Vanity Fair’s new cover story is all about “the real life Succession,” aka Rupert Murdoch and his game of thrones. Who will control his empire once he’s gone? Which of his children is favored? Honestly, I don’t even care at this point, which is why I skipped this story at first, that was until I saw that there was some interesting gossip about Murdoch’s fourth marriage, to Jerry Hall. Hall and Murdoch’s marriage came to a swift end last summer, and I widely assumed that was because Jerry wanted out. Turns out, not so much – Rupert wanted out and he shocked Jerry by just texting her out of the blue one day, telling her it was over. Some highlights from this VF story:

People in Murdoch’s orbit wonders if he’s lost the plot. Last June, Murdoch abruptly left his fourth wife, model-actor Jerry Hall. For two brief weeks this spring, he was engaged to Ann Lesley Smith, a 66-year-old former dental hygienist turned conservative radio host with QAnon-style politics. (Smith told an interviewer in 2022 that COVID was a “plandemic” hatched by Bill Gates at Davos.) “Rupert has been radicalized by his own echo chamber,” said a person close to him, explaining his initial attraction to Smith. In January, Murdoch scuttled a plan to merge Fox and News Corp—which would have centralized Lachlan’s control over the television and publishing divisions—after major shareholders balked. “It was a harebrained scheme. They got their ass handed to them by investors,” said a person close to the Murdochs.

The Dominion Voting lawsuit. The crisis has led to an existential threat: the $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit Dominion Voting Systems brought against Fox News. The blockbuster trial is set to begin in April, but even if the parties settle before then, Dominion’s legal filings have already publicized internal communications that revealed those at the highest levels of Fox News didn’t believe Trump’s stolen election conspiracies even as the network was cravenly promoting the lies for ratings. (In one email, Murdoch called Trump’s fraud claims “really crazy stuff.”)

Courting Jerry Hall: After a few weeks of dating, Murdoch and Hall flew on his private G650 jet to Texas to meet Hall’s Fox News–loving family. Hall left Texas at 16 to model in Europe, but as she watched her relatives line up to receive Murdoch like he was the king of red America, she realized that her family’s approval meant a lot. Six months into the relationship, Murdoch proposed. “Mick was so unfaithful to you, I’d never be unfaithful,” Murdoch told Hall, according to a person briefed on the conversation.

Murdoch found Trump appalling. “Rupert knew he was an idiot,” a person close to Murdoch said. Murdoch was a longtime champion of immigration reform and free trade and loathed Trump’s nativism and know-nothingism.

Jerry Hall hated Trump: “During dinners we had with Jerry and Rupert, Jerry wouldn’t hold back,” Cashin, Hall’s friend, said. According to a source, Murdoch wanted to buy a house in Florida to be closer to Mar-a-Lago, but Hall refused. Hall told friends she was alarmed by Trump’s lack of qualifications or respect for the office. At a lunch shortly after the 2016 election, Hall asked Trump to reroute the Dakota Access Pipeline away from Native American reservations that were protesting the project. Trump responded by asking if she wanted to serve in his administration as head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. “It was horrible. I couldn’t wait to get away,” she later told friends.

Blowing up his marriage to Jerry: At the age of 91, Murdoch blew up his fourth marriage. Hall was waiting for Murdoch to meet her at their Oxfordshire estate last June when she checked her phone. “Jerry, sadly I’ve decided to call an end to our marriage,” Murdoch’s email began, according to a screenshot I read. “We have certainly had some good times, but I have much to do…My New York lawyer will be contacting yours immediately.” Hall told friends she was blindsided. “Rupert and I never fought,” she told people. There had been disagreements over his antiabortion views and some friction with the kids over Hall’s rules about masking and testing before they saw Murdoch, according to sources. But Hall never felt Murdoch treated these as major issues.

After they finalized the divorce two months later: One of the terms of the settlement was that Hall couldn’t give story ideas to the writers on Succession. Hall told friends she had to move everything out of the Bel Air estate within 30 days and show receipts to prove items belonged to her. Security guards watched as her children helped her pack. When she settled into the Oxfordshire home she received in the divorce, she discovered surveillance cameras were still sending footage back to Fox headquarters. Mick Jagger sent his security consultant to disconnect them.

Jerry believes that Murdoch was already seeing Ann Lesley Smith: Looking back, Hall told friends that Murdoch had simply moved on, the way he had ended previous marriages. “She was devastated, mad, and humiliated,” Cashin told me. On the first day of Lent in February, Hall told friends she made an effigy of Murdoch, tied dental floss around its neck, and burned it on the grill.

His failed engagement to Smith: Murdoch and Smith had planned to marry this summer. He proposed with an 11-carat diamond engagement ring said to be worth upwards of $2.5 million. Then, a little more than two weeks after rolling out news of their engagement, the pair abruptly called it off. One source close to Murdoch said he had become increasingly uncomfortable with Smith’s outspoken evangelical views. “She said Tucker Carlson is a messenger from God, and he said nope,” the source said.

[From Vanity Fair]

This is insane! A then-91-year-old man sneaking around with an evangelical side-chick when he has a wonderful wife at home – VF details how much Jerry cared for him when he was sick with Covid and when he broke various bones. She was literally his nurse and primary caregiver, and they kept each other company during the lockdown. And he dumped her when he met some hot-to-trot nutcase. No fool like an old fool! Well, at least the Dominion Voting lawsuit will weaken his empire even further. And the sh-t about the security cameras at Jerry’s house!! Holy sh-t.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid and Cover Images.