This is the warning. I'm Steve Schmidt. Welcome. I'm here with Mackay Coppins, who is an Atlantic magazine staff writer, is the author of a great biography of Willard Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, the United States Senator from Utah, the two thousand and twelve Republican nominee for President of
the United States. The name of that book is Romney The Reckoning, and he has written recently for The Atlantic, a long form profile of James Murdoch, The Murdoch Children, about the Murdoch family, all of the considerations of the children with regarding the news empire that has, in my view done so much damage to the country. Two concepts of truth and what will happen to it as the inevitable happens, and Rupert Murdoch passes from this world to the next sometime before not too very long at age
ninety five. We have McKay Coppins with us, who I just want to say to everybody that he is an extremely talented writer, probably in my view, one of the two or three very very best of the best long form magazine profile writers of the country. In the country.
You back and look at a masterpiece of writing for those of you who are interested in writing as a form of expression and read his profile I think in twenty twenty with Steve Bannon at Steve Bannon's head Orders on the night of the Biden election, extraordinary portrait of the MAGA movement at a low move at a low moment. But I'm really thrilled today to have Mickay Coppins joining
me again. One of the best buy the book. You'll learn a lot about a compelling figure over this last decade and a half who is a deeper person than you may suspect, but with no further ado McKay coppins welcome.
Thank you, Steve, and thank you for that very kind, too kind introduction. But I'm glad to be here. I'm glad to be talking to you.
One of the odd things about this moment is that people like me, all of a sudden get to ask journalists like you questions and do so in front of an audience that is sizeable and has a lot of curiosity about what journalism has become, what it is. What I hope to do today is to expose them really to a world class practitioner. As we kind of get into Fox News and the story. I just want to start out, how do you assess what is happening in Washington?
What is the mood in Washington, DC? Right now? What is at a top level explaining beyond what I would say are the contours of a television production, a manifestation of reality show theater projected as the workings of the presidency to create responses, feelings, and effects. Take us into the cavern if you will a little bit.
Yeah, I always struggle to answer the question of, like, what's the vibe in Washington, because it really depends on who you are, Right, There's certainly a contingent of Republicans, Trump supporters, MAGA types, for whom this is like, you know, their emotional apex. This is like the triumph they have
been working toward for in some cases decades. Right, This mass disruption of the federal government, this dismantling of federal agencies, the replacement of civil servants and nonpartisan bureaucrats with Trump loyalists, like this is a project that has been in the works for a very long time, you know, way before Project twenty twenty five became a kind of talking point. And so for some conservatives, Andublicans. This is a kind
of joyful moment. I would say, if you tried to take the temperature of the Washington metropolitan area in general, I think it's hard to overstate how much the early weeks of trumps second term have kind of upended things,
right and how unnerving it is right now. To me, the most unnerving thing about the early weeks of the Trump presidency hasn't really been the Trump Show that you're talking about, you know, the post untruth social and the press conferences and Elon and the Oval Office and stuff. I mean, your mile wage may vary on that stuff, but like to me, it's kind of a piece with what Trump has been for since twenty fifteen, right for the past decade and maybe even longer you could go
and do his reality TV days. What's unnerving to me is the culture of fear and self censorship and silence that is becoming pervasive among large segments of Washington d C. I personally know people who work in the federal government, work in the State Department, Justice Department, places like that, who are fundamentally not partisans. They are not political creatures
in any meaningful sense. They've worked under administrations from both parties, and they are terrified, right, and they are looking over their shoulders constantly. They're afraid of ever expressing any kind of political opinion, even in private among friends at church, at dinner, because it might be overheard and make its way back to the White House, and you know, they could lose their jobs over it. People can't make long term or even short term plans about their families' lives,
their professional lives. You know, some people listening to this, you know, if you're like a Trump Trump fan, you might say, well, that's good. I want I want federal bureaucrats to be looking over their shoulders, right, And I think that's just the point. That is what Trump has tried to accomplish, and he has accomplished it. I think it'll take some time for us to really see what the long term consequences are of this kind of upending
of the federal bureaucracy. But at least right now, if you're asking for like a temperature check, the mood is very unnerved, very frightened, and the chaos, I think is doing what it's intended to do.
