The Southern Poverty Law Center has released more emails from 2015 and 2016 between White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller — at the time, an aide to then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) — and then-Breitbart editor Katie McHugh. In addition to showing Miller’s support for a number of far-right conspiracy theories, such as the “great replacement,” the emails reveal that Miller also took aim at a notable conservative target: Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch.
Miller’s criticism of Murdoch shows just how much the tycoon has lost control of right-wing media narratives. Instead, it’s now his son Lachlan Murdoch heading up the Fox Corp. and supporting the network’s descent into outright white nationalism.
In July 2015, Rupert Murdoch posted a tweet that was critical of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump’s statements on immigration:
“Actually, no,” Miller commented in an email to McHugh with the subject line “don’t believe your lying eyes,” which linked to the tweet. The email also linked to an article by Jason Richwine, who had previously resigned from the Heritage Foundation over his racist writings against Hispanics.
Lachlan Murdoch, by contrast, sent personal text messages of support to Fox’s Tucker Carlson, whose show has been a center of anti-immigrant commentary, after the prime-time host declared in December of 2018 that immigration “makes our own country poorer, and dirtier, and more divided.”
More recently, Carlson said that “illegal immigrants are tethering themselves here with millions of anchor babies.” Likewise, in Miller’s own emails to Breitbart, the future White House adviser decried: “Not only will the U.S.-born children of future illegal immigrants and guest workers be made automatic U.S. citizens, but their foreign-born children will too because, as [former Republican House Majority Leader Eric] Cantor said, ‘Our country was founded on the principle.’”
There were brief periods in the past in which Fox News would clean up its anti-immigration rhetoric to be more in line with Rupert Murdoch’s own positions. But those days are so long gone, they seem quaint in comparison to the conservative media of today.
