Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch has been persistently encouraging Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin to consider a potential White House run in the 2024 elections, even in the face of competition from Donald Trump, it was reported.
The billionaire Fox Corporation chairman urged Mr Youngkin to go for GOP nominations in at least two in-person meetings that took place months ago, the Washington Post reported citing at least two people familiar with the matter.
This development comes as the relationship between Mr Trump and the media tycoon has soured, whose outlets have begun hyping Mr Youngkin’s prospects of running in presidential elections.
The Virginia government has been continuing to steadily prepare for a potential eleventh-hour bid for the White House. He is thought to be waiting to gauge the outcome of the November state election before confirming his 2024 presidential run.
The latest discussions between Mr Mudroch and Mr Youngkin reportedly took place in the spring. The time of the first meeting, however, is not known, the sources were quoted as saying.
Dave Rexrode, chairman of Youngkin’s Spirit of Virginia PAC, sidestepped questions on reported meetings with Mr Murdoch but said the latest spotlight on the media mogul’s business empire is on the heels of Mr Youngkin’s success in Virginia.
“Virginia’s getting attention because parents still matter and Governor Youngkin’s commonsense conservative leadership is working,” Mr Rexrode told the outlet.
“There’s more to do, so the governor’s not taking his eye off Virginia. These races are too important.”
A source familiar with the discussions between Mr Murdoch and Mr Youngkin advised that the former had previously encouraged individuals to enter the political arena against Mr Trump, as he did with former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg in the 2016 Republican primary.
“Not everyone heeds Rupert’s advice, and his judgments aren’t infallible,” the source said. “Nevertheless, he consistently holds the belief that a certain level of competition is more beneficial than its absence, aiming to stimulate substantial debate on primary issues.”
It comes as Mr Trump’s high-profile fall out with Fox News as the former president ramped up attacks after the network called the election for Joe Biden in Arizona and began promoting his 2024 rival Florida governor Ron DeSantis.
The relationship soured after Dominion Voting System filed a 192-page document in the $1.6bn defamation lawsuit,
The network suffered heavily as it was forced to pay nearly $788m to the voting company in a settlement, one of the largest payouts of its kind by a media network.
Mr Trump doubled down on his attacks on Mr Murdoch in March, telling him to “get out of the news business” in a rant over Mr Murdoch’s testimony in a lawsuit against Fox News from Dominion Voting Systems.
“If Rupert Murdoch honestly believes that the Presidential Election of 2020, despite MASSIVE amounts of proof to the contrary, was not Rigged & Stollen [sic], then he & his group of MAGA Hating Globalist RINOS should get out of the News Business as soon as possible because they are aiding & abetting the DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA with FAKE NEWS,” Mr Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.
Mr Trump is reportedly expected to skip the first debate of the 2024 Republican primary season airing on 23 August on Fox News from Milwaukee.
