Rupert Murdoch privately told Trump that he had lost -- and made a similar call to McConnell: report

As President Trump's early lead on Election Day began to dwindle, he slowly began to realize that he could no longer rely on the support of Rupert Murdoch's media empire, inews' David Parsley wrote this Friday.

According to Parsley, Murdoch spoke to Trump earlier this week and told him he was set to lose the election, but Trump was having none of it.

"Privately, Mr Murdoch – formerly a friend and supporter of the President – is dismayed by Mr Trump’s inappropriate conduct since the polls closed," Parsley writes. "The 89-year-old’s backing for the President has been scaled back substantially in recent months as concerns grew about Mr Trump’s erratic performance and handling of Covid-19."

This Wednesday, Murdoch reportedly called Mitch McConnell and asked him and his GOP colleagues not to bolster Trump's conspiracy theories about election fraud. McConnell apparently agreed, as evidenced by his Thursday morning comments where he said, “Claiming you’ve won the election is different from finishing the counting.”

"Other senior Republicans began to publicly question Mr Trump’s behaviour in the aftermath of the vote," Parsley writes. "Such phone calls from Mr Murdoch and his team may help to explain why the President has struggled to find many prominent Republicans to publicly endorse his wild claims – alongside the lack of any evidence of fraud, of course."

Read the full report over at inews.