President Trump was adopted by the Rupert Murdoch media magnate during a 2017 dinner in New York to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Corail Sea during the Second World War.
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President Trump’s defamation trial against The Wall Street Journal And his powerful owner took a personal turn.
In legal deposits – and on social networks – Trump said that he personally said to the Rupert Murdoch media tycoon that the racy birthday greeting that he would have sent two decades earlier to the disgraced financier of the end Jeffrey Epstein had been rigged and did not exist. Murdoch Newspaper In any case, despite Trump’s warning anyway.
Now Trump asks a Miami federal judge to force the man he called once “my very good friend Rupert Murdoch” to answer questions from his lawyers under the 15 days of the order. Trump’s legal team acknowledges that ink is barely dry on the trial – there is not yet a legal time period – but argues that it is unlikely that Murdoch testifies in person each time a trial occurs because of its advanced age and health problems.
“Murdoch is 94 years old, has suffered from multiple health problems throughout his life, would have suffered recent important and alleged health fears in New York, New York,” said the file. “Together, these factors weigh heavily by determining that Murdoch would not be available for testimonies in person at the trial.”
The file repeatedly underlines the age of Murdoch and cites the reverse of health, including a collapse reported during a breakfast in London in 2023 with the director general of his British holdings, Rebekah Brooks. The judge ordered Murdoch – the only person that Trump asked to be forced to submit to an accelerated testimony – to be answered by the end of Monday.
“The way he is supervised is almost sarcastic,” explains Joseph Azam, former main vice-president and legal director of the newspaper and Empire of the Murdoch edition. “He’s a classic Trump. He uses Lawfare, to use his own term, to silence people.
“The problem is that he goes after people who are also equipped – and in some ways, I would say, better equipped – to sail in this kind of thing,” Azam told NPR. The unusual request to search for an urgent depot in Rupert Murdoch – and only Rupert Murdoch – looks like “a free attempt to prick the bear,” says Azam.
Murdoch is the emeritus president of News Corp, the corporate parent of The Wall Street JournalTHE New York Post And newspapers in the United Kingdom and its native Australia. His son Lachlan is the president of the company and his longtime executive Robert Thomson is managing director. News Corp and a Murdoch spokesman did not respond to requests for comments; Dow Jones, the corporate division that oversees the Newspaperand the Newspaper He himself refused to comment through a spokesperson. Trump’s legal team also refused to comment.
Days after filing the prosecution, the Newspaper Followed last week with another scoop: the Ministry of Justice told Trump in May that his name appears, among other things, in the documents he has about Epstein. NPR has not independently confirmed the Newspaper Initial report. US prosecutor Pam Bondi said she had informed the president of the conclusions. She didn’t say if she had told her that her name appeared.
While legal observers outside the outside question the arguments propeling the prosecution of Trump, his lawyers have won 10 million dollars regulations with Mother -based companies, ABC, CBS and Facebook for prosecution that legal experts are also considering thin status. However, he did not prevail at the trial; Other Trump combinations against media societies such as The New York TimesCNN and The Washington PostThe famous investigative journalist, Bob Woodward, was dismissed with little fanfare.
Two titans of the American right
The two men were known for most of half a century of New York circles: the owner of the tabloid and the auto-promotional real estate magnate that has fed treaties to himself for gossip columnists for turbo-charge of his name recognition.
The two titans of conservative and media policy struck an alliance of convenience and mutual interest in the last decade, since Trump entered the presidency race and won the White House.
Trump was reinforced by the personalities and programs of Fox News, which Murdoch founded in 1996, as well as by the tabloid of Murdoch New York Post and the NewspaperConservative editorial pages. THE NewspaperInformation reports work outside of its opinion pages – and are much less submissive than Murdoch’s tabloids to his political whims. Murdoch generally shows deference to the judgment of press chiefs in his most prestigious newspaper. But many viewers and readers of Murdoch’s Media Holdings are solid supporters of the president.
The Rupert Murdoch media magnate turns as President Trump speaks to the press while signing proclamations, initiatives and appointments inside the oval office on February 3.
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Perhaps the greatest demonstration of this alliance occurred in 2023, when the Murdochs agreed to pay $ 787.5 million to settle a defamation action submitted by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News. The voting machine company had continued after the Fox hosts and the guests falsely and repeatedly amplified Trump’s allies on which the company had helped to fake the race in 2020 for Joe Biden.
However, Fox’s materials that have become public during this dispute clearly indicated that Murdoch did not express high esteem for Trump. The documents have shown that the Murdoch, their leaders and their journalists recognized themselves that they knew that Biden had won the elections fairly. However, they decided that they could not risk offending Trump’s voters, who were one of their most loyal viewers.
Trump rubbed in the purchases of Murdoch for other candidates in 2024 and the reports and hard reprimands in the nose and the reprimands published by some of his points of sale. For example, Newspaper The editorials strongly criticized Trump’s thrust for the prices and reports from the newspaper were also a coherent source of irritation.
From the ally to the “clever” media
In the case of the history of the Epstein card, Trump himself blames Murdoch.
“”The Wall Street JournalAnd Murdoch, personally, were warned directly by President Donald J. Trump that the supposed letter that she printed by President Trump to Epstein was a false and, if they will print him, they will be prosecuted, “Trump posted on Truth Social after the publication of history.” Mr. Murdoch said he would take care of it, but obviously did not have the power to do so. “”
Trump also wrote that he and the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt NewspaperThe editor -in -chief, Emma Tucker, was that the story was false and that she “did not want to hear this”.
“The press must learn to be true and not count on sources that probably do not even exist,” wrote Trump.
THE Newspaper has not yet reproduced Trump’s birthday greeting to Epstein which she described as including a doodle of a naked woman accompanied by the distinctive signature of the future president. Trump lawyers say the newspaper does not have it because it does not exist.
In the original trial, Trump lawyers say the Newspaper “Published in Le Monde the false, defamatory and malignant statements” towards Murdoch and Thomson, its managing director.
THE Newspaper legal team has a reputation – before the acquisition by Murdoch of the newspaper in 2007 and has since maintained his reports to demanding standards before the publication and to defend it resolutely afterwards. Murdoch did not blocked the Newspaper From the publication of investigations exhibiting the deceptions behind the blood test startup Theranos – even if he was a major investor in the company and that his founder called him to leave the stories. And Trump does not want, in truth, that the trial goes to the discovery phase, when Murdoch’s lawyers can obtain previously private documents and ask the President under oath on his relationship with a man now considered as one of the most notable sex offenders.
Azam, the former legal framework of News Corp., said that Trump seems to have “tried to appeal in favor of an old friend” by warning Murdoch not to publish the history of the Epstein card. Which could work with an element in a social chronicle published in the New York Post But not in the cover of the news in the NewspaperSaid Azam.
Despite this, Trump has gripped his hand, as president of the Titan newspaper – and like a longtime New York to another.
“As long as Rupert is alive – and he is alive as long as he wishes – he will not change when it comes to the heart of this type of thing,” explains Azam. “People will always assume that they can call him and he has a magic wand under his office that can really make things happen.”
With his latest trial, Trump treats Murdoch as one of the suppliers of what he has denied as “false news”. Not as a independent editor of spirit. And certainly not as an important and faithful ally.
