The last time there was an explosion like this (other than at Trinity in 1945) the Tesla cybertruck blew up in Las Vegas in front of the Trump Hotel. That was seen as symbolic at the time but little did anybody know just how symbolic of the second Trump administration as a whole it would be. As you have heard, Donald Trump has filed a $10 billion defamation lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch, Dow Jones, News Corp., two Wall Street Journal reporters and a partridge in a pear tree. The partridge was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time when Donald blew his stack over what he screamed was a FAKE NEWS! article, and decided to sue everybody. And blow it he did. For a couple of days now, but this is the latest.
Trump didn’t win any of those cases, he settled them. The Pulitizer Prize Board case is still in the discovery phase. That will end up getting settled but not with some big concession to Trump. Or, Trump can keep litigating. Trump also had a case against Bob Woodward dismissed on July 18. Trump claimed that he was owed money because of the content of Woodward’s book, Rage. The judge didn’t see quoting Trump as owing him money. Once again, Trump went down in flames as a litigious asshole.
. ABC News settled with Trump, not because they feared they would lose at trial but because they didn’t want to go to trial. They made a decision — a wrong one, it is felt generally — that it was better to stand down than to argue with Trump.
That was a wrong decision. It led to Trump’s intimidation of CBS, who also settled because they didn’t want the FCC to impede the Skydance/Paramount merger. Now the aforementioned Pulitizer Prize Board intends to stand up for journalism, they have said, and they won’t settle. That’s why the suit is ongoing.
Which leads us to the latest travesty of Trump suing Rupert Murdoch. That is going to blow up in his face, for a lot of reasons. (Start at 4:50 in, if the tape doesn’t begin there.)
Murdoch isn’t risking as much as Trump is. Trump’s reign of terror, both in politics and in the court, is going to come to an end in the foreseeable future. The Murdochs are in this for the long haul, as is MAGA, as is Newsmax, right-wing media, the evangelicals, you name it. Trump may believe he’s the linchpin for all of this, he’s not. That’s his egotistical fantasy.
The next question is will the Murdochs lift the blackout of Epstein news or not? Because if they begin to report the case at all, and how they begin to report it, will tell a lot.
Remember when Laura Ingraham spoke about “turning the page” on Trump a few years back? That is the sentiment of Rupert Murdoch. And now he may just let it all out, like Pandora’s Box.
I must say, I didn’t expect Murdoch to become the modern Katherine Graham, nor Fox News the equivalent of the Washington Post during Watergate, but it looks like fate has drawn us to that bizarre and improbable place. Maybe Fox News will turn on Trump. Stay tuned and we mean that literally.