I want to dig in a little bit deeper on the question of fear and I want to do so superficious excuse me superficially, and it just asks your valuation, not putting you on the spot of trying to own something that's complex with a with a simple declaration, but just as a general statement, I'm going to give you some categories and ask you to valuate those institutions as whether they're filled with people as you described in the federal government with fear. Does that hold inside the Republican
House conference? Are they afraid of Donald Trump?
I would say almost categorically yes. I don't know if they're living in fear day to day, but certainly it is true, and I've done reporting on this. It was actually in my book. It is certainly true that Republicans in the House are afraid of political repercussions for crossing Trump. Some are even afraid of, you know, the potential for violence against them or their families if they cross Trump
and an especially highly visible way. So fear is definitely a component of some Republicans that now some Republicans are just fully on board with the Trump project and agenda, and I don't think they're operating from fear, but I think it's you know, it would be hard to say that fear doesn't play a part in Trump's kind of stranglehold on House Republicans.
I would I would argue that they're all fully on board with the project. Whether they get there, and how they get there and down which tributary they flow into it, I think is debatable, but let me let me, let
me keep going. So I think that's an interesting constituency because they are beneficiaries of staying in line, probably at a high level on the proverbial pyramid, and they face real repercussion forever objecting to anything in the fear of understanding that the benefit in everything goes away if they if they do so. Is there a climate of fear amongst House Democrats.
Hmmm, that's a more complicated question. I mean, I would say fear. The fear there is not fear of Donald Trump per se, more a fear born out of a kind of general aimlessness or feeling of like not knowing exactly how to respond to this moment. Again, it's hard to say anything too sweeping, because I think there are Democrats who are operating very boldly. I think there are
Democrats who are playing a long game. I think there are also democrats a lot of Democrats, And you sense this across in conversations with democratic political thinkers strategists that just don't kind of know how they get out of this moment, right they try. The feeling is, at least among some we tried resistance politics all through the first Trump term, and Trump is back right, and so should we be triangulating? Should we be appeasing should we be
ignoring him? I mean, James Carville famously said recently that Democrats should lay over and play dead for a while and let the Trump administration implode on its own. I think there are just a lot of different voices, a lot of confusion about how to respond. So I think that to the extent that fear is an element there, it would be more about a fear of doing the wrong thing right, of kind of taking the wrong political
course and seeing it backfire. And certainly I think you sense that among House Democrats.
Do you think that there are House Democrats that are afraid of Trump's mob, either online through a psychological prism of wow, I'm constantly abused, and or the presence of that mob manifesting crowd boys pardoned January sixth, rioters that we read about some stories that have been published in the last ten days talked about the anxiety of members. Is there fear amongst our elected officials of the Trump mob.
I think it would be hard to be a member of Congress who lived through January sixth and not have some kind of trauma associated with that.
Not.
I mean, it's kind of rational to take away from that experience some base level fear of that happening again, or something similar to it happening. I would also say that there has been a general, a gradual rise, and I'm afraid to say it, but almost kind of normalization of political violence in this country over the last decade decade and a half that that has resulted in elected officials and politicians walking around every day with the constant fear in the back of their mind that they might
somebody might be trying to kill them. And I remember, after even you know, the the assassin assassination attempt on Trump last year, talking to Republicans and Democrats who said, this is kind of the new reality that we all live in. We're all afraid of somebody coming after us, right like. And you know, certainly you could go back to periods in American history where that was pretty normal, and then we went through a period where it was not.
And there's a general fear that we might be going back toward an era of political violence, assassination attempts, and I think that fear is constantly lurking in the back of our political leader's mind.
