On Monday (July 28), Donald Trump’s lawyers demanded that Rupert Murdoch be deposed within 15 days in Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal, citing his advanced age.Trump sued The WSJ and its 94-year-old owner on July 19, telling a Florida federal court that the newspaper had defamed the US president in an article that “falsely claimed that he authored, drew and signed” a lewd birthday note to deceased financier and sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein. The suit said that “given the timing” of the article, “the overwhelming financial and reputational harm suffered by President Trump will continue to multiply.”This lawsuit marks a very public break in Trump’s longstanding friendship with the media tycoon. Here is what to know.Lewd letter to Epstein from Trump: articleThe WSJ article, titled “Jeffrey Epstein’s Friends Sent Him Bawdy Letters for a 50th Birthday Album. One Was From Donald Trump.”, was published two days before the lawsuit. It highlights a letter allegedly written by Trump as part of a collection of letters from Epstein’s family and friends to mark the latter’s 50th birthday in 2003.Trump’s friendship with Epstein has been under renewed scrutiny in recent weeks, with his constituents demanding the release of the Epstein Files, a collection of documents about the criminal cases against him. The circumstances of Epstein’s death in 2019 have been hotly contested in the years since, with conspiracies of a murder to protect the names of his influential associates – including Trump, allegedly – widely prevalent, despite several official statements.The article said that the collection was compiled by Epstein’s partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, who was in 2022 found guilty of child sex trafficking in association with Epstein.The birthday note attributed by the article to Trump featured typewritten text contained within the hand-drawn outline of a naked woman. “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret,” the letter said, with a signature attributed to Trump.Story continues below this adTrump denied any connection with the note or the drawing, saying, “This is not me. This is a fake thing. It’s a fake Wall Street Journal story.”Keith Rupert Murdoch is the owner and retired leader of the media companies News Corporation and 21st Century Fox, comprising hundreds of publishing outlets worldwide, chiefly in three countries – the US, the UK and Australia.He inherited News Corp Australia after his journalist-turned-media magnate father, Keith Murdoch, died in 1952. In the following years, the Oxford graduate built on this legacy, acquiring troubled newspapers in Australia and the United Kingdom in the 1950s and 1960s, and establishing mainstream tabloid culture.Murdoch’s foray into the US began in 1973 when he bought The San Antonio Express-News. He moved to New York City in 1974, where he acquired The New York Post two years later. In 1985, he acquired 20th Century Fox, and became a US citizen. A year later, News Corp acquired the broadcasting company Metromedia and founded Fox Broadcasting Company.Story continues below this adIn 1968, he purchased the British newspapers News of the World and The Sun, relaunching the latter as a tabloid. He all but cemented his monopoly on British news publishing in 1981 with his acquisitions of The Times and Sunday Times, which alone accounted for almost 40% of the British press. This acquisition enjoyed the blessing of Margaret Thatcher, then the British Prime Minister, who concluded a secret deal that year with him in exchange for favourable coverage in these newspapers.Across the Atlantic, a similar arrangement would unfold with Ronald Reagan. Sprawling positive coverage by The New York Post helped cement his election victory in 1980, including a front-page editorial in his support, and articles critical of his rival, Jimmy Carter. Murdoch’s 1983 meeting with Reagan would later extract an understanding from the US President to waive a ban on owning a television station and a newspaper in the same market, paving the way for his foray into the TV business.Investigative journalist Robert Parry wrote of the meeting in 2015, “Following that meeting, Murdoch became involved in a privately funded propaganda project to help sell Reagan’s hard-line Central American policies, according to other documents. That PR operation was overseen by senior CIA propaganda specialist Walter Raymond Jr. and CIA Director William Casey, but the details of Murdoch’s role remain sketchy partly because some of the records are still classified more than three decades later.”Slowly but surely, a culture of “kissing the ring” was born: A 2017 NPR article recounted that British prime ministers, from Tony Blair to Theresa May, privately met with Murdoch to curry favour with him ahead of their terms. Murdoch’s proximity to 10 Downing Street was the subject of an 18-month investigation by the Media Reform Coalition and 38 Degrees, which noted overwhelming support by Murdoch-owned publications for the Conservative Party in the 2015 general election, and their endorsement of the 2016 Brexit vote.A friendship of convenienceStory continues below this adAfter moving to New York City in the 1970s, Rupert Murdoch became acquainted with Donald Trump, then a 30-year-old real estate developer’s son who had just graduated from Wharton Business School and was trying to build a reputation for himself in Manhattan. Murdoch launched Page 6, a dedicated section in The Post for gossip, which helped raise