President Donald Trump has revealed the team of super-rich magnates he’s assembling as part of his goal to take TikTok out of Chinese hands in the U.S.—and he’s in the middle of a $10 billion legal dispute with one of them.
The president spoke about the popular app Sunday while appearing as the first-ever guest on The Sunday Briefing, a new show from Fox News.
Trump took some time to fawn over Lachlan and Rupert Murdoch as two of the one percenters he hopes will be involved in a TikTok deal. This is despite having served the 94-year-old mogul with a multi-billion dollar defamation lawsuit over one of his many papers, The Wall Street Journal.
Asked by host Peter Doocy—son of fellow Fox News pundit Steve Doocy—how much money would be involved in the potential TikTok takeover, Trump admitted he was expecting to pay a “tremendous amount.”
He then outlined which tech and media barons were on board to snatch the app up, naming the second-richest person in the world, Larry Ellison, as one of the chosen few. Also making the cut is Dell CEO Michael Dell, alongside British-born Lachlan Murdoch, who acts as both chairman of News Corp and the CEO of Fox Group.
“I hate to tell you this,” Trump said to Doocy. “A man named Lachlan is involved. You know who Lachlan is? That’s a very unusual name, Lachlan Murdoch.”
Surprisingly, the president also named Lachlan’s father as part of the crew.
“Rupert is probably in the group. I think they’re going to be in the group,” he said of the father-son duo.
Of his choices, Trump described: “Really great people, very prominent people, and they’re also American patriots, you know. They love this country, so I think they’re going to do a really good job.“
These words don’t match the description of the elder Murdoch in the lawsuit Trump filed against him in July.
The defamation case was opened against both Murdoch and The Wall Street Journal after the paper published the details of a crude drawing and message which bears Trump’s signature and was sent to Jeffrey Epstein for his birthday.
The president has denied authoring the note, and swiftly sued Rupert and his paper for $10 billion in damages.
The case is still ongoing, while Trump and Murdoch recently reunited in the U.K. at the state banquet held in honor of the president’s visit.
According to Trump biographer Michael Wolff, the dinner invitation may have been a way to try to bring the lawsuit to a satisfying end.
“What Trump intimates have told me is, because he believes that he can ‘Pressure the old man into a settlement,’” Wolff said on Inside Trump’s Head.
“Rupert Murdoch is 94 years old, so if he can pressure him into a settlement, and then a person near Trump said to me that it could be an easy 10 million,” Wolff said.
White House Communications Director Steven Cheung responded to Wolff’s claims by saying the author “a lying sack of s–t” who “has been proven to be a fraud.”
“He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain,” he said.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment on Murdoch’s involvement in the TikTok deal.
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