On with Kara Swisher - Fox News, Dominion — oh, and Donald Trump

Episode Date: December 15, 2022

What’s one way to stop misinformation? It might just be a giant defamation lawsuit. This week, media titan Rupert Murdoch was deposed in a $1.6 billion suit brought by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News and Fox Corporation. They allege Fox knowingly and maliciously aired baseless claims accusing Dominion of an election fraud conspiracy. Somewhat surprisingly, instead of settling out of court, Fox News is denying the allegations, and the case is scheduled to go to trial in April. To unpack the lawsuit and the revelations it has brought (and will continue to bring) to light, we turned to New York Times reporter Jeremy Peters, who says this could be “one of the most consequential First Amendment cases in a generation.” He breaks down the case, the souring Murdoch-Trump alliance and Fox News’s future. Plus, we review Ron DeSantis’s chances in 2024 (outlook: not good) and Ben Shapiro and Elon Musk’s chances of one day besting Murdoch (outlook: somewhat better). You can find Kara and Nayeema on Twitter @karaswisher and @nayeema.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Ready, set, grow. Go to ConstantContact.ca and start your free trial today. Go to ConstantContact.ca for your free trial. ConstantContact.ca Hi, everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is Justice with Judge Jeanine with 100% less white wine. Just kidding. No Chardonnay for me. This is On with Kara Swisher and I'm Kara Swisher.

And I'm Ney Maraza. Neither of us really drink, but we would need to if we were doing Judge Jeanine on Fox News. Allegedly. Allegedly. Yeah, we need a box of wine in that case, yeah. By the way, Fox News actually canceled that show, I think. Let's pour out a glass, as they say. Our interview today is about this topic, actually, well, about Fox News, and particularly the $1.6 billion defamation suit that Fox News

and Fox Corp are facing in their coverage of Dominion voting systems in the 2020 elections. This is the biggest defamation case we've seen in recent years, much more consequential than Johnny Depp versus Amber Heard, in my opinion, though more people were watching that one. And it could be a real blow to Fox News. Dominion says they were defamed repeatedly as part of this rigged election conspiracy theory that appeared on outlets like Fox and also on Newsmax and OANN. So today we'll hear from New York Times reporter Jeremy Peters, who's been covering this very closely. Yeah. I did actually want to book Rupert Murdoch today, Cara, but he had to decline. He's busy being deposed for a second day in a row in this suit.

Yeah, you wouldn't be able to understand him. One of the things that's really interesting about Ruperberg is he actually mumbles a lot. He's a mumbler. Yeah, I was sitting next to him and I was like, what, what, what? Do you think that's because he likes talking out of both sides of his mouth? No, he's very avuncular when you meet him in person, actually. You tend to, and he can be very funny. And that's sort of a problem because you sort of are like, what a charming person, and then you realize who you're talking to. Do you think that he will give anything up in these depositions or just mumble nothings? I don't know.

You know, you saw when he did the one in Britain, he— In 2011. The phone hacking incident. He tried to be sort of this frail old man, and he's sharp as a tack. I remember that going, huh, that doesn't look like the man I know. If you were the lawyer deposing him, how would you get him to open up and say something? Well, I suspect there's not as many emails and texts with him would be my guess, although he was pretty loose on Twitter a couple of years ago. I feel like you can either give more rope or put someone in a corner. I'd stay on him.

You think he's a stay on him? Well, he's just going to act like an old man. That's just going to be his thing. You know, I would just keep hammering him on, did you decide, did you decide, did you decide, and try to link him with directly with these decisions versus I don't know how this happened. And I wouldn't let him pass the buck to Suzanne Scott, who runs Fox News. You and I have some history in the case that Rupert's being deposed in today. We had the CEO of the company who filed this suit, John Poulos, the Dominion CEO, on our time show in January of last year, just shortly after January 6th. Do you remember that interview? Yeah, it was crazy at the time. I mean, we had the first real interview with him.

We were noticing a lot of the attacks on Fox News particularly, and so we brought him right in. But I think he was more dumbstruck about what happened, especially to his employees and the kind of doxing that is now common, unfortunately, for people who go up against this sort of right-wing media machine, which it is, a rage machine. People were saying that they were related to Hugo, that this was a Venezuelan company backed by Hugo Chavez, that they had rigged the elections, that they rigged the machines. backed by Hugo Chavez, that they had rigged the elections, that they rigged the machines. And we talked about the death threats and the toll on his employees and even the fact that their family and friends were all pulling away from them because they bought into the narrative over their relationships with these individuals at Dominion. So here's a clip and you're asking

if anyone in his family bought into the narrative against Dominion? Anyone in your family? Yes, as a matter of fact. What did they say to you? Who was it? Yeah, it was a family member in a jurisdiction that we actually do business in and use our tabulation systems. And the question was actually, are we from Venezuela? And this is an in-law, but they actually asked my wife, is this company actually from Venezuela? His own family members.

