Speaker 1: I have a little bit of a theme with a
Speaker 1: couple of my interviews this week. Happy Monday, Welcome to
Speaker 1: another episode of the Chuck Podcast. So today I'm interviewing
Speaker 1: McKay Coppins. It's a fascinating interview. He's a writer and
Speaker 1: reporter for The Atlantic, and he did the deepest of
Speaker 1: deep dives with incredible access on the fight for control
Speaker 1: of the Murdoch Empire James Murdoch in particular, the second son,
Speaker 1: eldest son of Rupert Murdoch, and who's the Murdoch children
Speaker 1: are in this big fight over whether to split up
Speaker 1: the empire equally or to in Rupert's case, he's afraid
Speaker 1: of his more liberal children taking a piece of the
Speaker 1: Murdoch Empire. So there's an ideological aspect to all of
Speaker 1: these things. Yes, if you're wondering this is the story
Speaker 1: of succession in real life, well certainly we'll feel familiar
Speaker 1: to you. But it's an incredible piece that McKay did,
Speaker 1: and we spend a good chunk of time not just
Speaker 1: talking about his piece, but sort of understanding sort of
Speaker 1: the ecosystem that Rupert Murdoch created and what it is
Speaker 1: done in at least the three places he's had the
Speaker 1: most success in acquiring media organizations Australia, the UK, and
Speaker 1: of course here in the United States. But let's be honest,
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why there's so much distrust of
Speaker 1: media in general is arguably due to the tactics that
Speaker 1: Rupert Murdoch has employed for some thirty years, the weaponizing
Speaker 1: of journalism for partisans. While he's not the first person
Speaker 1: to try and do it, I mean, I've told you this.
Speaker 1: The nineteenth century was filled with this type of mindset
Speaker 1: when it comes to journalism and media, but this modern
Speaker 1: era version of it, and this attempt to sort of
Speaker 1: essentially weaponize the information ecosystem that we're all living in today.
Speaker 1: Arguably the modern version of this began with the decision
Speaker 1: of what's happened with Fox News? But you'll hear an
Speaker 1: interesting conversation about how And I'm going to leave you
Speaker 1: with this question before I go into the weekend politics
Speaker 1: and what to expect this week, And that's simply this,
Speaker 1: would we be better off if Roger Ayles We're still
Speaker 1: running Fox News? So I'm gonna let you steal on
Speaker 1: that a minute before we get to my interview with
Speaker 1: McKay coppins. And by the way, later this week we
Speaker 1: talk about trust and media. Well, you want to know
Speaker 1: why there's such little trust in government, I'd argue it
Speaker 1: has to do with a certain cover up or supposed
Speaker 1: cover up of probably the most famous assassination of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century. So with that, I want to put a
Speaker 1: pin in that and instead talk about what we learned
Speaker 1: this weekend and what to expect in the topsy turvy
Speaker 1: world that is politics these days, and frankly, the tariff
Speaker 1: trade wars that Donald Trump has started around the world.
Speaker 1: The big news over the weekend, of course, is his
Speaker 1: decision to exempt, essentially exempt Silicon Valley as best he
Speaker 1: can from the tariffs. The question is is this a
Speaker 1: permanent exemption or a temporary one. Like with everything in
Speaker 1: how Donald Trump has handled the tariff situation, in the
Speaker 1: trade situation, his administration is giving mixed signals. On one hand,
Speaker 1: this looks like, hey, we can't step in front of
Speaker 1: something that has been that has allowed America to take
Speaker 1: the lead, whether it's on the development of smartphones or
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence, and the big chips and all these companies
Speaker 1: that desperately need this tech imported without big tariffs. They
Speaker 1: got their exemptions on that front, but the Commerce Secretary
Speaker 1: went out there on the Sunday shows and said, hey,
Speaker 1: these are only going to be temporary. So is this
Speaker 1: a permanent exemption? Is this a temporary exemption? And what
Speaker 1: does it mean to start handing out exemptions. If you recall,
Speaker 1: in the previous iteration of the Chuck podcast, I had
Speaker 1: a couple of experts on trade and tariffs and we
Speaker 1: were talking about what could be And this was back
Speaker 1: before the November election, but sort of like, what is
Speaker 1: it about tariffs that Donald Trump just loves so much?
Speaker 1: And what tariffs do when you start to implement him
Speaker 1: the way he implemented him very scattershot, is that it
Speaker 1: puts him at the center of every single negotiation. If
Speaker 1: you're a country with tariff slapped on you, you've got
Speaker 1: to go to Donald Trump. You're not going to some
Speaker 1: other entity, some other multinational trade agreement that you try
Speaker 1: to renegotiate. You have to go to Donald Trump. And
Speaker 1: if you're an industry impacted by tariffs and you're looking
Speaker 1: for an exemption so that you continue to do business
Speaker 1: in a reasonable way, you got to go to Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: And it really, this is why he loves it. He
Speaker 1: loves to be able to be in the middle of
Speaker 1: a one on one deal. And if you're wondering if
Speaker 1: the goal of the tariff policy is to achieve what
Speaker 1: he wants to achieve, which is to bring manufacturing back
Speaker 1: to America, then he's undermining his own policy with all
Speaker 1: of these exemptions. If you continue to give the tech
Speaker 1: industry all of these exemptions, they have no incentive to
Speaker 1: break ground in the United States of America. But you
Speaker 1: got to ask yourself, what's the motivation of Donald Trump
Speaker 1: to do this. Well, he's just trying to deal with
Speaker 1: short term political pain. Because you will see the markets
Speaker 1: briefly go up early in the week, perhaps early on Monday.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's a great day all day Monday with the
Speaker 1: tech Scott stocks, your apples, your Palenteers, your Navidia's. The
Speaker 1: people that have right now have the president's ear. And
Speaker 1: of course it's not lost on some people that hear
Speaker 1: apples getting a big benefit here. And we all know
Speaker 1: all of the amount of money that has been given
Speaker 1: to the Inaugural Committee by many of these tech companies
Speaker 1: or the library that may or may not ever exist
Speaker 1: in a future world of Donald Trump. But there is
Speaker 1: this essentially piggy bank of money and chits that he's
Speaker 1: been acquiring from these tech companies, and perhaps this is
Speaker 1: one way they've just cashed him to make sure they
Speaker 1: get these exemptions. But again, it undermines the stated goal
Speaker 1: of what they're trying to do. And if you're opening
Speaker 1: the door on this front with tech tariffs, you're going
Speaker 1: to start opening the door to other industries. And the
Speaker 1: next big industry that's going to be looking for an
Speaker 1: exemption there's going to be a politically powerful one, and
Speaker 1: that is folks that are involved with anything having to
Speaker 1: do with babies, whether it's taking care of if it's
Speaker 1: bringing in the right equipment that you want to import
Speaker 1: to take care of your kid, car seats, things like that.
Speaker 1: We already know if you recall remember the baby formula
Speaker 1: crisis and they had to temporarily wave tariffs in order
Speaker 1: to try to save money. There. When people start complaining
Speaker 1: about the cost of their coffee, are the coffee importers
Speaker 1: going to get an exemption? And is Donald Trump going
Speaker 1: to sit here and essentially play whack a mole with
Speaker 1: ways to try to soften the economic blow to the public.
Speaker 1: That's what this looks like so far. And if you
Speaker 1: do that, this is no way to run an economy.
Speaker 1: It is going to end up blowing up up both
Speaker 1: goals that he might have if he's trying to stabilize
Speaker 1: the economy by trying to do some of these exemptions. Okay,
Speaker 1: there's some sort of uneasy stabilization here right in the
Speaker 1: tech stocks. Maybe you'll have unevil even stabilization. They'll be
Speaker 1: relief that the cost of an iPhone isn't going to
Speaker 1: be so much that it impacts the earnings of Apple.
Speaker 1: And then maybe you know those that lobby the administration
Speaker 1: when it comes to the various things that impact having
Speaker 1: a baby and taking care of kids in this country,
Speaker 1: and you get rid of the tariffs on anything having
Speaker 1: to do with baby formula or car seats or strollers
Speaker 1: or things like that. Okay, so then there's that, and
Speaker 1: then every industry starts coming to the White House for something,
Speaker 1: and it means everything is a transaction. Now, look, the
Speaker 1: darker part of my brain is going to the world
Speaker 1: of a kleptocracy. This is how a kleptocracy is. Okay,
Speaker 1: before you go to a full fledge authoritarian regime, you
Speaker 1: go through this sort of midpoint between democracy and authoritarianism,
Speaker 1: which is kleptocracy. Arguably that's what Turkey is right now.
