they tried to run the family media empire together.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
Yeah, James, at that point, had stepped down as CEO of Fox but was still on the News Corp board. And, you know, he had always been taught not to answer questions like that. And generally, he didn't answer those questions.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
Even when he disagreed with his dad or disagreed with the way that the media outlets were being run, he would kind of keep it to himself or express his disagreements privately, try to push back internally. In 2020, he decided that he was just going to throw caution to the wind and answer a reporter's question.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
And he released a statement with his wife through a spokesman saying that their views on climate are well established. Their frustration with some of the News Corp and Fox coverage of the topic is also well known. They're particularly disappointed with the ongoing denial among the news outlets in Australia, given obvious evidence to the contrary.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
And let me tell you, it did not go over well on the News Corp board. This was seen as a profound act of disloyalty on James Murdoch's part. And he was basically told that he either needed to resign from the board or he would be forced off. And so later that year, he resigned.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
officially resigned and released a statement saying that he had disagreements with some of the company's strategic decisions and the editorial output of the news outlets. And that was that.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
What was remarkable is that Rupert was sitting next to the lawyer throughout the entire deposition. He was actually staring kind of inscrutably at his youngest son while the lawyer asked him questions like, have you ever done anything successful on your own? Does it strike you that everything that goes wrong is always somebody else's fault in your account?
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
Right. In 2023, Rupert begins working secretly with his son Lachlan and a consortium of executives and lawyers to rewrite the family trust in such a way that will concentrate complete control of the family business with Lachlan and essentially cut out his other three children from having a voice in the business. they codename this initiative Project Family Harmony.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
And they spend several months drawing up detailed legal memos and decks and quietly recruiting new trustees to join the board. And at the end of 2023, they... They basically spring it on James and his sisters that Rupert is planning to rewrite the trust and that Lachlan will be fully in charge once he's gone. James and his sisters experience this as a profound betrayal.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
This arrangement had been made at the insistence of their mother, Anna, when she was divorcing Rupert, actually. And the idea had been that she saw the way her soon-to-be ex-husband played their kids off each other, how he played favorites, how he pitted them against each other. And she worried that their lives would become consumed with kind of a never-ending quest for the crown.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
And she wanted the family trust... to basically establish that all four of those kids would have an equal say in the business when he was gone. And she thought that this would actually incentivize them all to get along and to work together. In fact, she gave up quite a lot of money in the divorce in exchange for this agreement.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
Part of what made James and his sister so upset about this is that it wasn't just their father kind of betraying them. He was going back on a promise he had made to their mother a long time ago.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
Right. And it was kind of this bizarre thing because, to put it another way, Rupert had to establish that disenfranchising three of his kids was actually in their best interest, right? That eliminating their voting power was good for them. Right. James and his sisters immediately sued to block this amendment.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
And what followed was almost a year of pretty intense, pretty nasty litigation that led up to a high drama but private trial of sorts in Reno, Nevada probate court.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
Why were you too busy to say happy birthday to your father when he turned 90? Throughout this, James tried to focus on the questions that the lawyer was asking, but he kept looking over at his dad, who was silent but kept picking up his phone. And finally, it dawned on James that Rupert was actually texting questions to his lawyer to ask him. And James reflected on this for months afterward.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
Yeah. Well, they were informed on a Zoom call and – James, looking back on this whole situation, would kind of marvel at the fact that at no point amid all the kind of scheming that was being done in Project Family Harmony did it occur to either Rupert or Lachlan that maybe they should just pick up the phone and try to talk to James and talk to his sisters, you know, like a normal family might.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
You know, yes, James was fairly estranged at this point from his father, but Liz wasn't and Prue wasn't. And James is adamant even today that if Rupert had just said, hey, let's all talk about this once. I have some concerns about what's going to happen to these companies when I'm gone.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
Can we try to figure out a solution that will be to everybody's benefit, whether that's a buyout or some amendment to the trust that's not quite as dramatic? James would have played ball. He would have been willing to talk it out. Instead, Rupert kind of went immediately into litigation. There were a couple odd moments of outreach throughout the litigation process. One of them
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
As I mentioned, I don't think you could even call this outreach, but was that deposition that I described at the beginning where Rupert sat across a table while he texted questions to his lawyer to ask to James. There's another moment where James's lawyer requested a packet of documents from Rupert, and it came with a handwritten note that said, Dear James, still time to talk? Love, Dad. P.S.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
Love to see my grandchildren one day. And to James, this was just extremely disingenuous. He said he couldn't remember the last time Rupert had taken an interest in his grandchildren and he didn't bother to reply.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
But it kind of underscored the weird dynamics in all of this where there were kind of, you know, interpersonal issues and family issues interwoven with this very high stakes legal drama that would determine the fate of one of the most powerful media empires in the world.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
Yeah, I found this really remarkable. And it's kind of tangential to the main story, but I think there's a way to understand it as actually central to the Murdoch story. So at one point, the lawyer asked James, isn't it true that Fox is the top cable news outlet because it respects its audience and gives them what they want?
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
And James kind of took issue with this idea and said, well, I don't know that respecting your audience and giving them exactly what they want are the same thing. The lawyer pushed forward and said, well, you know, Fox News lost a significant part of its audience when it called Arizona for Biden in 2020.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
And then said, and do you know that Fox won back most of that audience through its election denial coverage? Essentially, this lawyer was arguing that Fox had covered – false claims about the rigged 2020 election in the way that they did purely for ratings and to win back their audience.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
And that actually James, by opposing that coverage and insisting that the cable network should take a more responsible approach, was undercutting the value of the network. And I think that this both highlights the real difficulty gap in how he and his father see the future of these companies.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
Like James just finds that idea repugnant and believes that any news operation, no matter what its kind of ideological slant, should have to adhere to basic journalistic standards. That is not what Rupert's lawyer, at least in this deposition, was arguing.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
We spoke about it quite a bit. And he just couldn't quite make sense of how his relationship with his father had gotten to this point. He called it, well, it's an expletive that we can't use, but he called it twisted behavior. And I think that it really kind of captures just how far the family has fallen in terms of their estrangement and the dysfunction that now defines the family's dynamics.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
He told me that he had gone into the trial resolving to kind of approach it in a spirit of like corporate combat, right? And he told me, I'm good at that. You stiffen your spine. You harden your tummy. And then he walked into the courtroom each day. And he would look across the courtroom and see his father and his brother on the other side.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
These men whom he had loved, who he had believed had loved him, with whom he'd shared holidays and family memories and now was no longer speaking to. And he said the question that just kept coming to him was, how did we let it come to this? On the third day of the trial, when he testified, he said that
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
He recounted a dinner at which Lachlan effectively ended their relationship over a proposed sale of the film and TV studio to Disney. And James surprised himself by beginning to cry. And he didn't think that he would get that emotional. You know, he had really prepared for it.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
But there was something just so fundamentally sad about what had happened to his family that kind of caught up with him at that moment.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
Yeah, he ruled that Rupert could not amend the trust in the way that he wanted to, that he had not established that he was acting in good faith or in the best interest of the beneficiaries, and that essentially the status quo would remain. The trust would stay as it was, and when Rupert died, control of the business would be split four ways among his four oldest children.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
Yeah, it's a good question. James and his sisters feel good about where they are. They think it's unlikely that given how sweeping and definitive the ruling was by the probate commissioner that it will be overturned. But that doesn't mean it's the end of the story. I think everyone expects that if this particular initiative doesn't work –
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
Rupert will look for other ways to sideline James in particular, whether that means a buyout, whether that means an attempt to sever James's sub-trust from the rest of the trust. There were a lot of possibilities discussed by the Project Family Harmony team in 2023, and James suspects that there will be other efforts. But, you know, Time is ticking here, right? Rupert is 93 years old.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
There's no telling how much time he has left. And so if he's going to continue to make these moves, he's going to have to figure out pretty quickly what to do if he wants to get James out of the picture.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
