Rupert Murdoch's media empire is only hurting itself, not former President Donald Trump, by turning away from him in the wake of the Jan. 6 committee hearings, political strategist and author Dick Morris told Newsmax.
"I don't know if it will have an impact on Trump, but I think it will have a big impact for Fox News," Morris, the host of Newsmax's show "Dick Morris Democracy" and author of the bestselling "The Return: Trump's Big 2024 Comeback," said on Newsmax's "Prime News" Tuesday night. "I think that the Murdoch policy, which is making Fox flip and turn on a dime, is going to really hurt them.
"You know, Trump is very popular with the Republican base and is going to win that nomination, overwhelmingly. I don't think he'll even have a primary fight, and I think Murdoch is making a big mistake."
Note: Get Dick Morris' new book "The Return" on Trump's secret plan for 2024. See It Here!
Morris' comments were in response to an opinion piece on Politico that said Murdoch is "finally done" with Trump and points out not only Fox News but opinion pieces in the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal and the New York Post that criticized Trump and show the media giants have "viciously" turned against him, potentially in favor of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Fox News has quit covering Trump's rallies and did not cover his speech in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, said Morris, adding that only a couple of the network's stars, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, are still pro-Trump, but Brett Baier is "openly hostile" to the former president.
Morris added that he thinks that Murdoch's son, Lachlan, is more behind the turnaround than his father, but still, "it's funny to see" the New York Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Fox News about-face."
Decide: Do You Want Trump or DeSantis in 2024? Vote in Newsmax Poll – Vote Here Now
"They toe the line that their boss is giving them, and I think that will ultimately hurt all three of them, but in particular, Fox News," said Morris. "There's an alternative, a network that's pro-Trump called Newsmax."
Meanwhile, Morris said he "loved" Trump's Tuesday speech to the America First Agenda Summit, and he remains convinced that the former president will announce a campaign for the White House race in 2024, but he also thinks Trump will wait until after the midterm elections in November are finished.
He also noted that Trump, in his speech, highlighted the fight against crime, with one of the first things he talked about being the restoration of stop-and-frisk police policies.
"We had a huge problem in New York City, 2,000 murders a year, when [Rudy] Giuliani and [Mike] Bloomberg came in," said Morris. "Because of the stop-and-frisk policy, they reduced it to only 400. Now it's back up a little bit. But the key thing was the policy of stop and frisk. If you send cops into neighborhoods that are high crime, late at night, and if they see somebody walking around with a bulge in his pocket or suspicious, they [would] stop him.
"They questioned him and they had him down, and if he had a gun and he did not have a license, he got a three-year mandatory minimum jail sentence."
But liberal judges said that there was no probable cause for such arrests, even though the suspects were in a high-crime area during the night, and threw the law out, said Morris.
"What Trump is saying is bring that back, and I think that it's perfect in politics," said Morris. "I love the idea of jujitsu — use the enemy's strength against them. The gun control case can be the case for stop and frisk. That is gonna control for criminals, not for honest people."
About NEWSMAX TV:
NEWSMAX is the fastest-growing cable news channel in America!