Speaker 1: That is what Venezuela is times one hundred, where there's
Speaker 1: still some remnants of a democracy. Maybe in Turkey, for instance,
Speaker 1: the actual vote itself isn't rigged, but all of the
Speaker 1: industries are. Essentially you got to pay some sort of
Speaker 1: fee or honorarium or whatever you want to call it
Speaker 1: to the government in order to be able to do
Speaker 1: business in certain ways. And suddenly, when you're at the
Speaker 1: center of a terriff regime that Donald Trump is put on,
Speaker 1: every industry is coming, and they're going to be coming
Speaker 1: a little bit with hat in hand and perhaps an
Speaker 1: offering or two. And what is that offering? Sometimes we
Speaker 1: may know sometimes it's a quid pro quo that he
Speaker 1: may claim will help the country, and sometimes it may
Speaker 1: be a quid pro quo that helps one of his
Speaker 1: friends or himself. Some of this stuff will be transparent
Speaker 1: and some of this stuff will be opaque. But even
Speaker 1: the very idea that this econ, we no longer under
Speaker 1: a system like this can say we have a free
Speaker 1: market economy. Our economy is being dictated by government intervention.
Speaker 1: And there's some irony to this because right now it
Speaker 1: is the folks on the right that like to talk
Speaker 1: about folks on the left wanting a socialized government, wanting
Speaker 1: socialism in this country. Well, when you're attempting to control
Speaker 1: and manipulate business, that is the very definition of getting
Speaker 1: into the world of nationalism and socialism. And there really
Speaker 1: isn't a lot of difference. Right he may proclaim himself
Speaker 1: a nationalist, but the ability to manipulate an economy is
Speaker 1: something that socialist governments want to do as well. So
Speaker 1: in many ways, he is now practicing his own form
Speaker 1: call it national socialism. I'll let you go down that
Speaker 1: rabbit hole when you make that phrase, and have some
Speaker 1: fun with that phrase. But this is where we're headed.
Speaker 1: And now that he's been willing to cut a deal
Speaker 1: with Tech, others are coming. What does this do to
Speaker 1: the overall terrorf regime. I think it only is going
Speaker 1: to create continue to create long term concern about the
Speaker 1: stability of the economy and everything that his stated goal is,
Speaker 1: which is to essentially redo the manufacturing sector in this
Speaker 1: American economy, doing all of these sort of half in,
Speaker 1: half out all of this, it is not incentivizing business
Speaker 1: to break ground in this country. It is incentivizing business
Speaker 1: to wait him out or buy him out. Right. They
Speaker 1: might buy him out by getting an exemption. Hope they
Speaker 1: can survive maybe two years till the midterms, four years
Speaker 1: until the next presidential and then we go back to
Speaker 1: the global economy that frankly is already there and probably
Speaker 1: impossible to end. You might be able to slow it,
Speaker 1: slow it down. You might be able to take an
Speaker 1: industry here and industry there and try to manipulate it
Speaker 1: for a couple of years, but ultimately it is going
Speaker 1: to be really hard to stop the movement of progress.
Speaker 1: You can slow it down, you could possibly cause equity
Speaker 1: markets uh to freeze, you can, you can certainly disrupt things,
Speaker 1: but the long term it's going to be impossible to stop.
Speaker 1: And the short term at this point, you know, again,
Speaker 1: I think he's hoping that by doing these whack a moles,
Speaker 1: he can minimize the inflationary impact on people's pocketbooks. The
Speaker 1: next month or two, probably folks aren't going to see
Speaker 1: too much inflation. But starting around June first, when all
Speaker 1: of the inventories that people have already accumulated in this
Speaker 1: country without the big tariffs are completely sold down and
Speaker 1: sold down, and you know, sold sold out and and
Speaker 1: and are sort of brought back down. That's when you're
Speaker 1: going to start to see the increases. And then the
Speaker 1: question is is he going to continue to do these
Speaker 1: whack a moles when the ninety day pause expires, does
Speaker 1: he extend it another ninety days? Do we have extensions
Speaker 1: of thirty days at a time. A lot of it's
Speaker 1: going to depend on the perception of the economy. A
Speaker 1: lot of it's going to be about of the actual
Speaker 1: bond market itself. Is it collapsing still? Is the price
Speaker 1: of the dollar continuing to go down threatening our status
Speaker 1: as the reserve currency? So look, this has been a
Speaker 1: can of worms that he's opened up. He is trying
Speaker 1: to play whack a mole here. I don't think this
Speaker 1: is going to go well, but we're going to see.
Speaker 1: My guess is the markets react okay on the early
Speaker 1: part of the week, and then reality is going to
Speaker 1: set and you realize this instability. Who speaks for the administration?
Speaker 1: Is it the Commerce Secretary? Is it Peter Navarro, is
Speaker 1: it Scott Bessen? Is it Donald Trump? Right? We know
Speaker 1: it's Donald Trump ultimately, but who's got his ear at
Speaker 1: any given moment, That to me seems to be an
Speaker 1: open question. So prepare for another tumultuous week. As you
Speaker 1: see by the way his poll numbers continue to erode,
Speaker 1: they're going to continue to go down. This is this
Speaker 1: is not you know, there has been no positive coverage.
Speaker 1: He has no ribbon cuttings of new factories. He is
Speaker 1: you know, I've gone through this before. But he couldn't
Speaker 1: have politically mishandled the rollout of this tariff regime any worse.
Speaker 1: There are better ways this could have been done. I
Speaker 1: told you about how Owen Cass, who's somebody who's ideologically
Speaker 1: essentially tried to defend what Trump is doing. But he
Speaker 1: actually had a better, more coherent, methodical plan to do
Speaker 1: this than what this administration has done. And they've likely
Speaker 1: set themselves up for just what's going to continue to
Speaker 1: be political pain in the polls, financial instability in the markets,
Speaker 1: and a lot of uncertainty with our international relationships. Let
Speaker 1: me sneak in a break here and when we come back.
Speaker 1: My conversation with McKay coppins on the future of Rupert
Speaker 1: Murdock's Empire and joining me now is the author of this. Frankly,
Speaker 1: it feels like a mini book, a novella, if you will,
Speaker 1: except it's real life. It is not. It is nonfiction,
Speaker 1: even if it reads like incredible fiction. Is Mickay Coppins
Speaker 1: of The Atlantic McKay, it's good to talk with you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks for having me on seck.
Speaker 1: So first I want to get more of your sort
Speaker 1: of credentials and accolades out of the way. You are
Speaker 1: the author of a book that I've been using as
Speaker 1: a teaching tool for students in my I teach a
Speaker 1: class of USC students that are interning in DC, and
Speaker 1: in the class is called How Washington Works. And I
Speaker 1: give them sort of four or five books to choose
Speaker 1: from as a midterm assignment, and one of them is
Speaker 1: the Romney book. Wow, that's you, Because I think I
Speaker 1: look at it this way, there's sort of a few
Speaker 1: books right now that I feel like are perfect almost
Speaker 1: textbooks for understanding politics these days, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: how did the Republican Party move from the Eisenhower Romney
Speaker 1: era to this Trump era? And Mitt Romney your Romney Book,
Speaker 1: where Mitt Romney essentially give you incredible access to his
Speaker 1: innermost thoughts. I think does better job of any book
Speaker 1: out there of showing that evolution. You know, there's and
Speaker 1: when you're trying to put together you know you want
Speaker 1: to understand Washington these days, you've got to understand the
Speaker 1: evolution of the Republican Party. Your book does that. There's
Speaker 1: a great book by Roy ta Chera about Where Have
Speaker 1: All the Democrats Gone? That explains the Democrat It's so
Speaker 1: I use this piece Bill There's Brody.
Speaker 2: That's awesome.
Speaker 1: The Mullins brothers did that great book about the lobbying community.
Speaker 1: That's my textbook for lobbying. So it's been It is
Speaker 1: a reminder that I think the best journalism these days
Speaker 1: is in this long form element that we're in. But look,
Speaker 1: I booked you because of this incredible access you got
Speaker 1: with the Murdoch family, where whether the succession was real
Speaker 1: life Murdocks or not the great HBO show. It is
Speaker 1: a reminder no matter how you fictionalize something, the reality
Speaker 1: is so much weirder, so much more important. Let me
Speaker 1: just start with before we get it. By the way,
Speaker 1: I love that the Atlantic magazine tells you how many
Speaker 1: minutes it will take to read said article. We are
Speaker 1: going to be talking for less time than it will
Speaker 1: take to through the whole thing.
Speaker 2: Hopefully it doesn't. It doesn't feel like too much of
Speaker 2: a slog. It is long, but it's but I know
Speaker 2: when you when you write something that long, the thought
Speaker 2: is like when you have to take extra care to
Speaker 2: make sure it's not boring because you'll lose perilla, you know, I.
Speaker 1: Mean, you know, other than the time element here, how
Speaker 1: tempting is it to do a full book? Or in
Speaker 1: some ways would James not have cooperated James Murdoch, who
Speaker 1: clearly is the most important narrator here.
Speaker 2: For you, You know.
Speaker 1: It was that part of the bargain that it wasn't
Speaker 1: going to be a book.
