Books

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      The Successor review: life of Lachlan Murdoch pulls punches all too often

      by

      The Successor review: life of Lachlan Murdoch pulls punches all too oftenReaders of Paddy Manning’s book should keep in mind the words of Media Matters: Fox News is ‘an unchained pro-Trump propaganda outlet that promotes white nationalism’ The Murdochs are in many ways the most important media story of the last 50 years. On three continents their shoddy journalism, blind political ambition, outright racism and unlimited greed have done more damage to democracy than the actions of all their rivals put together.From George Floyd to Hunter Biden: Lachlan Murdoch, Fox News and the year that tested AmericaRead moreThe family’s internal competitions and political alliances are the subjects of dozens of books and documentaries, as well as the inspiration for Succession, the HBO hit now filming its fourth season.The Australian journalist Paddy Manning’s new book focuses on Lachlan Murdoch, the family’s current leader who will be fully in charge if his 91-year old father, Rupert, ever completely retires.This 359-page volume is a gigantic clip shop, giving us the greatest hits of everyone from Roger Ailes’s biographer, Gabe Sherman, to the Vanity Fair media writer Sarah Ellison and the investigative reporter Nick Davies, who broke so many of the details of the Murdoch newspapers’ illegal hacking of voicemails in the pages of this paper.The author’s main problem is that he has no judgment about what’s important to include and what ought to be left out. As a result he gives us equally dense accounts of Lachlan Murdoch’s early, disastrous media investments, the family’s efforts to create a new rugby competition in Australia and the sexual harassment scandal that finally ended the career of Ailes at Fox News.Manning also has no idea about which parts of this story are most important. An early section describes Rupert Murdoch’s brush with insolvency after he over-extended himself in the 1980s. But Manning never mentions the main reason: Murdoch’s vast overpayment of $3bn for Walter Annenberg’s TV Guide and his other Triangle properties in 1988, a purchase which turned out to be about as sensible as Elon Musk’s $44bn purchase of Twitter. Annenberg said he called Warren Buffet for advice about whether to take Murdoch’s bid, and Buffet replied: “Run to the bank!”None of the details of the TV Guide deal appear in these pages. Serious students of the Murdoch saga won’t learn anything new. But there are plenty of eye-popping numbers to remind most of us that the rich are not at all like you and me.The Successor opens with Lachlan relaxing with his wife on a new $30m yacht – a present for Sarah’s 50th birthday – which turns out to be a placeholder for a $175m yacht under construction in a Dutch shipyard. The couple paid “a stunning $37m for a boatshed and jetty at Point Piper, a few minutes’ drive form their $100m Bellevue Hill Mansion”.In 2007, the Murdoch family trust filed notice that each of Rupert Murdoch’s six children was getting $100m of News Corp stock, plus $50m in cash. Which sounds like a lot until you find out that after Disney paid $71bn for various Fox assets, each Murdoch child received “roughly $2bn” in Disney stock.Manning’s inability to make sensible judgments about any of this is suggested by his decision to quote the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren’s spot-on description of Fox News as a “hate-for-profit racket” – and then offer, in his very next sentence, his judgment that Lachlan was “a laid-back Australian and all-round smooth operator: spectacularly rich, impeccably mannered, handsome, open minded, adventurous, savvy, fun”.Similarly, after describing a Sydney mansion bought for $23m in 2009 and renovated for $11.7m, with room for two custom-built Porsche Panamera sedans at $300,000 each, just a few pages later Manning credulously quotes the Murdoch lackey Col Allan on Lachlan’s “deep appreciation of that part of America that’s ignored by the coastal liberal elites. I think it is true that Australia and its egalitarianism has had a profound and very positive effect on Lachlan’s nature and his cultural views”.Egalitarianism?The cost of Rupert Murdoch’s naked nepotism included a $139m settlement News Corp paid in 2013 after the Massachusetts Laborers’ Pension & Annuity Funds alleged that his children on the News Corp board “should be liable for its refusal to investigate and to stop known misconduct at the company”. It was “the largest derivative settlement in the history of Delaware’s court of chancery”.The book veers beyond implausibility when it describes the relationship between Lachlan and Tucker Carlson, who has become one of the Murdochs’ biggest cash cows by pushing racism, xenophobia and wild conspiracy theories. According to Manning the two men, “close in age”, share “a kind of philosophical bent”.After far-right protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 shouted “Jews will not replace us”, Kathryn Hufschmid, married to Lachlan’s brother James, insisted they issue a statement declaring “standing up to Nazis is essential; there are no good Nazis”. According to the New York Times, Kathryn said to her husband: “If we’re not going to say something about fucking Nazis marching Virginia, when are we going to say something?” Lachlan never followed his brother’s lead.The pervasive power of Rupert Murdoch: an extract from Hack Attack by Nick DaviesRead moreCarlson refused to condemn the neo-Nazi protesters and did “a bizarre segment on slavery in which he listed good people who had owned slaves, including Plato, the Aztecs and Thomas Jefferson”.To his credit, Manning quotes the judgment of the activist group Media Matters, that Fox News had become “an unchained pro-Trump propaganda outlet that promotes white nationalism” just “as Lachlan Murdoch’s control over the network steadily increased … he is happy to profit from the forces he continues to unleash”.But then, incredibly, the author describes Lachlan as devoted to “a vibrant marketplace of ideas, serving to raise the standard of public debate”, which “must offer a diversity of news and opinion … His closest advisers say a belief in free speech, in all its diversity, is Lachlan’s ‘north star’”.Why would anyone trust an author who can’t distinguish between racism for profit and celebration of free speech?
      The Successor: The High-Stakes Life of Lachlan Murdoch is published in the US by Sutherland House Books
      TopicsBooksLachlan MurdochRupert MurdochJames MurdochNews CorporationMedia businessFox NewsreviewsReuse this content More