You know, this was one question that I asked repeatedly to James and Catherine, and I think understandably they were a little bit cagey because this exact question has been central to the litigation with Rupert.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
Rupert is basically arguing that if James is allowed to have his say, Fox News will be defanged, it will become liberal, it will lose all its audience, and the profit center of the Murdoch empire will be destroyed. What James says is that he's not necessarily interested in turning Fox News into MSNBC, right? He's not trying to fundamentally change the political slant of the network.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
He just wants it to be more responsible. And he said, you know, Fox News could still report from a conservative perspective without, for example, platforming quack doctors who rail against vaccines or, you know, That basically, with the correct editorial guardrails, with the right professionals running the network, Fox News could be a responsible contributor to the national political discourse.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
I think there is a genuine and fair question to be raised about how much that would hurt the value of Fox News, though. You know, how many viewers would they lose to right wing competitors if they lost, you know, kind of their hard edged pro Trump reporting, for example? I don't know.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
But James just believes that if his family is going to continue to operate these media outlets, they should at least make an effort to ensure that they are responsible members of the media landscape.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
Yeah, well, it was one of the weird things about doing these interviews is I found myself repeatedly thinking, I swear this sounds familiar. And James would say, no, I've never told anyone this before. And it would occur to me that I had seen it on this HBO show or a fictionalized version of it.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
Throughout my reporting, it was one of the stranger phenomena was just how much the Murdoch family was obsessed with this show. James told me he watched the first episode and couldn't watch beyond it because it was too painful. And I can see that. Imagine if a TV show was made about your own life and family. It might be hard to watch.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
But other members of his family were obsessed with it and specifically obsessed with trying to figure out – There were just so many scenes and moments in the show that felt so uncannily familiar and true to life that everybody was convinced that somebody was kind of sharing family secrets with the writers. Oh, heavens.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
James believed his sister was his sister swore she wasn't but believed her ex-husband had I actually finally just went to Jesse Armstrong who created the show and asked him point blank you know who in the family were you talking to and he was adamant that not no one. You know, he didn't have a mole on the inside.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
He kind of laughed at what he called the psychodrama around this thing in the family. But he said, you know, the truth is they've all leaked so many stories against each other over the years that we had plenty of press reports we could draw on for our own stories.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
Yeah, I think it's one of the reasons he decided to talk to me. You know, James, like all the Murdochs, had been instilled with this kind of almost code of omerta idea that you don't talk about what happens inside the family outside the family, right? From a very early age, he was told you never talk to reporters. You never air the family's dirty laundry.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
If we have disagreements, we have them inside and we don't leak them. We don't talk about them. And I could sense James throughout my interviews with him last year sometimes bumping up against that reflexive protectiveness of his family. At the same time, as you mentioned –
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
This process of discovery meant in both the legal sense and the broader sense, I think, really did cause him to think about things differently. He was kind of almost processing in real time throughout our interviews what he had seen behind the scenes of the family business that he worked in for 20 years. he had seen inside his family for his entire life.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
And it made for a really compelling series of interviews and a really compelling subject because for really the first time, he was sharing his entire side of the story in a way that he had never dared to do before.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
Yeah. By all accounts, he was quite aggressive about it, in fact. He insisted on treating News Corp, even as it expanded and became a publicly traded company, like a family business, almost like, you know, kids living above the shop, right? He was... always looking for opportunities to draw his kids into his professional world.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
At breakfast, the legend goes he would spread the day's newspapers across the table and go through the various headlines with his kids and explain the editorial decisions that were made and the biases at work and kind of critique the framing of the stories. He would take his kids on tours of the printing press. He would bring politicians and dignitaries to dinner.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
And what he said was that his animating motivation in all of this was to give something of value, leave something meaningful behind. An inheritance to his children, the way that his father had for him. A quote that I found that he once gave was that he said, I don't know any son of any prominent media family who hasn't wanted to follow in the footsteps of his forebears. It's just too great a life.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
Yeah, that's right. I mean, I think that there was an assumption early on that Lachlan as the eldest son was the natural successor. And as they kind of grew up and acquired their own personalities, it was clear that Lachlan was more similar to Rupert. He was charismatic. He was, you know, kind of self-consciously emulative of his dad. James was a little bit more of a rebel. He...
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
was interested in countercultural things and music and art. He got piercings and tattoos. At the dinner table, he would kind of needle his dad with contrarian questions. And as they got older, James developed more moderate to liberal politics, whereas Lachlan kind of followed in lockstep with his dad. But James really didn't didn't think that he ever would have a chance to run the companies.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
And I think because of that, it almost created more space for him to explore his own interests. He dropped out of Harvard to start an independent hip hop label with his friends. And they went and kind of scoured Brooklyn for emerging rap talent. As a teenager, he spent his summers in Italy working on archaeological digs.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
And he almost kind of pushed back against early efforts to pull him into the media world. There's a great story about when he was interning at one of his father's newspapers in Australia, he actually fell asleep at a press conference. And somebody took a picture of him and it ended up in a rival newspaper.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
So, you know, he was, I think, very early on sort of staking out a position as somebody who's not going to follow in his father's footsteps. He'll leave that to his brother. But that didn't last long.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
Yeah, you know, James, I think, by all accounts, and I interviewed a lot of people who worked with him over the years, people who had worked inside the companies. And by all accounts, he actually did have a talent for business leadership, for corporate leadership.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
In Asia, for example, he was sent to take over this struggling satellite TV company, immediately sensed that they should pivot the growth strategy away from Hong Kong and which is where Rupert had positioned it, and toward India, where he thought there was more opportunity. It ended up working.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
He developed a series of splashy Hindi-language dramas, overhauled the company in a bunch of ways, and within two years, the company turned a profit. And I think that James would say, in particular, that he thrived when he wasn't working kind of under the claustrophobic supervision of his father. Right. In this case, he was living in Hong Kong, working in India.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
His dad was thousands of miles away and frankly, not all that interested in the Asian satellite business. A lot of people actually thought that he sent James there because it was a relatively low stakes part of the company and Rupert didn't really expect him to turn it around. And his success kind of came as a surprise back in News Corp headquarters.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
That's right. He basically took himself out of the running. to take over for Rupert in terms of people inside the family. I should mention that Liz ended up having quite a successful career herself and continues to in film and TV development. But according to James, Rupert never really saw her as a viable contender because she was a daughter. And in James's words, Rupert is a misogynist.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
And so James was really it in terms of successors. And that changed the dynamic between him and his father pretty quickly.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
Yeah, I mean, I think that after a successful run in Asia and then also running Sky in London, he was promoted to chief executive of News International, which is basically the family's Europe and Asia operations. And in that role, he really started to come into his own and he clearly felt like he was on a hot streak, right? He... Yeah.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
There are some who knew him at that time who told me that he looked a little bit like a boy trying on his father's sport coat. You know, trying to act like his dad but not quite pulling it off. But it was around this time that he really started to establish some independence from Rupert. He – based in London –
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
He started to surround himself with his own kind of loyal deputies who were young men made in his image, you know, dark suits, open collars, similarly fluent in MBA jargon, and began overhauling the Europe and Asia parts of the company in ways that his father did not entirely appreciate.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
Yeah, and this was kind of the central tension between him and his father throughout James' time at these companies. James kind of had immersed himself in a more modern approach to management theory, which was that a company's success is defined by its internal culture. And you need to have a positive, innovative, constructive culture.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
There need to be proper editorial guardrails at the media outlets. There needs to be attention paid to corporate governance. And we need to listen to the lawyers. We need to listen to HR. We need to have a set of values that define our modern workplace. And this just runs totally counter to the way that Rupert built his empire.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
Rupert had always prided himself on being scrappy and aggressive and irreverent. And, you know, he surrounded himself with really aggressive executives who acted kind of like pirates and gamblers. And the way Rupert seems to have interpreted James's approach is as a preoccupation with respectability. And Rupert never craved respectability.
