Here’s A Timeline Of Billionaire Network Chair’s Roller-Coaster Relationship With Trump

July 18, 2015Murdoch, who initially expressed doubts about Trump’s first presidential campaign, slammed Trump in a post on Twitter, writing, “When is Donald Trump going to stop embarrassing his friends, let alone the whole country?” while News Corp’s Wall Street Journal criticized Trump in an editorial, calling him “toast”—Trump retaliated on Twitter, saying the Journal “looks like a tabloid.”

April 14, 2016After years of scandalous reports on Trump’s personal life, The New York Post, which is also owned by News Corp, endorsed Trump in the New York GOP presidential primary, calling him a “rookie candidate” and a “potential superstar of vast promise,” though it did not endorse either Trump or Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the 2016 general election.

January 2017Murdoch maintained a direct line to Trump throughout the first year of Trump’s presidency, bypassing White House officials to offer advice to the president, including on ways to improve his floundering relationship with former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and by telling him to lay off the incessant tweeting, the New York Times reported.

December 14, 2017Trump, who made regular appearances on Fox throughout his presidency, congratulated Murdoch on an agreement to sell 20th Century Fox’ film and TV studios, as well as its stake in streaming giant Hulu, to Disney, calling the deal a “great thing” for jobs—despite analysts’ predictions of major layoffs as part of the deal—according to former White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

September 10, 2020In the lead-up to the 2020 election, Trump’s opinions on Murdoch and Fox News grew sour, after a Fox News segment in which Fox national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin confirmed reports that Trump had called fallen veterans “losers” when asked about a canceled trip to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in 2018, with Trump reportedly blaming Murdoch in private for the segment.

November 4, 2020Trump slammed Fox after it became the first major outlet to call Arizona, a swing state in the election, for President Joe Biden, telling “Fox & Friends” that the biggest difference between 2016 and 2020 was “Fox”—Trump reportedly pushed Arizona’s former GOP Gov. Doug Ducey to overturn the results of the election, while the Trump campaign filed a lawsuit to challenge the voting process in Arizona, though it admitted the suit would not change the result of the election.

February 17, 2023A court filing in Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Trump revealed several Fox News hosts and officials privately denied the Trump camp’s election fraud theory over Dominion’s voting machines, with Murdoch calling the claims “damaging” and “really crazy stuff” that should be taken with “a large grain of salt,” arguing that it was “really bad” for Rudy Giuliani, who peddled the claims, to be giving advice to Trump.

February 27, 2023Murdoch admitted in his deposition—which took place in January but had not been released until February—that some Fox News hosts who had endorsed Trump’s election theories did not personally believe they were true and that he wished the network had been “stronger in denouncing” those theories, writing in a letter to Fox Corp. board member and former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) that the Capitol riot should serve as a “wake-up call” to Fox host Sean Hannity, who Murdoch said had “been privately disgusted by Trump for weeks, but was scared to lose viewers.”

March 1, 2023Trump continued his onslaught against Murdoch on his social media platform, Truth Social, writing that if Murdoch did not believe the election was “Rigged & Stolen, then he & his group of MAGA Hating Globalist RINOs should get out of the News Business as soon as possible,” while accusing Murdoch of “aiding & abetting the DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA,” following Murdoch’s deposition, and as congressional Democrats wrote a letter to Murdoch, demanding he and other Fox executives keep the network’s on-air personalities from spreading baseless theories about the 2020 election.

April 18, 2023Dominion settled its lawsuit against the network, receiving $787.5 million from Fox less than two weeks after a judge in Delaware ruled that Murdoch and his son Lachlan Murdoch can be forced to testify in a trial.

August 30, 2023Trump accused Murdoch of sabotaging his 2020 campaign through negative coverage on Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, calling Murdoch a “globalist” while defending himself as a proponent of “America First” in a video on Truth Social.

September 20, 2023In his book, “The Fall: The End of Fox News and the Murdoch Dynasty,” author Michael Wolff wrote that Murdoch’s hatred toward Trump has strengthened to a “frothing-at-the-mouth” level, claiming Murdoch wishes Trump was dead.