Rupert Murdoch continues to donate to Republicans despite Trump tensions

Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire media mogul who controls News Corp, is a pragmatist.

So it was little surprise to learn that, in the lead-up to the US midterm elections, the man who owns the Wall Street Journal and other major media assets around the world, has continued to pour cash into the Republican cause, despite the best efforts of US President Donald Trump to sue him.

In this calendar year alone, Murdoch has made donations to Republican political committees of more than $US2 million ($2.84 million) in support of the party’s ambitions to hang on to its majority in the House, and even expand the party’s majority in the Senate.

The biggest of Murdoch’s contributions this year was a May 3 contribution of $US2 million to SLF PAC, according to political donation receipts filed with the US Federal Election Commission. The committee is a Republican super PAC focused on expanding the party’s control of the Senate.

The Murdoch patriarch then made two separate $US10,000 donations to the California Republican Party Federal Account in August, the filings show. News Corp didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Murdoch has been a reliable Republican donor for the better part of the past decade, even after Murdoch’s less than favourable views of the president became public a few years ago, and despite reported tensions between the pair.

Emails filed as part of evidence in Dominion’s lawsuit against Fox, for instance, show the elder Murdoch wanted to make Trump a “non-person”. Fox reached a $US787.5 million ($1.1 billion) settlement with Dominion in April 2023.

The Trump-Murdoch relationship soured further in July last year, when the Wall Street Journal revealed that a letter, reportedly from Trump, had appeared in a 2003 birthday book for disgraced late financier Jeffrey Epstein. In response, Trump launched a defamation lawsuit against the Journal and Murdoch last year. It was dismissed by a District Court judge in April but Trump’s lawyers refiled it in May.

Then there was the more recent act of defiance by the ordinarily Trump-friendly Fox News in joining other news networks in boycotting coverage of the president last month, in response to the president’s attacks on the press.

Murdoch and his advisers may well be counting down the days until Trump leaves the White House. But in the meantime, Murdoch would clearly still rather be doing business with Trump controlling the House and the Senate than considering life under a Democratic regime.

MCA rattles the tin

In October last year, the Museum of Contemporary Art drew about 250 artists and patrons for the third run of its MCA Artists Ball, to raise money for the museum’s artist and engagement programs. All in, that one raised about $1.6 million.

So the question heading into next month is whether the MCA can beat the figure when it returns for round four.

The MCA will rattle the tin in honour of Australian artist Julie Rrap on November 7, when a string of works from big name artists will go under the hammer to raise some cash.

Among them will be works by Chinese contemporary artist Ai Weiwei and Australian artist Del Kathryn Barton, along with Paris-based Australian artist Gregory Hodge, British-Indian sculptor Anish Kapoor and Australian artists Janet Laurence, Danie Mellor and Tom Polo.

Disclosure day

Regular readers will no doubt recall our interest in former Coalition staffer Vikki Campion doing some work for One Nation’s NSW executive.

Word of Campion’s new role reached us earlier this month after she had been listed as the media contact for the party’s NSW leader Mike Newman, sparking intrigue on Macquarie Street over who she was working for and what it would mean for her weekly column at The Daily Telegraph.

Well, not much at all, it turns out. Campion has continued writing her column for the Tele, without any disclosure in the print edition of Saturday’s newspaper related to her work for the One Nation NSW executive as a contractor.

But the newspaper did disclose the work at the bottom of the column online. But we can’t be sure whether it was there when it was published, or only after we approached News Corp Australia for comment.

We found the absence of any disclosure related to Campion’s work for One Nation in the newspaper particularly interesting, given she dedicates about 300 words to criticising NSW Labor’s new plastics bill. News Corp Australia never got back to us.

Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.