Fresh Air
The Murdoch Family's Real-Life 'Succession' Rivalry
He wanted power and success and almost delighted in his own villainous reputation. And I think that the way that James was going about running these companies in Europe really gave him pause about whether his youngest son was the best person to take over for him when he was gone.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Growing Up Murdoch / DOGE's Cuts To The Federal Workforce
And she wanted the family trust to basically establish that all four of those kids would have an equal say in the business when he was gone. And she thought that this would actually incentivize them all to get along and to work together. In fact, she gave up quite a lot of money in the divorce in exchange for this agreement.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Growing Up Murdoch / DOGE's Cuts To The Federal Workforce
And I think that part of what made James and his sister so upset about this is that it wasn't just their father kind of betraying them. He was going back on a promise he had made to their mother a long time ago.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Growing Up Murdoch / DOGE's Cuts To The Federal Workforce
He told me that he had gone into the trial resolving to kind of approach it in a spirit of like corporate combat, right? And he told me, I'm good at that. You stiffen your spine. You harden your tummy. And then he walked into the courtroom each day. And he would look across the courtroom and see his father and his brother on the other side.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Growing Up Murdoch / DOGE's Cuts To The Federal Workforce
These men whom he had loved, who he had believed had loved him, with whom he'd shared holidays and family memories and now was no longer speaking to. And he said the question that just kept coming to him was, how did we let it come to this? Right.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Growing Up Murdoch / DOGE's Cuts To The Federal Workforce
On the third day of the trial, when he testified, he said that he recounted a dinner at which Loughlin effectively ended their relationship over a proposed sale of the film and TV studio to Disney. And James surprised himself by beginning to cry. And he didn't think that he would get that emotional. You know, he had really prepared for it.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Growing Up Murdoch / DOGE's Cuts To The Federal Workforce
But there was something just so fundamentally sad about what had happened to his family that kind of caught up with him at that moment.
Fresh Air
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Yeah, he ruled that Rupert could not amend the trust in the way that he wanted to, that he had not established that he was acting in good faith or in the best interest of the beneficiaries, and that essentially the status quo would remain. The trust would stay as it was, and when Rupert died, control of the business would be split four ways among his four oldest children.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Growing Up Murdoch / DOGE's Cuts To The Federal Workforce
Yeah, it's a good question. James and his sisters feel good about where they are. They think it's unlikely that given how sweeping and definitive the ruling was by the probate commissioner that it will be overturned. But that doesn't mean it's the end of the story.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Growing Up Murdoch / DOGE's Cuts To The Federal Workforce
I think everyone expects that if this particular initiative doesn't work, Rupert will look for other ways to sideline James in particular. whether that means a buyout, whether that means an attempt to sever James's sub-trust from the rest of the trust. There were a lot of possibilities discussed by the Project Family Harmony team in 2023, and James suspects that there will be other efforts.
Fresh Air
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But, you know... Time is ticking here, right? Rupert is 93 years old. There's no telling how much time he has left. And so if he's going to continue to make these moves, he's going to have to figure out pretty quickly what to do if he wants to get James out of the picture.
Fresh Air
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You know, this was one question that I asked repeatedly to James and Catherine. And I think understandably they were a little bit cagey because this exact question has been central to the litigation with Rupert. Rupert is basically arguing that if James is allowed to have his say, Fox News will be defanged. It will become liberal.
Fresh Air
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It will lose all its audience and the profit center of the Murdoch empire will be destroyed. What James says is that he's not necessarily interested in turning Fox News into MSNBC, right? He's not trying to fundamentally change the political slant of the network. He just wants it to be more responsible. And he said, you know, Fox News could still report from a conservative perspective or
Fresh Air
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without, for example, platforming quack doctors who rail against vaccines or, you know, putting an oil shill on the air and pretending that he's an expert on climate change. That basically, with the correct editorial guardrails, with the right professionals running the network, Fox News could be a responsible contributor to the national political discourse. Yeah.
Fresh Air
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I think there is a genuine and fair question to be raised about how much that would hurt the value of Fox News, though. How many viewers would they lose to right wing competitors if they lost, you know, kind of their hard edged pro Trump reporting, for example? I don't know.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Growing Up Murdoch / DOGE's Cuts To The Federal Workforce
But James just believes that if his family is going to continue to operate these media outlets, they should at least make an effort to ensure that they are responsible members of the media landscape.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Growing Up Murdoch / DOGE's Cuts To The Federal Workforce
Yeah, well, it was one of the weird things about doing these interviews is I found myself repeatedly thinking, I swear this sounds familiar. And James would say, no, I've never told anyone this before. And it would occur to me that I had seen it on this HBO show or a fictionalized version of it.
Fresh Air
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Throughout my reporting, it was one of the stranger phenomena was just how much the Murdoch family was obsessed with this show. James told me he watched the first episode and couldn't watch beyond it because it was too painful. And I can see that. Imagine if a TV show was made about your own life and family. It might be hard to watch.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Growing Up Murdoch / DOGE's Cuts To The Federal Workforce
But other members of his family were obsessed with it and specifically obsessed with trying to figure out who in the family was leaking to the show's writers. There were just so many scenes and moments in the show that felt so uncannily familiar and true to life that everybody was convinced that somebody was kind of sharing family secrets with the writers.
Fresh Air
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You know, James believed his sister was, his sister swore she wasn't, but believed her ex-husband had. I actually finally just went to Jesse Armstrong, who created the show, and asked him point blank, you know, who in the family were you talking to? And he was adamant that no one. You know, he didn't have a mole on the inside.
Fresh Air
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He kind of laughed at what he called the psychodrama around this thing in the family. But he said, you know, the truth is they've all leaked so many stories against each other over the years that we had plenty of press reports we could draw on for our own stories.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Growing Up Murdoch / DOGE's Cuts To The Federal Workforce
Yeah. By all accounts, he was quite aggressive about it, in fact. He insisted on treating News Corp, even as it expanded and became a publicly traded company, like a family business, almost like, you know, kids living above the shop, right? He was always looking for opportunities to draw his kids into his professional world.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Growing Up Murdoch / DOGE's Cuts To The Federal Workforce
At breakfast, the legend goes, he would spread the day's newspapers across the table and go through the various headlines with his kids and explain the editorial decisions that were made and the biases at work and kind of critique the framing of the stories. He would take his kids on tours of the printing press. He would bring politicians and dignitaries to dinner.
Fresh Air
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And what he said was that his animating motivation in all of this was to give something of value, leave something meaningful. an inheritance to his children, the way that his father had for him. A quote that I found that he once gave was that he said, I don't know any son of any prominent media family who hasn't wanted to follow in the footsteps of his forebears. It's just too great a life.
Fresh Air
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Yeah, that's right. I mean, I think that there was an assumption early on that Lachlan as the eldest son was the natural successor. And as they kind of grew up and acquired their own personalities, it was clear that Lachlan was more similar to Rupert. He was charismatic. He was, you know, kind of self-consciously emulative of his dad. James was a little bit more of a rebel. He...