    • 38 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Christopher Ogden obituary

      by

      Christopher Ogden obituary My friend Chris Ogden, who has died aged 77 after a fall, was one of the most distinguished American journalists of his generation. He reported frontline politics for more than two decades from London, Moscow and Washington DC, and became an acclaimed biographer. He had all of the most important attributes for success in journalism: he was whip-smart, his prose was as elegant as his manners, and he had a charm that could open doors anywhere in the world.We met in 1985 under a palm tree outside the presidential palace in Cairo, where the then British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, was engaged in talks. Ogden had recently been appointed the London bureau chief of Time magazine, a post he held for the next four years and which would lead in 1990 to the publication of his authoritative biography, curated for an American readership, Maggie: An Intimate Portrait of a Woman in Power. The access he managed to secure as a foreign journalist to informative sources across Westminster and Whitehall was a considerable tribute to his professionalism.Chris was born in Providence, Rhode Island, the son of Michael J Ogden, the longtime editor-in-chief of the Providence Journal, and his wife, Agnes. He went to Portsmouth Abbey school, RI, and after graduating from Yale with a history degree in 1966 served as an army intelligence officer during the Vietnam war. He joined the international news agency UPI (United Press International) as a London correspondent in 1970, moving to report on the cold war from Moscow two years later.His long career at Time began in 1974. He reported for a year from Los Angeles, then spent five years in Washington, covering the White House and the state department, and travelling widely with successive secretaries of state. He returned to DC after four years as bureau chief in Chicago from 1981 and his posting to London, and resumed writing astute columns and commentary on US and international affairs.Ogden’s celebrated biography of Pamela Churchill Harriman, the British-born former wife of Randolph Churchill who was US ambassador to France from 1993 until her death in 1997, was published in 1994. The book was made into a TV film in 1998. Legacy, a biography of father and son publishers and philanthropists, Moses and Walter Annenberg, which followed in 1999, was the book of which Ogden was most proud.He was also a gifted photographer and his 1974 image of Alexander Solzhenitsyn for a Time magazine cover hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC.His first marriage to Deedy (Diana) May in 1967 ended in divorce in 2000. Later that year he met Linda Fuselier, a public relations executive, and they married in 2010. For the last four years they had been living on Kauai, a small island in the Hawaiian archipelago.Chris is survived by Linda, by his children, Michael and Margaret, from his first marriage, and by his grandson, Jack.TopicsTime magazineOther livesMagazinesBiography booksUS politicsobituariesReuse this content More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘A sacred space’: Sebastian Junger and Seth Moulton on Vets Town Hall