Well, yeah. I have the issue of my own family. I did an interview with Hillary Clinton. My mother was parroting, this is what Hillary Clinton said in this interview. And I said, no, no, she didn't say it. That was my interview. And she kept insisting that's what she said, because the way Fox News took my interview and warped it and transformed it. That's the power of Fox News, right? Poulos talked about that. Let's hear the clip. I mean, this is the problem where it's almost like the truth and reality suspends when you want to believe something. And the purveyors of these lies go on national TV and they say it as if it's factual with such authority and there's no reservation. It really resonates, unfortunately, with a lot of people that want to believe the underlying message and they just don't know and they just say, maybe it's true. There's a very clear record that it's not true.

clear record that it's not true. What Pulis is talking about, this idea of a narrative being more powerful, people believing what they see or read, reminds me of what Yoel Roth is going through right now. Do you want to talk about that a little bit? Yeah, Yoel obviously worked for Twitter. He was the head of trust and safety. He stayed on when Elon came on and Elon celebrated him. He had been the subject of attacks from the right wing who thought he made the decisions around Trump and Hunter Biden, when in fact he definitely didn't make the Hunter Biden decision to pull those stories down. But nonetheless, he got doxed then. And then now, after he left Twitter and was very kind to Elon, Elon started tweeting about a dissertation and saying that maybe sort of insinuating that he had some

pedophile tendencies. It was weird. And of course, that created a situation. You know, he'd been brewing in the QAnon area, but didn't really rise until Elon amplified it. And then Yoel had to leave his home. And it's under great stress and death threats and things like that because his former boss essentially terrorized him. That's what we're seeing a lot with Lenny Posner, with other people. We've interviewed the price that people pay for the misinformation that others spew. Yes. And I think in that way, you know, the fact that Dominion is pursuing this lawsuit has a value beyond the $1.6 billion that they're suing for.

Yeah. This trial is going to give us a peek into what actually happens inside the corner offices at News Corp, how decisions are made. And, you know, we've learned from this case already that Susan Scott, the Fox News CEO, talked about election deniers and told her employees,

we can't give these crazies an inch. And yet they gave them 20,000 miles. Yeah, exactly. Dominion has said enough is enough and that they have stuck with it. And so you saw that interview from two years ago. He thought enough was enough then, and now he's stuck with it, the CEO of Dominion, and we'll see where it goes. Yeah. And so to make sense of it, we booked Jeremy Peters, the New York Times reporter here today.

I'm obsessed with his reporting at the Times, especially his piece in August. The headline was defamation suit about election falsehoods puts Fox on its heels, and it did a beautiful job of laying out the stakes in this case, especially around the First Amendment. Yeah, he's also been covering a lot of political stuff, especially on the right. And he wrote the book Insurgency, How Republicans Lost Their Party and Got Everything They Wanted. So he's the perfect person to talk about what's happening here. Let's take a quick break and we'll jump into that interview Fox Creative

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Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here. We've got two defamation lawsuits I want to talk about. Let's start with Dominion Voting. Lachlan Murdoch was in the hot seat last week, and his dad, Rupert Murdoch, or I like to call him Uncle Satan, you don't have to, is being deposed today. Just walk us through Dominion's claims and explain where we are in the legal process. Well, by all accounts, this is really one of the most extraordinary defamation cases we've seen against a major media company in decades. And that's for a number of reasons. Primarily, it's the volume of the complaints that Dominion can make against Fox News. Typically, when you have a

defamation case, it involves one or two sentences in a newspaper article, or one kind of off-the-cuff remark that somebody made on the air. Here, what you have is night after night, show after show of false, demonstrably false claims, outright lies, distortions aimed at dominion by Fox hosts and guests. And it's very well documented. Legal experts have told me that they've rarely seen such a strong case. And as to where we are in the legal process right now, the strength of the case is why it's gotten this far. Typically, you would have seen a company as wealthy as Fox settle a claim like this months and months ago. And you certainly don't see the CEO and the founders of the company, Rupert Murdoch,

Lachlan Murdoch, being deposed by hostile attorneys. This kind of thing just doesn't happen very often. Right. Usually it's an oops, we made a mistake, we're sorry. And even the New York Times was involved in a lawsuit with Sarah Palin that Sarah Palin lost based on just one article. In this case, they're trying to look for a pattern of malevolence, a pattern of purposefulness in doing this, correct?

That's exactly right. And over the last several months, what Dominion has done is comb through thousands and thousands of personal text messages and emails and correspondence among Fox News employees and members of the Trump campaign and his legal team back then looking for evidence of what's called in legal terms, actual malice. And that's the standard that Dominion will have to meet before a jury, which essentially means that people at Fox knew that this was false, but they put it on the air anyway, or they were so reckless and hasty in putting this stuff on the air that they should have known it was false, or there was a high probability. That they kept making the same mistake over and over again means maybe they knew what they were

doing. Well, certainly in some of the communications, that's what Dominion hopes to prove. And they have so much, and this just points to the extraordinary nature of this case. It's not just that they have text messages, you know, between Sean Hannity and members of the Trump legal team, and maybe even Mark Meadows and the like. But they have the communications from the CEO of Fox News, Suzanne Scott, they have, you know, the personal cell phones of folks like Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Janine Pirro. We don't know what it says because it's all under seal.

