Rupert Murdoch thought $787.5m Dominion suit would cost Fox $50m, Michael Wolff book says

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Rupert Murdoch thought $787.5m Dominion suit would cost Fox $50m, Michael Wolff book says

Trump tell-all author returns with tale of Fox News strife which also includes prediction Ron DeSantis will be Republican nominee

Martin Pengelly in Washington
@MartinPengelly
Tue 19 Sep 2023 22.32 BST
Last modified on Tue 19 Sep 2023 23.07 BST

In winter 2022, at a hideaway in St Barts, Rupert Murdoch directed “sudden fury” at Donald Trump, who he thought would lose the 2024 Republican presidential primary to Ron DeSantis, but who the media mogul also said was likely to cost him “fifty million dollars”, through a lawsuit regarding Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.

The lawsuit was filed by Dominion Voting Systems, over Fox News’s broadcast of Trump’s lies. Settled this April, it cost Murdoch considerably more than he predicted: $787.5m, to be precise.

Murdoch’s wildly off miscalculation and his anger at Trump – in conversation with friends at the idyllic Caribbean getaway – is described by the journalist Michael Wolff in his new book, The Fall: The End of Fox News and the Murdoch Dynasty, in a passage set towards the end of Murdoch’s marriage to the model Jerry Hall.

-snip-

Murdoch’s reported prediction about DeSantis winning the Republican presidential nomination, “tak[ing] the evangelical vote in Iowa” because “it was going to come out about the abortions Trump had paid for”, now seems similarly off-beam.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/sep/19/rupert-murdoch-dominion-suit-trump-fox-michael-wolff-book

Alternate non-walled link: https://news.yahoo.com/entertainment/rupert-murdoch-thought-787-5m-213234298.html

[Best_man23]

1. Rupert forgot one thing

MAGAts don't care. To them, Inmate P01135809 is a gigantic daily FU to people in the media that says one word opposing the Dear Leader.

Rupert also wildly overestimated Gubner Noun/Verb & Woke's retail politicking skills. As someone on MSNBC put it a few weeks ago, the Gubner has all the personal appeal of three day old grits.

[Chainfire]

2. It must be nice to be able to mentally write off a measly 50 million bucks.

Or to have to figure out how to swap things around to pay 700 million bucks.

[flying_wahini]

3. Still not enough fine to ever fix what he did to our country.

And the assholes who still spew that crap still are saying it.
Even TFG still says it was “stolen”
at his rally’s.

[ificandream]

4. Just started listening to the audio version of this.

Hadn't really considered it seriously given criticism in the past of his books, but so far I'm loving this one. He seems to really have gotten deep into the Murdoch family and what Fox is. Right off the top, he calls Hannity thick as a brick and says Rupert hated Trump. I love the former (I know a few Hannity fans and they're as thick as he is) and the latter doesn't surprise me, but shows what a mongrel Rupert is to make money off of him. Wolff also says Roger Ailes called Trump stupid. There's all sorts of juicy stuff in the book. I have the audio and the reader is cracking me up with his imitation of Rupert. Anyway, if you hate Fox and you were considering this one, go for it.