Fresh Air
Best Of: Growing Up Murdoch / DOGE's Cuts To The Federal Workforce
was interested in countercultural things and music and art. He got piercings and tattoos. At the dinner table, he would kind of needle his dad with contrarian questions. And as they got older, James developed more moderate to liberal politics, whereas Lachlan kind of followed in lockstep with his dad. But James really... didn't think that he ever would have a chance to run the companies.
Fresh Air
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And I think because of that, it almost created more space for him to explore his own interests. He dropped out of Harvard to start an independent hip-hop label with his friends, and they went and kind of scoured Brooklyn for emerging rap talent. And he almost kind of pushed back against early efforts to pull him into the media world.
Fresh Air
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There's a great story about when he was interning at one of his father's newspapers in Australia, he actually fell asleep at a press conference. And somebody took a picture of him and it ended up in a rival newspaper. So, you know, he was, I think, very early on sort of staking out a position as somebody who's not going to follow in his father's footsteps. He'll leave that to his brother.
Fresh Air
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But that didn't last long.
Fresh Air
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Yeah, I think it was really disillusioning for him. You know, he had always had different political views than his dad, and he knew that. But what he told me is that he'd always assumed that his dad had political views, that he had a political ideology. Yes, Rupert was kind of this puckish anti-establishment figure. Yes, his media outlets often kind of delighted in needling the establishment.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Growing Up Murdoch / DOGE's Cuts To The Federal Workforce
But he believed that beneath all the kind of mischief-making was a set of real beliefs. He thought his dad was a devoted free marketeer, an internationalist who supported American global power. He had heard his dad talk about immigration as a source of industry and ingenuity in America. And in a lot of ways, Rupert's brand of conservatism was miles apart from Trump's.
Fresh Air
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And yet, as soon as Rupert realized that his audience loved Trump, he pivoted. And immediately, his outlet started to support Trump. The Wall Street Journal even started running editorials defending his policies. The New York Post was running covers celebrating Trump. And it dawned on James that there actually were no ideas at the center of all these media outlets, right?
Fresh Air
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It was really all about accumulating power and profit. And I think for James, who had grown up hearing his dad sermonize about how important it was for the media business to take their role seriously, this was profoundly discouraging and also eye-opening.
Fresh Air
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Yeah, well, this is the other thing that surprised James during Trump's rise was how quickly Loughlin kind of got on board. He said that he had always thought of Loughlin as sort of affable and dilettante-ish and friendly and not really that interested in politics at all. But James told me that while Trump was running for president in 2016 and when he would do something –
Fresh Air
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James considered outrageous, he would say, you know, bring it up with Lachlan, for example, his proposed Muslim travel ban. And he would expect Lachlan to say, oh, yeah, that's terrible. But instead, he would kind of retreat to this knee-jerk anti-Hillary stance. And
Fresh Air
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Over time, James started paying more attention to Loughlin and found that his older brother was willing to indulge in pretty reactionary and even, in his words, white nativist ideas. And I should note that a spokesperson for Loughlin pushed back against this characterization, called it false.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Growing Up Murdoch / DOGE's Cuts To The Federal Workforce
But I think it's safe to say that the Trump era was one of several wedges at this time that was driven between James and Loughlin as they tried to run the family media empire together.
Fresh Air
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Yeah. James, at that point, had stepped down as CEO of Fox but was still on the News Corp board. And, you know, he had always been taught not to answer questions like that. And generally, he didn't answer those questions.
Fresh Air
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Even when he disagreed with his dad or disagreed with the way that the media outlets were being run, he would kind of keep it to himself or express his disagreements privately, try to push back internally. In 2020, he decided that he was just going to throw caution to the wind and answer a reporter's question.
Fresh Air
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And he released a statement with his wife through a spokesman saying that their views on climate are well established. Their frustration with some of the News Corp and Fox coverage of the topic is also well known. They're particularly disappointed with the ongoing denial among the news outlets in Australia, given obvious evidence to the contrary.
Fresh Air
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And let me tell you, it did not go over well on the news court board. This was seen as a profound act of disloyalty on James Murdoch's part. And he was basically told that he either needed to resign from the board or he would be forced off. And so later that year, he resigned.
Fresh Air
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Officially resigned and released a statement saying that he had disagreements with some of the company's strategic decisions and the editorial output of the news outlets. And that was that.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Growing Up Murdoch / DOGE's Cuts To The Federal Workforce
Right. In 2023, Rupert begins working secretly with his son Lachlan and a consortium of executives and lawyers to rewrite the family trust in such a way that will concentrate complete control of the family business with Lachlan and essentially cut out his other three children from having a voice in the business. they codename this initiative Project Family Harmony.
Fresh Air
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And they spend several months drawing up detailed legal memos. And at the end of 2023, they basically spring it on James and his sisters that Rupert is planning to rewrite the trust and that Lachlan will be fully in charge once he's gone. James and his sisters... experienced this as a profound betrayal.
Fresh Air
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This arrangement had been made at the insistence of their mother, Anna, when she was divorcing Rupert, actually. And the idea had been that she saw the way her soon-to-be ex-husband played their kids off each other and how he played favorites, how he pitted them against each other. And she worried that their lives would become consumed with kind of a never-ending quest for the crown.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Whether the succession was real life Murdochs or not, the great HBO show, it is a reminder, no matter how you fictionalize something, the reality is so much weirder, so much more important. Let me just start with, before we get, by the way, I love that the Atlantic Magazine tells you how many minutes it will take to read said article.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
We are going to be talking for less time than it will take to get through the whole thing.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
I mean, you know, Außer dem Zeit-Element hier, wie anstrengend ist es, einen vollen Buch zu machen? Oder in manchen Fällen hätte James nicht kooperiert. James Murdoch, der klar der wichtigste Redakteur hier für dich ist. War das Teil des Vorgangs, dass es nicht ein Buch werden würde?
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
I actually as if I were playing book editor or book publisher, I probably would have said, you know what, we got you got to get it out now, do it. And, you know, Wer weiß, vielleicht geht man zurück in die alten Tage und schreibt Serien. Ja, ja. Und plötzlich geht jemand vorwärts und schreibt es in ein Buch. Absolut. Ein paar Jahre später.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Aber schau, die Urgenz, und ich stimme dazu, dass es hier Urgenz gibt, was mit dem Murdoch-Empire passiert, wird einen tiefen Einfluss haben, wie die Trump-Rechte, und ich denke, es ist eine Art der Version der rechte Linie, der populistische rechte Linie in der westlichen Welt, nicht nur in Amerika. How they communicate with voters, right? How they communicate their message.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
due to the tactics that Rupert Murdoch has employed for some 30 years, the weaponizing of journalism for partisan ends, while he's not the first person to try and do it. I mean, I've told you this, the 19th century was filled with this type of mindset when it comes to journalism and media. But this modern era version of it and this attempt to sort of
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Who controls the Murdoch Empire? You know, there are there's others nipping at their heels right in America. It's Newsmax. There's ones in the UK. There's ones in Australia. So this will have a profound impact on our politics.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Let's narrow it down here. We're talking Australia, the UK and the United States. That's where he's at the most imp, where truly his media empire has either served as an organ of political power or as a sorter of political power.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
I was just going to say, you know, look, the New York Post of the 90s was fun. Right? The New York Post of today is predictable and brutish, I guess, is what I would describe it as. You know? And Fox feels that way. There was a time... I mean, there's actually an individual... I think about a guy like Greg Gutfeld, who I knew when he was the editor at Maxim UK. And he was...