Trump’s star from just another businessman to celebrity status. The two forged a symbiotic relationship, with Trump providing entertaining fodder for Murdoch’s newspaper and benefiting from the visibility of The Post.The two were also clients of Roy Cohn, the defence attorney who became infamous for his starring role as chief counsel in Senator Joseph McCarthy’s 1954 investigations of suspected communists. Cohn had since established a lucrative career as a legal and political fixer. Cohn served as a personal mentor to Trump and introduced Murdoch to influential people in New York. Cohn’s influence opened access for both Trump and Murdoch into affluent New York circles, all the while demanding favours in return, a trait Trump reportedly came to embody in the years since. A 2017 analysis by The Guardian said that reporters who interacted with the current president between the 1970s and 1990s said that he often posed as his own spokesperson to plant Page 6 stories and engaged in “misogynistic boasting” about his sexual conquests.As the decades passed, this friendship became familial, with Murdoch guiding Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, when the latter acquired The New York Observer in 2006. Until February 2017, Ivanka Trump served on the board of a $300 million trust fund for Murdoch’s daughters with his ex-wife, Wendi Deng.Trump’s own relationship with Murdoch has not always been smooth sailing, with their personal interests placing them at odds. This was evident in 1988 when Trump attempted to purchase The New York Post when Murdoch was forced to rescind ownership owing to regulatory rules – Murdoch ended up selling the business to a different owner and bought back the paper in 1993.Story continues below this adMore recently, Murdoch had initially rebuffed Trump’s presidential bid in 2015, writing on social media: “When is Donald Trump going to stop embarrassing his friends, let alone the whole country?” Vanity Fair in 2015 reported that Murdoch directed then-Fox News CEO Roger Ailes to target Trump with tough questions at the first primary debate in a bid to dissuade Trump from contesting. However, Trump prevailed and trounced his rivals, prompting Fox News to switch tack and champion him. The two made up, and Murdoch was pictured at Trump’s side during his presidential inauguration in 2017.Also Read | Canada could join UK, France in recognising Palestine: The significanceIn a similar attempt after Trump’s 2020 election loss, Murdoch directed Fox News executives to “make Trump a nonperson” and cultivate Ron DeSantis as the potential Republican presidential candidate. DeSantis was prominently featured on Fox News post 2021, while The New York Post in 2022 carried a front-page story titled “DeFUTURE” after his win in the Florida gubernatorial election in 2022. In the following days, The Post carried a front page story likening Trump to Humpty Dumpty about to have a great fall, and announced his 2024 presidential bid with the headline “Florida Man Makes Announcement.”However, DeSantis lacked Trump’s resounding charisma and did not endorse Trump’s claims of a stolen election, a claim that had proven to be widely popular among sections of the conservative voter base. Even as Trump made his displeasure at being sidelined known, this attempt failed, and he surged through the primaries to be named the 2024 Republican candidate. Murdoch was once again forced to change course, restoring prime real estate on Fox News to Trump. Murdoch also attended the 2024 Republican National Convention, but for the first time, was seated at a considerable distance from Trump.Both Trump presidential terms have received overwhelmingly positive coverage in two of three major US-based news outlets owned by Murdoch – Fox News and The New York Post, as well as The WSJ’s conservative editorial pages. In contrast, The WSJ’s reporting enjoys a certain degree of editorial independence.Story continues below this adFox’s courtship of the president has, on occasion, been to its own detriment – it was the first to declare that Trump had lost Arizona in the 2020 election. Despite Fox News journalists believing the contrary, the channel parroted Trump’s “stolen election” claims to retain its conservative viewership. Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation suit against Fox News revealed internal communications from Murdoch and other Fox honchos who had expressed cynicism over Trump’s claims while taking a different stance publicly. In 2023, the Murdochs were forced to pay $787.5 million to settle a defamation suit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against the channel.Fox News has thus far sparingly covered the present lawsuit in two news programmes over the last weekend, according to The Guardian report.The present lawsuit is the first lawsuit against a media organisation that Trump has initiated as a sitting President. ABC, owned by Disney, agreed to pay $15 million as a settlement last December. And earlier this month, Paramount settled for $16 million with the President over another lawsuit he had filed about a CBS News interview with Kamala Harris, the 2024 Democratic presidential candidate.While settlement remains a possibility in the current lawsuit, Dow Jones, The Wall Street Journal’s parent company, had last week said that it stood by its reporting and said it would vigorously defend itself. Meanwhile, The WSJ has since published another story claiming that in May, the Justice Department had told Trump that his name figured in the Epstein Files.