Joe Biden called Fox News one of the most destructive forces in America and billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch “the most dangerous man in the world”, a new book has claimed.
This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future by New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns revealed that the president allegedly made the critical assessment to an unnamed associate, according to CNN.
The Democratic president claimed to have said in mid-2021 that Mr Murdoch was “even more toxic” than Fox News, the two reporters said.
The first major book about the Biden-Harris administration is set to be released on 3 May.
The book has previously made headlines about the then-candidate’s wife Jill Biden not being in favour of Kamala Harris’s selection as her husband’s running mate and the vice president’s 2020 presidential campaign being a “fiasco”.
The description from the chapters of the forthcoming tome said “cable-news powerhouse” Fox News “spewed forth a torrent of anti-Biden programming, stoking skepticism about vaccines and disseminating wild conspiracy theories about the January 6 attack..”
“..the Democratic president assessed Fox as one of the most destructive forces in the United States and told an associate midway through 2021 that its corporate overlord, the Australian-born News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch, was even more toxic than that,” the book claimed.
A White House spokesperson has declined to comment on the book’s claims.
The Biden allies accused Mr Murdoch, 91, and his eldest son Lachlan Murdoch, 50, who is the CEO of Fox News, of endorsing right-wing hosts such as Tucker Carlson, known for his anti-immigrant and racist comments.
Mr Murdoch controls a media empire that includes the Fox News Channel, The Times of London and The Wall Street Journal and his net worth is $9.2bn, according to Bloomberg’s billionaire index.
The book revealed that White House communications director Kate Bedingfield reportedly said Ms Harris was to be blamed for a “messy” office.
“Her Senate office had been messy and her [2020] presidential campaign had been a fiasco,” the authors said, citing Ms Bedingfield. “Perhaps, she suggested, the problem was not the vice president’s staff.”
In her response, Ms Bedingfield said she has “utmost respect for the work she does every day to move the country forward” and that the authors did not “fact check this unattributed claim”.