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
He was just a, you know, a provocateur. Yeah, but intellectually honest about it. Right. And and and and even as a comedian, you know, but in some ways.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
You know, playing kind of a similar role. And now it's almost like, nope, they have to be on a message. Right. He's lost. They've lost what there was a rebelliousness to them that made it interesting. And now. instead of being a rebel still, right? Instead, they're weirdly their own establishment.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
essentially weaponize the information ecosystem that we're all living in today. Arguably, the modern version of this began with the decision of what's happened with Fox News. But you'll hear an interesting conversation about how, and I'm going to leave you with this question before I go into the week in politics and what to expect this week. And that's simply this.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Both Brexit and Trump were that way. And this was a case, look, I think the problem with media in general is that a lot of traditional media followed the Murdoch model here. Murdoch chose to follow the viewers. Um die Leser zu folgen. Oh, oh, warte mal. Unsere Leser sind Anti-Immigranten. Wir sollten das jetzt besser tun. Selbst wenn er, du weißt, er wollte Pro-Immigration sein.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Er wollte das tun, bis Rush Limbaugh es ihm anders gesagt hat. Und es war nicht so, dass er es ihm gesagt hat. Es ist, dass sie bemerkt haben, oh, unser gesamtes lernende Publikum. Also das war der erste Moment, wo Rupert bemerkt hat, dass ich denke, dass er das Wetter nicht machen konnte. Jemand anderes war tatsächlich darin verantwortlich.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Und dann, was ironisch ist, ist, dass alle anderen in Ordnung gefolgt haben. Ich denke, das größte Problem mit der Medienzeit ist, dass zu viele Leute zu ihrem Publikum kümmern.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Und sie sind hundertprozentig.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
rational analytical view of what's happening. And I'm trying to attack it like a political anthropologist.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
And that's how I sort of have always viewed my role, is that I'm more of an anthropologist about our politics and our media than anything else where I certainly have my own opinions, but I am more of like, okay, but how is this all interacting and creating the politics that we have versus the politics that we want?
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
The difficulty is there isn't a constituency there per se. Yeah.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Correct. And a lot of this is gathering as political.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Would we be better off if Roger Ailes were still running Fox News? So I'm going to let you stew on that a minute before we get to my interview with McKay Coppins. And by the way, later this week we talk about trust in media. Well, you want to know why there's such little trust in government? I'd argue it has to do with a certain cover-up or supposed cover-up.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
No, it's the other way around. It's why I left. NBC, weil ich tatsächlich fühlte, als ob das Geschäft von NBC mehr über die Publikation, die es hatte, über die Publikation, die es wollte. Und es ist nicht nur sie, richtig? Das ist, wo alle traditionellen Medien sind. Und es ist verständlich, richtig? Es ist eine Geschäftsentscheidung.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Es ist nicht unbedingt das, was im besten Interesse des Ökosystems ist. I will tell you this, the easy way to do this is to pick a side. Megan Kelly made this decision. We've seen her own discomfort with what the politics of this era is, but she chose to make a living. Gott schütze sie, richtig?
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Ich denke, sie ist, du weißt, ich denke, es ist ein sehr talentierter Broadcaster, der die Wahl gemacht hat, dass wenn wir eine Seite nehmen, dann können wir vielleicht die am liebsten vertraute Medienperson für die Trump-Reihe sein.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Du weißt, es ist, es ist, es ist nichts falsch, du weißt, es ist, es ist, es ist, es ist, es ist, es ist, es ist, es ist, es ist, es ist, es ist, es ist, es ist, es ist, es ist, es ist, es ist, es ist,
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
There's a lot of this out here and is almost an acceptance that, hey, you're actually only speaking to a small slice of the electorate, no matter how large your slice looks in comparison to the entire ecosystem. Right.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
I do compare it to sports in this way. I can't I can't stand listening to, you know, Yankees announcers broadcast a Yankees game. Because I just, I want an honest portrayal of the game. I don't want the Yankee perspective, right?
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
And so I am surprised at the number of people that don't, that, you know, think, you know, that just live in the right or the left wing ecosystem and don't want a reality check. Now, I happen to think this is where Everything is cyclical, right? Which is, you know, the late 19th century and the early 20th century was all partisan media. Yes. Until we all got tired of it, right?
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
And so I do think there's a moment here. And that's what I mean. We're in a fragmented world again. Just like we were in the early days of magazines, the early days of the muckrakers, early days of radio. And then we will, you know, there'll be winners and losers. There'll be the big curators, the big networks. And, you know, you'll have a new...
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Es kann sein, und wir werden hier zu den Murdochs kommen, es kann sein, dass Megyn Kelly die nächste Rupert Murdoch ist und wir es noch nicht erkannt haben. Ja, ja. Und sie kreiert ihr eigenes neues konservatives Ökosystem, weil die Murdochs komplett zerbrochen sind. Was mich zurückbringt zu deiner Geschichte und James.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Bevor wir in einige der Details hineingehen, als James mit dir gesprochen hat, weißt du, an welchem Punkt hast du dir erkannt, dass die Verbindung Did Succession have an insider account? You dove into this. Yeah, yeah. Or was it simply there just were a predictable dynastic family and it was actually easy to write?
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
of probably the most famous assassination of the 20th century. So with that, I want to put a pin in that and instead talk about what we learned this weekend and what to expect in the topsy-turvy world that is politics these days and frankly the tariff trade wars that Donald Trump has started around the world.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Well, I always say that about Donald Trump. There is no... When people ask me about understanding Donald Trump, I said, it's not hard. He's arrested development. He's 13. He's constantly 13. And like every 13-year-old, there are moments of adulthood and moments of stupidity. And he is... Transaktional und, weißt du, es ist sehr einfach.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Er will Macht und Aufmerksamkeit und Freude und all diese Dinge. Und es ist so, dass ich denke, dass das, was ich hier entfernt habe, ist, dass die Murdochs eigentlich eine sehr normale, unfunktionale, reiche Familie sind.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
The big news over the weekend, of course, is his decision to exempt, essentially exempt Silicon Valley as best he can from the tariffs. The question is, is this a permanent exemption or a temporary one? Like with everything in how Donald Trump has handled the tariff situation and the trade situation, his administration is giving mixed signals.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Where are we in this suit? Is Rupert going to be able to rewrite his trust or not?
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
What about the other children?
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Was du gerade beschrieben hast, das war eine Storyline in Verbindung mit dem, wie die Ex-Wife den Mediator hier gespielt hat. Ich bin gespannt. Es gab viel Spekulation über Wendy und ob diese Beziehung und ob es eine Operation war oder nicht. Ich meine, um ehrlich zu sein, war es eine Intelligenz-Operation? War er geholfen? Wo liegt James auf dem Punkt?
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Ich meine, wenn du einen John le Carre oder was auch immer designen würdest, eine Art günstige Plotlinie hier. James and Catherine still will talk about how they don't trust her.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
On one hand, this looks like, hey, we can't step in front of something that has allowed America to take the lead, whether it's on the development of smartphones or artificial intelligence and the big chips and all these companies that desperately need this tech imported without big tariffs. They got their exemptions.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Keine Sorge, sie hat es, aber ihr Verhalten seitdem hat ihr Gehalt nicht geholfen. Und die Beziehung, mit der sie ist und die Menschen, mit denen sie ausgewählt wurde, hat nicht geholfen, diese Gerüchte zu verlassen.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Es stellt Fragen. Warum denke ich, dass James und Lachlan sich verabschieden, wenn ihr Vater stirbt? Hm. Glaubst du? Das ist das, was in vielen dieser Familien passiert. Wenn du nur darüber nachdenkst, und deshalb bin ich gespannt, ob du das sehen könntest, weil es ein paar Dinge gibt, die Realität ist eine sehr mächtige Organisierungsstärke, okay?