I want to specifically exempt The Atlantic in this next question, even from consideration. I don't want to put you on the spot there, but you're deeply respected, very established by merit and earned reputation in Washington amongst journalists. Is their fear of Donald Trump in the Washington newsroom of many organizations by journalists.
I mean.
I I again don't want to speak categorically. There are too many data points over the last few months that you could point to without sensing that there is fear guiding decisions being made at news organizations at some levels. Right I would argue that more of that fear is being sensed at the ownership and executive level than at
the newsroom and journalist level. I think we've seen, you know, too many frankly, owners and executives at news organizations kind of sweatily looking for ways to uh, you know, appease or cozy up to the new administration, and uh, and yeah, that's unnerving. That's unnerving for journalists. In my experience talking to my fellow journalists in Washington, there's more fear about what the bosses will do, their their own bosses will do, and how that will affect them as opposed to you know,
Trump coming after them. There is there is talk about that. I mean, let's let's be real, like, of course, there's talk about what especially, you know, as we were leading up to the election, in the weeks after, there was there was plenty of discussion in newsrooms about what precautions should we be taking, how should we protect ourselves against you know, the Justice Department for example, coming after us,
or Trump putting us on our enemies list. I think if you're an especially high profile political journalist who's tangled with Trump, you have reason to be concerned. So, no question, those those those conversations are happening. But but I would say that the what what kind of amplifies that fear and what spreads it is the feeling that your owners and bosses don't have your backs, right that that's where
you get really worried. Speaking as a reporter who's worked at a bunch of places and for a bunch of editors and owners who I really did feel had my back. I can tell you like that is a crucial component to being able to do, you know, fearless adversarial journalism against you know, against the backdrop of powerful and illiberal leaders who are who are calling out the media every day.
But you need you need that support. You need to feel like your owners are going to spend money to uh and you know, against a frivolous lawsuit or whatever. You need to feel like you're the top editors have your back, that they're not gonna kind of cowtow to somebody who complains about your reporting. You just need to have that sense of support. And I think too many journalists right now don't have that feeling.
I don't want to put words in your mouth at all. Well, what I just heard you say is that there is a chill in the air in America's newsrooms, and it's driven by two factors, maybe three. The first is Trump's aggress and his aggressive statements of retaliation and retribution made against the ownership of media companies, who regard those media companies as appendages to great empires that are at the periphery that were totems of ego and then until they
became liabilities of empire. And now the journalist does not feel like that they have their back covered by management, and that, combined with Trump's arbitrary aggressiveness, there's been a very acute change in media culture very quickly in the country that people are now very conscious of if I write something, there's a consequence. So what you're saying, you put.
It that way, I would say, and I think that's that's a totally fair way of describing what's happening.
I guess my.
The the only caveat I'd add is that while there may be a chill in the air as you put it, I don't want to overstate overstate this because I still think there are so many reporters doing really good challenging uh, you know, reporting, holding power to account, UH, documenting what the administration is doing, what dog is doing, UH, doing tough stories. There are a lot of newsrooms, even in some of those same newsrooms, where there is a fear of what management is up to and UH and you know,
a fear that they might not have their back. Some of a lot of reporters are still willing to take the risk to to do solid reporting because they care about it that much. Right, So I don't want to say that our whole you know, journalistic class has sold out and is terrified and you know, cowering and fear. I just think that we're up against different dynamics than we were in the first Trump term, where we had the same kind of rhetoric coming out of the White House.
But back then it felt like that rhetoric was emboldening publications and even their owners right like it. It was kind of a dare to like go to to really do great work, and a lot of great work was done. And my fear is that this time around, at the ownership level of management level, there is not the same kind of defiance that's motivating the decisions that are being made.
There is a seminal quote that will be at the front of history's recollection of this era when it comes to any study of journalism and the collapse of integrity that so many American people feel and the disorientation around fact, and it will be what Selena Zito said very famously, which is about some people take Trump literally and others
taking him seriously, and the difference between the two. And so what I just heard you described is that Trump was taken literally but not seriously at one point by the American media. But Trump is now taken literally and seriously by the American media and probably more importantly by the ownership groups of the American media the corporate me today than he was then. And that's all the difference in the moment.
