A Monday night segment of “The Beat” on MSNBC had host Ari Melber skewering former President Donald Trump, embattled Fox News media mogul Rupert Murdoch and the continued push-and-pull of their political and financial relations.
After walking through Murdoch’s ongoing feud with the former president, which is currently seen in Fox News’ “soft ban” of the politician and has garnered his heated responses on Truth Social decrying the network as “MAGA hating globalist rhinos” and demanding “they get out of the news business,” Melber invited “Talking Points Memo” founder and editor Josh Marshall on air to parse things out further.
“How weak of a former presidential campaign are you, a former president running, when your top people are out here publicly begging for one interview on Fox News?” Melber asked.
Marshall immediately dove into the topic by comparing the ongoing feud to a dramatic arc on HBO’s “Succession.”
“The one thing that occurs to me is, you know, we’re all familiar with the HBO show ‘Succession,’ which is a roman à clef about the Murdoch family and Fox News and so forth – and so many of the things that you’ve been talking about over the last few minutes, each few of them is like an episode of ‘Succession,’” Marshall enthused. “It’s like these two old men … One thing that comes out is this is what happens when you’re a corrupt news organization, right?”
“One of the benefits of being a real news organization is that you keep basically on track by needing to cover the news,” Marshall continued. “You’re not in fights with the presidential candidate who you run or runs you or something like that, or trying to get all this kind of stuff. As you said earlier, there are lots of problems with the big corporate news organizations, but this is something that generally keeps them on track is that you always know that you’re supposed to report at least what you think is the truth at the moment, right? And that can change, you can be wrong, no one’s perfect, but that’s the big thing that jumps out to me.”
The two journalists then posited why Murdoch is getting the boxing gloves on for Trump so far ahead of the 2024 election. In short, it’s because he knows that if Trump secures the Republican nomination, they’ll have to about-face and support him all over again.
“Murdoch has been back and forth on Trump for awhile,” Marshall said. “They started off at the very beginning back in 2015 treating him as a joke. He kind of went to war with Fox, Fox did with him, but as soon as Trump was the guy, they got onboard. And I don’t think there’s any question that is what is going to happen again.”
He continued: “If he’s the nominee, they will have to not only support him but lie on his behalf. This is, again, an issue you don’t have to grapple with if you’re not a corrupt news organization.”
Watch the full “The Beat” segment from MSNBC in the video above.