NONE OF THEM CAN GET TRUMP NEAR AN OPEN WINDOW

There was a party in D.C. last night, and two of our best Beltway gossipers have thoughts:

Combo of Barr + Pence + Christie is that Rs are slowly saying maybe they can move on from Trump. Barr saying Murdochs told him to go ahead with book in which he describes Trump as unfit says it all. https://t.co/ZUCU3jRXkn

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) March 16, 2022

That's the team you expect to be the foundation of a coup that deposes Trump as leader of the Republican Party, Maggie? Mike Pence, Chris Christie, and Bill Barr -- all of whom continue to praise Trump even as they criticize him? Two of them, Christie and Barr, have made clear that, heck yeah, they'll vote for him in 2024 if he's the nominee.



And while Rupert Murdoch and his son seem more fearsome, remember that Rupe has always regarded Trump with contempt, but has never been able to stop him. In his 2018 book Fire and Fury, Michael Wolff said that Murdoch had "only ever ridiculed Trump" before Trump was elected in 2016. Murdoch and Fox boss Roger Ailes deployed Megyn Kelly to take out Trump in a 2015 debate. Trump emerged stronger. Kelly became a pariah on the right, and even though she was subsequently given a lucrative deal to switch to NBC, her career has never recovered. On Election Night 2020, according to Wolff, Rupert Murdoch personally given the go-ahead for Fox's early call of Arizona for Joe Biden.

“Lachlan got his father on the phone to ask if he wanted to make the early call. His father, with signature grunt, assented, adding, ‘F--- him,’” Wolff wrote.

But Fox suffered a ratings slide over the next few months, and had to become more Trumpist and conspiratorial in order to fend off rival right-wing news channels. Wolff said in 2021, “Rupert hates Donald Trump. Hates him – but Rupert loves money.” So Fox has continued to defer to Trump.

Although as Yastreblyansky notes, Barr defers to Murdoch even if Trump doesn't.

It's cute that Barr asked his permission though

— Yas We Can (@Yastreblyansky) March 16, 2022

Barr's book is published by William Morrow, which is an imprint of Murdoch's HarperCollins. Nevertheless, book publishers are supposed to operate with a significant level of autonomy. It's odd when the head of the parent company gets personally involved in an individual book. But it's not odd if the head of the parent company, despite appearing to be a Master of the Universe, has reasons to be afraid of a very prominent person who's the principal subject of the book.

Once again, Murdoch is deploying a lackey to try to take down Trump, when he and his son don't have the cojones to do it themselves on their TV channel, because taking down Trump would mean they'd be slightly less obscenely rich. Sorry, this is not the way you put together a plot to push a despot out an open window.