Rupert Murdoch looks on, at the White House, in Washington, United States, February 3, 2025.
Elizabeth Frantz | Reuters
Why let a $10 billion lawsuit stop old friends from eating chicken and gravy for dinner?
President Donald Trump dined at the White House last week with Rupert Murdoch and the media baron’s top lieutenants, despite Trump’s ongoing defamation lawsuit against Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal reporting that he sent a “bawdy” 50th birthday letter to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, according to a new report.
Breaker Media reported Tuesday evening that Trump hosted fellow billionaire Murdoch and company at the White House last Thursday.
Guests included Murdoch’s wife Elena Zhukova, New York Post editor Keith Poole and Post columnists Miranda Devine and Douglas Murray, News UK CEO Rebekah Brooks, Sun editor Harry Cole, as well as Vice President JD Vance and White House Susie Wiles, reported Breaker. Murdoch’s News Corp. owns The Post, The Sun and News UK, as well as the Journal.
The outlet said the group ate chicken and gravy.
Three months before the dinner, Trump, in a social media post, wrote: “I look forward to seeing Rupert Murdoch testify in my lawsuit against him and his “trash pile” newspaper, the WSJ.
“It will be an interesting experience!!!” wrote the president.
CNBC requested comment on the report from News Corp and the White House. A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team declined to comment.
The announced dinner came five days before Trump’s legal team filed a scathing response to a request from Murdoch’s lawyers that a federal judge in Miami dismiss the president’s defamation lawsuit.
The suit is a glaring exception to Trump’s often cozy relationship with Murdoch’s conservative media empire, which includes Fox News. The Post and Fox have supported Trump and his policies for years, and Trump, for decades, has been an avid reader and staple of the Post’s tabloid pages.
The current dispute stems from a July 17 Journal article, which indicated that a racy letter bearing Trump’s signature was included in a scrapbook of letters Epstein received for his 50th birthday in 2003.
At the time of the party, Trump was a friend of Epstein. The two then argued; Epstein died of suicide in prison in August 2019, weeks after being arrested on federal child sex trafficking charges.
The Journal noted that the typewritten text of the letter was “framed by the outline of a nude woman, which appears to have been drawn by hand with a thick marker.”
“A pair of small arcs designate the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a wavy ‘Donald’ below his waist, imitating pubic hair,” the newspaper notes.
Trump angrily denied writing the letter the night the Journal article was published.
“It’s not me. It’s a fake thing. It’s a fake Wall Street Journal story,” Trump said in a Truth Social article. “I’ve never written a painting in my life. I don’t draw women,” he said. “It’s not my language. It’s not my words.”
Trump also said he personally warned Murdoch that Trump would sue him if the Journal published the article.
“Mr. Murdoch said he would take care of it, but obviously he didn’t have the authority to do it,” Trump said on Truth Social.
On July 18, Trump sued Murdoch, the Journal, News Corp CEO Robert Thomson, and the two journalists who wrote the article.
The lawsuit denied that Trump authored the letter and that “despite egregious failures of journalistic ethics and standards of accurate reporting, Defendants Dow Jones and News Corp – at the direction of Defendants Murdoch and Thomson – published to the world the false, defamatory and malicious statements authored by Defendants.” »
Trump continued to deny writing the letter even after House Democrats in early September released a screenshot of the missive that the Journal reported on. The letter was obtained by the House Oversight Committee from Epstein’s estate, pursuant to a subpoena.
Murdoch’s lawyers reported the letter to the judge overseeing Trump’s trial.
In their motion to dismiss the case, Murdoch’s lawyers said the article was true and that the letter released by the House committee contained a “letter identical to that described in the article.”
The lawyers also argued that the article was not defamatory.
The motion noted that Trump had acknowledged being a longtime friend of Epstein and that he had been quoted by New York magazine three months before the birthday party, calling Epstein a “great guy.”
who “loves beautiful women as much as I do”.
“President Trump has also publicly admitted to making ‘locker room’ comments and has made numerous bawdy public statements,” Murdoch’s lawyers wrote.
“The article is therefore consistent with President Trump’s self-proclaimed reputation.”
Trump’s lawyers, in their response to that motion, called Murdoch’s lawyers’ arguments “disjointed” and incorrect.
“The article was driven entirely by Defendants’ salacious and outrageous accounts that prioritize gossip, clicks, and profit over the truth,” Trump’s lawyers said.