And this is another extraordinary aspect of this case. Fox has gone to great lengths to prevent this stuff from leaking out, which typically by now you would have seen more leaks because when depositions or discovery gets filed with the court, it's presumed to be public information. But we just don't know, by and large, what the evidence is at this point. But some of it has gotten out. Can you walk us through the biggest names that have been deposed, as you mentioned, Suzanne Scott and others, and the biggest revelations so far? So it really extends from the top of the company to the rungs of middle management. You have, as you mentioned, Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch,

you have Suzanne Scott, the chief executive of Fox News, you have almost all the high profile pro-Trump hosts from Sean Hannity to Tucker Carlson, Lou Dobbs, Janine Pirro. But in my reporting, what I've found has most unsettled folks at Fox is not the Tucker Carlson's being deposed. It's the mid-level producers. Dominion's lawyers have the personal text messages of ordinary folks who are not making millions of dollars a year and can't afford to hire their own lawyers. And from what I understand, that's really sent a chill through the network. Dominion thinks they're owed $1.6 billion. If Fox loses the suit, how much do you expect them to have to pay? This thing can go on forever. And Dominion's not backing down either. They're not

settling. It doesn't appear so, right? Because from what I understand, and this just kind of makes sense when you look at the totality of Dominion's claims here, they're not looking just for a $1.6 billion check. They want an apology, right? They want their name cleared in the court of public opinion as well as a trial court in Delaware. I don't see Fox doing either of those things. Yes, they could throw money at this and make it go away because they have so much money, but they're not going to want to apologize because think of what that would say to their

audience, right? We lied to you, basically. Have you talked to any sources of the inside knowledge of Rupert's deposition, which is about to take place? Rupert, for people who don't realize, has been here before many times. He had to go for parliament in Britain to explain himself after two of his British newspapers had hacked the phones of hundreds of public figures. How does this compare in terms of both financial and reputational damage? Because that was a big hit, although he bounced right back from that

eventually. Exactly. I think you could say that the Murdochs are well-practiced in giving depositions. They've been sued many, many times over the years and sat through many public investigations into their conduct. At the corporate level, I think what the Dominion attorneys are attempting to prove in these depositions is that Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch were calling the shots. Now, we don't know what type of evidence they have to prove that because, again, we haven't seen it. But at the heart of Dominion's case is this notion that Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, to maximize corporate profits, okayed the lies and the falsehoods that were spewed on the air about Dominion. And these are voting machines were hacked in some fashion. There's all kinds of weird allegations. Oh, I mean, it extends even farther than that. It's not just that there was some type of algorithm

that subtracted votes from Biden and gave them to Trump. It was that the company was somehow founded by Hugo Chavez. And it was the purpose of rigging these machines, as Dominion supposedly did, was to steal votes for Hugo Chavez and rig the elections in Venezuela. I mean, it's all just so preposterous. Yeah, there's a lot of things. It's actually stealing votes from Trump to give to Biden, correct? Yes. That's not the other way around. Yeah, right, whatever. So they're going to be asking them of their involvement and the decision-making. And presumably they're going to say,

well, we didn't realize what they were doing, correct? I mean, what do we know from their involvement, though? We know that Suzanne Scott, the chief executive of Fox News, expressed grave concern and said in one text message that they could not give the quote unquote crazies an inch. We know from reporting and context since the January 6th attacks that Rupert is no fan of Trump's. I mean, they've always had this complicated relationship. It was always a relationship of convenience because when Rupert is no fan of Trump's. I mean, they've always had this complicated relationship. It was always a relationship of convenience because when Rupert put Trump on the air,

or Roger Ailes and Rupert put Trump on the air, it was always good for Fox. He rated, he brought in viewers. And at the heart of Dominion's case is this attempt to prove that to maximize viewership, Rupert and Lachlan and the senior management at Fox kept putting this stuff out there. This story. And did so because it was good for the bottom line, the Dominion lies, yes. So they knew it was a lie and did it anyway, and that's malice. Exactly. And what the Murdochs are going to try to do, you would imagine. Yeah, I was going to ask, what is their defense?

We didn't have anything to do with this. Suzanne Scott runs Fox, not Rupert, not Lachlan. We'll see. I don't know. Because again, we don't know what the text messages say. But it's kind of inconceivable that, I mean, you remember what a big story this was, like that Rupert being the newshound that he is, you know, Lachlan being the CEO, that they're not going to express curiosity. Because I know from my own reporting that on the night of the election in 2020, when Fox got out there first with the Arizona call, and they said Biden is going to win Arizona, and Trump absolutely lost it, because effectively that meant the election was over. We know that the Murdochs were very interested in how that call took place. What was the methodology?

