Obama on Fox Explained: Murdoch Brokered Truce

Perhaps this explains Obama’s appearance tonight on Fox News’ O’Reilly Factor.

According to Vanity Fair contributing editor Michael Wolff, Rupert Murdoch brokered a truce between Barack Obama and Fox News’ president Roger Ailes. 

Murdoch also one day hopes to buy the NY Times, says Wolff

Wolff interviewed Murdoch for his upcoming bio, "The Man Who Owns the News."

The revelations are detailed in the October issue of Vanity Fair, available online.

The secret meeting between Obama, Murdoch and Ailes took place at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. "A tentative truce, which may or may not have vast historical significance, was at that moment agreed upon," states Wolff.

Of Murdoch’s NY Times aspirations, Wolff writes:

He is spending time now in consideration of an even more far-fetched fantasy, The New York Times: he’d really like to own it too. Now, everybody around him continues to tell him that buying the Times is pretty much impossible…..But it’s obviously irresistible to him. I’ve watched him go through the numbers, plot out a merger with the Journal’s backroom operations, and fantasize about the staff’s quitting en masse as soon as he entered the sacred temple…..

And then this observation from Wolff about Fox News:

Fox has been his alter ego. For a long time he was in love with the Fox chief, Roger Ailes, because he was even more Murdoch than Murdoch. And yet now the embarrassment can’t be missed…..