News Corp executive chairman Rupert Murdoch is reportedly pessimistic about President Trump’s odds of winning his re-election.
According to a Vanity Fair report on Thursday, citing two sources, Murdoch recently told people that Trump will “crash and burn” in the November election.
“It’s a clear-eyed assessment, just based on just looking at the news,” one person who has spoken with Murdoch regarding the election told Vanity Fair.
News Corp declined when asked by TPM for comment. The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to TPM’s request for comment.
Vanity Fair’s report of the pessimism that Murdoch has over Trump’s re-election comes amid the President’s increasingly fraught relationship with Fox News. The media mogul’s family owns its parent company, Fox Corporation.
On Wednesday, the President railed against his on-again-off-again favorite news network for cutting away from a congressional hearing on police reform.
Incredible! @FoxNews just took Congressional Hearing off the air just prior to important witness statements. More like CNN!!! Fox is lost!!!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 10, 2020
Last month, Trump slammed Fox News for not doing enough to help his re-election, saying that the network has “garbage littered all over.” He accused some of the network’s hosts and contributors of repeating “the worst of Democrat speaking points.”
Vanity Fair’s report on Thursday also revealed that Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Ainsley Earhardt are apparently dating, though neither host has confirmed the relationship.
A Fox News spokesperson shared with TPM a statement from Hannity saying: “I do not discuss my personal life in public.”Earhardt said in a statement to TPM via the Fox spokesperson that she is “focused on raising my daughter and I am not dating anyone.”
“As anyone at FOX News will tell you, Sean is a wonderful person and whomever he chooses to date will be extremely fortunate,” Earhardt said.
Vanity Fair noted that Hannity and Earhardt’s loyalty to Trump has proven increasingly valuable as Trump fumes over Fox polls showing that he is losing to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
Last year, Vanity Fair reported that Hannity revealed to Trump that the Murdochs hate him and that Hannity was “the only one holding Fox together.”
However, it appeared that the President was on a different page earlier this year during a signing ceremony for a trade deal with China. Trump praised Murdoch for being “the greatest” before saying that “the only problem” with the Murdoch family’s $71.2 billion sale of the Fox film and TV studio to Disney last year was that he “sold it to a group that doesn’t like Trump as much.”