As was Suzanne Scott and the senior leadership of Fox, because that was a decision that was basically left to Fox's decision desk and its Washington bureau. From what I understand, the senior management at the company was not tinkering around with that and didn't get involved until after the fact, once all hell started to rain down on Fox from Trump world. Right. Immediately after Rupert got calls, Rupert and all the Murdochs got calls from the Trump campaign and various people in it. This is ultimately Rupert's doing because in 2016, Rupert got upset that the exit polls that all these news networks rely on, including the New York Times, that they were wrong. And he said, why are we spending all this money for these polls that are consistently

garbage? So Fox and the Associated Press built their own system. And because they had their own proprietary data on election night, they were able to make this call in Arizona days before anyone else was. Well, senior management, Murdoch's included, weren't really paying attention. And I think there was some bad blood over that. And I think that's why somebody like Chris Stierwald, the former senior political editor, got the ax. And Bill Salmon, who was in charge of the Washington Bureau for Fox News, also got the boot. They kept Arnon Mishkin around. But if you were watching Fox News covering the most recent midterm elections, they were pretty slow in projecting winners this time around.

They were, absolutely. So Rupert gets deposed, and where does it go from here? There's been this flurry of back and forth, increasing animosity between the two sides as if it wasn't bitter enough. Dominion has successfully persuaded the judge in the case to allow them to recall Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, and Suzanne Scott, the chief executive. And they will be going back for a second deposition. I believe Hannity, if he hasn't already, he will soon. Jeanine Pirro did hers right before Thanksgiving, I believe. And Suzanne Scott's is soon to happen. So that's pretty unusual as well. That means you would think that Dominion found something in these emails and these text messages.

You'd imagine it's pretty big, whatever they found. Right. So you have this second round of depositions. Then the lawyers on both sides prepare their motions for what's called summary judgment. And they present those to the judge in January. their motions for what's called summary judgment. And they present those to the judge in January. And effectively, you know, with these civil defamation cases, the judge can decide, it's very, it's a very weird quirk in the law, but effectively the judge can say,

okay, I think Dominion's case is so strong that we don't even need to go to a trial. You're, Fox, you are liable. That would be, that'd be pretty extraordinary. No, that's a major trial. Yeah. So I would guess then we go to trial. And the judge has set a trial date for April. And he's been pretty clear that he's not moving on that. There have been requests to delay that. I don't think that's going to happen. And we could be getting testimony and watching some of the biggest stars in conservative media grilled on the stand for several weeks. They've also sued One America News Network and Newsmax. Where are those suits? Those are not as far along. Those are slower processes. We should also say that Fox News is being sued in another case by Smartmatic, which is another maker of voting

machines. And that case has a much longer timeframe. I mean, you're looking at like 2024 or something like that for a trial. That's for $2.7 billion. And is it different? And Fox is countersued also in that case. Fundamentally, it's not different. But one thing with Smartmatic that's very curious is Fox walked back by Fox hosts and guests like Sidney Powell were so outrageous and so demonstrably false. It's very puzzling to me why they didn't apologize. Because when you're trying to prove actual malice, and you referenced the New York Times case by Sarah Palin, one of the things the Times and other news organizations do most of the time when they make a mistake is they say, hey, we got this wrong, and they correct it. Or they say, we apologize, we regret the error. Which goes a long way.

It goes a long way in persuading the jury that you didn't act with malice. And in this case, Fox can't point to anything like that with Dominion. Now, is it possible the suit could help Fox if OWN and Newsmax go out of business or go bankrupt because they can't afford to pay anything they might be liable of, it's not the worst possible outcome for them. I think you're totally onto something there. And Newsmax has apologized because they don't have the money. OAN is in much more dire financial straits because they were just taken off the air at DirecTV and Verizon. So basically, they have no broadcast ability at them. I mean,

you can stream it, but you can't get it in your house, pretty much. And so they were already looking at possible financial ruin anyway. Let's take a step back. What are the implications these cases have for the press and First Amendment rights? It's very hard for a lot of people in the media to defend Fox, but what kind of implications does this have, or are these just a bunch of sloppy liars? One thing I think that is, I don't want to say troubling, but has kind of raised eyebrows among defenders of press freedoms in the First Amendment is the relative ease with which Dominion has been able to get access to journalists' private communications. Right. I think that any time you have that going on, even if it's a quote unquote bad guy,

as many would say, like Fox, the protections that journalists enjoy under the First Amendment usually shield you from having that kind of disclosure. And these are the producers. I assume you're not talking about Judge Pirro, who that's a very loose consideration of journalists, correct? And Sean Hannity doesn't even call himself a journalist, or he goes out of his way to say he's not. He famously doesn't, right? Yeah, exactly. I think the big picture though is, in talking to some of these media scholars and first amendment lawyers