Speaker 2: We didn't even talk about it being a book. And
Speaker 2: I have to say, like about a few months into
Speaker 2: the process, it kind of occurred to me that this
Speaker 2: maybe should have been a book, or at least first
Speaker 2: of all, might have been more lucrative. Although the Atlantic
Speaker 2: pays me very well, etcetera. But you know, I think
Speaker 2: that there's an urgency element to it, you know, as
Speaker 2: much as this is kind of a timeless story and
Speaker 2: we talk about how the Murdochs kind of resemble these
Speaker 2: dynastic families throughout history. It also the murder. I was
Speaker 2: catching the Murdocks at this moment where the family was
Speaker 2: melting down over the control of the empire. And the
Speaker 2: problem with a book is that, like that's a multi
Speaker 2: year process to get it out, and who knows how
Speaker 2: things would have changed by then. So I really appreciated
Speaker 2: that the Atlanta could get it into the bloodstream at
Speaker 2: this kind of moment.
Speaker 1: I actually as if I were playing book editor or
Speaker 1: book publisher, I probably would have said, you know what
Speaker 1: we got, you got to get it out, now do
Speaker 1: it as and you know, who knows, maybe you go
Speaker 1: back to the old days. It turns in you write serials. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: a sudden somebody goes ahead and turns it into a
Speaker 1: book totally a few years from now. But look the urgency,
Speaker 1: and I agree that there's urgency here. What happens to
Speaker 1: the Murdoch Empire will have a profound impact on how
Speaker 1: the Trump right wing, and I do think it's sort
Speaker 1: of that version of the right wing, the populace right wing,
Speaker 1: and around the western world, not just in America, how
Speaker 1: they communicate with voters. Right how they communicate their message.
Speaker 1: Who controls the Murdoch Empire. You know there are there's
Speaker 1: others nipping at their heels. Right in America it's news Max,
Speaker 1: there's ones in the UK, and there's ones in Australia.
Speaker 1: So this will have a profound impact on our politics, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. That That's what made the story, what gave
Speaker 2: it stakes, right because on one level, this is like
Speaker 2: a human drama about this traveling and if you watch
Speaker 2: Succession it will feel very familiar. Or if frankly you
Speaker 2: read Greek tragedies, it might feel familiar as well, King
Speaker 2: Lear or Shakespeare or whatever. But the stakes are that
Speaker 2: this is I think arguably the most powerful, certainly conservative
Speaker 2: media empire in the Western world, one of the most
Speaker 2: powerful media empires in the world. And they have become
Speaker 2: very deliberately the organ of this right wing populism that
Speaker 2: you're talking about. And it's we see it in Fox
Speaker 2: News here in the US. But this, this empire, these
Speaker 2: media outlets have played a key role in Brexit, They
Speaker 2: played a key role in in toppling governments around Europe.
Speaker 2: I mean, they know if they if this, if these
Speaker 2: outlets change hands and the direction changes it dramatically changes
Speaker 2: how politicians throughout the English speaking world U on the
Speaker 2: right connect with their their audiences.
Speaker 1: I mean, let's let's narrow it down here. We're talking Australia,
Speaker 1: the UK, and the United States. Yeah, that's the most
Speaker 1: that's most where truly his media empire has either served
Speaker 1: as an organ of political power or as a sorter
Speaker 1: of political power, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and there's and the thing that connects all
Speaker 2: of them is that there's always been and this of
Speaker 2: course back to the very beginning in Australia, this kind
Speaker 2: of like puckish anti establishment streak, right that defines all
Speaker 2: the from the first Australian newspapers that Rupert bought, to
Speaker 2: the tabloids on Fleet Street to certainly Fox News. The
Speaker 2: Murdoch Press is really good at identifying kind of the
Speaker 2: sacred cows of of you know, the liberal or centrist
Speaker 2: and liberal establishment and like slaying them right needly. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but what but that has I think that and you
Speaker 2: can we'll see some of that. But in the last
Speaker 2: twenty years, and certainly in the last decade, you've seen
Speaker 2: that kind of kurdle into this full throated support for
Speaker 2: something that you could critics would argue is more illiberal
Speaker 2: and more toxic than just kind of like mischief making.
Speaker 1: I was just going to say, you know, look, the
Speaker 1: New York Post of my of the nineties was fun, right,
Speaker 1: the New York Post of the New York Post of
Speaker 1: today is is predictable and brutish. I guess, yeah, I
Speaker 1: would describe it as you know, yeah, and and and
Speaker 1: Fox feels that way. There was a time. I mean
Speaker 1: there's actually an individual I think about a guy like
Speaker 1: Great Guttfeld, who I knew when he was the editor
Speaker 1: at maxim UK. And he was he was just a
Speaker 1: you know, a provocateur, but intellectually honest about it, right,
Speaker 1: and and and and even as a commute you know.
Speaker 2: But in Dennis Miller on Fox right, similar.
Speaker 1: Right, and now it's almost like, nope, they have to
Speaker 1: be on a message. Right, He's lost, They've lost what
Speaker 1: there was a rebelliousness to them that made it interesting.
Speaker 1: And now instead of being a rebel still, right, it's
Speaker 1: stead they're weirdly their own establishment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like it's a it's an organ of the
Speaker 2: kind of populist right establishment makes makes them less interesting,
Speaker 2: for sure, I.
Speaker 1: Think it does. Right, It made it less uh, less sticky.
Speaker 2: It also makes the Murdoch family and Rupert in particular,
Speaker 2: I think, less powerful in a way because for so
Speaker 2: long he was the one kind of making the weather
Speaker 2: on the right, you know, and now it really does
Speaker 2: feel like ever since Donald Trump arrived on the scene,
Speaker 2: at least in America, he is the one making the weather,
Speaker 2: and Rupert had to kind of make a decision about like,
Speaker 2: are we getting on board with this or not, and
Speaker 2: basically decided he.
Speaker 1: Was both breaks it and Trump were that way, which
Speaker 1: is and this was a case. Look, I think the
Speaker 1: problem with media in general is that is that a
Speaker 1: lot of traditional media followed the Murdoch model. Here, Murdoch
Speaker 1: chose to follow the viewers, to follow the readers. Oh
Speaker 1: oh wait a minute, our readers are anti immigrant, we
Speaker 1: better do this now. Even though he was, you know,
Speaker 1: he wanted to be pro immigration, right. He wanted to
Speaker 1: do this until Rush Limbaugh told him otherwise. And it
Speaker 1: wasn't that he told him that it's this they realized, oh,
Speaker 1: our entire listening audience. So that was the first moment
Speaker 1: where Rupert realized I think that he couldn't make the weather.
Speaker 1: Somebody else was actually in charge of it. And then
Speaker 1: what's ironic is that everybody else followed suit.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: I think the biggest problem with media right now is
Speaker 1: too many people catering to their audience.
Speaker 2: It's an audience capture, right.
Speaker 1: They're one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: And I think about this all the time, you know,
Speaker 2: I in my early years of my career worked for
Speaker 2: Ben Smith at BuzzFeed and at the time, BuzzFeed News.
Speaker 2: The whole idea was, We're going to be the news
Speaker 2: outlet that speaks to the social web, and we write
Speaker 2: these stories that go viral on Twitter or Facebook or whatever.
Speaker 2: And Ben ended up, you know, a couple of years ago,
Speaker 2: writing this book declaring the end of the social media
Speaker 2: era and that you know, the new media era is about,
Speaker 2: you know, cultivating these audiences and subscription models and all
Speaker 2: that stuff, right, And I think he's right. But it's
Speaker 2: funny because I'm now kind of for all the problems
Speaker 2: the social media era had in media. I'm a little
Speaker 2: nostalgic for it because we really were trying to write
Speaker 2: for as broad an audience as possible. And what's happened
Speaker 2: is now, with the fragmentation of the media landscape, everybody
Speaker 2: has just been able to figure out. You know, this
Speaker 2: is my audience of in Fox News' case, four million people.
Speaker 2: In like a substack writer's case, my audience is fifteen
Speaker 2: hundred people. But they're willing to pay me, and I
Speaker 2: just write. I tell them exactly what they want to hear,
Speaker 2: three times a week. And I think that's a real
Speaker 2: problem for news media.
Speaker 1: Look, I'm I'm going about this thinking that there's still
Speaker 1: an audience out there that just sort of wants a
Speaker 1: sort of a rational, analytical view of what's happening, you know,
Speaker 1: and I'm trying to attack it like a political anthropologist.
Speaker 1: And that's how I sort of have always viewed my
Speaker 1: role is that I'm more of an anthropologist about our
Speaker 1: politics and our media than anything elsewhere. I certainly have
Speaker 1: my own opinions, but I'm I am more of like, Okay,
Speaker 1: but how is this all interacting and creating the politics
Speaker 1: that we have versus the politics that we want?
Speaker 2: And so can I ask you, Chuck, because the.