I would also add that I'm not sure that they're wrong to take him more seriously now than they did in the first term. That doesn't mean they're making the right decisions or calculations based on that. But he clearly is His administration manifestly is more serious in the second term than it was in the first term. He has spent a lot of time, He and the people around
him spent a lot of time making plans. You know, we see this from all the executive orders he signed in the first week's Project twenty twenty five, et.
Cetera like it.
It is manifestly, self evidently clear that he is a more serious political figure. Whether you find him seriously threatening to American democracy or you know serious, you know, champion of whatever you believe in, he is a more serious figure. His administration is more serious, and there is a reason to take his threats more seriously this time than the first four years he was president.
Objectively what you just said, and it seems right to me by way of observation analytically, which is that any person rationally observing what's happening has to impose a lot of weight of denial into the analysis to come to a conclusion that Donald Trump does not mean the things that he is doing. Yeah, fair point.
No, Yeah, I think that I would fully agree with that.
Okay, I have one last question about about fear, and then I want to I want to get into the Fox News stuff because I think fear is in the end the commodity of Fox News. And there's this tremendous family drama, ammorality play that you wrote about so exquisitely, and I want to get get into talking about it. But Didmitt Romney leave Washington DC afraid?
You'd have to ask him that question. If you asked him, or if I asked him, he would say no, he would say that he was not afraid that you know, he had his own perfectly legitimate reasons for retiring. Is an ins late seventies, His wife is you know, has multiple sclerosis. He wants to spend his last good years with her and his family. All that that said, I know people around him, very close to him, who are afraid for him and who believe that I don't know
that he that would say that. Maybe he wouldn't be wouldn't describe himself as acting out of fear. But he's acting.
He is pragmatically and practically practically aware of the political situation that we're in with a president who has an enemy's list and a willingness to use the levers of government power to go after those those enemies, and that Romney, while maybe not at the top of that list, is probably somewhere on that list as a Republican apostate, and I should mention in my book the paperback edition of
my book, I interviewed him again last year. I was like, I think last spring, and I asked him about kind of, you know, if Trump wins, what does this mean for you, what does it mean for your family? And he tried to downplay it at first, and he said, you know, I don't know, I'm not spending a lot of time
thinking about that. But then I kept pushing it, and then he kind of got a little upset and like irritated, and he finally kind of just snapped at me and said, you know, I don't know what you want me to say. I have five kids, five daughters in law, you know, dozens of grandkids, like I can't protect all of them.
I don't know how to protect all of them. And it was an interesting kind of window, just a glimpse into the psychology of somebody who has been taken pretty courageous independent stands in the Trump era as like a dissident in the party, kind of reckoning with the reality of where we're at and realizing that there's only so much he can do to protect the people he cares about. With somebody like Trump in the Oval office.
Do you think that there is any chance we will see in the next two years time? In address by Mitt Romney somewhere in the country, rising to meet this moment as a matter of conscience outside the realm of his political ambitions, now in the past, where he simply as a man who any millions of people regard as a person of tremendous stature and rected to speak in what many scores of tens of millions, I suggest will we'll soon regard together as a as a really deep crisis.
Will we ever hear from him again in any consequential way, or is Mitt Romney in a state of retirement and repose.
It's a good question.
I feel like ever since my book came out in twenty twenty three, every interview I do, people are asking, you know, what's he going to do next? Is he going to say something? Is he going to speak out again? And you know, I don't know, is the short answer.
We actually saw him make his first public statement since leaving the Senate just a week or two ago, after that Oval Office meeting with Zelensky and with Trump and Vance, and you know, he said, we must not let petty personal differences get in the way of the reality that we're facing, which is an autocratic regime invading a sovereign nation and this country deserves our protection, et cetera. It's
all the things you would expect him to say. I don't know exactly what compelled him in that moment to speak out. It probably was some combination of just repulsion at what he was seeing in the Oval Office and a strong feeling that he needed to say something. I think at the same time, He's always weighing does this stuff make any difference?