      by

      ‘A sacred space’: Sebastian Junger and Seth Moulton on Vets Town Hall The bestselling author wants to help Americans understand those in the military. On Veterans Day, the Democratic congressman hosted a hometown eventOn Friday, Veterans Day, the Democratic congressman Seth Moulton hosted a town hall in Marblehead, his home town in Massachusetts. He first staged such an event in 2015, working with Sebastian Junger, author of bestsellers including The Perfect Storm, War and Tribe, which considers how veterans might be better understood and helped after coming home from war.‘I almost died last summer’: Sebastian Junger on life, death and his new book FreedomRead moreOn the page, Junger considers how Indigenous peoples treated warriors who returned from “intimate and bloody warfare”. Before the Marblehead event, he said: “I’d read about the gourd dance, this process that some of the Southern Great Plains tribes had. I’m sure all of them had some variant on allowing for warriors to recount what they did.”What Moulton did is this. After graduating Harvard in 2001, he joined the US Marines. In the wars after 9/11, he completed four tours in Iraq, taking part in the invasion in 2003 and the Battle of Najaf the following year. Moulton did not buy George W Bush’s case for war. As he said in Marblehead, even in action he thought the invasion “probably shouldn’t have happened”. But he was determined to lead his troops through it.In 2014, he won a seat in the US House. Speaking before the event on Friday, he described how he had “read Sebastian’s book, and said, ‘This is an amazing idea. We should actually do this.’ So I reached out to him and said, ‘Hey, I just got elected to Congress. I’m a marines vet. And I want to start this tradition. So he and I started putting together what would have to happen.”The project grew. It now has a name, Vets Town Hall, a new organisational structure as a non-profit and established rules. Politics are left at the door. Any veteran can speak. There are no questions. Attendees simply listen.Junger reported from Bosnia during the Balkan wars and later made Restrepo, a searing documentary about American soldiers in Afghanistan, and its sequel, Korengal. His co-director, the British photojournalist Tim Hetherington, was killed in Syria in 2011. In his book War and elsewhere, Junger has described being shot at and surviving a roadside bomb. But as he says, when he and Moulton staged their first Vets Town Hall, he had no role to play but to listen.There was, Junger said, “this extraordinary moment where an old lady stood up and said that she fought in Vietnam as a man and came home and got a sex change. Marblehead – it’s one of the more conservative enclaves in Massachusetts. Certainly traditional. And I watched that sort of blow people’s hair back. It was great. It was quite extraordinary.”Marblehead counts itself the home of the US navy. On Friday, busts of François Joseph Paul de Grasse, admiral of the French fleet off Yorktown in the revolutionary war, and Charles Snellen, a gunner’s mate on the USS Monitor, the first civil war ironclad, looked over the town hall speakers.A Marine veteran described a moment in 1967 when he and a North Vietnamese soldier both decided not to fire, then a visit to Vietnam, years later, and a salute to his unknown foe.A former soldier described his service in Afghanistan and what happened on 15 August 2008, when 1Lt Donald Carwile and Pfc Paul Conlon Jr, of the 101st airborne division, were killed by a roadside bomb.A retired naval commander described the wrench of deployments far from his wife and children. Other speakers, men and women, described work on the home front, supporting veterans or advocating for them.Before the event, as Moulton spoke outside Abbot Hall, a man with a prosthetic leg made his way into the venue. He later rose to speak about his struggles since leaving the marines, an edge of anger in his voice.“I took care of myself,” he said, “because I’m a veteran.”In this “dire time of polarisation”, Junger said, Vets Town Hall might provide “kind of a sacred space. I’m an atheist, but I use the word sacred all the time. It’s a sacred space in the sense that ordinary life is suspended and here we are in this place, and we’re honoring something, and we’re healing something, we’re doing something together. And it doesn’t matter if you were for or against the war, or you’re Republican or Democrat, Black or white, rich or poor. None of that matters.”He added: “Anytime you are in a space where you have to be respectful, and you hear things that are anathema to your ideology, it forces you to reconsider. To conservative America, America is always right. The virtuous nation. And the veterans are the heroes in the conservative ideology, almost beyond reproach. And then here, you have a veteran who’s just in a rage about a war we fought. Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam. Whatever it is, that’s healthy for a conservative psyche, to have to navigate through that.Geoff Dyer on war reportageRead more“But likewise, I’m a liberal, but it’s very healthy for liberals to share space with a veteran who’s saying, ‘You know what, I’m not a victim of all this. Going off to war was the best thing that ever could have happened to me. I was a troubled young man, and it was exactly what I needed. And I chose it freely. It wasn’t because I needed money. This was an amazing thing for me, and I miss it a lot.’ That’s great for liberals to hear.”Moulton was less keen to discuss political divisions, saying he thought the town halls might instead help bridge a social chasm between the general public and the “very small percentage of Americans who have served”. He did say the “no politics” ground rule established seven years ago “feels like it’s even more important now, with how divisive politics has become, especially in the last five years”.When Moulton ran for Congress – six years before campaigning, briefly, for president – it took an investigative reporter to find out he had been decorated, in part for “fearlessly expos[ing] himself to enemy fire”.Speaking to the Boston Globe, Moulton described “a healthy disrespect among veterans who served on the frontlines for people who walk around telling war stories” and said he was “uncomfortable calling attention to his own awards out of respect to ‘many others who did heroic things and received no awards at all’”.Through Vets Town Hall, he seeks to provide a forum. He said: “I have told stories at this town hall that I’ve never told before because I think this is the one place where it is appropriate. And I learned from Sebastian the value of telling some stories from war that helped explain both the experience overseas and how it influences our lives back home. And that’s what we really need to share with non-veterans, to help bridge that divide.”Junger described a story Moulton has told. It is about Najaf, where, in a hellish fight in a cemetery, Marines faced the Mahdi army, a militia loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr, a powerful Shia cleric.“He told a story about taking a break, because he’d been up for 48 hours straight. And it was a hot day. And he personally was just really starting to get wobbly. And they took a five-minute break. And because they stopped, the 19-year-old sitting next to him got a bullet in the forehead. And that’s the ghost he lives with.“You know, that’s combat. These random things. ‘If we hadn’t stopped’ or ‘If we had stopped’, or ‘If I hadn’t tied my shoe …’ If you’re a lieutenant or a captain or whatever, you take on responsibility for all the random shit that happens. It’s all your fucking fault. It’s not, of course, but psychologically that’s what it feels like. And it’s really, really hard.“Hearing Seth say that story? I was choking back tears. Everyone was choking back tears. It was absolutely brutal. You might ask him, if he doesn’t bring it up.”In Marblehead, Moulton did not bring up Najaf. Instead, he described a moment outside Baghdad, “dug into the mud” and freezing cold, when intelligence indicated that he and his marines were about to meet a column of Iraqi tanks without protection from their own.Tribe by Sebastian Junger review – why we need the solidarity felt during wartimeRead more“I remember thinking to myself, ‘What the hell am I doing here? I’m about to die, in the mud, in a town nobody’s ever heard of, in a country on the other side of the globe, in a war that probably shouldn’t have happened.’ I knew my buddies back home were probably on a good night in a Boston bar. ‘Why am I here?’ But that thought lasted for about 10 seconds, because I remembered why I signed up.“I didn’t want someone else to fight my place. I didn’t want to be in the Boston bar. And after that, I felt a little bit more warm. A little bit more comfortable. A little bit happier, perhaps, because I was exactly where I wanted to be.”TopicsUS militarySebastian JungerUS politicsUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesUS national securityfeaturesReuse this content More

    • 175 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Trump said Pence was ‘too honest’ over January 6 plot, says ex-vice-president in book

