'Bad for the brand': Fox News' Rupert Murdoch appears to be souring on Trump

Even though far-right media mogul Rupert Murdoch played a significant role in former President Donald Trump's rise to power, he may now be maneuvering to ensure his defeat in 2024.

That's according to a recent analysis in the New Republic by Paige Oamek, who wrote Tuesday that Murdoch's publications all appear to be taking an unusually adversarial tone regarding the 45th president of the United States. Citing the Daily Beast, Oamek wrote that both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post — both of which are part of Murdoch's empire — have run various unflattering articles, op-eds and editorials.

In one column, Wall Street Journal editor-at-large Gerard Baker opined that Trump was "looking like a loser again."

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"The Trump of the past few weeks has looked and sounded more or less exactly like the Trump of nine years ago. This is the problem," Baker wrote. "It is this Mr. Trump who lost the presidency in 2020. It is this Mr. Trump who lost the House in 2018 and the Senate in the Georgia runoff election in January 2021."

Oamek documented how both Trump and Murdoch have shown increasing levels of antipathy for the other since Fox News called Arizona for President Joe Biden in 2020 — a decision Murdoch personally signed off on. After the 93 year-old billionaire said Trump went too far in his lies about the 2020 election (which cost Fox News $787 million in a 2023 settlement with Dominion Voting Systems), the ex-president fired back on his Truth Social platform, calling him a "MAGA-hating globalist."

“Fox News and the Wall Street Journal fight me because Murdoch is a globalist,” Trump said in a video posted to his Truth Social account “And I am America First. It’s very simple, and it will always be that way, so get used to it.”

The ex-president also unleashed on Murdoch and Fox News in 2023 after former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) — who sits on Fox's board — attacked Trump. In that post, Trump suggested the conservative network was being run by "RINOs [Republicans in name only]."

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"Ryan is bad luck for Fox. He should either resign or be fired," Trump posted. "Too many incompetent RINOS at FoxNews!"

Apparently, Murdoch and Trump haven't personally been in contact with each other since the 2020 election, other than earlier this summer when he reportedly reached out encouraging the ex-president to pick North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum as his 2024 running mate. Trump instead chose Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), who has since been regarded as an albatross around the neck of Trump's third bid for the White House.

"Perhaps the businessman saw what is now becoming clear about J.D. Vance: He’s bad for the brand," Oamek wrote.

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Click here to read Oamek's analysis at the New Republic.