Robert De Niro Intervened in Billionaire Murdoch Clan’s Feud

Robert De Niro confronted News Corp heiress Elisabeth Murdoch at a dinner party and insisted she should challenge her dad for allegedly damaging the United States, according to a new report.

“You can still love your father, but you can tell him he is wrong for what he is doing to this country,” De Niro, 81, recalled saying to Elisabeth, 56, of 93-year-old Rupert. The Wall Street Journal reported the 2022 confrontation left her “visibly shaken.”

“I called Elisabeth and told her I was sorry,” the legendary actor told the paper. “I saw how upset she was and felt badly about that.”

De Niro is an ardent Democrat who, earlier this week, took part in a “Paisans for Kamala” livestream fundraiser of Italian Americans who support the Democratic ticket in this year’s presidential election.

Earlier this year, he showed up outside Donald Trump’s hush-money trial in New York City and called the former president a “clown.” Meanwhile, the stalwart conservative Murdoch media empire, especially Fox News, has backed Trump publicly, despite private reservations that reportedly include Rupert Murdoch wishing the former president was dead.

The dinner party where De Niro challenged Elisabeth Murdoch was hosted by someone with politics much closer to the Godfather actor than her dad: her younger brother, James, 51.

James Murdoch has made headlines in recent years for breaking ranks with his family’s arch-conservative legacy, donating tens of millions to progressive causes. He and his father are not currently on speaking terms, the Journal reported—in 2019, James told The New Yorker that was often the case “for periods of time.”

His older brother Lachlan, 53, has been tapped by dad as his successor for pledging to shepherd the family media empire’s right-wing bent.

In the fallout of Lachlan Murdoch’s planned elevation to the throne, the other three of Rupert’s eldest four children—Elisabeth and James along with 66-year-old Prudence—are currently mired in a heated legal bout with their father. All four were set to receive equal shares in the family trust—which holds crucial voting shares in Fox Corp and News Corp—but in a Shakespearean betrayal, Rupert MUrdoch filed a petition late last year to hand control exclusively to Lachlan.

Sisters Elisabeth and Prudence Murdoch are said to be more politically moderate, though are less open about their views than the thumbing-his-nose-at-the-father James Murdoch, who earlier this month endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

A closed-door court battle, set to kick off Sept. 16 in Nevada, could resolve the succession drama and, in the process, determine who will ultimately control the Murdoch empire, including Fox News and The Wall Street Journal itself.