Here’s How Rupert Murdoch Became Eight Times Richer Than Donald Trump

It’s been a rocky few weeks for one of the most stable relationships in cable news. As the animus grows between Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch and President Donald Trump, so do the rumors that they will one day be competitors in the market for conservative news. 

If Trump actually wanted to start a media business, he’d presumably have to make a significant investment, which could be challenging, given his current lack of liquidity and pile of debt. Competing with Murdoch would be even tougher. Sure, Trump previously made some money in television. But the vast majority of $2.5 billion fortune comes from real estate, the business his father taught him. Murdoch, who started with less than the President, is now worth nearly eight times as much, $19 billion, with a media empire that circles the globe. 

Murdoch’s story begins with just a single local newspaper in Adelaide, Australia, which he inherited from his journalist father in 1952. Over the years, Rupert Murdoch developed a winning business strategy: buy competitors and sell controversy. In 1985, he debuted on the Forbes 400 list as the owner of a chain of newspapers that included tabloids in the U.K. (The Times, The Sun, News of the World) and the U.S. (the New York Post, the Chicago Sun-Times), and with a net worth of $300 million.

Donald Trump ranked higher on the Forbes 400 that year, with a fortune listed at $600 million. Trump, however, didn’t deserve the ranking; he had created a fake persona to fool Forbes into believing his father had transferred his wealth to him. The young heir was in the early years of honing his own business strategy, which centered on misleading the media and loading up on debt. He acquired a yacht, casinos, Mar-a-Lago, the Plaza Hotel, a football team, even an airline. But eventually, it all came crashing down. In 1990, Trump fell off of the Forbes 400, burdened by debt and in trouble with his creditors.

Murdoch, meanwhile, kept expanding. He invested heavily in television, buying up stations in the U.S. to create the Fox Broadcasting Company and growing Sky News in the U.K. By 1996, his fortune had increased to $3.9 billion. It grew another $1.7 billion the next year when Fox Entertainment Group spun off from parent company News Corp in what was, at the time, the third biggest IPO in American history. 

Trump eventually made a comeback, returning to the Forbes 400 in 1996 with an estimated $450 million fortune. He struck gold with The Apprentice, which he later claimed provided him with $214 million. But he didn’t always reinvest wisely. For example, he bought a golf resort named Trump National Doral in Miami for $150 million, then dumped a reported $213 million of additional cash into the place. Today, Forbes estimates the property is worth just $153 million. So in other words, he apparently poured more than $200 million down the drain. Golf resorts in Europe also turned into money pits. 

Murdoch extended his lead. By 2002, he was worth $5 billion (compared to Trump’s $1.9 billion) and Fox News was reliably the country’s top-rated cable news network. In 2013, his net worth reached $10 billion, a level of wealth Trump has never achieved, when he once again spun off the television, sports and film divisions from News Corp as a new company, 21st Century Fox. 

Trump’s latest miscalculation: holding onto his business empire while assuming the presidency. Since Trump took office, his fortune has declined an estimated $1 billion. Politics poisoned his brand, and the coronavirus cut into the value of his hotels and office space. Had Trump sold everything at the start and reinvested it all into broad-based mutual funds, like ethics experts had suggested, he’d be far richer today. 

Murdoch has flourished during the Trump presidency, of course. Fox News’ ratings jumped, and the media mogul seized on an anti-regulatory climate to push through the deal of a lifetime. In 2018, he agreed to sell 21st Century Fox’s movie studio, a handful of cable networks, and its stakes in Star India and Hulu to Disney for $71.3 billion. His net worth grew from $12 billion in 2017 to $19.1 billion in 2019, the year the sale took place. Of course, he kept his crown jewel and the object of Trump’s current hostility: Fox News.