Trump waits for Rupert Murdoch at post‑election gathering in Trump Tower

2 TRUMP TOWER n the Saturday after the election, Donald Trump received a small group of well- wishers in his triplex apartment in Trump Tower. Even his close friends were still shocked and bewildered, and there was a dazed quality to the gathering. But Trump himself was mostly looking at the clock. Rupert Murdoch, heretofore doubtlessly certain Trump was a charlatan and a fool, said he and his new wife, Jerry Hall, would pay a call on the president-elect. But Murdoch was late—quite late. Trump kept assuring his guests that Rupert was on his way, coming soon. When some of the guests made a move to leave, Trump cajoled them to stay a little longer. You’ll want to stay to see Rupert. (Or, one of the guests interpreted, you’ll want to stay to see Trump with Rupert.) Murdoch, who, with his then wife, Wendi, had often socialized with Jared and Ivanka, in the past made little effort to hide his lack of interest in Trump. Murdoch’s fondness for Kushner created a curious piece of the power dynamic between Trump and his son-in-law, one that Kushner, with reasonable subtly, played to his advantage, often dropping Murdoch’s name into conversations with his father-in-law. When, in 2015, Ivanka Trump told Murdoch that her father really, truly was going to run for president, Murdoch dismissed the possibility out of hand. But now, the new president-elect—after the most astonishing upset in American history —was on tenterhooks waiting for Murdoch. “He’s one of the greats,” he told his guests, becoming more agitated as he waited. “Really, he’s one of the greats, the last of the greats. You have to stay to see him.” It was a matched set of odd reversals—an ironic symmetry. Trump, perhaps not yet appreciating the difference between becoming president and elevating his social standing, was trying mightily to curry favor with the previously disdainful media mogul. And Murdoch, finally arriving at the party he was in more than one way sorely late to, was as subdued and thrown as everyone else, and struggling to adjust his view of a man who, for more than a generation, had been at best a clown prince among the rich and famous. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019898