who've argued these big defamation cases and defended news organizations, they actually for the first time have a case that they want a media organization to lose. People have said that to me straight up. Fox deserves to lose this case. There needs to be some type of cost, not just financially, but a symbolic cost that they have to pay for perpetuating lies that not only hurt a company, but hurt the very fabric of American democracy. One thing that, you know, we should kind of step back and make note of here is, you know, I don't want to make it sound like I think it's a slam dunk and Fox is for sure going to lose because they've hired one of the best trial

lawyers in the country. Fox has an awful lot of money to keep throwing at this, to keep funding appeals and more attorneys. This is exactly why these cases against a major media organization like Fox are so hard to win because they have endless, virtually endless resources to keep throwing at the problem. But it does seem like Domenian's committed to it. When I interviewed him back then, he was committed to it.

Oh, 100%. And that's why they haven't settled. Do you feel like your leads never lead anywhere? And you're making content that no one sees? And it takes forever to build a campaign? Well, that's why we built HubSpot. It's an AI-powered customer platform that builds campaigns for you, tells you which leads are worth knowing,

and makes writing blogs, creating videos, and posting on social a breeze. So now, it's easier than ever to be a marketer. Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers. Let's get to the bigger picture, the Trump of all. Donald Trump is something of an uncredited protagonist in this lawsuit. Obviously, Murdoch and Trump, as you said, are linked. I want to unpack their personal relationship. Talk about where it is right now. TV networks, as you noted, live and die by the ratings. Even though he wasn't a fan of Trump, he gave viewers what they Fox. And Fox, in many ways, and the characters

who were on Fox from the conservative movement, like Sarah Palin, were Trump's teachers in a way. He looked to them for what kinds of things he could say and get away with. And I know from my reporting that I did for my book, he watched Sarah Palin very closely in the 2010 period when the Tea Party was just getting off the ground. And he said to himself, you know, if she can do this, I can do this because Trump is not naturally a conservative, right? I mean, he's a self-preservationist. He wants to say whatever he thinks will endear him to his followers. And so he watched the rhetoric that Tea Party politicians were spewing, and he tapped into the kind of cultural resentments and cross-currents around issues like, you may remember, the Ground Zero Mosque in 2010. It wasn't really a mosque.

It was an Islamic cultural center they were going to build down near Ground Zero. And Trump railed against this on Fox. And he talked about Obama's birth certificate on Fox. And so Fox really helped him find his voice. And Roger Ailes sees that Trump is raiding and that viewers like it. So what does Roger do?

He gives Trump his own segment on Fox and Friends on Tuesday mornings called Tuesdays with Trump, I believe, or Mondays with Trump, something like that. And this is how Trump begins to build his political base. And like many other people from that part of the conservative movement, these populist firebrands like Glenn Beck, they became too big for Fox and too big for Roger Ailes. And in Roger's mind, no one could ever be bigger than he was. And it became uncontrollable. And the Trump phenomenon spun out of Roger's control. And then you had Trump attacking Megyn Kelly by the time he was running for president. Then you had Trump attacking Megyn Kelly by the time he was running for president. And the audience turned.

They loved Trump and they turned on Fox. And that's exactly the situation you end up in in 2020 when Fox calls Arizona for Biden and they don't initially buy into the big lie that this was all rigged. And their audience turns. And they bolt to Newsmax and OAN. And the argument that Dominion is making to take us back to the case is once that audience started to flee, Fox had an incentive financially to keep peddling this lie so it could get back its viewers. Is there a different relationship between Rupert and with Fox News? Because he has a very different relationship with Hannity versus Rupert. Cut him in a second. Hannity seems more of a true believer, or an advisor,

really, is what he is. How is that run internally? Like, do they just let Hannity do this? Or is there any, you've been eased off or things like that? You know, one of the criticisms of Suzanne Scott, and I think we'll learn more about this at trial, is that she's very hands-off with the talent. And that effectively enabled people like Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro, Maria Bartiromo, Sean Hannity, you know, to say this stuff, to lie about Dominion on the air and peddle these outrageous claims of a massive voter fraud conspiracy that just didn't exist. Because Suzanne Scott was letting the talent do its thing. outrageous claims of a massive voter fraud conspiracy that just didn't exist because Suzanne Scott was letting the talent do its thing. And again, you know, it's, it's, it's one of these

situations where I think that happened because she's not naturally a Trump person from everything I know about her. If anything, she's more of like a Bush Republican, if you could even consider her that she's certainly not a Trump Republican. And in my reporting, one of the things Bush Republican, if you could even consider her that. She's certainly not a Trump Republican. And in my reporting, one of the things that I learned is as the inauguration of Biden was approaching and Trump and folks who work for him were saying that somehow the inauguration was going to be stopped, Suzanne Scott turns to people in a meeting and was like, people don't really believe this stuff, do they? It seems insane to me or something to that effect. So I don't think that, I think that this went on without much interference from above for

quite a while. And that's why you end up with a $1.6 billion defamation suit against Fox. So where is that relationship today between Rupert and Trump and Fox and Trump? Because he rails against them. He's been very critical. Okay. So I was just watching Fox News before we logged in to do the show here, Cara. Good luck for you. And they were... You do it so we don't have to, but go ahead.