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Und die Realität seines Todes und die Realität, ob ich ein bisschen Zugang zu Macht haben möchte, ob ich ein bisschen Empire haben möchte, um gemeinsam zu laufen, oder ob ich meinen Ball nehmen möchte und nach Hause gehen und nur fünf Jahre und zehn Jahre in Litigation sitzen, oder was auch immer es ist, oder We sell it and break it up and one gets a quarter, one gets a quarter and it fractures.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
I have no doubt that's one possibility. Right. Everybody takes a piece and run and goes their separate ways. And Lachlan, you know, finds right winger billionaires to fund him and James and Catherine find whatever, either independents or left wing. But, you know, who knows? Right. But it could also be reconciled and they could somehow figure out how to manage this thing together.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Because in some ways it could be the father that's the divisive figure between the two of them. In most of these Shakespearean things. Look, I've got family members who it's pretty clear to me The living parent is the device. They all seem to not get along, but they do agree about one thing, is how the parent created this distrust.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
My guess is they probably, weirdly, even though Lachlan has Rupert on his side, he probably resents the fact that Rupert blew this.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
I have a little bit of a theme with a couple of my interviews this week. Happy Monday. Welcome to another episode of the Chuck Todd cast. So today I'm interviewing McKay Coppins. It's a fascinating interview. He's a writer and reporter for The Atlantic, and he did the deepest of deep dives. with incredible access on the fight for control of the Murdoch Empire.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Aber der Geschäftsführer ist da auf den Sonntagsschulen und hat gesagt, hey, diese werden nur temporär sein. Also ist das eine permanenten Ausgabe? Ist das eine temporäre Ausgabe? Und was bedeutet es, Ausgaben zu starten? Wenn Sie sich erinnern, in der vorherigen Iteration des Chuck Todd-Kast, hatte ich ein paar Experten auf Handels- und Tarifen.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Ich werde hier eine Butterfly-Effekt-Theorie vorstellen. Wenn Hillary Clinton im Jahr 2017 Präsident ist, und nicht Donald Trump, ist es einfacher, mit einer Strategie zu kommen, die für die Empire Sinn macht, als die zerstörte Kraft, die Trump ist. Und die zerstörte Kraft, die Brexit war. Ohne Brexit und Trump
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
while they may ideologically not be on the same side of the aisle, there would be more comfort working with each other because the opposing force wasn't a threat, an existential threat.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
He still will say, it makes sense. My guess is he really is that, that he really is more of a probably economically center-right and maybe culturally center-left.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Und wir haben darüber gesprochen, was es sein könnte. Und das war vor der November-Elektion. But sort of like, what is it about tariffs that Donald Trump just loves so much? And what tariffs do when you start to implement them the way he implemented them, very scattershot, is that it puts him at the center of every single negotiation.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
One of my theses about Fox News is how off the rails it went after Roger Ailes left. And that Roger Ailes was actually a more stabilizing force. Roger Ailes actually understood that you actually had to have journalists in order to give credibility to the nighttime guys. I actually think if Roger Ailes were alive today, he would not like that they basically benched all their journalists.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
I've always said, Fox has... Journalisten, aber sie praktizieren nicht Journalismus als Netzwerk. Aber sie haben Individuen, die das tun. Jennifer Griffiths und solche Leute. Und Brit Hume, selbst als Analyst, ist immer noch ein Newsman zuerst. Du siehst es, du fühlst es in ihm, weil das einfach so ist. Und ich bin interessiert,
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Ich weiß, dass James kein großer Ailes-Fan war, aber ist das jemals aufgekommen, dass er bemerkt hat, dass Roger tatsächlich eine stabilisierende Kraft war, die wir alle bemerkt haben?
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Findings of an internal investigation. I'm not defending that. I want to make that clear.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
No, they have no leader. They're leaders now. It is one of those, just like the channel feels like they follow the audience, the media executives let the talent decide. They have totally ceased trying to be any sort of
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
If you're a country with tariffs slapped on you, you've got to go to Donald Trump. You're not going to some other entity, some other multinational trade agreement that you try to renegotiate. You have to go to Donald Trump. And if you're an industry impacted by tariffs, and you're looking for an exemption so that you continue to do business in a reasonable way, you got to go to Donald Trump.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
But McKay, the irony to this is by the time James and Lachlan get control of this, right? Because Rupert, you know, I mean, look, he seems to, you know, he's in his 90s and it's like, I mean, who knows, right? The actuary tables are the actuary tables.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Did he end up getting married or not?
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
No kids with this one, right?
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
So by the time James and Lachlan get control of this, I mean, one of the things I think that the Fox News hosts have realized is, you know, Es ist immer jemand anderes bereit, weiter zu gehen als sie. Und es ist immer ein Publikum, das bereit ist, die Person zu folgen, die weiter geht als sie. Ich weiß einfach nicht, ob ich glaube, dass die Lüftung aus der Maschine ist.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Und das Problem ist, dass Fox niemals sein wird. Sie werden niemals in der Lage sein, Newsmax oder OAN zu holen. Da sind sie. Diese Jungs sind bereit, die Arme von RT zu sein, wenn sie das müssen. Und und ich weiß nicht, ob es möglich ist. Ich meine, The smarter thing to do would be to zag while everybody else is zigging. But I don't know if they'll know how to do that. Yeah.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Do they regret that, by the way? Selling that off?
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
And it really, this is why he loves it. He loves to be able to be in the middle of a one-on-one deal. And if you're wondering if the goal of the tariff policy is to achieve what he wants to achieve, which is to bring manufacturing back to America. Then he's undermining his own policy with all of these exemptions.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Brian Roberts bei Comcast. Ja, ja, ja. Der hat den Verkaufspreis übernommen. Genau, genau. Er wollte, du weißt, es war, wir waren, du weißt, es gab dieses ganze, du könntest argumentieren, es gab sort of this landgrab, right, of content in that one moment. You know, we need the IP. We need all the IP.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
It was it was this, you know, constant. And so and, you know, it's the it's the best thing that happened to Comcast is that they didn't get saddled with it. Oh, my God. And frankly, I think they regret buying Sky. Right. Well, and they also acquire.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
A bad consolation prize.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
And you assume the sisters go along with whatever James wants to go along with on this?
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Well, it's interesting. Look, I think there's going to be an existential moment for Fox that comes up because the NFL has decided that they want to opt out of their TV deal. And this is going to be a huge decision by Fox, whether they're going to financially try to keep up with Google and Apple and Amazon, who all are suddenly...
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
If you continue to give the tech industry all of these exemptions, they have no incentive to break ground in the United States of America. But you've got to ask yourself, what's the motivation of Donald Trump to do this? With short term political pain, because you will see the markets briefly go up early in the week, perhaps early on Monday.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Was die NFL sieht, obwohl ich mich frage, ob die Tarif-Environment, ob die Wirtschaft so schlecht ist, wie ich denke, dass es in den nächsten Jahren oder zwei sein könnte. Wir können eine Situation sehen, in der es keine Ad-Marken gibt, die sich zerstören und die NFL zurückträgt. I wonder whether Fox is going to have the resources to keep up, because that's it.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
The NFL is such an important part of them having a foothold in legitimacy. Oh, no question. Like Fox News is becoming less and less legitimate. It's becoming more and more of a pariah. But Fox Sports is the narrator of our sports lives in many cases with the NFL. And it's such a huge if they lost it. So but it may become financially impossible to keep.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Sie interessieren sich nicht, auch Amazon nicht.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Is there a third generation of Murdochs that are adults yet? Und ich denke, sie sind es, richtig? Ja, junge Mädchen. Wollen sie das? Wollen sie das? Sind sie Teil davon? Was hast du gelernt?