      by

      Trump said Pence was ‘too honest’ over January 6 plot, says ex-vice-president in bookPence also seems to blame anti-Trump Lincoln Project for angering former president with political ad, fueling Capitol attack Shortly before the January 6 insurrection, Donald Trump warned Mike Pence he was “too honest” when he hesitated to pursue legalistic attempts to stop certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory and would make Trump’s supporters “hate his guts”, the former vice-president writes in his memoir.The winner of the midterms is not yet clear – but the loser is Donald TrumpRead morePence also seems, bizarrely, to blame the anti-Trump Lincoln Project for enraging Trump with a political ad, thereby fueling the anger that incited the Capitol attack.Pence’s book, So Help Me God, will be published in the US on Tuesday. An extract was published by the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.Describing a conversation on New Year’s Day 2021, five days before supporters Trump told to “fight like hell” stormed the US Capitol, Pence writes that he and Trump discussed a lawsuit filed by Republicans, asking a judge to declare the vice-president had “‘exclusive authority and sole discretion to decide which electoral votes should count”.Pence says Trump told him that if the suit “gives you the power, why would you oppose it?”Pence says he “told him, as I had many times, that I didn’t believe I possessed that power under the constitution”.“You’re too honest,” Trump chided. “Hundreds of thousands are gonna hate your guts … People are gonna think you’re stupid.”In the end, hundreds of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, some chanting that Pence should be hanged. Nine deaths, including law enforcement suicides, have been linked to the riot.Pence’s book emerges as he seeks to establish himself as an alternative to Trump in the Republican presidential primary for 2024.Trump has indicated he will announce his third consecutive run soon, a plan possibly delayed by midterm elections on Tuesday in which the GOP did not succeed as expected and high-profile Trump-backed candidates failed to win their races.Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor and a much stronger rival to Trump in polling than Pence, provided a bright spot for Republicans with a landslide win that thrust his name back into the spotlight.In hearings held by the House January 6 committee, Pence has been painted as a hero for refusing to attempt to block Biden’s win, even after his life was placed in danger.In the extract published on Thursday, Pence said the Lincoln Project, a group of anti-Trump conservative operatives, angered Trump with an ad which said Pence would “put the final nail in the coffin” of his re-election campaign by certifying Biden’s win.Rick Wilson, a Lincoln Project co-founder, told the Guardian: “It’s no secret that the Lincoln Project has lived rent-free in Donald Trump’s head since 2019. Mike Pence telling this story is one more powerful testimony to just how our ‘audience of one’ strategy unfailingly disrupts Trump world.”On Twitter, Wilson linked to the ad.On the page, Pence describes events inside the Capitol as Trump’s supporters attacked. His account parallels reporting by news outlets and testimony presented by the House committee, to which Pence has not yet testified.The devoutly Christian Pence gives his version of a call with Trump on the morning of 6 January in which Trump has widely been described as calling his vice-president a “pussy”.Pence writes: “The president laid into me. ‘You’ll go down as a wimp,’ he said. ‘If you [don’t block certification], I made a big mistake five years ago!’”Pence describes his refusal, also widely reported, to get in a Secret Service vehicle, lest his protectors drive him away while the attack was in motion.He describes meetings with Trump after the riot, when Trump’s second impeachment was in train. On 11 January, Pence writes, Trump “looked tired, and his voice seemed fainter than usual”. He says Trump “responded with a hint of regret” when he was told Pence’s wife and daughter were also at the Capitol during the deadly attack.“He then asked, ‘Were you scared?’“‘No,’ I replied, ‘I was angry. You and I had our differences that day, Mr President, and seeing those people tearing up the Capitol infuriated me.’ He started to bring up the election, saying that people were angry, but his voice trailed off. I told him he had to set that aside, and he responded quietly, ‘Yeah.’”Pence claims the Capitol rioters, more than 900 of whom have now been charged, some with seditious conspiracy, were “not our movement”. He says Trump spoke with “genuine sadness in his voice” as he “mused: ‘What if we hadn’t had the rally? What if they hadn’t gone to the Capitol? … It’s too terrible to end like this.’”Pence may risk angering Trump by presenting something approaching presidential contrition. Trump claims to regret nothing about his actions on 6 January, denying wrongdoing in the face of multiple investigations, pursuing the lie that his defeat was the result of electoral fraud and presenting rioters as political prisoners.Pence also describes a meeting on 14 January, “the day after President Trump was impeached for the second time”.“I reminded him that I was praying for him,” Pence writes. Trump, he says, answered “Don’t bother” but added: “It’s been fun.”Pence said he told Trump they would “just have to disagree on two things” – January 6 and the fact Pence would “never stop praying” for Trump.Pence says Trump smiled and said: “That’s right – don’t ever change.”TopicsBooksMike PenceDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS Capitol attackUS elections 2020US politicsnewsReuse this content More

    • 188 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Only the Strong review: Tom Cotton as hawk … too chicken to take on Trump?

