The Chuck ToddCast
Trump's Tariff Changes + Predicting Future of Fox News & The Murdoch Empire
Mon, 14 Apr 2025
First, Chuck reacts to President Trump’s announcement that smartphones, computers, and other electronics will be exempt from tariffs. He also previews what we can expect this week in political news, and breaks down what all these developments mean for our democracy as a whole.Then, Chuck is joined by The Atlantic staff writer McKay Coppins to discuss his latest story, “Growing Up Murdoch,” which delves into the Succession-style drama surrounding Rupert Murdoch, his children, and the future of their media empire.They examine Fox News’ enormous influence on American politics, how the network evolved during the Trump era, and how it could undergo major changes once Murdoch’s children take the reins.The conversation explores striking parallels between the Murdoch family and the Roys from HBO’s Succession, including a looming legal battle over the family trust and what it could mean for the company’s direction.McKay explains how Fox News shifted after the departure of longtime CEO Roger Ailes, while Chuck highlights how the potential loss of NFL broadcasting rights could pose an existential threat to the network.Finally, they turn to the Trump family and discuss why its own brewing succession drama might ultimately eclipse that of the Murdochs. Timeline:00:00 Intro02:58 Reaction to Trump’s tariff exemption of smartphones and computers07:45 Are we entering a kleptocracy?14:05 McKay Coppins joins Chuck16:47 Any discussion about making Mckay’s Murdoch article into a book?18:17 Fate of the Murdoch empire impacts the fate of American politics19:32 Murdoch outlets impacted Trumpism, Brexit and other major events22:47 Murdoch used to make the weather, now Trump does26:32 It’s easier to pick a side in media rather than be a neutral observer29:02 Did Succession have an insider account or were the Murdochs that predictable?30:47 The Murdochs are a normal, wealthy dysfunctional family32:17 Status of the Murdoch lawsuit?34:47 Was Rupert Murdoch “honeypotted” by the Chinese government?36:32 Will James and Lachlan reconcile after Rupert dies?38:17 Rupert has pitted his kids against each other39:32 Without Brexit and Trump, would James and Lachlan have worked better together?41:17 James can’t stomach what Fox News became in the Trump era42:17 Fox News went off the rails after Roger Ailes left43:47 Ailes ruled Fox News with an iron fist44:32 The inmates are running the asylum at Fox46:02 If James gets his way after Rupert dies, Fox will change drastically47:17 Fox can never go as far as Newsmax or OAN48:32 The Fox empire was built on its current audience50:32 James is building his own empire52:02 Sisters are embarrassed by Fox News52:17 NFL rights are existential for Fox and big tech can outspend them54:17 Murdoch kids have shielded their kids from the press55:47 WSJ + NY Post will still needle Trump57:32 James has more interest in the media business than Lachlan58:02 The Murdochs and Trumps have similar dynamics59:17 Don Jr. understood the Trump base better than his father1:00:17 Succession style drama is coming for the Trump family
Chapter 1: What are Trump's recent tariff exemptions?
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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Chapter 2: Are we entering a kleptocracy?
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Chapter 3: What is the future of 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Chapter 4: How has Fox News evolved during the Trump era?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Chapter 5: Did Succession provide an insider look at the Murdoch family?
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?
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.
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.
Chapter 6: What challenges does the Murdoch family face?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Rupert Murdochs Empire. Und jetzt mit mir ist der Autor dieses Buches.
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.
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Chapter 7: What parallels exist between the Murdoch and Trump families?
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.
Ja, ja. Und das, was alle von ihnen verbindet, ist, dass es immer gewesen ist, und das geht zurück zum Anfang in Australien, diese Art von Puckisch-Anti-Establishment-Streak, der alle von den ersten australischen Nachrichten, die Rupert kauft, zu den Tabloiden auf Fleet Street, zu certainly Fox News, die Murdoch-Presse definiert,
is really good at identifying kind of the sacred cows of, you know, the liberal or centrist and liberal establishment and like slaying them, right? Needling.
But that has, I think that, and you can still see some of that, but in the last 20 years and certainly in the last decade, you've seen that kind of curdle into this full-throated support for something that you could, critics would argue is more illiberal and more toxic than just kind of like mischief making.
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...
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.
Dennis Miller on Fox. Right.
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.
Ja, es ist wie ein Organ der populistischen Rechtsentwicklung. Es macht sie sicherlich weniger interessant. Ich denke, es macht es richtig. Es hat es weniger stickig gemacht. Es macht auch die Murdoch-Familie und Rupert im Wesentlichen, denke ich, weniger mächtig, weil er so lange derjenige war, der das Wetter auf der rechten Seite gemacht hat. Und jetzt...
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Chapter 8: How could the Murdoch family succession impact American politics?
Catherine actually joked to me that Wendy had evaded a subpoena in this current litigation by using a CCP-issued burner phone. Was sie als Lüge sagt, aber ehrlich gesagt, denke ich wirklich, es bleibt viel ernsthafte Bescheid über sie und ihre Beziehungen zur chinesischen Regierung und alles andere. Ich sollte sagen, Wendy hat nicht zu meiner Anmerkung für einen Kommentar geantwortet.
Sie ist offensichtlich verurteilt, dass sie ein chinesisches Asset ist, nur um unsere Basis zu öffnen.
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.
Sie ist ständig, es scheint so zu sein, berühmt, zumindest in Beziehungen mit verschiedenen sehr mächtigen Männern in der westlichen Welt. Ja, ja, ja.
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?
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.
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.
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.
My guess is they probably, weirdly, even though Lachlan has Rupert on his side, he probably resents the fact that Rupert blew this.
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