Rupert Murdoch Steps Down, Complains Unironically About Elites Trying to Silence Him

Media mogul accuses non-Fox media of being too political

If there’s one thing we’ve learned in the last few years it’s that money and power don’t buy self-awareness, and in case Musk and Trump weren’t proof enough, Rupert Murdoch is here to hammer the point home.

The ancient Australian news baron and destabilizer of democracy announced this week that he would step down as day-to-day head of his media empire in favour of his son Lachlan.

Never one for inactivity, the elder Murdoch will take on the role of chairman emeritus, presumably meaning he’ll stick around the office making a nuisance of himself while maintaining plausible deniability (he also recently broke up with his latest fiancé, so keep your Tinder Superlikes handy, ladies).

Murdoch's semi-retirement is no shock. He’s 92 years old, and if his net worth of $8 billion doesn’t put him in Musk or Bezos territory, it should hold him until Hell’s dingoes drag him on his final walkabout.

What’s remarkable are the passages in his resignation letter where he rails without apparent irony against unspecified “elites” and their media allies determined “to silence those who would question their provenance and purpose”, and ultimately to squelch freedom of thought.

Coming from a basement-bound Q-Anon-er these sentiments would be unsurprising, but from the owner of Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and a host of other media outlets, it’s clueless beyond comprehension.

Murdoch also accuses said elites of “peddling political narratives rather than pursuing the truth”.

It was Murdoch and News Corp, of course, who transformed Donald Trump from reality show host and serial bankruptee into the 45th President of the United States, created the MAGA-industrial complex, and spawned an assortment of media imitators even less tethered to reality than Fox News. Fox also recently paid out 787 million dollars for broadcasting spurious claims about cheating in the 2020 election.

Murdoch has since had a falling out with his erstwhile protégé, but he’s learned to play the victim with Trumpian conviction and inaccuracy. Hey plutocrats, if you’re gonna be a villain, you should at least have the cojones to own it.