The Budding Romance Between
Murdoch and DeSantis
(But Don’t Say Gay)
By J Max Robins, July 7, 2022
Ron DeSantis has been all but silent, thumbs up or down, about the “Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol.” It’s understandable; he gains nothing from speaking to it. But he’ll gain from it plenty, and no doubt a quiet Cheshire Cat grin crawled across the Republican Florida governor’s face when Cassidy Hutchinson told the tale of Donald Trump’s unhinged, traitorous attempt to hold on to power.
DeSantis is a mighty savvy politician and had to see how this summer’s surprise TV hit put one more solid knee to the groin of Trump’s chances at a 2024 White House run. A man of unbridled ambition, DeSantis has watched the post-hearing polls showing his numbers rising like gas prices, compared to Trump’s Dow Jones-like slippage.
But while DeSantis enjoys sweet dreams in the governor’s mansion, another public figure—his most powerful political ally, 91-year-old kingmaker Rupert Murdoch—is hard at work.
The media mogul and his minions have been using the hearings as a jumping off point to give The Donald the collective Bronx cheer we all know he deserves. It rang especially true after Hutchinson’s riveting committee testimony, which was worthy of an episode of the coming Season 4 of Succession that HBO announced had started filming the day before. Hutchinson infamously painted a terrifying picture of an unhinged Demander-in-Chief in full-throated leadership of a coup. That ironically earned Trump the thing he loves most: Ratings!
Dumping Grounds for Trump
Groundwork for the Dump Trump plan began long before Hutchinson was called before Congress and can be traced to Election Night 2020. When Fox News was first to call Arizona for Joe Biden, it became crystal clear to me that the Murdoch Mafia had decided that Trump was bad for the family business. In the year that followed, a decision was made inside Rupert’s empire that DeSantis was the chosen one. Dexter Filkins’ terrific New Yorker profile of the Florida governor last month noted that following Trump’s defeat, Fox News producers made more than 110 requests for DeSantis to appear on the network and posted over 340 pieces about him online. A propulsive pro-DeSantis drumbeat has continued apace including late last April, when Laura Ingraham gave her hour over to a DeSantis town hall that drew 2.5 million viewers. A few years ago, this format would have been reserved for The Donald.
The Murdoch-powered Trump takedown is in lockstep with Fox News’ full-throated support of DeSantis. With the radically Right governor firmly established, Murdoch is putting his entire media empire into unseating Trump atop the GOP.
The day after Hutchinson’s riveting testimony, Murdoch’s New York Post opined that the “Republicans aren’t finished. But the Donald Trump era surely must be.” This edition shared the newsstand that day with fellow Murdoch pub The Wall Street Journal’s proclamation that it was “time for Donald Trump to tell himself the words he’s most famous for: ‘You’re fired!’”
It’s A Small World After All, Ron
One crucial subplot is how the Rupert/Ron romance will play out on Main Street USA at the Walt Disney Company, where Ron is as welcome as Cruella de Vil. In a deal completed three years ago valued at more than $71 billion, Murdoch offloaded his 20th Century Fox holdings, including the film and TV studio, FX Networks and a big stake in Hulu, to Disney. Back then, Forbes estimated that Murdoch and his many heirs held more than $10 billion in Disney stock as a result of the deal. Because the proceeds were likely spread out among Rupert’s heirs—think Succession supremo Logan Roy splitting up the shares of a megadeal among Roman, Shiv, Kendall, Colin and cousin Greg and various ex-wives—it’s hard to determine how big a stake Murdoch and company still hold.
One clue of the size of Murdoch’s personal kitty may be evident if DeSantis soon ceases waging culture war against the Mouse House. Last spring, in an opportunistic play to the Right, he pushed through his Don’t Say Gay legislation in Florida; Disney, belatedly after pressure from employees, came out against it. DeSantis went on the warpath, threatening the most-favored-nation benefits Disney World has in the Sunshine State. Disney stock has taken a tumble in the last 12 months from a high of $187.80 per share to $96.40. A big chunk of that loss can be attributed to Wall Street becoming bearish toward all big media heavily invested in the streaming wars. Still, DeSantis continuing to take aim at Disney won’t boost its stock price. I do wonder if we will continue to see the governor get a big wet kiss over his attack on Disney as Tucker Carlson delivered in a commentary late last April.
It’s all a dicey play, but it’s being played by experts. In the short run, the Jan. 6 ratings haven’t been good for Fox News, while boosting its competitors such as MSNBC and CNN. But Murdoch is the master of the long game and sees how the hearings can work for him on the 2024 horizon. For Murdoch, Disney is only one piece of a much larger media puzzle. The Florida governor is heavily favored to win-reelection in the fall. Murdoch is making a heavy bet that with his media empire behind DeSantis, he can push him from the People’s House in Tallahassee to the White House in D.C. Then government media policy becomes Murdoch media policy. Megamergers favorable to competitors will be stalled and government regulations that print money for Murdoch Nation will be rubber stamped. Two years out, that scenario is, of course, a major “if,” with unseeable plot twists and turns certain to happen that may be every bit as game-changing for the Murdoch/DeSantis alliance as last week’s Hutchinson testimony. (Chief among them…Donald Trump ain’t dead yet.)
Word indeed has come from HBO that production just began on Season 4 of Succession. For me, however, the real-life version’s new season, starring Rupert Murdoch and Ron DeSantis, dropped last week. In terms of drama, Logan Roy’s got a lot to live up to.
J. Max Robins (@jmaxrobins) is executive director of the Center for Communication. The former editor-in-chief of Broadcasting & Cable, he has contributed to publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Columbia Journalism Review and Forbes. Read more from J. Max Robins at www.jmaxrobins.com
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No doubt a Cheshire Cat grin crawled across the face of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis when Cassidy Hutchinson revealed Trump’s unhinged and traitorous attempt to cling to power. Her testimony was a knee to the groin of Trump’s chances at a 2024 White House run. (Photo: Wikimedia)
