99. Trump Sues Murdoch: The Fight Over Epstein’s Secrets

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0:34Hello and welcome to this extra episode of The Rest is Politics US with me, Katty Kay. And I'm Anthony Scaramucci. Unfortunately, I'm no longer in London, Katty. It was a great trip for me. I enjoyed that. I was going to wear this actually today. Look what we got. This is our, for those of you not watching, this was given to us on stage. Katty Kay and Scaramucci, 2028. Two big problems with that. One, I was not born in States, so I can't actually run in 2028. and two, Anthony's wife will divorce him if he does run. So very nice of the lady who brought that and gave it to us, but it's not happening.

1:09Anyway, it was lovely to have you over here. But Katty, she threw it on stage. She threw it on stage. I was very impressed with that. She definitely wanted us to have that t-shirt. There's aspiration there. Okay, so we thought we would bring you this extra episode on top of all the ones we're going to bring you later in the week, but that's because of all the crazy news that's happening at the moment. We're recording this at about 10 o 'clock on Monday morning East Coast time. Over the weekend, Donald Trump filed a$10 billion lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch and two Wall Street Journal reporters.

1:43He was claiming libel and slander over allegations that the journal reported that Trump in 2003 sent Jeffrey Epstein, a lewd birthday letter. I think it was described as bawdy. We're going to break down that lawsuit, how it's keeping this story, the whole Epstein story alive, what it means for MAGA, what it means for Donald Trump, and what is Rupert Murdoch trying to do. I think that's also very important to look at because their relationship has been rocky on and off over the last decade or so. So let's start, Anthony, with what happened. For those of you who missed this, over the weekend, on Friday, Trump sued Murdoch.

2:35And it also targets Dow Jones and News Corp. This was filed in the Southern District of Florida in a federal court in Miami. It is the first time he's actually sued a whole news organization as opposed to an individual show and it's seeking$10 billion in damages. And this was all because of the report that came out after we recorded Anthony last week in the journal that in 2003, as part of a sort of birthday tribute to Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump sent a letter and a suggestive drawing and a reference to kind of let every day be a great day for secrets or something like that. Yeah, Trump tried to stop it.

3:23He called Murdoch. Then he came out and said, I don't ever do drawings. It actually turns out he's done lots of drawings and some of them have been sold at charity in auction. But I think for me, it gets to the surprising mismanagement of this whole story from Donald Trump himself and from the White House. And we can get into this a little bit more where they've been backwards and and forwards in their approach to the Epstein story. It just feels like they don't really know how to handle this. What do you make of the suit? First of all, let's talk about it from Donald Trump's point of view, and then we can talk about it from Rupert Murdoch's point of view.

4:00But what's your thinking about the suit? Yeah. All right. So let's step back. There's a lot going on. So the Murdochs and Fox News and Jesse Waters are being sued by Governor Gavin Newsom. And so Gavin said he had the following type of phone call with Donald Trump, which obviously made Trump look bad and made Trump look like he was a liar. And Jesse Watters is an acolyte of Donald Trump's. He gets his ratings from beating the drum for Donald Trump said, Gavin Newsom is a liar. And so he was sued for$787 million. And of course, Newsom demanded an apology. This is important, Caddy, because it's the doppelganger to this other suit.

4:39And of course, Jesse said on the air he would never apologize for this because he was right and Gavin's wrong. And of course, last Friday, the Murdoch family told Jesse, you better apologize. So of course he did. And Newsom is still going forward with the suit. Interestingly enough, Newsom is suing them for$787 million, which is the exact same lawsuit settlement that was received by the voting machine company that sued the Murdoch. So the Murdochs have been at the center of a lot of Donald Trump media suits. Right. And so why is that important? Because they're relenting. They're relenting on one and they just double down on the other.

5:21So the Murdochs have basically said, we have allowed our editors at The Wall Street Journal to verify, go through our lawyers and verify the veracity of what we're reporting. and Trump is like, well, I'm going to sue you because it's false. Now, our country's different from your country. There's a Supreme Court. I see you smiling. Yes, our country's different in many ways. One of the ways, Caddy Kay, ice, ice. You see the ice? It's unbelievable that there's no ice in your country, but we'll talk about that on a food show when we do a food show together. But on this specific topic, the Murdochs are doubling down.

6:04The Murdochs have said, this is true. And in our country, you have this wide latitude to talk about public people. There's a lawsuit, New York Times versus Sullivan. About 50 years ago, the Supreme Court said, hey, if you're a private citizen, you've got rights. But if you've declared yourself in the public and you've got Twitter followers and you've got Facebook people and you're out there as an influencer, too bad. Take your lumps. People have a very wide latitude. So the Murdochs are going to hold firm with Trump. Yeah, and I think that's worth just stressing because under that law, you and I would be public figures.

