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The publication of documents detailing Donald Trump’s friendship with the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein have recast the president’s relationship with Rupert Murdoch. By Michael Winkler.
Trump and Murdoch’s relationship sours over Epstein files
According to reports, Donald Trump contained his birthday message within the outline of a naked woman. He drew two “small arcs” for breasts. The harried thatch of his signature was a stand-in for pubic hair.
The image was made for a leather-bound book produced by Ghislaine Maxwell, a convicted sex trafficker, for her long-time associate, the paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein. The occasion was his 50th birthday.
Trump’s message was written in the form of a Socratic dialogue, if Socrates had the intellect of a Love Island contestant.
Voice Over: There must be more to life than having everything.
Donald: Yes, there is, but I won’t tell you what it is.
Jeffrey: Nor will I, since I also know what it is.
Donald: We have certain things in common, Jeffrey.
Jeffrey: Yes, we do, come to think of it.
Donald: Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?
Jeffrey: As a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you.
Donald: A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret.
President Trump immediately denied authorship, calling the story in the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal “malicious” and “defamatory”. Within 24 hours he filed a US $10 billion libel suit in the Southern District of Florida, naming Rupert Murdoch, News Corp, Dow Jones, WSJ and two reporters.
Trump has previously used lawsuits to intimidate media outlets, suing the ABC, CBS and Meta.
Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said that as punishment for “fake and defamatory conduct” the White House would bar WSJ reporters from covering Trump’s trip to Scotland.
When AP journalists were similarly frozen out earlier this year, in retaliation for them continuing to use the name “Gulf of Mexico”, an appeals court ruled the president was allowed to limit AP’s access to the Oval Office.
Prior to the current administration, pool assignments were determined by the White House Correspondents’ Association, an independent body. “Government retaliation against news outlets based on the content of their reporting should concern all who value free speech and an independent media,” the association’s president, Weijia Jiang, said this week.
The WSJ story appears to have provoked Trump into permitting further disclosure of some Epstein content. The Department of Justice, via attorney-general Pam Bondi and the deputy attorney-general Todd Blanche, submitted a motion in a Manhattan federal court to unseal grand jury transcripts from the Epstein and Maxwell cases.
The move was intended to reinforce the United States president’s image as pro-transparency, but naysayers on both sides of politics objected that it is only “pertinent” parts of the grand jury transcripts being offered, not the entirety of the Epstein files.
Meanwhile, Trump’s awkward protest that he “never wrote a picture” was countered by a New York Times story showing he regularly donated drawings to charities in New York in the early 2000s. Deepening the confusion was an aside during a CNN interview on Tuesday, in which his former attorney, Michael Cohen, claimed Trump took credit for but did not draw the charity doodles.
If the defamation lawsuit proceeds, which is by no means certain, especially as public-figure defamation in the US has a high bar and in this case is being heard by Obama-appointed judge Darrin Gayles, it would include a discovery phase during which each party could seek evidence from the other, at which point the WSJ would request information from Trump about his connections to Epstein. It was prominent accuser Virginia Giuffre suing Maxwell for defamation in 2015 that precipitated a tranche of Epstein documents becoming public, after the Miami Herald won a legal case to have them unsealed. The libel suit means Murdoch and his associated entities are at risk of losing $10 billion, but the president risks losing credibility with his heartland, and potential damage at next year’s midterm elections.
The White House has tried to spin this as a “beltway issue” of no interest to most Americans, an argument undone by a CBS-YouGov poll conducted last week. Its question “Should DOJ release all information about Epstein case?” received an 83 per cent “Yes” response from Republican voters.
Steve Bannon, offering opinions to anyone who might listen, laid bare the predictable defensive strategy, claiming the WSJ story was the work of “the Deep State, with their media partners, led by Murdoch, that’s out to destroy Trump”.
For the WSJ, this is an opportunity to maintain or strengthen credibility with its readers and reinforce the importance of investigative journalism as a pillar of legacy media. As a major conservative outlet, it also signals distancing from the excesses of the second Trump presidency. A blatant act of independence could alienate the readership, or could be an attempt to inoculate the publication from future Trump criticism.
Allison Archer, of the University of Houston, has published research showing that Trump’s tweets attacking Fox News correlated with dips in the network’s ratings. “Trump increasingly tweeted negative posts about Fox News toward the latter half of his presidency,” she tells The Saturday Paper.
“This seems to have had downstream effects on Fox News’s viewership. As Trump escalates his criticism of The Wall Street Journal, including his recent lawsuit, this could turn his followers away from the newspaper, even though it is generally viewed as being more conservative-leaning.”
The ratings for Murdoch’s Fox News have been strong this year, with the largest cable audience. Nevertheless, Fox remains vigilant about the threat of further-right arriviste operations such as Newsmax and One America News Network, which have eroded its viewership, as well as the proliferation of MAGA-aligned podcasters.
