Rupert Murdoch sends unsubtle message to Trump to stop the madness in Minneapolis

Brian Kilmeade, the co-host of Donald Trump’s favorite morning talk show Fox & Friends, repeatedly implored the president on Monday morning to send border czar Tom Homan to Minnesota to “settle things down” amid the growing public outrage over the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti.

Before Fox & Friends signed off that morning, it appeared the president had heeded the advice of his TV pals. “I am sending Tom Homan to Minnesota tonight,” Trump declared on Monday, adding that “Tom is tough but fair, and will report directly to me.”

Kilmeade’s plea to the president was just one part of what appeared to be a multi-pronged effort by Rupert Murdoch to use his right-wing media empire to push the Trump administration to shift its tactics as backlash over the Pretti shooting only intensified. It also saw Fox News and Murdoch’s conservative publications suddenly reverse course and change their own narrative about the killing.

In fact, by the end of the night Monday, it got to the point that even Sean Hannity – Trump’s close confidant who has been a vocal proponent of the administration’s heavy-handed mass deportation operation – took to the air to say that ICE should stop “going into Home Depots and arresting people,” adding that it wasn’t a “good idea.”

Of course, it isn’t much of a mystery why Murdoch media is doing a full-court press on the president to change the optics in Minneapolis – Trump’s approval ratings on the deportations are terrible. And it is only going to get worse after immigration enforcement officers shot Pretti – a 37-year-old ICU nurse and US citizen – at least 10 times on Saturday.

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According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Monday and conducted both before and after the Pretti shooting, only 39 percent of Americans approved of the job Trump is doing on immigration. Additionally, 58 percent of people said that ICE and Border Patrol agents have gone “too far” in the immigration crackdown across American cities, which includes Minneapolis. Only 26 percent of respondents said immigration enforcement’s actions were “about right.”

Still, in the immediate aftermath of the killing – the second deadly shooting of a U.S. citizen in Minneapolis since the crackdown began – Fox News and its corporate cousin the New York Post supported and parroted the administration’s initial (and false) narrative about the incident.

While video evidence and eyewitness accounts showed that Pretti was not brandishing a firearm when he was gang-tackled and pummeled by Border Patrol agents, CBP commander at large Greg Bovino and DHS chief Kristi Noem absurdly “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” Stephen Miller, the chief architect of the deportation operation, went even further, labeling Pretti as a “would-be assassin” and “domestic terrorist” who was looking to murder law enforcement.

Throughout much of the day Saturday and Sunday, Fox News commentators and hosts largely embraced this position. Joe Concha, for instance, claimed that it was Minnesota Democratic leaders who were “gaslighting” the public about the facts around this shooting while simultaneously lying that Pretti “literally” pulled a gun on an ICE officer.

Much of this commentary centered on a photo of the 9mm handgun that was found on Pretti, who was legally permitted to conceal and carry a firearm. That photo was initially provided to Fox News reporter Bill Melugin, who has been described as “the network’s dedicated shill for federal immigration enforcement agencies” and was likely seen by DHS as the right person to help kick off the agency’s spin.

Fox News contributor Paul Mauro insisted that Pretti – who only had his camera phone in his hands during the altercation – ““tried to involve himself somehow and at some point during the scuffle and when they were trying to subdue him without using deadly force, he pulls out that 9mm.” He also said that Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms would be “running that gun to see if there’s any bodies on it,” especially since it was “expensive.”

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The New York Post, meanwhile, ran pieces that seemed desperate to find a legal justification for the shooting – such as one that noted “Alex Pretti’s Sig handgun has history of accidentally firing — offering possible clue to why border agent shot him.”

However, with several mainstream news networks and publications doing frame-by-frame analyses of the shooting – which showed Pretti getting pepper-sprayed after helping a fellow observer was was violently pushed to the ground by an agent, only to be wrestled to the ground by several officers and shot multiple times after an officer removes a firearm from Pretti’s possession – things eventually started to change over at Murdoch media.

