It’s hard to believe it’s been over a year since Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. It’s hard to believe because he, many of his cronies, and a disarmingly large number of his supporters still think there was skullduggery, despite none of them being able to produce any evidence of same. While the former president still, improbably, has a firm grip on the Republican party, not everyone’s still happy to entertain his voter fraud fantasies. One of them is Rupert Murdoch.
As per The Guardian, the Fox News honcho — whose channel no longer always airs all his tantrums, leaving that to the shady, subpar likes of Newsmax or OANN — delivered an address at the annual News Corp shareholders meeting, which wasn’t remotely as chaotic as the one on the most recent Succession. There, he looked to the future, not to over 12 months in the past, as a large chunk of Republicans continue to do.
“The current American political debate is profound, whether about education or welfare or economic opportunity,” Murdoch told the crowd. “It is crucial that conservatives play an active, forceful role in that debate, but that will not happen if President Trump stays focused on the past. The past is the past, and the country is now in a contest to define the future.”
It’s not exactly a rebuke of Trump, and his network continues to allow at least a modicum of Trump or Trumpy nonsense. The failed blogger and Mar-a-Lago wedding toaster still cuts it up with Sean Hannity, while no doubt he loves when Tucker Carlson downplays the Jan. 6 Capitol siege that ended his presidency in disgrace.
But it’s something, even though it’s nothing new. Murdoch has been a Trump critic since for years, trying to get Fox News to “tilt” to anyone else, “even Hillary,” and reportedly calling him a “f*cking idiot” — the same term bestowed upon the body man Trump basically made a “deputy president” in his sad, doomed final stretch.
But don’t go cheering for old Rupert. Fox News continues to broadcast misinformation about vaccines while requiring them (or a negative COVID test) to enter the premises. And a former Fox News exec tried, and apparently failed, to convince him that his news network has long done “real damage” to America, as we see every day, every hour, every minute.
(Via The Guardian)