Exactly. I feel like that's a lot of a job. I hear about it from my mother every morning, so I already know. You do. That's right. Well, yeah. I mean, and you wrote about how these lies on COVID, which we haven't talked about, hurt people. And you see this firsthand. So it's like, there's not just a financial cost to this stuff. There's a real human cost, cost to our society. But what they were doing this morning on Fox is covering a poll showing that DeSantis was beating Trump. And it's stuff like that that shows you where the Murdochs are. They have been over the last couple, three, four months, allowing on the air more and more skeptical Trump coverage. It's not overtly anti-Trump. It's more pro other Republican

possible contenders. Which Ron DeSantis is their guy, in other words. DeSantis for now seems to be just like with the rest of the, you know, the quote unquote sane wing of the GOP, if you want to call them that. Yes, DeSantis is the rising star of the moment. So what I've learned, the Murdochs are, they think that Trump has done so much damage to the Republican Party. He can't beat Biden. So they will do what they can within the limits of what their audience will tolerate to try to slow him down. Have you confirmed that Rupert's not backing him? This has been reported.

Yes, exactly. I mean, backing is kind of like it's, I, it's, it's never, I mean, you know, because you were there. He'll switch, yeah. Yeah, it's never so much as like, you know, Rupert saying, I endorse. You know, maybe they'll do that through the New York Post. But, you know, I mean, famously, like Rupert saw all over the place, he wanted to endorse Obama in the New York Post in 2008. Yep. And that almost made Roger Ailes walk from Fox News. So Rupert will condone, will encourage positive coverage of others and more negative coverage

of Trump. That's pretty much how it works. It's not so much as like a command from on high as it is, you know, little bits of interference, very careful reading and questioning of certain segments or articles. And we'll see, you know, like we've seen with the Wall Street Journal editorials lately that are very critical of Trump and the same for the New York Post and the columnist there. The audience does still love Trump. How does Fox navigate that? Very carefully. And it boils down to, does Ron DeSantis rate? And does Trump not rate anymore?

The evidence you have so far is that- And this is ratings. Television ratings, right. This is like, it's quantifiable. And this is what the producers and executives and the Murdochs are looking at. They're looking at the numbers. And they can see that, for instance, on the night that Trump announced his 2024 campaign, that 5 million people tuned in. As much as people want to write Trump's death certificate, I wouldn't. He writes. Exactly. So it's going to be hard to walk away from the thing they've created that's so entertaining to people. Exactly. Trump is an entertainer. I mean,

he's a broadcaster more so than he ever was a politician. I mean, this is and that is that is in large part because of his own background as a television star, but because of the training that he got through Fox News. always knew how to give the audience what it wanted, how to be just provocative and outrageous enough to keep people tuned in and coming back and watching and listening more than they did to any other network. Is that different under Lachlan's eventual regime? Because it's not altogether clear that Lachlan will have total control of that company after Rupert's death at some point in the next 100 years? Yeah, that's a really good question. I think that you look at the tenor of Fox News under Lachlan's stewardship and who's the biggest star there? Tucker Carlson. And he has been given tremendous leeway by the Murdochs to create, you know, this incredibly vitriolic and nationalistic,

racist programming. So, you know, do we think that Fox News is going to be like kinder and gentler once Rupert is no longer in charge? I don't see any evidence of that. There's three other kids, and we'll see what happens when that, and one of whom is obviously been hostile to what Fox is doing, or increasingly hostile, I guess, which is James Murdoch. Oh, exactly. Is there an ascendant media network that they're worried about? So I think Ben Shapiro is one of the most influential and powerful because he's incredibly persuasive. If you listen to him, whatever you think of his ideas and his biases, he's incredibly intelligent and knows how to

construct an argument. And it's incredibly compelling to his audience. And his audience is consistently one of the biggest in all of, and he has this website, The daily call, I'm not the daily caller, the, um, wire, it's a daily wire, the daily wire. Um, I mean, it's been one of the lead combatants in the culture wars. Um, and I think it's, it's an audience, like somebody with the power to persuade a young ascendant audience, because these, these are the people who are listening in their 30s right now are the ones who are going to have purchasing power, who are going to graduate into that demographic that is now watching Fox News. So if I were them, I would be worried about losing those types of people to guys like

Ben Shapiro. And he's building a media empire of his own in Nashville or wherever. In Nashville, right? They relocated from Los Angeles to Nashville, where there's no state income tax, but it's also a little bit more culturally friendly. Yeah, it's always about taxes, Jeremy, just so you know. And speaking of that, speaking of culture wars, I want to end, before we go, we have to talk about Elon, because he's actually emerging as the next one, trying to create what I think is a media empire at Twitter. When you have everything else, you might as well have a media company, and that gives you real power, actually, real political and social power, more than a car could or a rocket. So, very nice cars, very nice rockets.

