Did Rupert Murdoch's Admission Kill The Televised Debate?

Republican Operatives: whatever happened between Murdoch and Kushner during the Trump Campaign, it's not good for audiences who want to hear both sides

Earlier this week we learned that in his deposition as part of the $1. 6 billion defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Machines against Fox News, Rupert Murdoch said that he had handed Jared Kushner, confidential Biden ads - plus debate strategy. Here’s the wording from the latest filing:

During Trump’s campaign, Rupert provided Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, with Fox confidential information about [Joe] Biden’s ads, along with debate strategy. Ex.600, R.Murdoch 210:6-9; 213:17-20; Ex.603 (providing Kushner a preview of Biden’s ads before they were public.

So, once you’ve absorbed the sheer chicanery of the described “transaction” – you are left with some puzzling questions.

First, what Biden Campaign ads even ran on Fox News?

We are now so siloed in this country, that the idea of of one political party attempting to talk to the audience of a network affiliated with the other, is startling.

I don’t recall seeing Trump Campaign ads running on CNN or MSNBC.

I reached out to a couple of Trump World strategists to fact check this, and they told me, yes, broadly it wouldn’t be worth it for them. The numbers are too small. But they also told me, that Democrats absolutely do advertise on Fox News because it has the biggest crossover audience.

But not even the Trump Strategists could answer my second and third questions. So, the wording about Murdoch’s “debate strategy” is a little ambiguous. Did Rupert Murdoch proffer Kushner his own advice on debate strategy, or did he proffer Biden’s debate strategy? If the latter, how would he have known that?

“Who the F…knows!” was the answer of one person, that typified the general response.

Whatever actually happened in Murdoch’s communications with Kusher, the consensus among the Republican strategists is that the outcome may well be that political debates, possibly even Presidential debates on the networks may now be relegated to the past. As will the number of guests appearing to present an alternative point of view from that of the hosts.

Sam Nunberg, Trump’s first campaign advisor, reminded me that the first Presidential Debate in 2020 was hosted by Chris Wallace, on Fox News. And, for whatever reason, Trump interrupted Biden the whole way through. At the time Wallace told the New York Times he couldn’t have known that Trump would consistently interrupt. But, actually, given what Murdoch has now reportedly said about his back channelling to the Trump campaign, was there a way for someone at Fox News to know? (I am not suggesting Wallace, now at CNN, knew anything. I think he’s a terrific, fair and honest journalist).

But the fallout from all this, in Nunberg’s opinion, and in that of several other operatives, is that no Democratic candidate is likely to ever agree to participate in a primary debate on the network again. And probably vice versa when it comes to Republicans wanting to be on MSNBC or CNN.

Read an edited version below.

Happy Thursday!

Vicky: Here we are again. Now take me inside this story about Rupert Murdoch leaking to Jared Kushner the content of Joe Biden's ads during the Republican Convention

Sam: Well, first of all I think it's important to talk about the source of this information. This is all coming out of the Dominion brief that was filed earlier this week in response to response to Fox's brief trying to get a summary judgment against the lawsuit. Now it's a throwaway line in the brief. I've seen it, it's seems–

Vicky: Well, hold on. I've read it too, very carefully. It's not a throwaway line because it comes from Rupert Murdoch's actual deposition.

Sam: Well, let me just make a point to then say whether or not it is accurate–I would assume it's accurate because they base it on Murdoch's deposition. But in the lawsuit it's simply a throwaway line. And it doesn't go to the substance of whether or not Fox News is going to be found liable to Dominion.

And I have to see exactly what it was. It doesn't say which was exactly the TV ad that Rupert allegedly showed to Jared. If it was a TV ad that was airing during the convention, which is what some of the speculation is, then that would be an advantage to the Trump campaign because the convention is a live event and they would not otherwise have time to respond. But we don't know if that’s the case.

Vicky: What does knowledge that the ad is coming out do? Even if you're in the middle of the Republican convention, how do you punch back against that?

Sam: So let’s assume for argument sake that it's an ad that was going to air on TV, and it wasn't during the convention. It’s certainly inappropriate, especially because you have a campaign that's paying money to a media conglomerate and the head of the media conglomerate is sending the ad to the opposing campaign before it even airs. The major factor would be that this is during the closing months of the campaign, and the most valuable asset you have during the closing months is money. And the second most valuable asset is time, because you don't have a lot of it. You're losing it second by second. So it would be an advantage if it was shown to him a day before. We just don't know the details.

And there were some very good and smart people on the Trump campaign. I think Jared was extremely effective at certain things such as the Middle East and other issues, but was a terrible campaign strategist. He shouldn't have been running the campaign. I don't think it's such an event to give it to the great political mind of Jared Kushner, but it is inappropriate. The same way I would say it's extremely inappropriate that Comcast, NBC Paramount, any of these companies would've done it to the Democrats. We would be screaming bloody murder.

Vicky: Is there anything illegal about it, or is it just inappropriate?

Sam: I don't believe it's illegal.

Vicky: And Rupert Murdoch does in his deposition in the Dominion lawsuit refer to Jared Kushner as “my friend.” Jared Kushner played up his relationship with Rupert Murdoch.

Sam: Yes. And as Rupert says during his deposition, he could hear Donald scream in the background that Jared’s trying to get the Arizona announcement that Joe Biden won the state taken down. And Rupert, to his credit, refused to do it. And the decision did not affect voting itself because the polls were completely closed.

Vicky: No, although the irony is that this whole lawsuit is kind of about the fact that that decision did apparently affect Fox News's viewers.

Sam: And I think that's a part of the lawsuit that Dominion is arguing. And it's a solid narrative point. I don't know if it goes through the substance of the claims that they have against Fox News, but yes, there was a lot of backlash against Fox News for that call for Chris Wallace and other reporters on the network. And Newsmax at that time saw a major uptick in viewership.

Vicky: This ambiguous line about debate strategy. Could be Murdoch was giving Kushner his own advice. Or it could be Biden's debate strategy. We don’t know. But how would Murdoch have known what Biden's debate strategy was?

Sam: I don't think he would have. And once again, I would be very careful and wary to everyone to take what was written in an opposing party's legal brief as gospel. I'm a lawyer. It's their interpretation of the evidence. It's the way that they describe it. And I don't know if it's completely accurate.

Perhaps Dominion's council is claiming that their discovery shows that Rupert was giving contemporaneously or in advance to Jared all the demands that the Biden campaign was making directly to Fox News. Because as we all recall, Chris Wallace, who I think did a terrible job, moderated that first debate. So that's one assumption.

I'm not passing judgment one way or the other. I'm not out here to make enemies with Fox News. I don't think that is something that would have changed the outcome of the debate. And in general, I believe that debate cost Donald Trump the election. It was one of the worst debate performances I've ever seen by a presidential candidate.

Vicky: I think the great irony of all this is that despite having all this inside help and information, Trump still bombed in the debate. And despite getting contents of the Biden ads, he still lost the election.

Sam: Neither one of these would've been the deciding factors–that because the Donald Trump campaign had this in advance, they were going to definitely win the election and it would've put them over the top. But no, it is certainly not, as they say, a good look. It's problematic. And what I would say is I don't see any Democrat primary debates in Fox News's future.