Speaker 1: Difficulty is there isn't a constituency there per se other
Speaker 1: than but.
Speaker 2: It's not a political constituency.
Speaker 1: And a lot of this is gathering as political Yes, well.
Speaker 2: And that was my question do you I know this
Speaker 2: is your your show, but the one question I'll ask you,
Speaker 2: do you feel that poll, like the poll of the
Speaker 2: audience like wants a certain thing from you?
Speaker 1: You know, it's the other way around. It's why I
Speaker 1: left to because I actually felt as if the business
Speaker 1: of NBC was more worried about the audience that it had,
Speaker 1: not the audience that it wanted. And it's not just them, right,
Speaker 1: this is where all traditional media and it's understandable, right,
Speaker 1: it's being it's it's a business decision. It's not necessarily
Speaker 1: what's in the best interest of the ecosystem. And I
Speaker 1: you know it's it is. I will tell you this.
Speaker 1: The easy way to do this is to pick aside.
Speaker 1: Right what Megan Megan Kelly made this decision. Right, we
Speaker 1: know she's we've seen her own discomfort with what the
Speaker 1: politics of this era is, but she chose to make
Speaker 1: a living God bless her. Right. I think she's you know,
Speaker 1: I think there's a very talented broadcaster who made the
Speaker 1: choice that if we take a side, then we can
Speaker 1: maybe be the most trusted media person for the Trump right.
Speaker 1: You know it, By the way, it's it's there's nothing
Speaker 1: wrong you know, just like there's people the most trusted
Speaker 1: on the left right for that it is that is,
Speaker 1: And I don't I don't see it as a I
Speaker 1: don't lament this. I think that's a healthy I think
Speaker 1: that's healthy as long as there's something. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of this out here, and it's almost an acceptance that, hey,
Speaker 1: you're actually only speaking to a small slice of the electorate,
Speaker 1: no matter how large your slice looks in comparison to
Speaker 1: the entire ecosystem.
Speaker 2: Right yeah. And there's a role for you know, being
Speaker 2: the kind of person that grounds the whatever your political
Speaker 2: constituency is, grounds it in reality, gives it facts maybe,
Speaker 2: you know, helps them understand an intellectually honest way to
Speaker 2: make their arguments as opposed to you know, all.
Speaker 1: I look at it, but I you know, and people
Speaker 1: hate this. I do compare it to sports in this way.
Speaker 1: I can't. I can't stand listening to, you know, Yankees
Speaker 1: announcers broadcast a Yankees game because I just I want
Speaker 1: an honest portrayal of the game. I don't want the
Speaker 1: Yankee perspective, right yeah. And so I am surprised the
Speaker 1: number of people that don't that that you know, think
Speaker 1: that you know that that just live in the in
Speaker 1: the right or the left wing ecosystem and don't want
Speaker 1: a reality check.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I happen to think this is where everything is cyclical, right,
Speaker 1: which is you know, the late nineteenth century, in the
Speaker 1: early twentieth century was all partisan media, yes, until we
Speaker 1: all got tired of it, right, And so I do
Speaker 1: think there's a moment here and that's what that's what
Speaker 1: I mean. We're in a fragmented world again, just like
Speaker 1: we were in the early days of magazines, the early
Speaker 1: days of the muckrakers, early days of radio. And then
Speaker 1: we will you know, there'll be winners and losers. They'll
Speaker 1: be the big curators, the big networks, and you know,
Speaker 1: you'll have a new It may be and we're going
Speaker 1: to get to the Murdos here. It may be that
Speaker 1: Megan Kelly's the next Rupert Murdoch and we just don't
Speaker 1: realize that yet. Yeah, right, yeah, and she creates her
Speaker 1: own new conservative ecosystem because the Murdochs fracture completely, which
Speaker 1: brings me back to back to your story and James.
Speaker 1: Before we get into some of the details, when James
Speaker 1: started talking with you, you know, at what point did
Speaker 1: you realize that Succession. Did Succession have an insider a
Speaker 1: count you delve into this yeah? Or was it simply
Speaker 1: there just were a predictable, dynastic family and it was
Speaker 1: actually easy to write it.
Speaker 2: Was the weirdest thing about doing these interviews was that,
Speaker 2: like I remember the first few interviews I did with
Speaker 2: James and his wife Catherine was also a big part
Speaker 2: of it. I would have these experiences where they'd be
Speaker 2: telling me a story and I'd have like this weird
Speaker 2: deja vu where I'd be like, I feel like I've
Speaker 2: heard this story before and they're like, no, We've never
Speaker 2: told this to anybody, and I was like, well, has
Speaker 2: it been reported? And then I'd realize it was a
Speaker 2: storyline on Succession, and that's why it was familiar. There
Speaker 2: is this you alluded to, this, this whole parlor game
Speaker 2: among the Murdochs about who was leaking to the writers.
Speaker 2: Like all, everyone in the family is obsessed with the show,
Speaker 2: even James, who claims that he never watched it beyond
Speaker 2: the first episode, still has theory is about who was
Speaker 2: leaking to the writers. You know, James and Catherine thought because.
Speaker 1: You don't watch the show doesn't mean you don't read
Speaker 1: every review of it.
Speaker 2: Well, and and everybody in his life watches it and
Speaker 2: wants to talk to him about it, and you know,
Speaker 2: it's all out there, right, and you know, they thought
Speaker 2: that his sister Liz was was leaking to the writers.
Speaker 2: Liz said no, but he thinks that her ex husband
Speaker 2: was Like there was this whole, this whole thing. And
Speaker 2: I think at the end of the day, I should
Speaker 2: say Jesse Armstrong. I ended up finally talking to him,
Speaker 2: the creator of the show, and he just kind of
Speaker 2: laughed about it. It was like, there's this whole psychodrama
Speaker 2: with the Murdocks where they all think that somebody is
Speaker 2: leaking to us, and the reality is we could figure
Speaker 2: out the dynamics pretty easily. They're not the most complicated
Speaker 2: you know family.
Speaker 1: Well, I always say that about Donald Trump. There is
Speaker 1: no you know, when people ask me about, you know,
Speaker 1: understanding Donald Trump, I said, it's you know, it's not hard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, he's you know, he's a he's arrested development,
Speaker 1: he's thirteen. He's constantly thirteen and what thirteen? Like every
Speaker 1: thirteen year old there are moments of adulthood and moments
Speaker 1: of stupidity and he is transactional, and you know, it's
Speaker 1: very simple. He wants power and attention and affection and
Speaker 1: all these things. And it's like, I think that that's
Speaker 1: what I took away here, is that the Murdochs are
Speaker 1: actually a very normal, dysfunctional, wealthy family.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, that was actually something James talked about early
Speaker 2: on because he had that famous quote from Anna Karenina
Speaker 2: about all happy families are alike, all unhappy families are different, right,
Speaker 2: unhappy in their own way, and he was saying he
Speaker 2: doesn't actually believe that because if he looks at the
Speaker 2: history of families like his, for example, wealthy families that
Speaker 2: fracture over power and money, he feels like they're all
Speaker 2: pretty similar and he sees the same patterns repeating over
Speaker 2: and over again, including in his own family. And he
Speaker 2: actually told me, what I think the real tragedy here
Speaker 2: is that nobody else in my family seems to have
Speaker 2: read the history right, Like, what is happening to my
Speaker 2: family has happened to a thousand families before ours, and
Speaker 2: we should have all seen the warning signs and figured
Speaker 2: out how to avoid this. Faith.
Speaker 1: Well, let's where are we in this suit? What what
Speaker 1: is the is it going to be, you know, is
Speaker 1: Rupert going to be able to rewrite his trust or not?
Speaker 2: It's we don't know for sure yet, but it seems
Speaker 2: like probably not. So Rupert tried to rewrite the trust.
Speaker 2: There was a year of litigation, there was a trial
Speaker 2: last fall. The judge in December or the actually the
Speaker 2: probate commissioner, I should be careful here. The Reno, Nevada
Speaker 2: Probate commissioner, overseeing the fate of this multi billion dollar empire,
Speaker 2: decided that ruled against Rupert on basically every count, said
Speaker 2: he could not rewrite the trust was not operating in
Speaker 2: good faith. Rupert and Lachlin have appealed that decision, and
Speaker 2: so we are now waiting and it could be months
Speaker 2: before a judge makes the final to call. But all
Speaker 2: indications point to Rupert not being able to do this,
Speaker 2: which means that when he dies, unless something else changes,
Speaker 2: control of the empire will be split equally among Lachlan, James,
Speaker 2: Elizabeth and Prudence.
Speaker 1: Well, I want to get to that. So those are
Speaker 1: the four children that get a piece of this. What
Speaker 1: about the other children.
Speaker 2: The two younger ones gracing.
Speaker 1: This is the one with Wendy right yes, that's right.
