Lachlan Murdoch “woke up great”
In his announcement Thursday that he would step down as chairman of News Corp. and Fox Corp. steps down and hands over the reins to Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch assured staff that his eldest son was “absolutely committed to the cause”.
According to Fox News’ far-right media rivals, the obvious cause is wokeness.
Following the 92-year-old media mogul’s decision to fade into the background, mainstream and liberal media outlets have pondered how much the younger Murdoch will continue his father’s legacy of peddling outrage porn. ComplaintAnd illusion for profit. “I fear that Fox will only get worse under son Lachlan and that this is a way to consolidate his power before his father’s death,” said journalism professor Jeff Jarvis written down.
However, MAGA media has invented a completely different narrative and alternate reality. Although it is largely accepted that Lachlan’s politics are like this further right Conservative media personalities who have portrayed Fox News as aggressively anti-Trump in recent years have used the Murdoch scion’s rise to raise alarm bells.
Newsmax, the Trumpy cable channel whose ratings have risen since Fox News fired primetime star Tucker Carlson, has devoted over a dozen segments to the Fox founder’s retirement. Throughout its coverage, the right-wing network, whose programming is filled with Fox News affiliates, has repeatedly suggested that the move could lead the conservative cable giant to drift even further to the left.
During a panel discussion Thursday afternoon, embattled conservative activist Matt Schlapp — who was effectively banned from Fox News networks over substantive allegations — railed that Fox has become a “less hospitable place” for Trump supporters in recent years.
“I was on Fox practically every day for years,” said the head of the American Conservative Union. “And then something happened in the country: the BLM riots happened, the virus happened, and then this crazy presidential election happened with all this voter fraud.” And Fox seemed to be at war with its viewers and people who have opinions and voices like me to want to lead.”
As for Lachlan, Schlapp wondered whether the new chairman would “recapture the spirit of Fox’s early years” or whether he would “continue on the ‘woke’ path,” which included Carlson’s ouster and the “abolition of conservative voices.” himself.
Later that evening, former Fox News host Eric Bolling, on his primetime Newsmax show, brought on Beth Ailes, the widow of disgraced Fox News boss Roger Ailes, to discuss the change at the top of Fox to speak. Bolling, who worked at Fox for 12 years before leaving amid allegations of sexual misconduct, was angry that the Murdoch children would turn Fox into a liberal bastion.
“You and I, we know Lachlan. We know James Murdoch with the two sons – the two sons who wanted control of Fox News. Lachlan got it. Both have a liberal bias, don’t they? Bolling asked Ailes. “I know James is a little bit more, and James’ wife actually worked for the Clinton Foundation for a while, but they’re both climate alarmists and they’re both into a lot of things that we would call – I would call pro-left and perhaps more woke than what we are used to from the conservative media that Roger built.”
Ailes, a outspoken critic the Murdochs calling Lachlan a “tweedle dumbass,” she repeated previous criticism about the family’s Australian heritage and how that proves they don’t “get” America.
“Well, I think Lachlan revealed his true feelings about President Trump, for example, when he said it was time for the country to move on,” Ailes said. “I personally find this offensive coming from someone who wasn’t born in this country, who doesn’t love this country as much as my late husband Roger did, or who doesn’t understand Americans, who, by the way, are very smart. And they know that the media and those in power have adjusted themselves to spewing out lies.”
During the broadcast of his right-wing extremist podcast on Friday War roomformer Trump strategist Steve Bannon discussed the power shift with his colleague Rudy Giuliani, a 2020 election denier. (Of course, it was Giuliani’s on-air spreading of Trump’s election lies that led to Fox News’ historic $787.5 million US settlement -Dollar with the election software company Dominion Voting Systems.)
“Really quickly about the sons and especially about Lachlan, because Lachlan is fully awake,” Bannon griped. “They say, Oh, he’s a conservative. This is all nonsense. And the woman woke up. He woke up. I mean, they woke up great. So you’re going to see a lot more of the Dana Perinos, you’re going to see a lot more of the Republican climate cult. Anything, sir.”
After Giuliani said he had not “given up” on Lachlan and added that “Lachlan will not be happy if this trend continues at Fox and our people continue to abandon Fox,” Bannon claimed that Fox News was losing its influence with conservatives have.
“This is what you should understand: No matter how big the network they have, all the money, all the talk show hosts, you know, they don’t have a stroke,” he proclaimed. “So they are big but ineffective. They are empty calories… They don’t bring the heat that is concentrated War room and other.”
Despite what Fox News’ right-wing critics say, Lachlan Murdoch is hardly considered “woke,” as The Daily Beast’s Lachlan Cartwright explained earlier this year.
“It is important to note that Lachlan’s politics are far more conservative than his father’s,” he noted. “He’s decidedly more conservative than his father, and so I think you might find some of that in some titles across the Empire.”
Cartwright also noted at the time that Lachlan was an advocate for Carlson, which became clear when the younger Murdoch waved off criticism of Carlson’s on-air embrace of the white supremacist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory.
“Lachlan is close to Tucker Carlson. Tucker and Lachlan speak often and Lachlan is a big supporter of Tucker. He is completely on board with many of the political issues presented on Fox News.”
