From New York mag, you’re fired:
The mounting problem Donald Trump poses to Republicans is also a mounting problem for the country’s most powerful conservative media mogul: Rupert Murdoch. This morning’s New York Times gives front-page treatment to the billionaire grudge match that has become a major story line in this year’s (already) fractious GOP primary. The piece by political reporters Amy Chozick and Ashley Parker chronicles Murdoch’s intensifying efforts over the past week to blunt Trump’s surge to the top of the crowded GOP field. In recent days, Murdoch has tweeted that Trump is “wrong” and “embarrassing.” On Sunday, the New York Post mocked Trump on the cover with the headline “DON VOYAGE” and featured him marooned on a life raft being circled by a shark. The same day, The Wall Street Journal ran a scathing editorial that labeled Trump a “catastrophe.”
One reason Murdoch is taking to social media and deploying his publishing properties to attack Trump may be the simple fact that he hasn’t been able to control his most powerful media organ: Fox News. According to sources, Murdoch has tried — and failed — to rein in Fox News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes, who, insiders say, is pushing Fox to defend Trump’s most outlandish comments. This week, Ailes told his senior executives during a meeting that Murdoch recently called him and asked if Fox could “back off the Trump coverage,” a source told me. Ailes is said to have boasted to his executives that he told Murdoch he was covering Trump “the way he wanted to.” The implication was that he wasn’t going to budge.
