Donald Trump has trashed two of the world’s biggest media moguls — charging that both Rupert Murdoch and Michael Bloomberg have not treated him well.
“Murdoch’s been very bad to me,” the Republican presidential front-runner says of the Fox News tycoon in an interview with Gabriel Sherman in New York Magazine.
And, Trump adds, Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor and head of the global financial news network that bears his name, is not any better.
“Bloomberg’s been quite bad to me. I thought he was a friend of mine; he’s no friend of mine. He was nasty,” Trump said.
If Trump can fire back at either of his fellow multibillionaires, Murdoch may be the easier target.
That’s because of Trump’s on-again, off-again relationship with Fox News chief Roger Ailes, who he’s warred with for months over Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly following her GOP debate questions to him about alleged sexist remarks.
“In 2014, I published a biography of Ailes, which upset the famously paranoid executive. Several months before it landed in stores, Ailes fired his longtime PR adviser Brian Lewis, accusing him of being a source,” Sherman writes.
“Lewis hired high-powered lawyer Judd Burstein and claimed he had ‘bombs’ that would destroy Ailes and Fox News. That’s when Trump got involved.”
Trump told Sherman: “When Roger was having problems, he didn’t call 97 people, he called me [to help mediate].”
“Roger had lawyers, very expensive lawyers, and they couldn’t do anything. I solved the problem,” Trump said to Sherman.
According to Sherman, Fox paid Lewis millions of dollars to “go away quietly.”
“Trump, I’m told, learned everything Lewis had planned to leak. If Ailes ever truly went to war against Trump, Trump would have the arsenal to launch a retaliatory strike,” Sherman writes.