Right? He put that.
Statement out, it got some coverage, Did it move the needle at all? You say that millions of people look up to him, and I think that's true. I mean, I also think that he believes he has never had less influence in Republican politics than he does now, and so he asked a way that reality against the costs of speaking out. But my guess is, if you were asking me to take bets, I'm I'm not a gambling man, but I would guess that it's not the last that
we've heard of Met Romney. I would I would guess that we'll we'll hear from him again.
I just want to say before we turn to the to the story of Fox News that Romney a reckoning I think is interesting, a psychological portrait that you can
read of a complex person in public life. I think it's an extraordinary portrait of a man in a season, but also the institution of the US Senate in a particular moment in time, just on the edge of what I would argue is a real fundamental collapse now into a pile of bureau at least temporarily of both privilege and control by the executive branch to which it it's a coequal check and balance against, at least within the constitutional imagination of our of our of our ancestors. And
so it's a it's an incredible book. But one of the things I walked away from that book astonished by was that point that Mitt Romney has a lack of self awareness about how much Mitt Romney's words could mean to so many people after so much time in office, that something more down and edging him like water on a rock, that created this doubt in his mind, this voice of doubt inside of Mitt Romney's mind about the
ability of Admit Romney to roar like a lion. And I don't doubt it right that he could have that he can, and he's got a couple of roarers left. But that doubt I found just to be fascinating. I want to get into this Atlantic piece that you did, which is another astounding piece of psychological portraiture, family portraiture or portraiture of power. This is real life succession, This
is the Murdoch family. And to set the stage that very wealthy people have organized their affairs in series of inner linking financial arrangements that seek to avoid taxes and allow for the salubrious intergenerational transfer of wealth. And there are revocable trusts, and there are irrevocable trusts. And one of the features of an irrevocable trust is its irrevocability.
And so there is an irrevocable trust that Rupert Murdoch litigated against his children in court and lost the case, meaning that upon the death of this ninety five year old man, he is unable to fulfill his living intention, which is to bestow control of it to the child he has selected as his business heir, which is his son Lachlan, and not his dissident James, who now with
the other children. If I understand your story correctly, at the moment the Pope dies, blessings will be said, and the fisherman's ring, Peter's ring will be taken from his singer, from his finger, and the seal of Saint Peter cracked from it. And this scene is played out in conclave. When his Majesty the King passes in an instant, the sovereign is dead, Long live the King at that instant
which all of humanity shares. When Rupert Murdoch's brain fires its last electrical impulse, heart beats a final time, his lungs fill in exhale, his last raph. He is gone. It seems to me reading your story, Jesse Waters is gonna wind up like a park Ranger underdoge scrutiny.
I won't make quite that bold of prediction, but I will say that it does look like as things stand now, pending appeals in the litigation and various other possibilities, if things play out the way we think they'll play out, change will be coming to Fox News when Rupert dies.
I think that is fair to say yes.
And the reason is you alluded to it that the way that the fam the Murdoch Family trust is currently set up, when Rupert dies, control of the empire that includes Fox News. It also includes Dow Jones, the Wall Street Journal, a bunch of British and Australia newspapers, and TV channels, et cetera. The you know, the Fox network, but the empire will be split. The control of the empire will be split four ways, equally among Rupert's four oldest children, Lachlan, James, Elizabeth and Prudence.
And.
