President Donald Trump managed to put his grievances aside for a brief moment to share a gushing tribute to Rupert Murdoch for the media mogul’s 95th birthday celebrations, despite suing him for $10 billion.
The president was not present at the star-studded bash in New York on Saturday, but Fox News’ Bret Baier played a video message of the 79-year-old praising the chairman emeritus of Fox Corporation and News Corp.
Trump described Murdoch as “legendary” and “one of a kind,” while also praising his “courage, vision, and determination,” and saying he has “changed the world” during his decades-long career, the New York Post reported. The Post is one of several newspapers controlled by the media magnate’s News Corp empire.
Trump did not spoil the occasion by reminding everyone that he is currently suing Murdoch over The Wall Street Journal’s reporting on a birthday message the president allegedly sent to pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
The Murdoch-owned paper first reported in July 2025 on the existence of a letter Trump allegedly wrote to Epstein for his 50th birthday as part of a book compiled by Epstein’s child-trafficking accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell.
The bombshell report was met with fury from the president, who filed a $10 billion lawsuit against Murdoch and the Journal.
“I look forward to getting Rupert Murdoch to testify in my lawsuit against him and his ‘pile of garbage’ newspaper, the WSJ,” Trump posted on Truth Social last July. “That will be an interesting experience!!!”
After Trump and the White House denied that the birthday message even existed, the Journal published images of a lewd drawing of a naked woman alongside a message telling the disgraced financier: “May every day be another wonderful secret,” apparently signed in the president’s distinctive, thick handwriting.
The message was sent around 2003, a period when Trump and Epstein were still close friends, before the financier was first exposed as a child sex offender.
Elsewhere, the Post reported that Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner attended Murdoch’s 95th birthday celebration at The Grill in New York, alongside other MAGA figures such as Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum and former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
Other high-profile guests included former British prime ministers Tony Blair and Rishi Sunak, former Archbishop of New York Timothy Dolan, and actor Hugh Jackman, who performed songs including the Frank Sinatra classics “New York, New York” and “Fly Me to the Moon,” as well as tracks from the musical The Greatest Showman.
Murdoch does not actually turn 95 until Wednesday.
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