Murdoch wanted to tilt election to anyone but Trump: report

Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of 21st Century Fox, instructed Roger Ailes to “tilt” Fox News coverage “to anyone but [Donald] Trump … even Hillary [Clinton],” according to a new report.

“Murdoch instructed Ailes to tilt to anyone but Trump, Ailes confided to me before he was fired, even Hillary,” Michael Wolff, a close friend of Ailes, wrote in a story published Wednesday in The Hollywood Reporter.

“(Ailes, for his part, characterized Murdoch’s periodic efforts at interference as similar to Nixon’s instructions to bomb this or that country — best ignored.),” Wolff continued.

{mosads}The story, titled “Lessons Learned From Roger Ailes One Year After His Fox Firing,” marks the anniversary of Ailes’s stunning ouster from Fox News amid sexual harassment claims following an internal investigation.

Ailes, the former chairman and CEO of Fox News, died in May after a fall in his home in Florida. He was 77.

Wolff in the report also shared new information on Ailes’s plans for a comeback.

“In May, the day after he fell and hit his head in the Palm Beach house — he would be dead less than a week later — he was supposed to go to New York for a set of discussions that could have put him back into the news business,” Wolff revealed.

It is not known whom Ailes was set to meet with.

” ‘It’s strange to be at home with nothing to do but just to see how right you were. The liberals really have had no idea what was going on,’ said Ailes, in buoyant humor, during our last conversation, the day before his fall,” Wolff wrote.

“But the lesson is, you probably don’t want to be as right as I’ve been,” Ailes reportedly added. “That’s not going to make you a lot of friends.”

Fox News has lost key personnel over the past year in addition to Ailes, including top-rated hosts Bill O’Reilly, Megyn Kelly and Greta Van Susteren.

Despite those losses, the network has continued to flourish, finishing the week of July 10-16 as the most-watched basic cable network for the 28th straight week.

The Hill has reached out to 21st Century Fox for comment.

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