The current kind of makeup of those four. Lachlan is the Rupert's mini me. He is a conservative ideologue by all accounts. He believes in the way that his father has built the empire, and that's why Rupert chose him
as his successor. James and his two sisters are much less conservative and to varying degrees centrist to liberal, and more importantly, are appalled by some of the things that Fox News has done and other elements of the Empire have done, and they believe serious reforms need to be made to these businesses to make them responsible participants in the public discourse, international politics, media, et cetera. And it looks like the three of them will be able to
outvote Lachlan on major decisions. And so that is why there's been so much attention paid to this family drama, why The Atlantic put this thirteen thousand words story on the cover, Because while it is a very juicy family drama, a morality play, like you said, and I think there's a lot of pathos and really tragedy in it. It's almost Shakespearean in nature, it has very real stakes for American politics and American democracy, and we're going to find out what that means pretty soon.
Probably what is his condition?
Ruberts, Yes, as far as I know, healthy or as healthy as he can be. But he's ninety four years old, so you know, I mean, just actuarily speaking, it's only a matter of time before he passes away. But I don't know of any imminent illness that is threatening his life right now?
Do the children? When you talk about the four parts, are they apportioning as these trusts or structured pieces of bricks and mortar in an empire between themselves one part for you, one part for you, one for you, one for you, or is it three against one seventy five percent control of the vote, where fifty plus one is the magic number.
That's right.
So there's the board that constitutes the trust currently includes Rupert, who has four votes, and then each of his four oldest children has one. Once Rupert dies, his four votes go away, and those the one vote that each of the four has belongs to them, and so they have supervision over the entire empire. And it's a little more complicated than that, but basically, yes, it's not like you
get this fiefdom, I get this one. It's more that decisions are made by the four of them together and right now, just looking at it, it looks like James and his sisters are on one side on most issues.
Lachlan is on the other.
So I have an ambition. I've never expressed it before, and since these companies are all dying, I'm not going to get to live it. But I think I would have been a great president of a cable news company. But what you're saying, uh huh, is that the Murdoch siblings could say, at the moment of death, we want to make Steve Schmidt the president of Fox News.
Are you your application right are to them?
I would, I would, but but that's what we're talking about. Whomever it is now, Juseanne Scott, you're fired, right, you're coming in. And so, for example, the new Fox News could, if the siblings decided, open up the files of every sexual harassment settlement misconduct case of every Fox News anchor famous person going back twenty years. You know, whether it's O'Reilly,
you know, fifty sixty million in settlements, Kimberly Guilfoil. I mean they could if they so chose, and their council let them, Hey, we are going to open up open kimono this institution and let everybody have the peakaboo inside of what went on here. They will have that type of revelatory power should they choose to do it. They could ask, for example, if they wanted to at Fox News, say to the Wall Street Journal, we'd like you to investigate this organization, open kimono and report back.
In theory yes, and I'm you added in boring caveat, you know, depending on what their council says, I'm sure that there are all kinds of legal complexities involved here. What I will say, though, having spent a lot of time talking to James, who, by the way, spent twenty years working for the family business before his eventual falling out an estrangement from his father, is that I don't see him as like an as a particularly activist figure
in this sense, right. I don't see him going taking over and trying to sabotage Fox News or you know, meaningfully hurt these companies to make a point about how they've been run. As disillusioned as he is by the way that they've been run, I think that what's more likely is there would be leadership changes in key ways. There would be you know, kind of company wide reforms that deal with things like corporate governance and editorial guard rails,
journalistic guard rails. He would want to see Fox News run like a true news organization that didn't, for example, broadcast lies about who won the last election, or put on quack doctors to spread vaccine misinformation during a pandemic, or platform an oil shill and let them pretend that they're an expert on climate change. Like those things, to him are not political things. And he's been clear every time we've talked about this that he doesn't want to
turn Fox News into MSNBC. He's not saying Fox News should become a liberal network. He thinks Fox could continue to report from a center right perspective, but do it responsibly, with responsible corporate leadership and newsroom, you know, principles and values that they abide by. And would that mean some change in the way that the coverage is done. Absolutely, Would that mean change in talent? He wouldn't go there
with me, but we've seen reporting elsewhere. I think Brian Stelter reported that many of the Fox News stars have already started to kind of make plans amongst themselves for what to do in the event that James takes over. Or James and his sisters are in control, so that I would imagine there would be changes at the talent level too, But to be clear, that's me speculating. James was always careful about going into too much detail about what changes he'd want to make, first because he thinks
it's not appropriate yet. The second because he also he recognizes that it's something that his father could weaponize and the litigation that's going on because basically Rupert's chief argument in this attempt to rewrite the family trust is that if Lachlin isn't allowed to have full control of the empire, when Rupert's gone, James and his sisters will take the value of the companies by moderating its politics, defanging them, and making them more responsible, basically, and so so James
is wary of giving too much detail that Rupert could then use in this ongoing litigation.