6:43Trump will have to drop this suit, by the way, Katty. I agree with that, that I think that the chances of this suit going forward are minimal. And it's interesting if you just look at the chronology of this, because Trump called Murdoch two days before he launched the suit, saying, don't run this story. Murdoch knew that if he ran the story, he would be sued. Now, two things about Rupert Murdoch, love or hate the Fox News empire and the Wall Street Journal. He is known as a newspaper man. Amongst reporters, amongst my colleagues, I have friends who have been reporters at the Wall Street Journal.

7:20The journal stands up for its reporters and Rupert Murdoch stands behind his reporters. And he has famously, you know, he used to get called up by sort of titans of the film industry in Hollywood saying, you've got to not you've got to drop that story, Rupert. I don't like that story about my studio. And Rupert's answer pretty much invariably would be, well, yeah, we're running it. And he does stand up. He's a kind of newspaper guy. He loves a scoop. He loves being a newspaper guy. he's had newspapers for decades is in his blood. And I think that's important to realize. And by the way, Mike Bloomberg, by Mike Bloomberg, the same way.

7:53Yeah. And I think that if Rupert Murdoch, who's a good businessman, ran the story, even though Trump had said to him, Fenn, you know, if you run this story, Rupert, I'm going to sue you. And he ran it anyway. Murdoch's a good enough businessman to know that he had that story right. Well, but these lawsuits, So, Catty, let's tell the viewers why these lawsuits are so gigantic in terms of the sums. Okay, they're to grab newspaper headlines. $787 million for telling a lie about Gavin Newsom on the air. Now, believe it or not, that steps over the line of New York Times versus Sullivan. You can't accuse somebody of lying when they're not lying, and you can't accuse somebody of doing something criminal when they're not criminal.

8:40If you want to say Gavin Newsom is a blankety blank, no problem. If you want to say, Gavin, you hate Gavin Newsom's policies or you saw Gavin Newsom had French laundry and he was drooling, no problem. Even if he wasn't drooling, you could say that. Anyway, make a long story short, these big numbers, Caddy, are to draw headlines. The numbers never settle out at those numbers for these types of infractions. Donald Trump will be dropping, and let me repeat, he will be dropping that lawsuit and he will be making a decision that, oh, wow, this is actually going to blow over because my people actually don't care that I was hanging out with a pedophile.

9:22Most of them don't. And I'm going to keep ramming through my MAGA policies. Again, we said that last week. I'm going to maintain my prediction that this does not unravel Donald Trump. Yeah, I agree with that. And I agree definitely that the lawsuit doesn't go anywhere, which by the way, the Wall Street Journal is counting on. They know his history of launching this kind of lawsuit. We're going to take a quick break and come back and talk about the jeopardy that there would be for Donald Trump, which I think is kind of interesting if this lawsuit were to go ahead. And I'm kind of interested in how J.D.

9:53Vance is handling this as well. So we'll take a quick break and be right back.

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11:07Okay, welcome back. We just finished that last half by talking about how this lawsuit is not going to go anywhere. I want you to speculate you're the lawyer, I'm not the lawyer. but my understanding, Anthony, is that if the White House were to push ahead with this lawsuit, if Donald Trump were to push ahead about this lawsuit, imagine all of the things that he might have to be deposed about under oath, right? I mean, he could be asked about that letter. He could be asked about why he called Jeffrey Epstein a terrific guy at the same time that he was pointing out that Jeffrey Epstein was hanging out and had a penchant for younger women.

11:46I mean, And it just seems to me that the amount of stuff that Donald Trump wants to avoid talking about in public around the whole Jeffrey Epstein saga is enormous. And why on earth would he ever put himself into a position where he might have to answer questions about this? Because remember, I think just for a second, we should be thinking about the victims of Jeffrey Epstein. There were a host of underage girls who were forced to have sex with Jeffrey Epstein, who were sex trafficked, according to the Department of Justice. And this was at the same time back in 2003 that Donald Trump wrote this letter saying, you know, may every day be a day for another amazing secret or whatever it was, and called Jeffrey Epstein a terrific guy.

12:35So this terrific guy who was hanging out with underage women and forcing underage women to have sex with him is also the person that was his friend. I just don't think Donald Trump wants to be answering those kind of questions, does he? Which my understanding is that he would have to if he pushed ahead or potentially would have to if he was deposed and pushed ahead with this lawsuit. So you have to understand in our criminal procedure, once you do discovery, forget about it. It becomes a nightmare for you. If you're on the wrong side of something in a civil suit and you do discovery, forget about it.

