‘If We Lose This Suit, It’s F*cking Bad’: 5 Wild Revelations From New Report on Fox News and Murdoch

Vanity Fair special correspondent Gabriel Sherman published a deep dive on Wednesday into all the latest drama surrounding Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch, 92, and Fox News, just ahead of the network’s landmark $1.6 billion defamation trial. Sherman, known as one of the best chroniclers of the Trump-era and modern American politics, offers a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the Murdoch family and the peril Fox faces in a remarkable piece chock-full of bombastic quotes and vivid color.

Below are 5 key episodes from Sherman’s reporting

How Tucker played into Murdoch ending his engagement

The article details at length Murdoch’s many health issues, his waning power within Fox News, his recent divorce from Jerry Hall, and the abrupt calling off of his engagement to Ann Lesley Smith – who he ended his marriage with Hall to be with.

Sherman describes Smith’s colorful past in great detail, noting after her first divorce to a railroad heir, “She was suicidal, then found Jesus in a coffee shop and became a street preacher in Marin County” before marrying country singer Chester Smith.

Sherman summarizes Smith’s worldview as a “mix of inspirational self-help talk with Christian nationalism and right-wing conspiracy theories.” He shared a post from her Facebook page to drive the point home, “The voting process may be so corrupted we may live in a de facto dictatorship with oligarchal [sic] control by the party in charge now.”

However, the most stunning detail in Murdoch’s short relationship with Smith is a quote from a source regarding why Murdoch decided to call the wedding off, despite giving her a $2.5 million 11-carat diamond engagement ring:

A little more than two weeks after rolling out news of their engagement, the pair abruptly called it off. One source close to Murdoch said he had become increasingly uncomfortable with Smith’s outspoken evangelical views. ‘She said Tucker Carlson is a messenger from God, and he said nope,’ the source said. A spokesperson for Murdoch declined to comment. (Smith did not respond to requests for comment on social media.) Still, the future of Murdoch’s hobbled empire depends on viewers who share Smith’s very outlook.

Murdoch’s relationship to Trump and election denial

In recent weeks, the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox News alleging defamation has revealed countless emails, text messages, and other documents divulging the privately held beliefs of Fox executives, hosts, and producers related to Trump and his roundly debunked allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 election. Murdoch’s communications on the topic have been among those revealed and showed him to be a voice of reason at the network, both condemning Trump for spreading the allegations and advocating for the network to stop spreading them.

Sherman reports on this dynamic and concludes, “I was also struck by how diminished Murdoch’s own influence was. After the election, Murdoch told Lachlan and Suzanne Scott that Fox hosts should say Biden won and move on, according to a source who spoke to Murdoch.”

“I told Rupert privately they are all there,” Scott [the CEO of Fox News] wrote in an email Sherman highlighted. “We need to be careful about using the shows and pissing off the viewers but they know how to navigate.”

Sherman then details a phone call between Murdoch and Trump, in which Murdoch is roundly shut down by the then-president for asking him to uphold the democratic process:

At one point, Murdoch even lobbied Trump to concede. “Rupert called Trump before Biden’s inauguration to tell him to accept defeat graciously and that he had left a good legacy and that this stolen election stuff would drag everyone down,” the source said. Trump refused. “Trump threatened to start his own channel and put Fox out of business,” the source said. Murdoch seemed trapped by the people he radicalized, like an aging despot hiding in his palace while the streets filled with insurrectionists.

Dominion lawsuit peril

Sherman’s article doesn’t center specifically on the Dominion lawsuit, but he does report on the remarkable threat it poses to Fox News, calling it “the worst crisis at the network I’ve seen” in more than a decade of reporting on Fox.

“Murdoch’s most damaging error, though, has been Fox News’s coverage of President Donald Trump’s 2020 defeat and its aftermath. The crisis has led to an existential threat,” Sherman writes of the lawsuit, which goes to trial in late April.

Sherman summarizes the various revelations that have come out in the course of Dominion’s court filings being made public and emphasizes the damage done to Fox News’s brand – at least in media and journalistic circles:

In their own words, Fox hosts have been exposed as propagandists. “If we lose this suit, it’s fucking bad,” a senior Fox staffer told me.

Could James Murdoch destroy Fox News?

In a thorough examination of what could happen to Fox News after Murdoch’s passing, Sherman details the real-life succession battle that even the writers of HBO’s hit show have had a hard time topping for actual drama.

Murdoch “long wanted one of his three children from his second wife, Anna—Elisabeth, 54, Lachlan, 51, and James, 50—to take over the company one day,” writes Sherman, setting up the background, adding:

Murdoch believed a Darwinian struggle would produce the most capable heir. “He pitted his kids against each other their entire lives. It’s sad,” a person close to the family said. Elisabeth was by many accounts the sharpest, but she is a woman, and Murdoch subscribed to old-fashioned primogeniture. She quit the family business in 2000 and launched her own phenomenally successful television production company.

Lachlan shared Murdoch’s right-wing politics and atavistic love for newsprint and their homeland, Australia. “Lachlan was the golden child,” the person close to the family said. But Murdoch worried that his easygoing son, who seemed happiest rock climbing, did not want the top job badly enough.

Sherman explains how in the end Murdoch managed to coax Lachlan Murdoch, now the CEO of Fox Corp, back from Australia in 2015 and James, with his more left-of-center politics, eventually exited as a top executive at the company.

Sherman reports, however, that given how the board that governs the company is comprised, James could be waiting in the wings to make a comeback:

Two people close to James told me he is biding his time until he and his sisters can wrest control from Lachlan after Rupert is gone. “James, Liz, and Prudence will join forces and take over the company,” a former Fox executive said.

Some think James would purge Fox News and transform the network into a center-right alternative to CNN. Others think James would opt to sell Fox News to a private equity firm just so he could be rid of a toxic asset. Inside the network, there’s a visceral fear of what a James-led future would mean. “James sees destroying Fox News as his mission in life,” a senior Fox staffer told me.

Sherman notes that whether or not Lachlan would fight for control is an open question, with sources telling him Lachlan may only be currently “running the company out of filial duty.”

“When his father is gone, he may prefer to live the good life in Sydney,” Sherman explains, but adds that other sources tell him Lachaln is “fully engaged in the job” and would not give it up so easily.

Ended marriage with an email

Finally, the last of the stunning revelations (of which there are many more in the article) is a wild personal anecdote about how Murdoch, then 91, told Jerry Hall he wanted a divorce:

Hall was waiting for Murdoch to meet her at their Oxfordshire estate last June when she checked her phone. “Jerry, sadly I’ve decided to call an end to our marriage,” Murdoch’s email began, according to a screenshot I read. “We have certainly had some good times, but I have much to do…My New York lawyer will be contacting yours immediately.” Hall told friends she was blindsided. “Rupert and I never fought,” she told people.

Murdoch’s marriage to Hall was his fourth and Sherman explains that Hall and Murdoch had hosted Smith at their California ranch while Smith was dating the ranch manager. Murdoch then made excuses to go visit the ranch to meet Smith while still married to Hall.

“She was devastated, mad, and humiliated,” a source told Sherman, who reported, “On the first day of Lent in February, Hall told friends she made an effigy of Murdoch, tied dental floss around its neck, and burned it on the grill.”

Sherman ends the whole sordid episode by noting that “When she settled into the Oxfordshire home she received in the divorce, she discovered surveillance cameras were still sending footage back to Fox headquarters. Mick Jagger (Hall’s famous ex) sent his security consultant to disconnect them.”

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