Is James ashamed of his last name?
I wouldn't. I wouldn't. I don't know. You'd have to ask him, But I can say.
That he's James ashamed of his father.
I think he is ashamed of some of the associations that the Murdoch name now has and the things that have been done under the banner of his last name, the Murdoch Empire.
Does James Murdoch appreciate that a majority to a substantial plurality, depending on how you look at it, views his last name shamefully?
Is he aware of that? Did you ask? Yeah?
I'm sure he is. I mean I didn't ask him quite that question, but I think it was pretty much understood.
James Murdoch and his siblings live very well. They're billionaires. Has James Murdoch ever earned and died doing anything in his life that's not associated with the company or his inheritance.
Yes, yes, he's in right now, for example, building a media empire in India.
Has James Murdoch and I just asked this right by any reasonable definition, right, discounting nepotism, Have they accomplished anything on their own name? When, for example, Teddy Roosevelt's son, Teddy Roosevelt Junior, was a young man, he said that, lamenting his name, that he would never be judged on
his own merit. Well, he became the Governor General of the Philippines, the board chairman of American Express, He founded the American Legion, and he led American Forces Ashore on d Day as the only father who had a son in the first wave, as the oldest man in the first wave, is the only general officer in the first wave, and he received them of honor that day for his valor. What I'm trying to establish, right other than live lives of extraordinarily gilded privilege and desecrate what it is that
their father built that I think is monstrous. Have they ever done anything that any of them can point to that I did this? I took a stand on this
somewhere anywhere in the world. I dug a ditch in Suriname so that human feces could blow away from the water supply to your knowledge, have any of Rupert Murdoch's kids ever accomplished anything of note or worth anywhere, not attached to his money, not attached to their name, or taken a stand on anything other than saying, we don't like how my dad runs the company that gave us our billions to enjoy our lives with.
I will give you the answer that James would give, which is that he, like I said, he spent twenty years in the family business, mainly over maybe mainly internationally right so Asia, and then London, he would say that. So each of the kids walked away from the twenty nineteen deal where Fox twenty first century, Fox Film and TV Studios were sold to Disney with two billion dollars in their pockets. Right, James helped orchestrate that deal. He landed the plane on that deal. Lachlan was against it.
He would say he earned He helped earn that money for him and his siblings by doing that deal, which now most analysts would say Disney wildly overpaid for. Setting that aside. Since then, since he's left the company, resigned from the board, he's done a number of things. He's donated, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars to various democratic causes, climate change. He's bought, you know, like I said, a bunch of media art Basel for example. He's building a
media empire in India. Now, can you disentangle that stuff? This is me speaking now from the obvious head start that he got by being born a murdoch. I don't
know if you can. I think that's part of what made him, though, such a compelling interesting subject, is that he was grappling with that those questions that you're asking in real time as we talked over the course of a year, right, Like, he has spent most of his life kind of drafted into this family drama, this kind of like very Shakespearean, you know, psychodrama about who is the father's favorite and who is going to be the successor, and spent almost his whole life playing this specific part
that he was casting as the dissidence on the rebel, the black sheep, whatever. And only now that he's in his fifties is he trying to kind of figure out what his identity is apart from that whole drama, right, And you know, you can make a lot of criticisms of him, and I think they're fair. I'm not here
to defend him. I think that there's a lot of kind of pathos in seeing somebody like him who has a functioning conscience and is trying to figure out the right thing to do in a system that he was kind of born into and doesn't have a lot of right things to do as obvious options.
