Rupert Murdoch had made up his mind. “We want to make Trump a nonperson,” he assured one of his former executives in a 2021 email, two days after the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.

Over seven decades, Murdoch has sought to charm, challenge and change prime ministers and presidents as he built one of the world’s most powerful media empires. In this particular endeavor, however, he failed.

Donald Trump, far from being made a nonperson, became the first defeated US president in 132 years to win back the White House. And from the Club World Cup final to the Oval Office, Murdoch has been seen by his side.

As the Wall Street Journal prepared to report that Trump provided a bawdy birthday letter to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein last week, the president appealed to Murdoch – chair emeritus of News Corporation, the newspaper’s owner – to kill the story, claiming it was false. The story ran.

But the story did not receive the same treatment across Murdoch’s empire. The Fox News anchor Laura Ingraham went on air 15 minutes after the Journal published its story, and talked about Epstein. “We have new news coming on about this, as well, from the Wall Street Journal. A new report tonight – next,” she said, throwing to a commercial break. When The Ingraham Angle returned, the new news did not feature.