Rupert’s our ‘deadliest export’, Trump’s an egomaniac bully, says Turnbull

New York: Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has described Rupert Murdoch as Australia’s deadliest export, saying no one has done more to damage American democracy than the US-based media mogul.

And as Donald Trump’s campaign to return to the White House builds momentum, Turnbull also gave his frank assessment of the former president, branding him a “shameless showman” and a “bully” whose lies about the 2020 election being stolen constituted “gaslighting on an epic scale”.

Former PM Malcolm Turnbull blames media tycoon Rupert Murdoch for the decline of democracy in the US.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen; AP

Speaking at an event on the future of democracy, hosted by Heather Ridout, Australia’s new consul-general in New York, Turnbull told the audience: “What we saw in this country was a government that was nearly overthrown in a coup promoted by the president – and in an environment that was enabled by Fox News and other right-wing media, promoting stuff they knew was untrue.

“I say this without any sense of hyperbole: I do not believe that there is any individual alive today that has done more damage to American democracy than Rupert Murdoch. You might say [he’s] Australia’s deadliest export.”

Murdoch, now an American citizen, presides over a large influential media empire in the United States, UK and Australia. Turnbull did not elaborate further on the reasons for his “deadliest” claim.

His comments come two weeks after Fox agreed to pay a $US787.5 million ($1.17 billion) settlement to Dominion Voting Systems after airing claims the company had rigged its voting machines to help President Joe Biden win office.

As court filings have revealed over the past few months, some of Fox News’ top executives and presenters fuelled this lie because they were so concerned about losing audience share and profits to rival networks, despite knowing that Trump’s claims of voter fraud were untrue.

Among those presenters was Tucker Carlson, Fox’s highest rating prime-time host, who drew more than 3 million viewers a night to his daily 8pm show and was an influencer of Republican Party politics.

The 53-year-old was sacked last week amid revelations of vulgar texts messages about a senior executive, claims of sexism from a former staffer who is now suing the network, and his inflammatory views on race. One text, revealed by the New York Times this week, reportedly included fantasies of a white “mob” killing a left-wing “Antifa kid”.

Some political observers and media experts have suggested that Carlson’s abrupt firing could be emblematic of a shift in Fox’s coverage. However, Turnbull – a former journalist and head of the lobby group Australians for a Murdoch Royal Commission – made the point that Fox News provided Murdoch with the “single most influential element in the right-wing political environment in this country”.

A truck outside the Delaware court complex where Fox settled its case with Dominion Voting Systems.Credit: Bloomberg

“How do we deal with this?” the former leader asked, noting that the media landscape had become so hyper-partisan that many people “are now living in information silos” with opposing views of reality.

Citing former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, who once suggested a tactic to “flood the zone with shit”, Turnbull argued the answer was to do the opposite: “flood the zone with facts”.

He drew on his own experience at the 2016 election, when Labor falsely told voters the Coalition wanted to sell Medicare. He said this was an “audacious lie” but it worked because “we did not do enough to rebut it”.

“The perceived wisdom at that time was that, if people were saying crazy things like, ‘The election’s stolen’ or, ‘You’re about to sell Medicare’, [and] you rebutted it, you’re giving it more salience and oxygen.

“In the digital media, and the viral media age, that is no longer right. You have to have a whack-a-mole approach […] and keep rebutting and hitting those lies on the head.”

Asked what he thought of Trump, who is currently the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for another term in the White House, Turnbull recounted his “blazing row” with the then newly elected president in January 2017 when Trump berated him over a refugee resettlement deal done with the Obama administration.

“Trump is a big, narcissistic egomaniac with a sense of self-belief that is off the charts even by political standards. He’s a bully … and the one thing you cannot do with bullies is give in to them.”

Turnbull served as Australia’s 29th prime minister from 2015 to 2018, but was replaced by Scott Morrison after a failed challenge by Peter Dutton. He is now a regular visitor to the US and has recently produced a multipart podcast, Defending Democracy, which examines issues such as authoritarianism, misinformation campaigns, and the democratic backsliding around the world.

In his farewell speech as prime minister in 2018, Turnbull suggested forces “outside the parliament” were partly responsible for his demise. As reported by this masthead that year, he had earlier challenged Murdoch over the coverage of his government by News Corp newspapers and its Sky News television channel, arguing the media company was intensifying the leadership turmoil.

Fox News and News Corp have been contacted for comment.

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