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Rupert war ein Berichter. Er liebt es, ein Büro zu lesen. Er liebt die Geschichten von ihm, die Editeure ständig anrufen. Er liebte es. Letztendlich liebte er es, von seinen Berichterstattern provokiert zu werden. Er liebte das. Was ist James? Und was ist Lachlan? Sind sie letztendlich Berichter? Sind sie letztendlich interessierte Leute? Oder sind sie...
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Media executive mogul types and they're more mogul thinking rather than, like I said, Rupert, look, I sense that Rupert cares about the Wall Street Journal's reputation, right? He does, right? So there's, you know, it's sort of like Darth Vader, there's some good in him somewhere, right? That at least sees what a good newspaper like
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Maybe it's a great day all day Monday with the tech stocks, your Apples, your Palantirs, your Navidias, the people that have right now have the president's ear. And of course, it's not lost on some people that here Apple's getting a big benefit here.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
And the New York Post. It's interesting that those two are doing it. And the assumption is that Rupert has no control over Fox. But if he calls up Paul Gigot at the Wall Street Journal or if he calls up his buddies over at the Post, they'll listen.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
It's not lost on me that as you described the Murdoch kids, that You know that we're probably a decade away from the Trump family imploding like this. I know we don't see it yet, but it's sort of like it seems inevitable that these family run companies always turn to this. Once there's a patriarch that actually does pit kids against each other, which.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Donald Trump in many ways is very similar to Murdoch. There is a familiarity to the two of them. And I've watched the way he works. Eric versus Junior versus Ivanka versus Jared and all this stuff there. You know, right now they're all swimming in the same pool. Aber wir können alle sehen, wie es kommt. Wie groß ist es?
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
And we all know all of the amount of money that has been given to the inaugural committee by many of these tech companies or the library that may or may not ever exist in a future world of Donald Trump. But there is this essentially piggy bank of money and chits that he's been acquiring from these tech companies. And perhaps this is one way they've just cashed in.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Was interessant ist, ich gehe eigentlich tief, ich gehe ein bisschen, du weißt, es ist, du weißt, es ist sort of what happened with his dad, right? Fred, the son who Fred gave his name to disappointed him. Ja, ja. that there was almost a disappointment that Fred wasn't the guy, right? Fred was supposed to be the guy and he wasn't. It was Junior. And I think it was Donald.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
And then when you have Donald, you see, who does he trust to run the business? Not Junior. He trusts Eric. And it's not lost on me. Eric does all the deals. Eric does that. But then there's little superficial things. Eric's taller than Junior. Eric has blonde hair. Eric has, you know, I have, you know...
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
You can always tell there's been this weird relationship between father and son, junior and senior, because you know that what Donald cares about is what his name looks like. His brand is with one son. So he probably can never live up to senior. Ja, und es gibt keinen Zweifel, dass ich Juniors ständig versuche, seinen Vater zu akzeptieren. Also dachte er, ich gehe auf diese politische Straße.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Okay, ich mache das. Richtig. Wird das das? Und er hat ihn. J.D. Vance. Wird das das? Ja, ich weiß nicht, ob es das tut. Richtig. Am Ende hat er noch Erik, der die Empire läuft. Er will immer noch Ivanka. Du weißt, er wird sie nicht völlig ausdrücken. Du weißt, aber es gibt keinen Zweifel, dass das kommt. Die Frage ist, ich meine, bitte.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Can you imagine what's going on in Junior's head that his ex-wife is dating Tiger Woods and his father is going to be obsessed with hanging out with Tiger Woods? This is going to cause all sorts of bizarre... It just feels like if you're looking for the next succession, I have a feeling it's probably the Trumps.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Well, because it will be infused with politics, right? Especially if Junior runs. If he runs himself at some point, whether it's in 28, whether it's in 30, whatever it is. Das war immer meine Theorie, dass es Vance und Trump ist, ein Ticket. Vance und Junior, das ist nicht Senior. Und wie das aussehen wird. Wie handelt Dad das?
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
to make sure they get these exemptions. But again, it undermines the stated goal of what they're trying to do. And if you're opening the door on this front with tech tariffs, you're going to start opening the door to other industries. And the next big industry that's going to be looking for an exemption is going to be a politically powerful one.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Na, McKay, wie viele Interviews mit James und Catherine hast du mitgebracht?
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Weil sie nicht daran involviert war. Genau. Es ist fantastisch. Und wie ich an der Spitze gesagt habe, ich meine, du bist generational in deiner Fähigkeit, das zu tun. Und es ist fantastisch, es ist notwendig und es illuminiert, ob es die Dynamik der Situation in der Republikanischen Partei ist oder nicht. I tell people there's no other book to read.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
And, you know, you read these Trump books or you read these history of the Republican Party books and you're like, OK, they all have sort of the same anecdotes. Right. Or the anecdotes are different, but they but it's the same.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
They all feel the same. I always say every Trump books the same. You won't believe what he tried to do. You won't believe who stopped him and you won't believe where they headed next. Right. Like it's always like it's some version of that. And yet you tackled it in a way through sort of the last of the Mohicans, if you will, with Romney.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
And it was more illuminating than any any supposed Trump insider book you could get on where the party is today. And I think this on media and conservative media in general. hat eine ähnliche Bedeutung für mich. Ich danke dir.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Ich danke dir. Du bist zufrieden, dass du das sagst. Ich denke, dein Arbeit ist das, was die Unterschiede gemacht hat. Lass uns das nicht so zerstören. I mean, this was, I'm sure, exhausting, a labor of love, and now you've got to, you know, go find some, I assume you've got a couple of things you're working on now?