One of these is Mike Benz, of Foundation for Freedom Online, who strafes his one million X followers with conspiracy theories about Epstein, as well as podcasting prolifically. This week, Benz pointed to potential fracture lines with Trump, saying the failure to release Epstein documents “puts the base and donor class ... at loggerheads”. He addressed Trump directly with this pertinent point: “You trained us to go after this issue.”
Thomas Volscho, associate professor of sociology at the College of Staten Island, has written extensively about the Epstein scandal. He tells The Saturday Paper that attachment to the Epstein story is a central tenet of belief for many in Trump’s base.
“Trump and his associates have used this conspiracy theory to maximum effect to rally voters,” he says.
“News Corp/Fox has been a significant supporter of Trump and MAGA [but] the WSJ editorial board has no fear of Trump suing them. A discovery process in the courts would cause Trump and others to produce documentation that demonstrates his close association with Epstein. That would be extremely harmful to his reputation. The authors of the WSJ piece have broken other Epstein stories involving Bill Gates, for example, and he has not sued them.”
Volscho makes the point that some MAGA followers are themselves survivors of sexual abuse who may be seeking catharsis through pursuing the Epstein files vendetta. “The politicisation of the case has turned it into a political device. I have heard from victims and survivors that the story recirculating can stimulate post-traumatic stressors. Pursuing justice is helpful, but if it has been turned into a political meme, it can be harmful.”
Volscho notes that Epstein tended to associate closely with representatives of whichever party was in power. “In the late 1980s, he gave to Republicans and Democrats, but by the 1990s and later he mostly gave to Democrats. Epstein’s main financial client, Leslie Wexner, was a Republican. His associations [were] on both sides of the political aisle.”
Murdoch’s half-century connection to Trump has undulated like the Rocky Mountains. For both men, the relationship has always been transactional. Trump and Fox have a common problem: the vast, murky shadow of the Epstein issue is splitting their constituencies. Trump is now exercising the art of the conceal, and it is not washing with those parts of the base wanting him to honour his pledge to expose the secret cabal of corrupt elites running their nation and the world.
Trump’s weariness bled through a post on Truth Social: “I have had more success in 6 months than perhaps any President in our Country’s history, and all these people want to talk about, with strong prodding by the Fake News and the success starved Dems, is the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax. Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats work, don’t even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success, because I don’t want their support anymore!”
Murdoch outlets promoted Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as the best Republican pick for the 2024 election, and internal documents revealed during the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit recorded Rupert Murdoch saying, “We want to make Trump a non person.”
This revelation must have shocked the Fox News audience. The WSJ decision will provoke some angst in the Fox back offices. Their commentators would be entitled to ask whether their riding instructions have changed. For the station as a whole, it raises questions of following and leading. Does Fox need to follow its audience, reflecting back the MAGA-base obsession with Epstein, or can it shape a narrative distinct from those ingrained prejudices without sacrificing audience share?
Arthur Jipson, an associate professor of sociology at Dayton University, is an expert on the rise of QAnon and MAGA. Jipson welcomes WSJ airing the latest allegations, as a small step towards accountability. “This isn’t just about salacious details or individual guilt,” Jipson says. “It’s about systemic protection, the selective use of transparency, and the way political actors exploit public outrage while rarely delivering real accountability.
“The public deserves to know why the full truth about a vast, international exploitation network has yet to be revealed, even when a central figure in that network [Maxwell] is alive, convicted and capable of testifying. Until that question is asked forcefully and repeatedly, the Epstein case remains less a closed chapter and more an open wound.
“The Journal’s decision suggests Murdoch sees Trump less as an indispensable ally and more as a controversial figure whose political utility is waning. It’s a warning shot: Murdoch’s empire may no longer protect Trump from uncomfortable truths.
“It could signal a broader media turn. The fact that a Murdoch-owned publication is willing to amplify this link suggests a shift in the protective media ecosystem that has often insulated Trump.
“If this story leads to more investigative coverage across mainstream and conservative outlets, it could escalate into a wider reckoning. Murdoch signals that his loyalty is conditional, and that his outlets remain capable of real journalism, not just partisan defence.”
Jipson senses that this story represents a significant shift in their power dynamic. “Trump’s control over the right-wing media narrative is no longer absolute, and Murdoch’s role as kingmaker is under renewed scrutiny,” he says. “Trump’s strategic advantage lies in turning the story into yet another episode in his longstanding war with the press, which energises supporters and reframes scrutiny as persecution.”
If Trump’s deep links to Epstein are foregrounded, however, and he loses credibility with the MAGA rank and file, Jipson believes rival figures within the far-right ecosystem, including media personalities, politicians and influential conspiracy theorists, will argue that Trump has been compromised, silenced or controlled.
“Figures like Tucker Carlson, R. F. Kennedy Jr, or even lesser-known so-called populists, could gain traction by accusing Trump of betrayal or failure, especially if they claim to be more committed to truth and accountability,” he says. “This could lead to splintering within the MAGA base, where once-unshakable loyalty begins to erode, not from the centre, but from the ideological fringe.”
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on July 26, 2025 as "Enigma machines".
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