I'm not criticizing him. I'm trying to understand him, to be clear, and I want to bring it back, you know, as we start to wrap up here, because I think this is where I see a gap in the proverbial bri ridge across the canyon and trying to understand who this person is. Right as a as a reader of your story, that I think fleshes out a great, a great deal of this right. But the missing the missing gap for me is will he is he on a
journey to fully recognize? Is he's somewhere in root to a destination that ends inevitably with him staring into a mirror and seeing at some degree, like every son will see their father's face and time etched in a genetic familiarity, does he see evil in the face of his father? And does he see the damage that that evil did to the most incandescenly perfect idea ever put to paper
by the mind of man in human history? Is that something that he has the depth to reckon with, and that he has the deserve shame to face and the strength to try to make right by ending an existential threat that pounds on by the moment. And even since you wrote your story has announced itself in a way that is almost incomprehens answible in that it's become the
government of the United States. That's what his father created, and that's what has taken over politically and at this moment is working continuously to tear down the institutions that emerged from the Second World War that's saved during that war, Australia from whence Rupert came by the country that rebuilt the world, and any talk about that, and then I'll turn it over. I'll ask you one last thing and we'll wrap it up.
I mean, I don't think I have a satisfying answer for you, because the truth is, I don't know, and I don't know that anyone apart from the person himself, can ever know. You know, the kind of depths of courage you're able to summon, the depths of self awareness and recognition. I spent a lot of time with him. I found him impressive in.
A lot of ways. He is.
He's a deep thinker, he's a deep reader. He references history, he references philosophy, uh classic works of literature.
He he he is.
Not a you know, kind of an unthinking, diletent billionaire. I've I've interviewed plenty of those as well.
I think he's he.
Is somebody who thinks a lot and where that that that kind of depth of historical knowledge and philosophical thinking will lead him. I just don't know. I don't know, and that, but that, but that's part of again, part of what made him so compelling to me as a subject is that he does have enough self awareness to be grappling with some of the questions you just laid out. Maybe not quite in the way you laid them out,
but he's grappling with these things. But I don't know where that grappling will will ultimately lead him.
It is a fascinating story in a fascinating moment. You know, listen again, everybody. Romney a reckoning is a masterpiece of political portraiture. It is laugh out loud funny. There is something that I'll just say about Mitt Romney that I know to be true, having spent enough time around him. He has an author's eye for absurdist detail. Mitt Romney when he walks into a room, and no one would
suspect us about Mitt Romney. But Mitt Romney is a genuinely funny guy and and his there's different types of humor and Mitt Romney's humor. If you think Jerry Seinfeld is funny, and I think Jerry Seinfeld is funny, The basis of Mitt Romney's humor is his keen eye for absurdism, and it conveys so deeply in McKay Coppins's book about
the Senate about this moment. And McKay coppins, because he is the best at what he does, has some license at the place he works, which is he gets to pick out the things that interest him, and I suspect has a long leash in pursuing them. And so when you read this story in The Atlantic, we'll share as we go out about the Murdoch family. It was brilliant, It's consequential, It is Shakespearean, uh, it is biblical and astonishing.
And the drama that begins to play out at the instant of Rupert Murdoch's death is something that every person in this country is a stakeholder in. And let me say I've never said this about another human being. When the moment this monster draws his last breath, good reredditence,
and let the drama begin. And James Murdoch has a lot to answer for, as every one of those kids does in my view, and we'll see and and you begin to see the contours of how they'll approach a decision that will redeem a rotten name or dig a deeper grave for it. And with that McKay coppins, the very best journalist in America. Thank you for joining the Warning.
Thanks Steve, and I'm Steve Schmidt. This is the Warning.
I invite you to join this community where I promise to be honest, blunt and direct about what is happening in this country. America is in crisis. Follow and subscribe to this channel on YouTube and on substack. Thank you,