So, your last article was headlined, Critics Say Musk Has Revealed Himself But Conservative. It's not so simple. It got a lot of heat from other journalists, including Philip Bump at Washington Post and Charlie Wurtzel, who wrote this in The Atlantic. Peters' laundry list of Musk's recent lib-trolling and, quote, woke scolding undermines the very thesis of this article. and, quote, woke scolding undermines the very thesis of this article. Yeah, I mean, the problem with writing about anything with nuance is that social media is a place where nuance is not exactly welcome. But, I mean, I think that what's happening with Musk is people are projecting what they want to be true. The virtues and these boogeyman

qualities, both. And I just don't think it's that easy. And I think also, I mean, you know this far better than I do. I have a hard time taking anything he says very seriously because so much of it seems to be trolling. And so when people try to assign- It's pretty hard right talking points. I mean, it's Fauci. I mean, it's vaccines, it's Fauci, it's woke mind virus, it's trans. He's sort of hitting the greatest hits of the right. Yeah, on a lot of that stuff, he certainly is. Like I was saying, I just wonder how much of it is is because he means it and how much of it is because this is all a performance of some kind. And he's certainly getting a lot of attention and and drawing eyeballs to his 44 billion dollar new toy,

which he needs to to turn around financially in a big way. And he's been very, very clear about that. I just think that what I was pointing out in that story is this is a guy who has a very mixed bag of politics, somebody who's arguably done more to draw attention to pollution and climate change and change consumer habits for the better in that way. As somebody who voted for Joe Biden, who voted for Obama, who says he doesn't support Trump, I mean, to kind of just like cast him as this kind of right-wing villain, I think just oversimplifies whatever he believes. Sounds like someone we know, Rupert Murdoch. He'll do what it takes, right? I don't think Rupert Murdoch likes Donald Trump. There's no way. And I just don't think he does. And I think

he does think he's a moron. But is that what's happening here? Is he doing the same thing? I think so. Could he possibly be the inheritor of the Murdoch legacy? Or is it Ben Shapiro, as you noted? I mean, I think, right, there's such different. Someone's got to replace Fox News at some point, correct? Presumably. Right, because the audience is just, is dying. And I think it becomes a different kind of company.

All these cable news networks have such challenges, right? Because people are not watching in the same way that they used to, and they are reliant on revenue that comes from subscribers, and people are cutting the cord. You know, it's just, it's not sustainable. It's kind of like where, you know, like with print journalism, people just aren't picking up newspapers like they used to. So, you know, they have such, they have such challenges on the horizon. Ben Shapiro is, you know, in these podcasters and these content creators, it's such a different beast than it is owning like a social media company where those content creators speak to their audience, right? So I don't know, you're you, you're the expert here, but like somebody like

Musk, who really doesn't have much of a history at all of giving to politicians. I mean, his, his, his federal contributions, I was surprised to learn don't even add up to a million dollars. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, you know, you look at somebody like Peter Thiel. I don't, I don't know that I see Elon Musk becoming that type of a political, wannabe political kingmaker, bankrolling his own candidates who are ideologically clones of his, whatever his ideology is. I don't. You own the media company. You use the media company to do that, presumably. Last question then, who is going to be the power going forward?

So I think it's not Ron DeSantis. I'll answer who I don't think it is first. Ron DeSantis reminds all this attention, and I bring this up just because he is the flavor of the moment, all the attention and praise and, oh, this is our guy type of sentiment is so reminiscent to me of what we saw about people like Chris Christie eight years ago. You know, Chris Christie was going to be the Republican nominee. He was going to beat Obama, you know, the next president, all this. And then we heard that about Marco Rubio and this whole wave of, you know, next generation Republicans.

And it never happened. So, I mean, I think who has all the power at the moment, it's still Donald Trump. Like this is still his Republican Party. And no one has proven that they're able to beat him even if he, unless they're a Democrat, right? The Republicans who try to defeat him. It's not, you know, and Peggy Noonan had an interesting point about this that I've been trying to beat into people's brains for years now, is that it is not Mitch McConnell's choice. It is not Ron DeSantis' choice. It's not Fox News or Rupert Murdoch's choice. It's the voters who will decide this. And right now, it's still the voters who want Trump. And yes, there's some fragmentation going on there. And people are excited about Ron DeSantis. And they do say they would like an alternative.