Speaker 2: They get significant share of the money, but no controlling
Speaker 2: vote in the direction of the empire. And this was
Speaker 2: actually by design. So Rupert's second wife, Anna, who is
Speaker 2: the mother to James, Lachlan and Liz, actually when they
Speaker 2: got divorced twenty five years ago and in nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 2: she basically said, I am willing to give up a
Speaker 2: significant portion of the money that I'm entitled to here
Speaker 2: if we establish this trust that secures control of the
Speaker 2: empire with these four oldest children, including one from Rupert's
Speaker 2: previous marriage, and so if he has more kids later,
Speaker 2: they can get money, but you know, not not control
Speaker 2: of the empire. And specifically she wanted it to be
Speaker 2: split equally because she thought, and this is kind of
Speaker 2: ironic in retrospect, that it would incentivize them all to
Speaker 2: work togethers right, that it would basically prevent the them
Speaker 2: their lives being consumed by this succession battle.
Speaker 1: Which, by the way, what you just described, I mean
Speaker 1: that was the storyline in succession of how the ex
Speaker 1: wife you know, sort of had played the the the
Speaker 1: mediator here. I'm curious, you know, there's been a lot
Speaker 1: of speculation about Wendy and whether you know that relationship,
Speaker 1: and was it an operation or not? I mean to
Speaker 1: be frank right, was it? Was it an intel leigence operation?
Speaker 1: Was he honeypotted? Where does James fall on that?
Speaker 2: James and Lachlan both, at least according to James, strongly
Speaker 2: opposed the marriage in nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 1: Were they very skeptical of her?
Speaker 2: They were very distrustful of her. They were suspicious. They
Speaker 2: felt like she couldn't be trusted. They felt like she
Speaker 2: came out of nowhere. She was this executive at the
Speaker 2: Asian satellite company that they owned all of a sudden.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, if you were to design a
Speaker 1: you know, John Leacree or whatever, you know, sort of
Speaker 1: cheap plot line here of an intelligence operation by the
Speaker 1: Chinese government, it might look something like this.
Speaker 2: James and Catherine still will talk about how they don't
Speaker 2: trust her. Catherine actually joked to me that Wendy had
Speaker 2: evaded a subpoena in this current litigation with by using
Speaker 2: a CCP issued burner phone, which she says is a joke.
Speaker 2: But honestly, I really think there remains a lot of
Speaker 2: serious suspicion about her and her ties to the Chinese
Speaker 2: government and everything else. I should say, Wendy didn't respond
Speaker 2: to my request for comments. She's obviously denied being like
Speaker 2: a Chinese passet just just to cover our bases.
Speaker 1: Here, no doubt she has. But her behavior since then
Speaker 1: has not helped her cause. And the relationship she is in,
Speaker 1: you know, people she has chosen to be associated with,
Speaker 1: has not helped put those rumors to rest.
Speaker 2: She is constantly, it seems like, rumored at least to
Speaker 2: be in relationships with various very powerful men throughout the
Speaker 2: West Western worlds. Yes, yes, yes, it raises questions.
Speaker 1: Why do I think James and Lachlan will reconcile when
Speaker 1: their dad dies?
Speaker 2: Hmm?
Speaker 1: Do you That's what happens in a lot of these families, right,
Speaker 1: if you just go about that. And that's why I'm
Speaker 1: curious if you could see any of that, because there's
Speaker 1: a few things sort of reality has is a very
Speaker 1: powerful organizing force, okay, and the reality of his death
Speaker 1: and the reality of do I want to have some
Speaker 1: access to power? Do I want to have some empire
Speaker 1: to jointly run, or do I want to take my
Speaker 1: ball and go home and just sit in litigation for
Speaker 1: five years and ten years or whatever it is, or
Speaker 1: we sell it and break it up and one gets
Speaker 1: a quarter, one gets a quarter, and it fractures. I
Speaker 1: have no doubt that's one possibility. Right, everybody takes a
Speaker 1: piece and run and goes their separate ways. And Lachlan,
Speaker 1: you know, finds right winger billionaires to fund him, and
Speaker 1: James and Catherine find whatever, either independence or left wing.
Speaker 1: But you know who knows right. But it could also
Speaker 1: be reconciled, and they could somehow figure out how to
Speaker 1: manage this thing together, because in some ways it could
Speaker 1: be the father that's the divisive figure between the two
Speaker 1: of them, right in most of these Shakespearean things that
Speaker 1: once you you know, look, I've got family members who
Speaker 1: it's pretty clear to me the living parent is the device.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: They all seem to not get along, but they do
Speaker 1: agree about one thing. Is how the parent created this distrust?
Speaker 1: I guess is they probably right. Weirdly, even though Lachlan
Speaker 1: has Rupert on his side, he probably resents the fact
Speaker 1: that Rupert blew this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is I think that is a key insight
Speaker 2: to the dynamic. It is no, it is absolutely true
Speaker 2: that Rupert, the role Rupert has played throughout his kid's
Speaker 2: life is by pitting them against each other for his
Speaker 2: attention and affection and approval. And so yeah, you could
Speaker 2: make a case that removing him from that dynamic actually
Speaker 2: leaves these adult children now some space to kind of
Speaker 2: work out their own relationships with each other. I think
Speaker 2: that in the case of James, and by the way,
Speaker 2: I would say James's sisters I could easily see reconciling
Speaker 2: with Lachlan right now. I think they're not really talking
Speaker 2: that the sisters are lined up with James in this litigation,
Speaker 2: but I could see them them kind of reconciling. The
Speaker 2: question is if there's just been too much damaged on
Speaker 2: to the specific relationship between James and Lochlan. They tried
Speaker 2: to run the companies together in twenty sixteen, seventeen, eighteen nineteen.
Speaker 2: Like that, there was a moment where Rupert said, Okay,
Speaker 2: we've we've resolved the succession battle. They're both going to
Speaker 2: do this together, Lachlan as chairman, James is CEO, and
Speaker 2: it was a disaster.
Speaker 1: Well, but here I'm going to introduce a butterfly effect
Speaker 1: theory here, which is, if Hillary Clinton is president in
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen and not Donald Trump. Does Lachlan and James
Speaker 1: have more? Are there more? Is it easier to come
Speaker 1: up with a strategy that makes sense for the empire
Speaker 1: versus the disruptive force that is Trump, right, that had
Speaker 1: you know, and the disruptive force that was breaks it
Speaker 1: right without breaks it in Trump, do Lachlan and James,
Speaker 1: while they may ideologically not be on the same side
Speaker 1: of the aisle, there would be more comfort working with
Speaker 1: each other because the opposing force wasn't a threat, an
Speaker 1: existential threat that I.
Speaker 2: Could I could see that, and I would add that
Speaker 2: a lot of the kind of key moments of division
Speaker 2: between the two brothers when they were co running the
Speaker 2: company had to do with Trump. Right. It was Charlottesville,
Speaker 2: it was the Muslim ban, like the these key early
Speaker 2: moments of that first Trump term that were frankly devisive everywhere. Right,
Speaker 2: they caused countless Thanksgiving you know, debates in living rooms
Speaker 2: around the world, like it was very you know, it
Speaker 2: drove a huge wedge between the two of them. I
Speaker 2: think that there is something to be said for that.
Speaker 2: It's also true that like Trump's arrival caused these outlets
Speaker 2: to start to remake themselves in Trump's image in a
Speaker 2: way that you know, James could have stomached and still, honestly,
Speaker 2: I think would be okay with Fox News being a
Speaker 2: center right outlet. Right he's he still will get sense.
Speaker 1: My guess is he really is that he really is
Speaker 1: more of a probably economically and maybe.
Speaker 2: He left He calls himself a centrist, and I think
Speaker 2: that's he's where a lot of kind of wealthy centrists are,
Speaker 2: which is yeah, exactly, and and free markets are good
Speaker 2: and etcetera. I think that he he just he could
Speaker 2: not stomach Fox News becoming in the trump eraw what
Speaker 2: it became. Right. He also, frankly, spent a lot of
Speaker 2: his time working when he was working in the family
Speaker 2: business overseas. He was in Asia and Europe and so
Speaker 2: Fox News.
Speaker 1: So he felt the effect of anti Americanism in some way.
Speaker 2: And and then he came back and Fox News was like,
Speaker 2: I think it hurt he. He didn't realize quite how
Speaker 2: much Fox News defined the entire empire until he came
Speaker 2: back to America and realized that. You know, He's like,
Speaker 2: We're doing all these great things in India and Hong Kong,
Speaker 2: and we have this huge media, you know, apparatus in Britain,
Speaker 2: and all anyone wants to talk to me is about
Speaker 2: Sean Hannity, And like, I think that it really underscored
Speaker 2: for him how how much it had kind of polluted
Speaker 2: the Murdock name and also made it harder for him
Speaker 2: to expand the empire in ways that he wanted to.
Speaker 1: One of my thesis about Fox News is how off
Speaker 1: the rails it went after Roger Ales left, mm hmm,
Speaker 1: and that Roger Ales was actually a more stabilizing force.
