Murdoch-Trump rift opens over Epstein – but don’t expect a decisive break

Threats to sue. Angry calls to editors. Public denunciations. In the wake of the Wall Street Journal’s story claiming Donald Trump contributed to a “bawdy” letter to the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein – featuring a drawing of a naked woman’s silhouette around a typewritten personal message – the president’s relationship with the outlet’s proprietor, Rupert Murdoch, appears on the surface to have deteriorated from temperamental to terminal.

Just a few days ago, the 94-year-old mogul was spotted among the president’s high-profile guests at the Fifa Club World Cup final. Following the publication of the article, however, Murdoch now finds himself on the president’s lengthy list of media opponents threatened with court action.

In an unprecedented environment in which a sitting president regularly takes direct aim at the media, there have been numerous claims of big outlets making decisions that make life easier for their billionaire owners. Yet the Journal published the Epstein allegations even after Trump picked up the phone to its British editor, Emma Tucker, to demand that she ditch the story. Trump also claims Murdoch himself was approached to stop the article, to no avail.

According to some media watchers, it is the latest sign that Murdoch is taking a different approach to Trump’s return than some of his fellow billionaire moguls. Even before the Epstein story dropped on Thursday, Murdoch’s Journal continued to criticise Trump from the right over some of his early decisions.

In January, its editorial page took aim at his unconditional pardon for many of those who stormed the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. It also accused Trump of “pleasing China’s Xi Jinping above a law passed by Congress” with what it described as the “illegal” suspension of a law forcing TikTok to break from ByteDance, its Chinese owner. It has also criticised Trump for launching new family crypto tokens.

It wasn’t that long ago, either, that Murdoch was Trump’s guest in the Oval office. Even then, however, tensions were on display. Trump brought up his disagreements with the Journal, which had recently dubbed his tariff battle with Canada and Mexico as “the dumbest trade war in history”.

It has led some to regard Murdoch’s Journal as representing a political band on the right aware of Trump’s political draw, but sceptical about his economic effects – particularly around the use of tariffs as a constant weapon in his international dealings.

Yet the Journal’s critical stance on aspects of Trump’s presidency is far from proof of a decisive break between Murdoch and the president. Murdoch’s Fox News – the cash cow of his media businesses and a powerhouse in the Maga world – continues to provide supportive content. The Epstein letter story was relegated to an opinion piece low down on the network’s online homepage on Friday morning.

And those who have watched Murdoch’s career closely over the decades tend to conclude that, ultimately, his decisions are driven by business. With the Journal appealing to economically hawkish Trump sceptics on the right and Fox News continuing to serve up content for Trump supporters, Murdoch finds himself at the helm of a media empire on the right with all bases covered.

The episode also highlights that, just a few months into Trump’s second coming, internal pressures are pulling at the threads of big players in the Maga media. Already, influential pro-Trump personalities – most notably Tucker Carlson and Laura Loomer - have protested at the lack of action around releasing all documentation relating to Epstein. Others stick to Trump’s line that the existence of extensive files related to the disgraced financier is a “hoax”.

The saga appears to confirm Murdoch’s status as a different beast from some of the more recent arrivals to media ownership, developing a skin as thick as rhinoceros hide in his decades making and breaking political careers. As the veteran media writer Ben Smith has put it: “If you want to be a mogul, as the Murdochs have learned over the decades, you can’t make yourself quite that easy to bully.”