Why would a $10 billion lawsuit get in the way of an old friend having chicken and gravy for dinner?
President Donald Trump dined with Rupert Murdoch and the media mogul’s top lieutenants at the White House last week, according to a new report, despite Trump’s continuing defamation lawsuit over Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal newspaper reporting that Murdoch sent a “vulgar” 50th birthday letter to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Breaker Media reported Tuesday night that President Trump invited billionaire Murdoch and his company to the White House last Thursday.
Guests included Murdoch’s wife Elena Zhukova, New York Post editor-in-chief Keith Poole, Post columnists Miranda Devine and Douglas Murray, News UK CEO Rebecca Brooks, The Sun editor-in-chief Harry Cole, as well as Vice President J.D. Vance and White House chief Susie Wiles, the Breaker reported. Murdoch’s News Corp Along with the Journal, it owns The Post, The Sun and News UK.
The group reportedly ate chicken and gravy.
Three months before the dinner, President Trump wrote in a social media post that he was “looking forward to having you testify in the lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch and his ‘trash’ newspaper WSJ.”
“It will be an interesting experience!!!” the president wrote.
CNBC has reached out to News Corp and the White House for comment on this report. A spokesperson for Mr. Trump’s legal team declined to comment.
The dinner was reported five days before Trump’s legal team responded harshly to Murdoch’s lawyers’ request that a federal judge in Miami dismiss the president’s defamation suit.
The case is a clear exception to the often friendly relationship President Trump has with Mr. Murdoch’s conservative media empire, which includes Fox News. The Post and Fox have been cheerleaders for Mr. Trump and his policies for years, and Mr. Trump has been an avid reader and staple of the Post tabloid for decades.
The current controversy stems from the newspaper’s July 17 report that a letter album given to Epstein at his 50th birthday party in 2003 contained a risqué letter signed by Trump.
Mr. Trump was a friend of Mr. Epstein at the time of the party. The two later had a falling out. Epstein died by suicide in prison in August 2019, weeks after he was arrested on federal child sex trafficking charges.
The paper noted that the typewritten text of the letter was “surrounded by an outline of a naked woman that appeared to have been hand-drawn in thick marker.”
“A pair of small arcs represent a woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a undulating ‘Donald’ below the waist, imitating pubic hair,” the newspaper said.
Trump angrily denied writing the letter the night the Journal article was published.
“This is not me. This is fake. This is a fake article from the Wall Street Journal,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “I have never painted in my life, nor have I painted a picture of a woman,” he said. “It’s not my language. It’s not my language.”
Trump also said he personally warned Murdoch that Trump would sue him if the Journal published the article.
“Mr. Murdoch said he would deal with it, but clearly he didn’t have the authority to do so,” Trump said on Truth Social.
On July 18, President Trump sued Murdoch, the Journal, News Corp CEO Robert Thomson, and two reporters who wrote the article.
The complaint denies that Trump wrote the letter, saying, “Despite clear deficiencies in journalistic ethics and standards of accurate reporting, Dow Jones and News Corp., at the direction of Murdoch and Thomson, released to the world false, defamatory, and malicious statements written by Defendants.”
President Trump continues to deny writing the letter, even after House Democrats released screenshots of the letter reported by the Journal in early September. The letter was obtained by the House Oversight Committee from Epstein’s estate pursuant to a subpoena.
Mr. Murdoch’s lawyers reported the letter to the judge overseeing Mr. Trump’s case.
In a motion to dismiss the case, Mr. Murdoch’s lawyers said the article was true and that the letters released by the House of Commons committee included “letters identical to those described in the article.”
The lawyers also argued that the article was not defamatory.
The motion noted that President Trump acknowledged being a longtime friend of Epstein and was quoted in New York magazine calling Epstein a “great guy” three months before the birthday party.
He “likes beautiful women as much as I do.”
“President Trump has also publicly acknowledged the ‘locker room’ discussions and has made a number of vulgar public statements,” Murdoch’s lawyers wrote.
“This article is therefore consistent with President Trump’s self-proclaimed reputation.”
In their response to the motion, Trump’s lawyers said the arguments by Murdoch’s lawyers were “disjointed” and inaccurate.
“This article was driven entirely by the defendants’ vile, scandal-driven rhetoric that prioritized gossip, clicks, and profit over truth,” Trump’s lawyers said.
