There are two new reports out this week that dig in on where Rupert Murdoch is leaning ahead of the 2024 Republican primary, as he creates distance between his conservative media empire and Donald Trump, whose 2020 election lies have already cost Murdoch’s Fox News three-quarters of a billionaire dollars in just one defamation suit settlement. Murdoch reportedly is doing whatever he can to avoid being “stuck” with Trump again in 2024, privately expressing repeatedly over the last two years that he thinks Trump is unhealthy for the Republican Party, according to the New York Times.

Special Counsel Jack Smith subpoenaed the Arizona secretary of state’s office as recently as May for information related to the unsuccessful lawsuits brought by the Trump campaign and the Arizona Republican Party about supposed errors in the 2020 election. As you’ll recall, Arizona was a hotbed of conspiracy theories tied to the effort to overturn the election after President Biden flipped the longtime Republican stronghold state, leading to Trumpworld outrage, a phony and expensive state election “audit” and the lawsuits.

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate discuss the independent state legislature decision, an incriminating tape and House Freedom Caucus squabbling.

You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here (Note: recorded before today’s affirmative action ruling).

The oversaturation strategy continues.

Donald Trump is leaning in hard on the classics to deflect responsibility for the charges against him in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, and especially so in the wake of new, seemingly incriminating tapes of him admitting to aspects of the charges he currently faces. His latest remarks to Fox News are a pivot back to a vintage yet reliable genre of Trumpism, using “stable genius” energy and “fake news” schoolyard bullying to shrug off the fact that the audio recording CNN published this week features him admitting he shouldn’t have the classified documents he’s flinging around for all to see.