13:12You're going to get wildly embarrassed. All the stuff is in public. And, you know, so Trump's lawyers are going to tell him, OK, so not only do they have the letter, they must have got the letter from Ghislaine Maxwell or somebody close to Epstein or maybe even the FBI leaked it to them. Here are the following other things that you did with Jeff Epstein. OK. And by the way, that probably the enigma thing is probably an anagram for young women. And you're going to have more evidence of that. And you're going to get blown out of the water in this lawsuit. And remember something about Rupert Murdoch.

13:48He's in his 90s. Do you think he gives the SHIT about, honestly, Donald Trump? He could care less about Donald Trump. His attitude is, and, Cady, I was there in 2016. The Murdochs did not want Trump to get that nomination. They preferred somebody like a Marco Rubio, a Jeb, or a Ted Cruz. I was there when Megyn Kelly was excoriated. Megyn Kelly is now on the goomba list with Trump. She's tooting his horn. But I was there when Trump went after him. I was literally in the audience in Cleveland in August of 2015 when Trump went after her. And I was there when Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch wrote the response to Donald Trump.

14:31Okay. And then he said this disgusting stuff about Megyn Kelly on Don Lemon's show, which I'm not going to repeat on our show. And those two executives were very livid related to Donald Trump. So Donald Trump has been a tolerable right-wing person for the Murdochs. He is not their favorite. They were pushing Ron DeSantis in the primaries. And I'm just wondering if that meeting with J.D. Vance was a, you ready for this, Caddy? I'm wondering if that meeting was a succession meeting. That's what I'm really wondering. So I know Megan, and it was after those meetings, after Donald Trump kind of went after her publicly and said what he said about her, that you're right, we don't need to repeat, that she then had to get, Fox had to get her 24-hour security because MAGA world went after her so vehemently that she and her family felt they were unsafe.

15:26I mean, the power of MAGA to go after people who cross Donald Trump is still very high. It's interesting that you raise the Vance thing because Vance initially came out last week after the Wall Street Journal story ran on Thursday. Vance initially came out and said, OK, show us the letter. You know, where is this letter? You know what? If you say you've got a letter, where are you, Wall Street Journal? How can you run this? And then after that, when Trump crickets from Trump in asking for the letter, I mean, Trump is kind of slamming Wall Street Journal, but you don't have Trump saying, can you go public with the letter?

16:01And Trump, I think, must have spoken to J.D. Vance and said, okay, drop this idea of wanting the letter out there. I don't think Trump wants this letter out there. Why would he want that letter out there? That doesn't help him at this point in the story. And I think you're right about the succession issue. It wasn't just in 2016. In 2024, they didn't want Donald Trump. In 2020, they helped propagate the lie on Fox News and then got sued for it, as we said earlier. But in 2024, when Donald Trump announced that he was running again, there was that piece that ran in the very back amongst the car ads in the New York Post with a fantastic headline, been there, done that.

16:41And just they buried it. They buried the story. They clearly didn't want Trump as the candidate in 2024. So there's no love lost there. But I think JD's position on this is interesting because now he's standing up for Trump, right? At the moment, he's defending Trump against the journal, but he also has to watch which way MAGA goes on that and how long this split lasts. And if there is a real MAGA revolt against Trump, where does he go in this? He is clearly trying to read the maggoty leaves on this one. But I don't know that he can, I think he probably would be Murdoch's favorite of all of the ones who were there.

17:21I could see Murdoch endorsing JD. He's got the tech entrepreneurial thing. But Murdoch thinks he's going to be around for a while. His mother lived till she was 103. I mean, he's, you know, presidents come and go, publishers stick around. He's going to have this news empire for a while. So whether JD is his choice or not, I feel like Murdoch feels he's sitting pretty on this. I sort of expect Rupert to get married a few more times, don't you, Caddy? I mean, he's only 93. I mean, you know, right? He's got another decade, at least, if he's going to go to his mother's age. I got to just say this one thing.

17:54It's probably not related, but it's just a fun story. I was in the newsroom. I was hosting Wall Street Week for Rupert Murdoch. and he came in and he was wearing these chino pants and these sketchers. Okay. And he came over to me and he said, oh, I watch you. You're doing a good job. Bye-bye. A little flattering. I said, thank you, Mr. Mer. No, no, no. Call me Rupert. And I looked down at his sketchers and he looked at me and he goes, okay, I know they're not good looking shoes, but I don't have to walk with a cane with these shoes. And I said, sir, I didn't say a word. Okay. Let's just leave it at that.

18:31You know what I mean? But I can just tell you, when he walked into the newsroom, he's not an imperious guy. He's not Brian Cox of the HBO show Secession. He's like a very polite Australian, very diplomatic. Do you know what I mean? He's not what they made him out to be in that show. But there's one thing about him is he's iron tough, steel tough. He's not going to back down from Donald Trump. Quickly, before we go, there's two other things. One is that Donald Trump, always the master of distraction. I don't think it's going to help him at all, but he's weighing back into the culture wars, I think, clearly to try and get back on the right side of MAGA when it comes to culture stuff.