Speaker 1: Roger Ales actually understood that you actually had to have
Speaker 1: journalists in order to give credibility to the nighttime guys.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: I actually think if Roger Ales were alive today, he
Speaker 1: would not like that they had they basically benched all
Speaker 1: their journalists. Yeah, right, they have totally. I've always said
Speaker 1: Fox has journalists, but they don't practice journalism as a network,
Speaker 1: right they But they have individuals who do, right, You're
Speaker 1: Jennifer Griffins and folks like that. In brit Hume, even
Speaker 1: as an analyst, still is sort of a newsman first, right,
Speaker 1: You see it, you feel it in him because that's
Speaker 1: just who he is. And I'm curious because I know
Speaker 1: James it wasn't a big Ales fan, But did that
Speaker 1: ever come up that we talked realized that Roger actually
Speaker 1: was a was a more stabilizing force than maybe we
Speaker 1: all realized.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think some of this ended up on the
Speaker 2: cutting room floor, but we talked about you know, he
Speaker 2: he was appalled by Roger Ale's personal behavior and you know,
Speaker 2: he was actually privy to the findings horrendous.
Speaker 1: I'm not defending it, and I'm just.
Speaker 2: Bringing that up because what he said is that, you know,
Speaker 2: what he realized once his dad, once Rupert stepped in
Speaker 2: to be the interim CEO of Fox News, was that
Speaker 2: there was a benefit to having Roger Ales, who's basically
Speaker 2: like a operated like an authoritarian leader of Fox News,
Speaker 2: but ruled with an iron fist over the talent there. Right.
Speaker 2: And he had a very clear vision of what Fox
Speaker 2: News should be. There's be news during the day, there
Speaker 2: should be provocation and opinion at night, and and and
Speaker 2: but he always maintained the belief that nobody is bigger
Speaker 2: than Fox News, right, and and you had all these
Speaker 2: cases where he would toss somebody like Glenn Beck. Uh,
Speaker 2: you know, I if Glenn Beck was getting a little
Speaker 2: too big for his britches and wouldn't be a team player.
Speaker 2: And Rupert got in there and he just was totally
Speaker 2: outmatched by the talent. I think, you know, like the
Speaker 2: hosts were running wild, they were doing whatever they wanted
Speaker 2: and and Rupert just had either no ability or no
Speaker 2: interest in trying to rain them in. And Fox News
Speaker 2: really did become much more of a kind of inmates
Speaker 2: running the asylum situation after all, Oh.
Speaker 1: They have no leader, They're they're leaders now. It is
Speaker 1: one of those just like the channel feels like they
Speaker 1: follow the audience, the media executives followed. Let the talent, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, decide right. They have totally ceased trying to
Speaker 1: be any sort of and this governing force totally.
Speaker 2: And this was a key key moment though, because I
Speaker 2: will say, uh, I report about this in the piece.
Speaker 2: When Roger Ayles left, there was this big debate between
Speaker 2: Lachlan and James about who should replace him, and James
Speaker 2: wanted what's the CBS guy, David Rhodes. He wanted David
Speaker 2: Rhodes to come in and replace roder Ailes and basically
Speaker 2: build Fox News into a center right journalistic outfit with
Speaker 2: editorial guard rails.
Speaker 1: And a Wall Street Journal exactly to.
Speaker 2: Wall Street Journal on cable right right, and Lachlan was
Speaker 2: adamantly opposed to this. They went back and forth and
Speaker 2: bickered and fought for a while, and then Rupert finally
Speaker 2: stepped in and resolved it by saying, I'll just be
Speaker 2: the CEO. And and but you wonder what would have changed,
Speaker 2: Like if James had gotten his way, you actually could
Speaker 2: have seen a situation where I don't think David Rhodes
Speaker 2: led News would have been airing you know, rigged election
Speaker 2: conspiracy theories after twenty twenty, for example. And this is
Speaker 2: I think what's at stake now If James gets his way,
Speaker 2: when Rupert's gone, Fox News and other outlets that he
Speaker 2: believes are really reckless purveyors of kind of misinformation will
Speaker 2: be turned into either dismantled and sold off or turned
Speaker 2: into real you know.
Speaker 1: The irony But McKay, the irony to this is by
Speaker 1: the time James and Lachlan get control of this, right
Speaker 1: because Rupert, you know, I mean, look he seems to
Speaker 1: you know, he's in his nineties, and it's like, I mean,
Speaker 1: who knows, right, the actuary tables are the actuary tables
Speaker 1: he does.
Speaker 2: There are no indications that he's nearing death.
Speaker 1: He is did he get did he end up getting
Speaker 1: married or not?
Speaker 2: Good? Yes?
Speaker 1: So there is another there is another.
Speaker 2: Wife, right, fifth or sixth wife I think six? Ye?
Speaker 1: No kids with this one right right that we know of.
Speaker 2: Yes, No, the only kids are with with Wendy and
Speaker 2: Anna and then his first wife.
Speaker 1: Right. So by the time James and Lachlan get control
Speaker 1: of this. I mean, one of the things I think
Speaker 1: that the Fox News hosts have realized is, you know,
Speaker 1: there's always someone else willing to go further than them,
Speaker 1: and there's always an audience that's willing to follow the
Speaker 1: first and that goes further than them. Like, I just
Speaker 1: don't know if I think the toothpaste is out of
Speaker 1: the tube. And the problem is Fox's is never going
Speaker 1: to be They're never going to be able to chase
Speaker 1: Newsmax or o An right there. Those guys are willing
Speaker 1: to literally be arms of our tea if they have to,
Speaker 1: and and so I don't know if there's I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's possible to. I mean, the smarter thing
Speaker 1: to do would be to zag while everybody else is digging.
Speaker 1: But I don't know if they'll know how to do
Speaker 1: that by the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean this is this is the big
Speaker 2: caveat when we talk about the stakes here, Like we
Speaker 2: are now in a media environment where there are so
Speaker 2: many competitors and insurgents in that space on the right
Speaker 2: that if Fox News disappeared from the planet tomorrow, it
Speaker 2: changes I don't I don't know. I mean that certainly
Speaker 2: the media landscape would be scrambled, but I'm not sure
Speaker 2: that audience ends up in a much more responsible information ecosystem.
Speaker 2: You know, you do see Fox trying to position themselves
Speaker 2: for this future, right They've recently acquired Red Ventures, which
Speaker 2: is the podcast distributor for Making Kelly and a bunch
Speaker 2: of other prominent.
Speaker 1: And Fox Nation is kind of their attempt at sort
Speaker 1: of making sure that if YouTube is the future, they're
Speaker 1: going to have a significant place in it too.
Speaker 2: And again I think that this is the case that
Speaker 2: Lachlin and Rupert are making, which is basically, this is
Speaker 2: this is what the empire was built on, right, this
Speaker 2: is what this is our our value add proposition. We
Speaker 2: can't abandon this audience. We need to just be doing
Speaker 2: everything we can to hold on to this audience and
Speaker 2: the next generation of conservatives, and James would tank our
Speaker 2: ability to do that.
Speaker 1: So what the so what does James want to do now?
Speaker 2: You know? So James when he left the company in
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen after the Disney sale, which he was he
Speaker 2: played a big role in, uh negotiating the sale of
Speaker 2: the films.
Speaker 1: Do they regret that, by the way, selling that off
Speaker 1: and murder strapping.
Speaker 2: No, I don't think they. I Well Lacklin I think
Speaker 2: was always against it because he didn't like that it
Speaker 2: made the empire much smaller and less claim it is.
Speaker 2: But if you look at the number they got, the
Speaker 2: the number that they got is wildly inflated. Analysts now
Speaker 2: will tell you that they sold at the very height
Speaker 2: of what they know.
Speaker 1: They have to thank for that. Brian Roberts, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: who drove the sale price that you know he wanted?
Speaker 1: You know, the it was we were you know, there
Speaker 1: was this whole you could argue there was sort of
Speaker 1: this land grap right of content in that in that
Speaker 1: one moment, you.
Speaker 2: Know, we need the IP, we need all the I
Speaker 2: everybody wanted to our streamers.
Speaker 1: You know, it was it was this you know, constant
Speaker 1: and so and uh, you know, it's the It's the
Speaker 1: best thing that happened to Comcast is that they didn't
Speaker 1: get saddled with it. Frankly, I think they regret buying
Speaker 1: Sky right well.