      by

      Only the Strong review: Tom Cotton as hawk … too chicken to take on Trump?The Arkansas senator’s book may be a calling card for 2024 but he must know he is highly unlikely to be the next GOP nominee Together, Tom Cotton and Mitch McConnell worked to undermine Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. On 6 January 2021, both Republican senators refused to take the path paved by their colleagues Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley and object to results in key states. Cotton, from Arkansas, branded those who stormed the Capitol “insurrectionists” – a label he had used before, for those who rioted in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd.Senator Tom Cotton brags about ignoring Trump impeachment evidenceRead moreUnlike Cruz, Cotton didn’t back down or simper before Tucker Carlson. In contrast to Hawley, he is southern but not neo-Confederate, more Andrew Jackson than John C Calhoun. Cotton’s new book, Only the Strong, name-checks Abraham Lincoln. He has previously opined on slavery, saying the founders viewed it as “the necessary evil upon which the union was built”, a remark that angered the left (most likely pleasing its author). More recently, Cotton condemned David DePape, the man who attacked Paul Pelosi. The US needs to “get tough on crime”, the senator said.Cotton’s consistency, however, is limited. He knows his party belongs to Trump. In his new book, he avoids mention of January 6.Cotton is happy of course to castigate Joe Biden on Ukraine, writing: “His weakness enticed Vladimir Putin to invade.” The senator is a decorated combat veteran who served in Afghanistan and Iraq (though not as an army ranger, as he has previously said). Against the backdrop of the botched US pullout from Afghanistan, his critique is comprehensible. Not surprisingly, though, Cotton is loth to criticize Trump, a Vietnam-era draft-dodger who in early 2022 lavished praise on his idol, Putin, and derided Nato as “not so smart”.“I don’t speak on behalf of other politicians,” the normally loquacious Cotton told ABC in response.There is also the fact Cotton received more than $40,000 in campaign donations from a commodities speculator who profiteered from Ukraine’s misfortune.The subtitle of Cotton’s book is “Reversing the Left’s Plot to Sabotage American Power”. He seeks to pin all that is wrong on the Democrats, their allies and their voters. He slams Bill Clinton and Barack Obama for their lack of military service – but again his gaze is selective. He omits George W Bush’s spotty time in the Texas air national guard, rather than go to Vietnam, and Trump’s “bone spurs” which kept him out of the same ghastly war.Practically speaking, Only the Strong is best viewed as an obligatory pre-presidential campaign book, penned to distinguish its author from the rest of the Republican field. Cotton pays lip service to Trump but his heart clearly belongs to Ronald Reagan, the last president to win in a landslide.Cotton approves of Reagan’s stance toward a Sandinista-run Nicaragua but is silent on Iran-Contra. He rightly praises Reagan’s arms treaty with the Soviets, but doubles down on his contention that Vietnam was a “noble cause”. Cotton has only scorn for Daniel Ellsberg, the source for the Pentagon Papers, which cast light on US handling of Vietnam. Cotton is unmoved by evidence the government was less than forthright.He avoids substantive criticism of the Iraq war. Bush should be faulted for failing to “dedicate enough troops during the early days”, Cotton writes, without elaboration. It’s a far cry from calling Bush a “stupid moron”, which Trump did in an interview with Bob Woodward of the Washington Post.Cotton would look foolish or worse if he tried. He is an unbowed war hawk. In 2013, he attended a campaign fundraiser hosted by Dan Senor, the Bush administration spokesman who once told reporters: “Well, off the record, Paris is burning. But on the record, security and stability are returning to Iraq.” Senor’s event netted more than $100,000. Donors included the late casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who memorably urged the US to bomb Iran.“You pick up your cellphone and you call somewhere in Nebraska and you say, ‘OK let it go,’” Adelson said in 2013. “And so, there’s an atomic weapon, goes over ballistic missiles, the middle of the desert, that doesn’t hurt a soul. Maybe a couple of rattlesnakes and scorpions, or whatever.”Predictably, Cotton goes full bore at Biden for, he claims, doing “next to nothing to protect America from our greatest threat, Communist China”. Biden’s efforts to restrict US companies and citizens from helping China make semiconductor chips seem to have escaped the senator’s notice.Likewise, Cotton supports arming Taiwan against China but fails to comment on Trump’s willingness to cut Taiwan loose. Trump once remarked that the island was “like two feet from China” and the US was “8,000 miles away”, chillingly adding that if the Chinese invade, “there isn’t a fucking thing we can do”.At a September rally, Trump contrasted Biden with Xi Jinping and Putin: “I’ve got to know a lot of the foreign leaders, and let me tell you, unlike our leader, they’re at the top of their game.”Pence blames Trump for events leading to January 6 in new memoirRead moreFrom Cotton? Nada. From the looks of things, he wishes to maintains his viability as a possible Republican nominee. At 45 he is decades younger than Trump and in far better condition than Cruz. He has plenty of time.But don’t expect Cotton to take on Trump in 2024, unless Trump is indicted. Cotton lacks Ron DeSantis’s war chest, and would probably get crushed. For what it’s worth, even DeSantis is suddenly reported to be suffering from cold feet. Beyond that, Sarah Sanders, once Trump’s press secretary, is a shoo-in to be the next governor of Arkansas. With her assistance, Trump would crush Cotton in his home state.On Friday, reports said Trump was set to announce his bid for re-election in a matter of days. Within the GOP, there shall be no god before Him, and Him does not include Cotton. His book’s shelf-life may be limited.
      Only the Strong: Reversing the Left’s Plot to Sabotage American Power is published in the US by Hachette
      TopicsBooksPolitics booksUS politicsUS elections 2024RepublicansUS SenateUS CongressreviewsReuse this content More

    • 200 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      From George Floyd to Hunter Biden: Lachlan Murdoch, Fox News and the year that tested America