19:16And he's doing it through this renaming of the Washington, D.C. football team, which used to be called the Washington Redskins. After a moment of political correctness. The owners of the Redskins decided, OK, we're going to change the name. They are now the Washington commanders. Donald Trump weighs back in with MIGA. I hadn't heard of that one, Make Indians Great Again, and says, and he's just, it's all, it's that classic distraction. I don't think it's going to work. I agree with you, Anthony. I don't think this is what breaks Donald Trump. I think, you know, we just have way too short attention spans.

19:52We're not talking about Iran, right, which was only three weeks ago. And the MAGA world will move on from this. And I'm amazed that it's lasted this long as a front page news story. But it's rattling Trump. Trump doesn't like this. He doesn't like being out of step. He doesn't like saying to his supporters, okay, get back in line and finding that they don't all get back in line, even if it's the influencers. And even if current polling since Epstein's story broke recently shows that the majority of Republicans are still with him, he is not enjoying Beak Outer Step. My reporting is that he's pissed off.

20:30He's not a happy camper at the moment. And so he tries to kind of very clumsily change the subject and show MAGA he's right there with them, always go to the woke stuff, go to the politically correct stuff. I don't think it works. I don't think for the moment he has to let, he has to let, they have to come up with a better response to this. They have to have a more coordinated response to Epstein. They're going to have to do something about a special counsel or a special investigation, announce something that pushes this down the road, release something that is vaguely plausible for the influencers who are not happy, who still believe there's a conspiracy theory and that the powerful are protecting the powerful.

21:07But I think, you know, playing with names of football teams that nobody really cares about. It's not like it's the best football team in the world anyway. Let's be clear about that. He's not going to do it. I agree with you, but let's just get inside the mind of Donald Trump for a second. I have to take a shower after I come out the other ear, but let's walk into his mind for a second. He's worried. And I know he's worried because the make India great again is a distraction. But there's another thing he did over the weekend. He started telling people that he has 92, 94, 96 % approval ratings. and you then get the proverbial call from business executives and say, Anthony, why isn't anybody in the media fact-checking him?

21:50This is a question for you, Gatike, in a second, but let's get inside the mind of Trump for a second. He's like, whoa, this is really bad for me. There is a schism here. If more Epstein stuff unravels, there's actually a group of people that bought into my bullshit about unraveling the deep state and taking down pedophiles. I don't really want to do that. So, I mean, you know, how am I going to combat that if this continues to unfold in a bad way for me? So he sent out that big lie about his approval ratings, which conjoins with what your feelings are and your sentiments and your insight. But my question to you as a member of the media, why don't we fact check him anymore?

22:34Why doesn't somebody say, okay, he's out there with a tweet, blah, blah, but his approval ratings are not anywhere near that? Well, I was on television on Friday morning on Morning Joe, and we ran through all of the latest polls. And obviously, this is before he said there were 92, 93 percent, but obviously it's not 92, 93 percent. And he is losing ground on two big issues. He's losing ground on cost of living and he's losing ground in polls actually on immigration. 93 percent of our producers, Caddy. 93 percent of our producers like you. Seven percent. Seven percent like me. And I demand a recount, Caddy.

23:09I demand a recount. He does get fact-checked, Anthony, is the truth. I mean, maybe the business leaders aren't looking at the moment that it's fact-checked, but nobody on television is going to spend the whole weekend on a loop fact-checking Donald Trump because you would never end. It would never end. I mean, this is one of the problems of interviewing Donald Trump is you have to make a decision. Do I spend the whole interview fact-checking him, in which case I don't actually get any other information out there and you don't get to ask the questions and the follow-up questions you want to? or do I not fact check him the whole time?

23:39And so you give him a platform in which to say things like I have 93 % approval rating, which he clearly doesn't. We should leave it there. But you know what today is, Anthony? It's sort of delicious parallel. 56 years ago today, Americans woke up to the headline that a man was walking on the moon. Of course, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong had touched down on the moon after landing there on Apollo 11, which was perhaps the biggest conspiracy theory of all. Has Donald Trump ever tried pushing that one? Or maybe they didn't land on the moon. We will never know. And not only did they land on the moon, but the bizarre thing is 30 % of the people below the age of 30 don't think they landed on the moon, Katty.

24:21I don't know. It's crazy. Live by conspiracy theories, die by conspiracy theories. There will be more on this, and we will have it, I'm sure, on the program later this week. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. And of course, if you'd like to become a founding member, you know where to go. at therestispoliticsus.com. We'd love to have you with us. Thanks, guys.