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