President Donald Trumps inner circle is issuing a pointed warning to News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch after his media conglomerate unleashed a coordinated barrage against Vice President JD Vance in the wake of last weeks bruising Republican midterm defeats.
According to Breitbart, senior Trump allies inside the administration and across the broader movement have taken sharp notice that Fox News, the New York Post, and the Wall Street Journalthree of Murdochs flagship outletshave embarked on what they view as a sustained smear operation, simultaneously championing the war in Iran despite its obvious political fallout for Republicans and targeting Vance or anyone else who dares to question that war.
These media broadsides followed Vances blunt assessment that the war in Iran was the central factor behind the GOPs historic midterm setbacks, a critique that cut directly against the hawkish consensus in much of the establishment press. These attacks, Trump allies argue, are not isolated editorials but part of a broader effort by Murdoch-aligned outlets to punish dissent from the foreign-policy line favored by neoconservatives and globalists.
Many in the corporate media, particularly within Murdochs stable but by no means limited to it, have seized on Vances comments as an opportunity to drive a wedge between the President and his Vice President. But the President himself, in his 60 Minutes interview on Sunday night, not only backed up Vance but went even further than Vance did in his comments about Israel when it comes to American public sentiment.
With Trump refusing to abandon his running mate, the ongoing attempts by Murdochs properties to manufacture a TrumpVance split appear increasingly puzzling on the surface. For seasoned Trump-world operatives, however, the strategy makes sense only if the real objective is to kneecap Vance ahead of a potential 2028 presidential bid and to clear the way for a more globalist-friendly Republican nominee who will embrace open borders, surrender U.S. leverage in trade to multinational interests, and revive the interventionist foreign policy that conservative voters have repeatedly rejected.
That possibility has not gone unnoticed among those closest to the President, who warn that while Murdochs gambit is unlikely to succeed, it still poses a serious threat to the populist realignment reshaping the GOP. One senior administration official, speaking to Breitbart News, singled out Fox News hosts Mark Levin and Brian Kilmeade, along with Washington Post columnist and frequent Fox guest Marc Thiessenwho has spent the year urging dramatic escalation against Iran while downplaying the political blowbackfor their role in cheerleading the war.
How many different Fox News talking heads are responsible for talking the President into this mess in the first place? a senior Trump administration official told Breitbart News. Mark Levin, Brian Kilmeade, Marc Thiessen, the list goes on. These morons all advocated, relentlessly for this shit show. Theyve all lost whatever credibility they once had in the White House.
A source familiar with internal discussions told Breitbart News that Murdoch himself has, since last Tuesday, been personally phoning major Republican donors and party strategists to insist that Trumps political moment has passed and that the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement is finished. Rupert Murdoch plans to use the midterm elections to end President Trumps political career, take down Vice President Vance, and wipe out the entire MAGA movement, a Trump world operative told Breitbart News. And hes going to use Fox News to do it.
This is not the first time Murdochs media empire has attempted to steer the Republican Party away from its populist base and back toward a more compliant, establishment-friendly posture. In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, Fox News personalities repeatedly tried to undermine Trump and boost his primary rivals, only to watch GOP voters reject the donor-class favorites and hand Trump a decisive victory.
That pattern repeated itself in the 2024 cycle, when Fox News aggressively promoted Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as the preferred alternative to Trump, again attempting to block the populist frontrunner from reclaiming the White House. Murdochs other outlets, the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal, joined in that effort with similarly slanted coverage, and once again they failed to move the Republican base away from Trump.
When it became clear that Trump would secure the GOP nomination for a third consecutive presidential contest in 2024, Murdochs media network shifted to a new objective: pressuring Trump to choose anyone but then-Sen. Vance as his running mate. That effort also collapsed, as Trump selected Vance, and the ticket went on to rout thenVice President Kamala Harris, sweeping all seven swing states and returning to the White House in a landslide that repudiated both the Democratic agenda and the consultant-class vision for the GOP.
Following that victory, a fragile dtente emerged between Trump world and Murdochs outlets, with both sides appearing to set aside past grievances in the interest of defeating the left and governing. That uneasy peace, however, is now under severe strain as Murdochs properties respond to the midterm setbacks by reviving their old campaign against the populist-nationalist wing of the party, particularly its most prominent standard-bearers in Trump and Vance.
A veteran GOP operative from the 2024 Trump campaign told Breitbart News that this pattern is now familiar: whenever a Republican primary or major intra-party fight begins, Murdochs media machine lines up against the candidates most aligned with grassroots conservatives and in favor of those most palatable to the donor class. This operative pointed to the 2024 primary as a textbook example, invoking the derisive nickname Meatball that Trump allies used for DeSantis to underscore how out of touch Murdochs preferences were with the base.
Every time a Republican primary beings, you can count on Rupert Murdoch to put his finger on the scale for the worst candidate imaginable, this 2024 Trump campaign veteran told Breitbart News. He did the same thing when he tried to anoint Meatball in 2024 and box President Trump out from returning to the White House. This is that exact same show all over again.
For conservatives who believe the GOP should answer to voters rather than media moguls, the latest clash with Murdochs empire is more than a personality dispute; it is a test of whether the party will remain a vehicle for America First priorities or revert to the pre-Trump status quo. With Trump reaffirming his support for Vance and the MAGA base still deeply skeptical of foreign entanglements and globalist economics, Murdochs renewed offensive risks further alienating the very voters his outlets claim to serve, while once again exposing the widening gulf between conservative media elites and the movement they seek to control.
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