      by

      From George Floyd to Hunter Biden: Lachlan Murdoch, Fox News and the year that tested America In an extract from his biography The Successor, Paddy Manning considers how Rupert Murdoch’s favored son dealt with the challenges of 2020, and what might come nextThe murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on 25 May 2020, captured on video, turned Black Lives Matter into the biggest protest movement in the history of the United States, with more than 15 million people turning out to demonstrations, some of them violent, in 550 towns and cities across the country.Murdoch’s succession: who wins from move to reunite Fox and News Corp?Read moreFox News had a history of antipathetic coverage of BLM, which took off after the police killing of an 18-year-old Black man, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. Former primetime host Megyn Kelly subverted the narrative, asserting that Brown’s reported last words, “Hands up, don’t shoot,” were a lie, and that Brown was the aggressor. Twenty-six-year-old Fox Nation host Tomi Lahren described Black Lives Matter as “the new KKK”. Fox commentators had also defended police and rejected claims of systemic racial injustice in America. Nevertheless, the public reaction to Floyd’s murder was on a completely different scale to earlier protests, and it took place amid swirling speculation that Donald Trump would declare martial law.On the Monday morning, Lachlan Murdoch tried to set a conciliatory tone in an internal statement, urging Fox employees to “come together in their grief, work to heal, and coalesce to address injustice and inequity in our country”. After the tragic death of George Floyd, Murdoch continued:.css-lf9l6c{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#866D50;}It is essential that we grieve with the Floyd family, closely listen to the voices of peaceful protest and fundamentally understand that Black Lives matter. The FOX culture embraces and fosters diversity and inclusion. Often we speak of the ‘FOX Family,’ and never has the need to depend on and care for that family been more important. We support our Black colleagues and the Black community, as we all unite to seek equality and understanding … This is an ongoing conversation, and no one has all the answers in this moment.Some of Fox’s highest-profile commentators seemed to miss Lachlan’s memo. That same night, Tucker Carlson bemoaned the protests. “The nation went up in flames this weekend,” he opined. “No one in charge stood up to save America. Our leaders dithered and they cowered, and they openly sided with the destroyers, and in many cases, they egged them on … The worst people in our society have taken control.” Laura Ingraham blamed Antifa and “other radical elements” and said the death of Floyd had nothing to do with the violence, which was “part of a coordinated effort to eventually overthrow the United States government”. Days later, Fox News had to apologize after an episode of Special Report with Bret Baier aired a chart showing how the stock market had rallied in the days immediately after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr in 1968, the bashing of Rodney King in 1991, and the more recent killings of Michael Brown and George Floyd. Fox acknowledged the chart was insensitive and Baier apologized for a “major screw-up”. There followed an internal phone hook-up with many of its Black staffers, led by Scott, to discuss the network’s racist and hostile rhetoric towards the BLM protests. The open forum was unprecedented, but Lachlan wasn’t there and it resolved little.As the protests dragged on, Carlson only grew more strident, attacking the president for failing to re-establish law and order, calling BLM a “terror organization” and Minneapolis “our Wuhan”. In early July, CNN discovered that Carlson’s chief writer, Blake Neff, had for years been using a pseudonym to post a stream of bigoted remarks denigrating African Americans, Asian Americans, and women on an online forum, AutoAdmit, that was a hotbed for racist, sexist and other offensive content. Fox accepted Neff’s resignation within hours of CNN’s inquiry and Suzanne Scott and Jay Wallace condemned his “horrific racist, misogynistic and homophobic behavior”, saying neither the show nor the network had known of the forum and there was zero tolerance for such behavior “at any time in any part of our workforce”.More mainstream advertisers abandoned Carlson and Lachlan personally approved the comments Tucker made about Neff’s resignation in his next show. Carlson refused management requests to pre-tape the comments and struck a defiant tone, suggesting he knew he had Lachlan’s full backing. Dissociating himself from Neff’s posts, Tucker added, “we should also point out to the ghouls beating their chests in triumph of the destruction of a young man that self-righteousness also has its cost … when we pose as blameless in order to hurt other people, we are committing the gravest sin of all, and we will be punished for it, there’s no question.” Tucker announced he was going on a week’s vacation, effective immediately, which he insisted was “long planned”. One staffer told the Daily Beast off the record that Fox News had “created a white supremacist cell inside the top cable network in America, the one that directly influences the president … this is rank racism excused by Murdoch.”It was all too much for James Murdoch, who had been negotiating an exit for some months, hoping to sever his connection to the family business. At the end of July, James sent a two-line letter of resignation to the board of News Corp, effective that day, with only the briefest explanation: “My resignation is due to disagreements over certain editorial content published by the Company’s news outlets and certain other strategic decisions.” In a bland joint statement, Rupert and Lachlan thanked James for his service and wished him well.James continued, of course, as beneficiary of a one-sixth share of the Murdoch Family Trust, which ultimately controlled both Fox and News Corp. In a sit-down interview with the New York Times a few months later, James told Maureen Dowd that he felt he could have little influence as a non-executive director, wanted a cleaner slate and “pulled the ripcord” because:.css-lf9l6c{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#866D50;}I reached the conclusion that you can venerate a contest of ideas, if you will, and we all do and that’s important. But it shouldn’t be in a way that hides agendas. A contest of ideas shouldn’t be used to legitimize disinformation. And I think it’s often taken advantage of. And I think at great news organizations, the mission really should be to introduce fact to disperse doubt – not to sow doubt, to obscure fact, if you will.It was a direct shot at Lachlan, whose mantra was to defend free speech, even that of commentators he did not agree with from time to time, and apparently regardless of whether the speaker was spreading disinformation.Dowd canvassed a scenario which was doubtless briefed by James and which could give Lachlan nightmares. Despite appearances, she wrote, the succession game may not truly be over: “Murdoch watchers across media say James is aligned with his sister Elisabeth and his half-sister, Prudence, even as he is estranged from his father and brother.”Alan Rusbridger: who broke the news?Read moreIt was true that there had been a thawing of the relationship between James and Elisabeth, which had come apart during the phone hacking crisis of 2011, when Murdoch titles were pitched into controversy in the UK. When James bought Tribeca Enterprises, which ran the famous New York Film Festival, Liz soon joined the board. The implied threat from the Dowd piece was clear: once their father was gone, when control of the empire passed to the four elder siblings, each with an equal vote on the Murdoch Family Trust, Lachlan could find himself getting rolled by James, Liz, and Prue, who were generally more liberal than Rupert.In a plausible scenario, after Rupert has died and his shares are dispersed among the four adult children, the three on the other side of Lachlan could choose to manifest control over all of the Murdoch businesses, and to do it in a way that enhances democracies around the world rather than undermines them. In this scenario, the role of Fox News has become so controversial inside the family that control of the trust is no longer just about profit and loss at the Murdoch properties. In one view that has currency among at least some of the Murdoch children, it is in the long-term interests for democracies around the world for there to be four shareholders in the family trust who are active owners in the business. Just such a scenario is freely canvassed by investors: a Wall Street analyst who has covered the Murdoch business for decades and is completely au fait with the breakdown in the relationship between the brothers, volunteers off the record that it would be “fair to assume Lachlan gets fired the day Rupert dies”.It is a formula for instability and intra-family feuds that must weigh on the minds of directors of both Fox and News Corporation as they contemplate the mortality of the 91-year-old founder, although they deny it. A source close to members of the Murdoch family questions the extent of succession planning by the boards of Fox or News Corporation and whether discussions among the directors can be genuinely independent, as corporate governance experts would like.“Rupert has total control over all the companies as long as he is alive,” the source says. “It’s an unrealistic expectation that the boards of those companies are going to use their voices to manifest independence. What is their succession plan? What if something happens to Lachlan? Do they put Viet in charge?”At the same time James announced his resignation from the News Corp board, he and Kathryn were ploughing millions into climate activism, the defeat of Trump, and other political causes. The couple had invested $100m worth of Disney shares into their foundation, Quadrivium, and through 2020 were heavy backers of mostly Democratic-leaning outfits, including $1.2m to the Biden Victory Fund and a handful of anti-Trump Republican organizations such as Defending Democracy Together, led by Bill Kristol. That was only some of the couple’s total political funding. A year later, CNBC obtained a Quadrivium tax return showing donations of $38m toward election organizations, including those dedicated to protecting voting rights.Lachlan’s personal political donations through the 2020 cycle were much smaller and were overwhelmingly directed towards the GOP, according to Federal Election Commission records. The politician he favored most was Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, an establishment Republican who made a calculated decision to become Trump’s “enabler-in-chief ” and was married to Trump’s transportation secretary, Taiwanese-born Elaine Chao, a former director of News Corp. Lachlan contributed $31,000 in four donations in March, including to the Bluegrass Committee for Kentucky Republicans. Ten days after the November election, Lachlan made a much bigger personal donation, of $1m, to the Senate Leadership Fund, which had one goal: protecting the Republican Senate majority. Lachlan did make one small donation on the Democrats’ side in the 2020 cycle, after he attended a fundraiser for Democratic candidate Pete Buttigieg, the gay ex-mayor of South Bend, Indiana, pledging $1,500 to his campaign. Realizing the potential for embarrassment, he asked for it back and was duly refunded.Fox’s profitability fell by more than two-thirds in the June quarter, which would later prove to be the low point of the pandemic, as sports leagues went dark and general ad revenue collapsed. Fox News was the only bright spot, accounting for 90% of operating profit, despite advertiser boycotts of Tucker Carlson Tonight, as the 2020 presidential election campaign intensified.Three weeks out from polling day, on 14 October, the New York Post broke a story that might have influenced the outcome of the 2020 election. It had obtained a trove of messages, documents, photos and videos “purportedly” recovered from a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden, son of the Democratic presidential candidate, which had been taken to a Delaware computer shop for repair in 2019 and never picked up. The computer shop owner was a Trump supporter and handed the water-damaged laptop to the FBI, but also sent a copy of the hard drive to Rudy Giuliani, who had long sought to tarnish Joe Biden with conflict-of-interest allegations concerning his son’s involvement with the Ukrainian oil and gas company Burisma. The Post story zeroed in on a “smoking gun” email sent to Hunter in 2015 by Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to Burisma. The email read: “Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together.”According to the Post, the email gave the lie to Joe Biden’s claim that he had “never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.” However, it was not clear whether Pozharskyi had in fact ever met with Biden, who as vice-president had handled the Ukraine portfolio for President Obama, and the Biden campaign explicitly denied it, after going back over his official schedule.However irresistible the story was to the Post and its warhorse editor Col Allan, the rest of the mainstream media was exceedingly wary. The Post would not provide a copy of the laptop or hard drive to allow other media to verify the contents. The timing was transparently intended to damage the Biden campaign and memories remained fresh of the FBI’s momentous decision to investigate Hillary Clinton in the final days of the 2016 election campaign, after emails stolen by Russian operatives were dumped online by WikiLeaks. Twitter and Facebook intervened dramatically to stop circulation of the Post story. Twitter even temporarily locked White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany’s account, as well as that of the Post itself. More than 50 intelligence experts signed an open letter stating that the story “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation”. The Times reported that at least two Post journalists had refused to put their byline on the laptop story, while the lead reporter, Emma-Jo Morris, had not had a previous byline with the paper. Furthermore, News Corp stablemate the Wall Street Journal had been offered much the same story before the Post but concluded the central claims could not be proved. The whole story failed to gain much traction beyond the Post, Fox News, and avowedly rightwing media like Breitbart.Trump seized classified documents – but for Republicans the story is Hunter Biden’s laptop | Lawrence DouglasRead morePost-election, Hunter Biden would reveal that he was under federal investigation for tax offenses and over the following year and a half, the industrial scale of his influence-peddling became clearer, including possible breaches of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the same legislation that Trump’s 2016 campaign manager, Paul Manafort, had pled guilty to violating. In mid-2021, the Post revealed that Joe Biden had indeed met Pozharskyi in 2015, and in early 2022, both the New York Times and the Washington Post reported that independent experts had examined the files which purported to be from Hunter Biden’s laptop and they appeared genuine. That did not prove Hunter Biden was guilty of anything, of course, only that the laptop was his. But for his part, Lachlan believed that an important news story about the Bidens had been deliberately suppressed by the tech companies and a liberal-leaning media, saying much later:.css-lf9l6c{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#866D50;}… had the laptop belonged to another candidate’s son, it would certainly have been the only story you would have heard in the final weeks of the election. But lies were concocted: ‘the laptop was hacked, or stolen;’ it was not. Or ‘it was Russian disinformation;’ it was not, and the story was completely suppressed. It was censored by EVERYONE.The scene was set for one of the most contentious presidential elections in American history.
      The Successor: The High-Stakes Life of Lachlan Murdoch will be published in the US by Sutherland House on 15 November
      TopicsBooksFox NewsLachlan MurdochRupert MurdochJames MurdochFoxNews CorporationfeaturesReuse this content More

