It’s not just tech moguls that can get face time with Donald Trump in the White House.
Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, made his way to the Oval Office on Monday.
It’s a notable show of influence by a legacy media executive at a time when it seems like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and OpenAI’s Sam Altman have been pointedly showing off their access to the new administration.
Murdoch, who formally stepped back as the chairman of Fox Corp. and News Corp. in 2023 but who still wields outsized influence, watched as Trump signed a series of executive orders and parried with press about the particulars (like, for instance, a new sovereign U.S. wealth fund that could be set up and could be in the running to buy TikTok).
Asked about the presence of the 93-year-old media mogul and what he’d discuss with him, Trump demurred, sort of.
“Just respect, I have great respect for Rupert Murdoch. I disagree with him a lot of times with The Wall Street Journal but it’s all right. We’ve disagreed before. And I’m sure they didn’t have any idea what they were talking about,” Trump told reporters.
Presumably, the president was referencing a piece by The Wall Street Journal editorial board, the opinion section that ultimately reports to ownership, titled “The Dumbest Trade War in History,” about Trump’s tariffs battle with Canada and Mexico.