Speaker 2: And they also acquired so interesting And you know, James
Speaker 2: that was like his white whale forever. He wanted to
Speaker 2: buy a Sky and they just couldn't get it done
Speaker 2: because you know, the public profile is just too toxic
Speaker 2: for news corporate Fox. But the point is James left
Speaker 2: that that when he left after that sale, he got
Speaker 2: two billion dollars in cash, all the siblings did. So
Speaker 2: he set himself up and price and he's kind of
Speaker 2: building his own little mini empire, right and it's very
Speaker 2: kind of James. And he's bought controlling stake in Art
Speaker 2: Basel and uh, you know the Tribeca Film Festival or
Speaker 2: the yeah, and you know, like he's he's investing in
Speaker 2: India again, which is where he started his career, and
Speaker 2: he's kind of building up his own portfolio. And I
Speaker 2: think he's fine with that. And you know, when when
Speaker 2: Rupert's gone, there is a possibility that Lachlan just goes
Speaker 2: to James and says, let me just buy you out,
Speaker 2: like I'll there were there have been buyout attempts before,
Speaker 2: but James always felt like they were low balling him.
Speaker 2: It's possible that Lachlan says, and maybe even before rupertiz,
Speaker 2: maybe Rupert is the catalyst for it. Maybe Rupert says, look,
Speaker 2: let's just could we tried this kind of scheme. It
Speaker 2: didn't work. Let's just go straight to him, give him
Speaker 2: exactly what he wants for his stake, and James walks
Speaker 2: away an even wealthier man with the freedom to build
Speaker 2: whatever he wants.
Speaker 1: And you assume the sisters go along with whatever James
Speaker 1: wants to go along with on this.
Speaker 2: It would be no I think they would make their
Speaker 2: own decision. But I think that Prudence in particular has
Speaker 2: never shown any interest in the business at all. She
Speaker 2: would probably I'm speculating here, but probably be happy with
Speaker 2: just taking her money and going home. Liz is more
Speaker 2: of a wildcard. Liz is actually a very successful TV
Speaker 2: and film developer and her own way I just set
Speaker 2: up her own production company. But Liz, Prue and James
Speaker 2: are all embarrassed by Fox News and by kind of
Speaker 2: the more right wing elements of the company. So if
Speaker 2: they don't see a way to reforming it. I think
Speaker 2: they would want to just kind of wash their hands
Speaker 2: and walk away.
Speaker 1: Well, it's interesting. Look, I think there's going to be
Speaker 1: an existential moment for Fox that comes up when because
Speaker 1: the NFL has decided that they want to opt out
Speaker 1: of their TV deal, and this is going to be
Speaker 1: a huge decision by Fox and whether they're going to
Speaker 1: financially try to keep up with Google and Apple and Amazon,
Speaker 1: who all are suddenly you know what the NFL sees.
Speaker 1: Although I do wonder if the tariff environment, if the
Speaker 1: economy is as bad as I think it could end
Speaker 1: up being in the next year or two, you know,
Speaker 1: we may see a situation where where there's no ad
Speaker 1: market is collapsing and the NFL backtracks. But I wonder
Speaker 1: whether Fox is going to have the resources to keep up,
Speaker 1: because that's it. The NFL is such an important part
Speaker 1: of them having a foot hold in legitimacy. I know,
Speaker 1: like Fox News is becoming less and less legitimate, it's
Speaker 1: becoming more and more of a pariah. But Fox Sports
Speaker 1: is the narrator of our sports lives in many cases
Speaker 1: with the NFL, and it's such a huge if they
Speaker 1: lost it, so but it may become financially impossible to keep.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's this is the position that all of
Speaker 2: these these broadcast networks are in, Like how do you
Speaker 2: compete with with something like Amazon or Apple where they.
Speaker 1: Just doesn't need to make money on this thing streaming,
Speaker 1: They don't care neither dose Amazon.
Speaker 2: Billions of dollars on fire to outbid them, and uh
Speaker 2: and and you know these big tech companies are coming
Speaker 2: for them. And I will say this was something that
Speaker 2: Rupert saw coming down the line, and it's part of
Speaker 2: why he sold the Disney assets because he kind of
Speaker 2: or the assets to Disney. He kind of realized, we're
Speaker 2: not going to be big enough to compete with the
Speaker 2: netflixes of the world, right, We're just not. We're not.
Speaker 2: It's not possible. And so he basically decided, let's whittle
Speaker 2: this back down to the thing I actually care about,
Speaker 2: which is news. And maybe that ends up being the right,
Speaker 2: right call. It's a much smaller business, but it is
Speaker 2: more in line with what Rupert cares about.
Speaker 1: Is there a third generation of Murdocks that are adults yet?
Speaker 1: And I think they're so right? And are they?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: They want in on this, are they a part of it.
Speaker 2: I did not talk to James and Catherine's kids. I
Speaker 2: met one of them, but they they're pretty adamant about
Speaker 2: keeping their kids out of the press, and I understand why,
Speaker 2: given what James has been true. But no one thing
Speaker 2: James and Catherine did tell me is that they are
Speaker 2: gratified by the fact that they have three kids. They're
Speaker 2: all on very different career paths, and they have taken
Speaker 2: pains to not try to draw them into whatever kind
Speaker 2: of professional world day inhabit, because they James feels like
Speaker 2: he lost a good chunk of his life to just
Speaker 2: trying to play in his dad's sandbox, and they would
Speaker 2: rather let their kids kind of figure out their own way.
Speaker 1: Ultimately, Rupert was a news guy. He loves to read
Speaker 1: a newspaper. He loved, you know, the stories of him
Speaker 1: calling up editors constantly. You know, you know, he loved ultimately,
Speaker 1: he loved being provoked by his newspaper columnists. He loved
Speaker 1: that stuff. What is James and what is Lachlan? Are
Speaker 1: they Are they ultimately news guys? Are they ultimately curious guys?
Speaker 1: Or are they media executive mogul types? And they're more
Speaker 1: mogul thinking rather than yeah, like I said, Rupert, Look,
Speaker 1: I I sense that Rupert cares about the Wall Street
Speaker 1: Journal's reputation, right, Sure, he does. Right, So there's you know,
Speaker 1: it's sort of like Darth Vader. There's some good in
Speaker 1: him somewhere, right that that at least sees what what
Speaker 1: a good newspaper like.
Speaker 2: Well, well, another way to put it is that he
Speaker 2: likes Rupert likes it, realizes that one of the great
Speaker 2: pleasures of being a media baron is that you get
Speaker 2: to have these outlets that kind of needle the powerful,
Speaker 2: even when the powerful are on your side. And so
Speaker 2: you see the Wall Street Journal taking Trump to task
Speaker 2: over tariffs over and over again, I think.
Speaker 1: And the New York Post. It's interesting that those two
Speaker 1: are doing it. And the assumption is that's Rupert has
Speaker 1: no control over Fox. Right, But if he calls up
Speaker 1: Paul she go to at the Wall Street Journal, or
Speaker 1: if he calls up his buddies over at the Post,
Speaker 1: they'll listen.
Speaker 2: I think that to answer your question, Lachlan and James
Speaker 2: are very different. Lachlan is, you know, a kind of
Speaker 2: rugged outdoorsman. He's most at home in Australia. He likes
Speaker 2: being a big shot. He was for a long time
Speaker 2: in Australia, this big shot media investor. His wife was
Speaker 2: the host of Australia's Next Top Model. That they are
Speaker 2: very much in that they're swimming in those waters of
Speaker 2: just kind of corporate elite world. Right, And I don't
Speaker 2: know how much he cares about news. James is actually
Speaker 2: a pretty voracious consumer of news, but it's not the
Speaker 2: for the most part, the kind of news that the
Speaker 2: Murdoch Press creates. Right. He doesn't read I think the
Speaker 2: New York Post, he said, even when he was running
Speaker 2: all of Europe and Asia, he didn't read the news
Speaker 2: of the world and kind of the down market tabloids
Speaker 2: because it just wasn't his speed. He reads the New
Speaker 2: York Review of Books and you know, the Atlantic, the
Speaker 2: New Yorker. He's just texting me about. I mean, he is,
Speaker 2: He's the kind of person that Great Guttfeld makes fun of, right, right,
Speaker 2: But but but because of that, I would argue that me.
Speaker 2: And you know, also, he really liked being involved in
Speaker 2: the movie stuff, and you know he's like knows Wes
Speaker 2: Anderson and stuff like that. He I think that he
Speaker 2: actually has more interest in the media business than Lachlin
Speaker 2: in some ways. But it's part of the reason that
Speaker 2: he has a very different vision than his brother and
Speaker 2: father for what the outlets should be.
Speaker 1: It's not lost on me that, as you described the
Speaker 1: Murdoch kids, that you know that we're probably a decade
Speaker 1: away from the Trump family like this. I know we
Speaker 1: don't see it yet, but it's sort of like it
Speaker 1: seems inevitable that these family run companies always turn to
Speaker 1: this once there's a patriarch that actually does pit kids
Speaker 1: against each other, which Donald Trump in many ways is
Speaker 1: very similar to Murdoch. There is there is a a
Speaker 1: familiarity to the two of them, and I've watched the
Speaker 1: way he works. Eric versus Junior, versus Sodavanka versus Jared
Speaker 1: and all this stuff there. You know, right now they're
Speaker 1: all swimming in the same pool. But you know, we
Speaker 1: can all see this coming. You know, it's how big
Speaker 1: is it? You know?
