A new explosive report reveals that News Corporation’s Rupert Murdoch has launched an obsessive campaign to try to control former President Donald Trump by getting him to pick North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum as his vice presidential candidate—or at least not pick Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), who he has no influence over.
Murdoch, the story from NOTUS says, has been calling Trump multiple times a day personally and has also, as Breitbart News has previously reported, multiple times enlisted the help of his outlets the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal to push the agenda.
“Rupert Murdoch has launched a full-scale lobbying effort to get Donald Trump to pick North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum for vice president, sources told NOTUS,” NOTUS’s Reese Gorman wrote. “And if Trump won’t pick Burgum, these sources said, Murdoch apparently has one last request: At least don’t pick Sen. J.D. Vance. Sources told NOTUS Friday that Murdoch has been pushing for Burgum — and against Vance — for quite some time now, both over the phone and by dispatching surrogates to Trump in person. A source close to Trump told NOTUS that Murdoch has been regularly calling the former president — often multiple times a day — to urge him to choose Burgum. One Fox News communications consultant told NOTUS that Murdoch had also sent employees from the New York Post down to Mar-a-Lago to bash Vance and make the case for the North Dakota governor. And the source close to Trump told NOTUS something similar — that Murdoch had sent News Corp executives to meet with the former president to personally make the pitch for Burgum and against Vance.”
What’s more, the story from NOTUS also features an on-record quote from former Fox News primetime host Tucker Carlson speaking out against the Murdoch obsession with blocking Vance.
“A lot of supposedly conservative news outlets turn out to have zero interest in anything their readers and viewers care about. Instead, they’re focused on promoting pointless wars,” Carlson said. “That’s why they’re working so hard to destroy J.D. Vance before Trump can pick him. Let’s hope they don’t succeed.”
To see Carlson speak out so forcefully and aggressively against his former company is a massive development. There has been bad blood between them since he left last year, but much of it has simmered below the surface. Now, Carlson is putting his name on it and ripping the globalists who control Fox News to shreds publicly. Whether any of this has any impact on Trump–from either Murdoch or from the actual conservatives like Carlson–remains to be seen, but even the perception of allowing Murdoch a modicum of influence when he tried so ardently to stop Trump’s return to the White House would seem something Trump would be unlikely to do.
Throughout the explosive piece, Gorman quotes several people familiar with the matter who say that Murdoch’s efforts are designed to try to reassert his control over the Republican Party and take it back from Trump, while riding out Trump’s likely next term and then reverting back to the olden days of the GOP establishment.
“Rupert has always viewed Trump as subservient to him,” a Fox communications consultant said. “And it bothers him. He’s not looking forward to another four years where he’ll have to kiss Trump’s ass. They don’t want Trump on Fox, so they get Burgum on there and groom him for the next four years and make him president. That’s his way of ending Trumpism.”
A longtime Trump adviser is quoted later in the piece saying that Murdoch “wants to use the VP pick to control Trump and his second administration.”
But if Trump goes with Vance instead of Burgum or one of the other names being discussed, this Trump adviser told the outlet, “It will be a signal that Rupert Murdoch no longer controls the Republican Party and that this is now the party of Trump.”
It remains to be seen who Trump will pick as vice president and when an announcement might happen, but it’s likely coming very soon. On Monday, the Republican National Convention begins in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and delegates will begin the process that day of formally nominating Trump and his running mate to be the next president and vice president of the United States. As Breitbart News reported earlier on Friday, a lot of signs are pointing Vance’s way—and selecting Vance would be a historic selection given his service as a combat Marine veteran. If Vance is picked, he would be the first Marine veteran ever on a major party presidential ticket—and he would also be the first millennial on a major party ticket. Vance, who is 39-years-old, is the same age that former President Richard Nixon was when former President Dwight Eisenhower selected him to be his running mate in the mid 20th century.