But Trump, he has a funny way of rallying his voters in an almost kind of self-defeating way. They want to see Republicans lose, even if that means not having any power in Washington. They want to see the disloyal Republicans defeated and punished. And that's the culture of this Republican party right now. And I don't see that changing. It goes back to the same kind of anger and grievance that we were talking about earlier. That's what galvanizes the right at this moment in time. And I would just say one last thing, just to leave you with this thought. Trump embodies all of that kind of self-defeating energy.

And as Steve Bannon said to me when I was reporting the book, when I asked about could somebody like a Mike Pence someday inherit the Trump movement, which now seems like an absolutely laughable proposition. Bannon said to me, do you think Donald Trump is looking to nurture anything? He wants the next Republican after him to lose by 40 points. So he can prove that he alone was able to do this. Oh, as you said in your book, he's like Hitler. And that was meant as a compliment. That was a great line.

That's what Bannon said. Yep, he was like Hitler. Yeah, that's what Steve, not that was meant as a compliment. That was a great line. Exactly. That's what Bannon said. Yep, he was like Hitler. Yeah, yeah. That's what Steve, not you, Steve Bannon. Anyway, no one's using that as a compliment but Steve Bannon. Okay, Jeremy, it's been great. I have to go watch some Tucker Carlson now. I'm kidding.

I'll let my mom do it. But seriously, thank you. This has been great, and I really appreciate it. No, I'm glad to be on. Thank you. It's on. No, I'm glad to be on. Thank you.

So Rupert and Trump, a love story gone south. Yes, indeed. That's the next book he should write. They'll stay married. They're going to stay in their unhappy marriage. Who's Ron DeSantis? The mistress? No, he's so boring.

He's too dull to be a mistress. So I think he's a flash in the pan. I think that's what Jeremy was saying, essentially. And I agree with him. Chris Christie was all hot. I remember Scott Walker was hot. I think he's certainly a strong candidate in terms of Florida, et cetera, important state, but much more important state than New Jersey or Wisconsin ever was. But the national appeal of him is still unclear. Who do we think has more staying power, Rupert Murdoch or Donald Trump after that conversation? Did it shift?

No, Rupert Murdoch. I mean, except for age, he's older. But the Murdochs. You know what? I would never turn my back on Rupert Murdoch. I just wouldn't. Really? I'm sure you have. I have not. I walk out of the room backwards whenever I've been in rooms with him. I just think he's a very crafty person, and I think he ultimately comes out on top every time. And he would throw any of these people under the bus if it suited him and he needed to. He's just, he's captive to the audience with the

audience and what he's trained them to like, so. He's not clumsy. He's careful. Yeah. I think if I had to bet against anyone, it would be Murdoch over Trump every time and twice on Sunday. But I am, you know, it's be Murdoch over Trump every time and twice on Sunday. But I am, you know, it's very interesting what Jeremy was saying about media advocates and First Amendment advocates actually being, you know, turned on to this defamation case against Fox News, feeling like even though they've been staunch supporters of the First Amendment, this case has legs and there needs to be a limit. I thought that was really striking. Well, it's very hard to defend someone, some media organizations that's been so sloppy

and obvious in their maliciousness. And so that's the problem. And I think, you know, sloppy is the nicest version of it. Calculated is really what seems to have been at work here. And you can see it, this talking points. Fox News is a political campaign more than a media organization. And so that's why I think

they feel like there needs to be some accountability. For me, I think they might have, it's that they've gotten so big and in the bigness, there is room for messiness

to happen. But that bigness also gives them plausible deniability. Like, oh, I didn't know that happened. I wasn't in the room when that happened.

I don't know how all those phones got hacked. You know, it gives him both. They know exactly what they that happened. I wasn't in the room when that happened. I don't know how all those phones got hacked. It gives him both. They know exactly what they're doing. He is the sharpest media executive you've ever want to see. He knows exactly what's happening everywhere. And so he used to call me up in the middle of in the night to talk about internet stuff. He is on 24-7. I don't care how old he is. He's aging, Kara. He's aging. I'm not being an ageist, but he is aging. Whatever. Again, I think they know exactly what they're doing. I mean, Suzanne Scott, Jeremy's whole point was that she does let them run a little bit loose.

And so, I don't know. I think there's some looseness in the organization. But I think the looseness is beneficial. It gives you plausible deniability. I guess. I think they're in big trouble here. I think they're in big trouble. Yeah, I do too. With that very promising, hopeful future. Slouching towards Bethlehem, waiting to be born, as Yates says. That's dark and depressing. So let's get to the credits on that note. All right. Today's show was produced by Naeem Arraza, Blake Neshek, Christian Castro-Rossell, Rafaela Seward. Special thanks to Haley Milliken.

Our engineers are Fernando Arruda and Rick Kwan. Our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you get a Fox Nation show. Everybody gets one of those. If not, you're stuck on YouTube. But go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Karis Fisher and hit follow. That's the most important thing of all. Thanks for listening to On with Karis Fisher and hit follow. That's the most important thing of all.

Thanks for listening to On with Karis Fisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Monday with more.