Today’s great electoral skill is the ability to harvest resentment. The psychology is simple. Identify with a large demographic that feels looked down on. Fuse your anxieties with theirs. Always be entertaining. Above all, treat voters as a delivery mechanism for your ends: power, status and more money. Policies are for wonks. Celebrity is for winners. Those who find a way to tap mass insecurity have struck political gold.
It has also done wonders for the media business. Donald Trump learnt many of these skills from Roy Cohn — the notorious New York lawyer who taught him that shame was an affliction of the weak. If you lacked squeamishness, the world was your oyster. Fortune favoured the brazen. It was Cohn who introduced the US president to Rupert Murdoch in 1976 after he bought the New York Post. Mr Trump’s antics helped sell newspapers, which, in turn, gave him the celebrity he craved. Their relationship changed the west’s democratic course. But it was Mr Murdoch who made it possible.
Think of it as bringing a West End hit to Broadway. Mr Murdoch produced a New York version of what he had already worked in Australia and Britain — that mix of prurience and hard politics; popular fare and oligarchic control. Fox News is its apotheosis. Long before Mr Trump came of age, Mr Murdoch was seeding the ground for his kind of politics. Both were born into wealth — Mr Murdoch inherited an Australian newspaper; Mr Trump a New York property portfolio. Each resented those who were still more privileged. Such angst is unquenchable. It has become the reigning id of our time.
Their like-mindedness should not be mistaken for an ideology — unless the yen for power is one. In Britain, Mr Murdoch has supported Conservative and Labour. At one point he considered supporting Hillary Clinton. Then he shifted to Jeb Bush. Finally he swung behind Mr Trump, who has a history of giving money to anyone with influence. That is in spite of referring to Mr Trump as a “f***ing idiot”, according to Michael Wolff, author of Fire and Fury. Many who work for Mr Trump talk about him in similar terms. John Kelly, the White House chief of staff, reportedly often calls him an “idiot” (though he has denied the claims). His days are thought to be numbered. Mr Murdoch, on the other hand, plays a soothing role from outside.
Prime ministers have danced to Mr Murdoch’s tune. But Mr Trump is the first US president on whom he has personal influence. They talk weekly — and sometimes daily. Mr Trump takes his cue from Fox & Friends, the morning show that plays the same role in Mr Trump’s day as the presidential intelligence briefing did for his predecessors. Sometimes Mr Trump phones the show live. Thirty minutes into his latest call, one of the hosts had to cut him off. He was starting to incriminate himself. “We could talk to you all day but it looks like you have a million things to do,” the journalist told the president, which shows there is a first time for everything.
Here is another. When 21st Century Fox said it was selling $52bn worth of entertainment assets to Disney last December, Mr Trump called to congratulate Mr Murdoch. He also wanted to confirm Mr Murdoch would retain Fox News, according to Vanity Fair. The Department of Justice is not examining the deal’s impact on competition. In contrast, it is suing to block AT&T’s $84bn merger with Time Warner — the parent company of CNN, a cable channel that Mr Trump would never call. Economics would imply the reverse: AT&T and Time Warner operate in different sectors. Disney is already a big entertainment brand.
What is the future of the 42-year-old Murdoch-Trump relationship? Shortly after the Disney announcement, Mr Murdoch suffered a back injury in a sailing accident and was forced to work from home. But by early April, he was well enough to host Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince — and Mr Trump’s close ally — at his Los Angeles estate.
Last week, Mr Murdoch attended Mr Trump’s state dinner for Emmanuel Macron. It was a special moment. The 87-year-old media owner and his fourth wife, Jerry Hall, a former supermodel, were hosted by the 71-year-old president and his third wife, Melania, a former model. The media mogul and the property tycoon toasted the French president in the White House. It is the kind of fable we read about in Mr Murdoch’s tabloids. Neither could use his story as a motivation for others. That would miss the point. They are too busy reaping the fruits of resentment.
Letter in response to this column:
Potent and populist bigotry has deep roots / From Toby Zanin, Toronto, ON, Canada
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