    • 150 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      Pence blames Trump for events leading to January 6 in new memoir

      by

      Pence blames Trump for events leading to January 6 in new memoirFormer vice-president says meeting at which advisers led by Giuliani urged Trump to not accept election defeat was ‘a new low’ A post-election meeting at which advisers led by Rudy Giuliani attacked campaign lawyers and urged Donald Trump not to accept his election defeat was “a new low” for a president “well acquainted with rough-and-tumble debates”, Mike Pence writes in a forthcoming memoir.Of the meeting in November 2020, the former vice-president writes: “In the end, that day the president made the fateful decision to put Giuliani and [attorney] Sidney Powell in charge of the legal strategy … The seeds were being sown for a tragic day in January.”‘Lachlan gets fired the day Rupert dies’: Murdoch biography stokes succession rumorsRead moreBy openly blaming Trump for events leading to the January 6 insurrection, when a pro-Trump mob attacked the US Capitol in an attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory, Pence risks angering Republicans he must court as he considers the next nomination for president.His memoir, So Help Me God, will be published on 15 November. Axios published a short excerpt on Monday.Pence writes: “What began as a briefing that Thursday afternoon quickly turned into a contentious back-and-forth between the campaign lawyers and a growing group of outside attorneys led by Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, an attorney who had represented Gen Mike Flynn [Trump’s first national security adviser, fired for lying to the FBI].“After the campaign lawyers gave a sober and somewhat pessimistic report on the state of election challenges, the outside cast of characters went on the attack … Giuliani told the president over the speakerphone, ‘Your lawyers are not telling you the truth, Mr President.’“Even in an office well acquainted with rough-and-tumble debates, it was a new low …. [and] went downhill from there.”Trump’s culpability for the Capitol attack has been examined and presented by the House January 6 committee and is being investigated by the US justice department.The former president is in legal jeopardy on other fronts: election subversion, the unauthorized retention of White House papers after the end of his presidency, his business affairs and a defamation lawsuit from a writer who alleges he raped her.Trump denies wrongdoing and remains dominant in polls for 2024. He is reported to be seeking campaign hires while waiting until after the midterm elections next week to make a formal announcement.Pence’s presidential ambition is no secret but although the January 6 committee has presented him as a hero for refusing to cooperate with Trump’s election subversion, he has work to do if he is to persuade Republican voters he is the man to take on Biden.Polling gives Trump huge leads over his nearest challenger, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis. If Trump is removed from the equation, DeSantis enjoys healthy leads over figures including Pence, the Texas senator Ted Cruz and Donald Trump Jr.TopicsPolitics booksMike PenceDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Lachlan gets fired the day Rupert dies’: Murdoch biography stokes succession rumors

