Longtime allies Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch have experienced highs and lows that fluctuate in tandem with their ratings and popularity. Murdoch helped build Trump's career, notably through coverage on Fox News and in the New York Post, while Trump's scandals and rise in politics brought audiences and readers to Murdoch's media empire. Since The Wall Street Journal – owned by the media mogul – published an article on July 17 about the ties between Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, the New York sexual predator found hanged in his cell in 2019, the relationship between the two men has reached a breaking point.
At the center of this crisis is a scrapbook, one among many, created in 2003 for Epstein's 50th birthday. According to The Wall Street Journal, Trump had, at the request of Ghislaine Maxwell – Epstein's associate who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2022 – signed an explicit drawing of a naked woman, with the comment: "Happy Birthday − and may every day be another wonderful secret."
The president, who has tried to explain that he cut ties with Epstein before the criminal accusations began two decades ago and was never involved in his secret and criminal life, vehemently denied the report. "This is not me. This is a fake thing. It's a fake Wall Street Journal story," he told the newspaper's reporters. His calls to The Wall Street Journal's editor-in-chief, British journalist Emma Tucker, and his interventions with the paper's owner, the American-Australian media tycoon Murdoch, were to no avail. The story broke anyway.
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