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
And that is folks that are involved with anything having to do with babies. Whether it's taking care, if it's bringing in the right equipment that you want to import to take care of your kid, car seats, things like that. We already know, if you recall, remember the baby formula crisis and they had to temporarily waive tariffs in order to try to save money there.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
There you go. He can be your therapist, and you don't have to pay him. There you go. Okay, thank you. So, do you buy our theory that perhaps Fox News would be better today if Roger Ailes were still running it and were still alive? Anyway, I would love to hear your comments and results on that and your responses to that. By the way, don't forget to ask Chuck at thechuckpodcast.com.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
That's where you send in your questions. That's where you send in your feedback. That's where you throw ideas out there that you'd like to see me to tackle that perhaps we haven't tackled that. And of course, later this week, I will try to answer as many of your questions. And my theme this week of sort of institutions who helped facilitate the great distrust environment that we all live in today.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
We just finished up media today. We're going to tackle government distrust later this week with one of the great experts these days on all things JFK. So I hope you look forward to that later in the week. And with that, I'll sign off and I'll see you on the next episode of the Chuck Podcast until we upload again.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
When people start complaining about the cost of their coffee, are the coffee importers going to get an exemption? And is Donald Trump going to sit here and essentially play whack-a-mole with ways to try to soften the economic blow to the public? That's what this looks like so far. And if you do that, This is no way to run an economy. It is going to end up blowing up both goals that he might have.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
If he's trying to stabilize the economy by trying to do some of these exemptions, okay, there's some sort of uneasy stabilization here in the tech stocks. Maybe you'll have uneven stabilization. There'll be relief that the cost of an iPhone isn't going to be so much that it impacts the earnings of Apple.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
And then maybe, you know, those that lobby the administration when it comes to the various things that impact having a baby and taking care of kids in this country. And you get rid of the tariffs on anything having to do with baby formula or car seats or strollers or things like that. Okay, so then there's that. And then every industry starts coming to the White House for something.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
James Murdoch in particular, the second son, eldest son of Rupert Murdoch und die Murdoch-Kinder sind in diesem großen Kampf darüber, ob sie das Empire gleicherweise verteilen oder, wie bei Rupert, er ist Angst vor seinen mehr liberalen Kindern, ein Stück des Murdoch-Empires zu nehmen. Also gibt es einen ideologischen Aspekt zu all diesen Dingen.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
And it means everything is a transaction. Nun, schau, die dunkle Seite meines Gehirns geht in die Welt einer Kleptokratie. So ist eine Kleptokratie. Bevor du zu einem vollständigen autoritären Regime gehst, gehst du durch diese Art von Mittelpunkt zwischen Demokratie und Autorität, was Kleptokratie ist. Argumentativ ist das, was Türkei jetzt ist.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Das ist, was Venezuela 100-mal ist, wo es noch einige Remnanten einer Demokratie gibt. Vielleicht in Türkei, zum Beispiel, ist das aktuelle Votieren nicht gegründet, aber alle Industrien sind essentiell, du musst irgendeine Art von Fee oder Honorarium oder was auch immer du es nennst, bezahlen. Vielen Dank.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Sometimes it's a quid pro quo that he may claim will help the country and sometimes it may be a quid pro quo that helps one of his friends or himself. Some of this stuff will be transparent and some of this stuff will be opaque. But even the very idea that we no longer under a system like this can say we have a free market economy. Our economy is being dictated by government intervention.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
And there's some irony to this because right now it is the folks on the right die gerne über Leute auf der Linken sprechen, die eine sozialisierte Regierung wollen, die Sozialismus in diesem Land wollen. Wenn man versucht, Business zu kontrollieren und zu manipulieren, dann ist das die very definition of getting into the world of nationalism and socialism.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
And there really isn't a lot of difference. He may proclaim himself a nationalist, but the ability to manipulate an economy is something that socialist governments want to do as well. So in many ways he is now practicing his own form, call it National Socialism. I'll let you go down that rabbit hole when you make that phrase and have some fun with that phrase. But this is where we're headed.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
And now that he's been willing to cut a deal with tech, others are coming. What does this do to the overall tariff regime? I think it only is going to continue to create Long-term concern about the stability of the economy.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
And everything that his stated goal is, which is to essentially redo the manufacturing sector in this American economy, doing all of these sort of half in, half out, all of this, it is not incentivizing business to break ground in this country. It is incentivizing business to wait him out or buy him out. Right?
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
They might buy him out by getting an exemption, hope they can survive maybe two years till the midterms, four years until the next presidential, and then we go back to the global economy that frankly already there and probably impossible to end. You might be able to slow it down. You might be able to take an industry here, an industry there and try to manipulate it for a couple of years.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
But ultimately, it is going to be really hard to stop the movement of progress. You can slow it down. You could possibly cause equity markets to freeze. You can certainly disrupt things. But the long term is going to be impossible to stop.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
And the short term at this point, you know, again, I think he's hoping that by doing these whack-a-moles, he can minimize the inflationary impact on people's pocketbooks. The next month or two. Probably folks aren't going to see too much inflation.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
But starting around June 1st, when all of the inventories that people have already accumulated in this country without the big tariffs are completely sold out and sold out and sold out. are sort of brought back down, that's when you're going to start to see the increases. And then the question is, is he going to continue to do these whack-a-moles when the 90-day pause expires?
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Ja, wenn Sie sich fragen, ob das die Geschichte von Succession in der realen Leben ist, dann fühlen wir uns sicherlich zu Ihnen bekannt. Aber es ist ein unglaubliches Stück, das McKay gemacht hat und wir haben eine gute Menge Zeit, nicht nur darüber zu sprechen, aber auch darüber zu verstehen, wie das Ökosystem aussieht. Das hat Rupert Murdoch geschaffen.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Does he extend it another 90 days? Do we have extensions of 30 days at a time? A lot of it's going to depend on the perception of the economy. A lot of it's going to be about the actual bond market itself. Is it collapsing still? Is the price of the dollar continuing to go down, threatening our status as the reserve currency? So, look, this has been a can of worms that he's opened up.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
He is trying to play whack-a-mole here. I don't think this is going to go well, but we're going to see. My guess is the markets react okay on the early part of the week. And then reality is going to set and you realize this instability. Who speaks for the administration? Is it the Commerce Secretary? Is it Peter Navarro? Is it Scott Besson? Is it Donald Trump? Right.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
We know it's Donald Trump ultimately. But who's got his ear at any given moment? That to me seems to be an open question. So, prepare for another tumultuous week. As you see, by the way, his poll numbers continue to erode. They're going to continue to go down. This is not, you know, there has been no positive coverage. He has no ribbon cuttings of new factories.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
He is, you know, I've gone through this before, but he couldn't have politically mishandled the rollout of this tariff regime any worse. There are better ways this could have been done. I told you about how Owen Cass, who is ideologically essentially trying to defend what Trump is doing, but he actually had a better, more coherent methodical plan to do this than what this administration has done.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
And they've likely set themselves up for just what's going to continue to be political pain in the polls. financial instability in the markets and a lot of uncertainty with our international relationships. Let me sneak in a break here and when we come back, my conversation with McKay Coppins on the future.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
frankly, it feels like a mini book, a novella, if you will, except it's real life. It is non-fiction, even if it reads like incredible fiction. Is McKay Coppins of the Atlantic McKay, es ist gut, mit dir zu sprechen. Ja, danke, dass ich hier bin, Chuck. Also, zuerst möchte ich mehr von deinen Kredenzen und Akkordeuren aus dem Weg bringen.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Du bist der Autor eines Buches, das ich als Lehrstuhl für Studenten benutze. Ich leite eine Klasse von USC-Studenten, die in D.C. internieren. Und die Klasse heißt How Washington Works. Und ich gebe ihnen vier oder fünf Bücher zu wählen, als Mittagsaufgabe. Und einer davon ist der Romney-Buch. Oh, wow, das ist großartig. Danke. Weil ich denke... I look at it this way.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Und was er gemacht hat, in den mindestens drei Orten, in denen er den größten Erfolg in der Verwaltung von Medienorganisationen hatte. Australien, die USA und natürlich hier in den Vereinigten Staaten. Aber seien wir ehrlich. Einer der Gründe, warum es so viel Vertrauen in die Medien im Allgemeinen gibt, ist, dass
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
There's sort of a few books right now that I feel like are perfect, almost textbooks for understanding politics these days, which is, you know, how did the Republican Party move from the Eisenhower Romney era to this Trump era? And Mitt Romney, your Romney book. Mitt Romney gibt dir im Wesentlichen unglaubliche Zugang zu seinen innersten Gedanken.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Ich denke, er macht einen besseren Job als irgendein Buch, das diese Evolution zeigt. Wenn du versuchst, Washington in diesen Tagen zu verstehen, musst du die Evolution der Republikanischen Partei verstehen. Dein Buch macht das. There's a great book by Roy Teixeira about where have all the Democrats gone. That explains the Democrats. So I use this piece, Brody Mullins' book.
The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
The Mullins Brothers did that great book about the lobbying community. That's my textbook for lobbying. So it's been, it is a reminder that I think the best journalism these days is in this long form element that we're in. But look, I booked you because of this incredible access you got with the Murdoch family, where