The impetus for this narrative shift appeared to be a report by Melugin – citing several of his sources within DHS – that senior employees at the department had grown “increasingly uneasy & frustrated” with some of the agency's claims in the aftermath of the shooting.

While the report generally focused on the messaging that had been coming out about the shooting from senior leaders, such as Noem and Bovino, Melugin also included this line: “There is no indication Pretti was there to murder law enforcement, as videos appear to show he never drew his holstered firearm.”

“Melugin’s stark acknowledgement was whiplash-inducing for anyone who had been following Fox’s on-air coverage of Pretti’s killing up to that point, and it marked the start of a dramatic shift in the network’s treatment of the case,” Media Matters’ senior fellow Matthew Gertz noted about the impact that story had on Fox News’ on-air coverage.

Indeed, the shift in tone wasn’t just apparent from the denizens at the right-wing cable network. It also came from the editorial boards of Murdoch’s two biggest American newspapers – the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post.

Saying it was “time for ICE to pause in Minneapolis,” the WSJ’s board said Sunday evening there “isn’t much heart in Immigration and Customs Enforcement” and the “Trump Administration spin on this simply isn’t believable,” adding that it is “backfiring against Republicans.”

By Monday morning, the NY Post’s board – which has been far more pro-MAGA than the WSJ – was also pushing the president to “de-escalate” in Minneapolis. While placing a large amount of the blame for Pretti’s death on “leftist propagandists falsely claiming that Americans’ right to protest extends to messing with the feds,” the Post’s board still called for Trump to shift his tactics in the area.

That included staying away from invoking the Insurrection Act, which many Murdoch media figures had been urging the president to use over the weekend. Instead of fixing things, the board argued, “it’ll backfire even worse.”

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This shift also represented a sea change from the aftermath of the Renee Good shooting earlier this month, which saw Fox News and the rest of MAGA media stay in lockstep with the administration’s assertion – despite video evidence – that Good was violently trying to run over an ICE officer with her vehicle when she was fatally shot.

Even Fox News primetime host Jesse Watters, while also raging about the Democrats in the state being in “open rebellion,” urged Trump to draw down the surge of immigration officers from Minneapolis and move them to another city. “You can't stand in the middle of the ring forever,” he declared while an on-screen chyron blared: “ICE HAS TO CHANGE TACTICS.”

Meanwhile, it appears that Trump’s cable news obsession – which features a number of conservative hosts speaking to an audience of one – spurred him into action to soften his tone on immigration enforcement amid the growing backlash over Pretti’s killing and the Minneapolis crackdown.

“Over the weekend, Trump took note of conservative media figures, including Fox News host Maria Bartiromo, who criticized the rhetoric from officials such as Noem and White House adviser Stephen Miller, who called Pretti a ‘domestic terrorist,’” the Washington Post reported.

By the end of the day Monday, besides Trump’s announcement that Homan was heading to Minnesota to head up the administration’s immigration enforcement efforts, the president also boasted about his “great” and constructive calls with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey – who he has spent months antagonizing and accusing of propagating the state’s welfare-fraud scandal.

It was also reported that Bovino – the face of the aggressive immigration crackdown in Minneapolis and other large U.S. cities – had been removed from his role and blocked from using social media. (DHS has denied that Bovino has been “relieved of his duties.”) On top of that, Trump held a late-night crisis meeting with Noem and her top aide Corey Lewandowski amid growing calls for her to be fired or impeached.

Murdoch, who has long had a love-hate relationship with Trump and is currently embroiled in a legal fight with the litigious president over the Wall Street Journal’s reporting on Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, is probably the only conservative media ally with enough power and influence to fully sway the president’s actions and opinions.

Why is that? As Murdoch said last year, he has nothing to lose at this point – and has “the resources, the freedom and the fortitude” to weather a showdown with Trump.

“I’m 94 years old and I will not be intimidated,” Murdoch reportedly said last summer.