      by

      ‘Lachlan gets fired the day Rupert dies’: Murdoch biography stokes succession rumorsNew book by Australian reporter Paddy Manning hints at Succession-style feud with ramifications for US rightwing politics It’s long been thought that the succession plan for Lachlan Murdoch to take control of Fox Corporation and News Corp was set in stone for when his 91-year-old father, Rupert Murdoch dies.But a new book is stoking speculation that Murdoch’s oldest son might be ousted in a Succession-style feud with his family, in a move with potentially huge ramifications for Fox News, the TV network that dominates US rightwing politics, according to a new biography of the Anglo-Australian media heir.The author, Paddy Manning, writes: “A Wall Street analyst who has covered the Murdoch business for decades and is completely au fait with the breakdown in the relationship between the brothers [Lachlan and James Murdoch], volunteers off the record that it would be ‘fair to assume Lachlan gets fired the day Rupert dies’.”The Successor: The High-Stakes Life of Lachlan Murdoch will be published in the US on 15 November and is out in Australia now.Manning is an Australian journalist who has written for outlets including the Guardian. His previous books include biographies of Malcolm Turnbull, the former Australian prime minister, and Nathan Tinkler, a mining entrepreneur.The title of Manning’s biography of Lachlan Murdoch echoes that of the TV hit Succession, the HBO story of an ageing media tycoon, played by Brian Cox, and his family’s struggles to succeed him.Lachlan Murdoch, 51 and Rupert Murdoch’s oldest son, has led the family media businesses with his father since 2014.James Murdoch, 49, resigned from the board of News Corp in July 2020. He said then: “My resignation is due to disagreements over certain editorial content published by the company’s news outlets and certain other strategic decisions.”The younger Murdoch has since emerged as a backer of progressive and environmental concerns, in Manning’s words, “ploughing millions into the defeat of [Donald] Trump, climate activism, and other political causes”.But Lachlan Murdoch has remained in a position of near-unrivaled power in rightwing media and politics, overseeing US properties including the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal and Fox News, the TV network with a near-symbiotic relationship with Trump and the Republican party.Though Manning reports a potentially surprising $1,500 donation Lachlan Murdoch made in 2020 to Pete Buttigieg, then a Democratic presidential hopeful, now the Biden administration’s transportation secretary, he also reports that “realising the potential for embarrassment, [Murdoch] asked for it back and was duly refunded”.The Successor covers the older Murdoch son’s life from childhood through youthful business ventures including investment in Australian rugby league, to his departure from his father’s businesses in 2005 and return nearly a decade later.Lachlan Murdoch has become a champion of the rightward march of Fox News, which inspired his brother’s resignation from the News Corp board. As described by Manning, the older Murdoch son has for example remained supportive of Tucker Carlson, the primetime host and provocateur who regularly espouses far-right views.But all four grownup Murdoch children – Lachlan and James, their sister Elisabeth Murdoch and their half-sister Prudence MacLeod – will be key players in the eventual succession.“In a plausible scenario,” Manning writes, “after Rupert has passed and his shares are dispersed among the four adult children, the three on the other side of Lachlan could choose to manifest control over all of the Murdoch businesses, and to do it in a way that enhances democracies around the world rather than undermining them.“In this scenario, the role of Fox News has become so controversial inside the family that control of the trust is no longer just about profit and loss at the Murdoch properties. In one view that has currency among at least some of the Murdoch children, it is in the long-term interests for democracies around the world for there to be four shareholders in the family trust who are active owners in the business.”Murdoch’s succession: who wins from move to reunite Fox and News Corp?Read moreLast month, Rupert Murdoch was reported to be seeking to merge News Corp, which owns newspapers outside the US including the Times, the Sun and the Australian, with Fox, which includes Fox News and Fox Sports, which shows prized NFL games.A former Murdoch senior executive told the Guardian then the plan had been “in the works for two years. I give it a 75% chance it will happen, 25% that it will be blocked. It’s all about Lachlan. Rupert is in his 90s – this is his last deal, it’s succession planning.”Discussing the belief that “Lachlan gets fired the day Rupert dies”, Manning writes that it is “a formula for instability and intra-family feuds that must weigh on the minds of directors of both Fox and News Corporation as they contemplate the mortality of the 91-year-old founder, although they deny it.“A source close to members of the Murdoch family questions the extent of succession planning by the boards of Fox or News Corporation and whether discussions among the directors can be genuinely independent, as corporate governance experts would like.“‘Rupert has total control over all the companies as long as he is alive,’ the source says. ‘It’s an unrealistic expectation that the boards of those companies are going to use their voices to manifest independence. What is their succession plan? What if something happens to Lachlan?’”TopicsBooksRupert MurdochLachlan MurdochJames MurdochFox NewsNews CorporationUS press and publishingnewsReuse this content More