Speaker 2: I actually wrote a cover story for The Atlantic six
Speaker 2: years ago about the Trump family and the kind of
Speaker 2: battle between Evanka and Don Junior. At that time that
Speaker 2: was kind of the defining beef about who would be
Speaker 2: kind of the heir to the You know, the Trump Empire.
Speaker 2: And the interesting thing with them is that Trump, for
Speaker 2: a long time and still to some extent, prefers Avanka
Speaker 2: as the face of his his family because he always
Speaker 2: kind of wanted to be on the inside. He wanted
Speaker 2: the kind of Manhattan elite crowd to accept him. But
Speaker 2: Don Junior was the one who actually went to where
Speaker 2: Trump's real base is and understands the better. And and
Speaker 2: you can sense the kind of way that Trump resents
Speaker 2: Don Junior for that because on some level, I think
Speaker 2: he looks in the mirror and with with with his
Speaker 2: son and sees himself and doesn't like what he sees. Well,
Speaker 2: that Don Junior is more successful than Evanka in this
Speaker 2: in this world kind of.
Speaker 1: Well, what's interesting is I actually go deep, I go
Speaker 1: a little bit. You know, it's it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: sort of what happened with his dad, right, Fred, the one,
Speaker 1: the son who Fred gave his name to, disappointed him. Yeah, right, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: Fred Junior did, and you know he ends up favoring
Speaker 1: the son. And you know there's so there's probably blee.
Speaker 1: We don't know this for sure because Fred's never you know,
Speaker 1: by the time Fred might have spoken about it, he'd
Speaker 1: already sort of was slipping away. But you do get
Speaker 1: a sense that, at least in my sort of study
Speaker 1: and research of this, that that there was almost a
Speaker 1: disappointment that that Fred wasn't the guy, right, Fred was
Speaker 1: supposed to be the guy, and he wasn't. It was Junior,
Speaker 1: and I think when it was Donald, and then when
Speaker 1: you have Donald, you know, you see who does he
Speaker 1: trust to run the business. Not Junior. He trusted Eric.
Speaker 1: It's not lost on me. Eric does all the deals,
Speaker 1: Eric does that, and Eric. But then there's little superficial things.
Speaker 1: Eric's taller than Junior. Eric has blonde hair, Eric has
Speaker 1: you know I have? You know it is And you
Speaker 1: could always tell there's been this weird relationship between father
Speaker 1: and son, Junior and Senior, because you know that what
Speaker 1: Donald cares about is what his name looks like. Right,
Speaker 1: His brand is with one son. So there's he probably
Speaker 1: can never live up to Senior. Yeah, and there's no
Speaker 1: doubt to me, Junior's constantly trying to get his dad's approval.
Speaker 1: So he thought, I'll go down this political road. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'll do this, right, will this do it? And he's
Speaker 1: got him jd Vance. Will this do it. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know if it does. Right. At the end, he
Speaker 1: still has Eric running the empire. He still wants Evanka,
Speaker 1: you know, he won't totally push her out, you know,
Speaker 1: but there's no doubt in my mind this is coming.
Speaker 1: The question is I mean, please, can you imagine what's
Speaker 1: going in Junior's head that his ex wife's stating Tiger
Speaker 1: Woods and his father is going to be obsessed with
Speaker 1: hanging out with Tiger Woods. Yeah, yeah, right, like this
Speaker 1: is going to cause all sorts of bizarre Like I'm
Speaker 1: just it just feels like, if you're looking for the
Speaker 1: next succession, I have a feeling it's probably the Trumps.
Speaker 2: I think that's probably right. Maybe that's the book. Maybe
Speaker 2: maybe I end up writing the succession that it's somehow
Speaker 2: even more unseemly than the Murdock one.
Speaker 1: But well, because it will be confused with politics, right,
Speaker 1: you know, especially if Junior runs right, you know, if
Speaker 1: he runs himself at some point, whether it's in twenty eight,
Speaker 1: whether it's in thirty, whatever it is. You know, That's
Speaker 1: always been my theory is that it's it's Vance and
Speaker 1: Trump right is a ticket and that Vans and Junior
Speaker 1: that is not senior, and then how that will play out? Right? What?
Speaker 1: How does how does Dad handle that?
Speaker 2: I think I think that the last thing I'll say
Speaker 2: about this is that it reminds me of the Murdock dynamic,
Speaker 2: in that the more successful James became, the more Rupert
Speaker 2: was threatened by him and alienated by him, and it
Speaker 2: actually drove you know, James thought the way to win
Speaker 2: his dad's approval was to succeed at the company his
Speaker 2: dad owned. That seems like thinking, a pretty rational idea.
Speaker 2: But the more successfully he became, the more power he accumulated,
Speaker 2: the more wins he notch, the more Rupert kind of
Speaker 2: resented him, And I could very easily see a similar
Speaker 2: dynamic playing out with Junior and and Trump.
Speaker 1: Well, McKay, how many interviews with James and Catherine did
Speaker 1: you end.
Speaker 2: Up with between the two of them? Fifteen sixteen something
Speaker 2: like that? Any in Lachlan Lachlan when to talk Rupert?
Speaker 2: When talk I did talk to Liza. She was also
Speaker 2: in some ways real and almost more helpful because she
Speaker 2: could see the thing, the dynamic objectively, a little bit
Speaker 2: from the.
Speaker 1: Middle side, right right, because she wasn't involved in it,
Speaker 1: you know, involved with the fight. Well, look, it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's fantastic. And like I said at the top, I mean,
Speaker 1: you're you know, there's there's you're, you're you're generational in
Speaker 1: your ability to do this, and it's, uh, it's it's fantastic,
Speaker 1: it's necessary, and it's illuminating, whether it's understanding the dynamics
Speaker 1: of what happened in the Republican Party. And again I
Speaker 1: tell people there's no other book to read. And you know,
Speaker 1: you read these Trump books or you read these history
Speaker 1: the Republican Party books, and you're like, Okay, they all
Speaker 1: have sort of the same anecdotes, right, or the anecdotes
Speaker 1: are different, but they but it's the same the same, Right,
Speaker 1: they all feel the same. I always say every Trump
Speaker 1: book's the same. You won't believe what he tried to do,
Speaker 1: you won't believe who stopped him, and you won't believe
Speaker 1: where they headed next. Right, Like, it's always like it's
Speaker 1: some version of that, and yet you tackled it in
Speaker 1: a way through sort of the Last of the Mohicans,
Speaker 1: if you will, with Romney, and it was more illuminating
Speaker 1: than any any supposed Trump insider book you could get
Speaker 1: on where the party is today, and I think this
Speaker 1: on media and conservative media in general has a similar
Speaker 1: feel to me.
Speaker 2: Well, I appreciate it. I appreciate all your support. You
Speaker 2: were the first person to interview me on stage about
Speaker 2: that Romney book back in twenty twenty three, kicked off
Speaker 2: the book tour, and it really made a difference.
Speaker 1: So I appreciate, well, your your your kind of your
Speaker 1: kind of say that. I think your work is what
Speaker 1: made the difference. Let's let's let's not get that, get
Speaker 1: that distracted there, McKay. I mean this was I'm sure exhausting,
Speaker 1: a labor of love. And now you've got to, you know,
Speaker 1: go find some some I assume you've got a couple
Speaker 1: of things you're working on now.
Speaker 2: Onto the story, but always searching for a confessional, influential
Speaker 2: person who wants to bear their soul to me. So
Speaker 2: if anyone listening wants to talk, you can find me.
Speaker 1: There you go. He can be your therapist and you
Speaker 1: don't have to pay. There you go, McKay, Thank you, Chuck.
Speaker 1: So do you buy our theory that perhaps Fox News
Speaker 1: would be better today if Roger Ailes are still running
Speaker 1: it and we're still alive. Anyway, I would love to
Speaker 1: hear your comments and results on that and your responses
Speaker 1: to that. By the way, don't forget to ask Chuck
Speaker 1: at the chucktodcast dot com. That's where you send in
Speaker 1: your questions. That's where you send in your feedback. That's
Speaker 1: where you throw ideas out there that you'd like to
Speaker 1: see me to tackle that. Perhaps we haven't tackled that,
Speaker 1: And of course later this week I will try to
Speaker 1: answer as many of your questions. And my theme this
Speaker 1: week of sort of institutions who helped facilitate the great
Speaker 1: distrust environment that we all live in today. We just
Speaker 1: finished up media today. We're going to tackle government distrust
Speaker 1: later this week with one of the great experts these
Speaker 1: days on all things at JFK. So I hope you
Speaker 1: look forward to that later in the week. And with that,
Speaker 1: I'll sign off and I'll see in the next episode
Speaker 1: of the Chuck Podcast until we upload again.