Rupert Murdoch thought $787.5m Dominion suit would cost Fox $50m, Michael Wolff book says [View all]

Source: The Guardian

Rupert Murdoch thought $787.5m Dominion suit would cost Fox $50m, Michael Wolff book says

Trump tell-all author returns with tale of Fox News strife which also includes prediction Ron DeSantis will be Republican nominee

Martin Pengelly in Washington
@MartinPengelly
Tue 19 Sep 2023 22.32 BST
Last modified on Tue 19 Sep 2023 23.07 BST

In winter 2022, at a hideaway in St Barts, Rupert Murdoch directed “sudden fury” at Donald Trump, who he thought would lose the 2024 Republican presidential primary to Ron DeSantis, but who the media mogul also said was likely to cost him “fifty million dollars”, through a lawsuit regarding Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.

The lawsuit was filed by Dominion Voting Systems, over Fox News’s broadcast of Trump’s lies. Settled this April, it cost Murdoch considerably more than he predicted: $787.5m, to be precise.

Murdoch’s wildly off miscalculation and his anger at Trump – in conversation with friends at the idyllic Caribbean getaway – is described by the journalist Michael Wolff in his new book, The Fall: The End of Fox News and the Murdoch Dynasty, in a passage set towards the end of Murdoch’s marriage to the model Jerry Hall.

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Murdoch’s reported prediction about DeSantis winning the Republican presidential nomination, “tak[ing] the evangelical vote in Iowa” because “it was going to come out about the abortions Trump had paid for”, now seems similarly off-beam.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/sep/19/rupert-murdoch-dominion-suit-trump-fox-michael-wolff-book

Alternate non-walled link: https://news.yahoo.com/entertainment/rupert-murdoch-thought-787-5m-213234298.html