This is the On the Media Midweek podcast. I'm Brooke Gladstone. This week, NPR's media reporter David Fulkenflick had a story with the headline, Trump's lawsuit against Murdoch and Wall Street Journal turns personal. The lawsuit in question is over the journal's exclusive about a birthday card to Jeffrey Epstein, signed by Donald Trump,

with a message about sexy sounding, quote, secrets inside the doodled outline of a naked woman

with Donald Trump's signature scrawled where the pubic hair would be. Mr. Trump tried to cash in

on his long relationship with his pal and journal owner Rupert

Murdoch to have the story squashed, but to no avail. Now, as Fokinflik reports, Trump is asking a

federal judge in Miami to compel the man once called my very good friend Rupert Murdoch

to answer the president's lawyers' questions under oath

within 15 days of the order. Murdoch is the only person Trump is asking to appear in person.

The decades-long relationship between the president and the media mogul has had its share of

ups and downs, but both have been invested in each other's continued success.

Now at the age of 94, Murdoch has started to think about his legacy,

and it seems he'd like to retain his position of power even in the afterlife.

That is part of what made this story so compelling to me.

McKay Coppins is his staff writer at the Atlantic.

He wants to, from the grave, manipulate and govern not just his media outlets,

but the politics of the countries where they are most influential.

Coppins conducted a series of interviews with the Murdox, most notably Rupert's son, James,

and his wife, Catherine.

When I spoke to Coppins in May, he told me he'd discover that the family was embroiled in a legal

battle that would define the future of the Murdoch Media Empire.

The focus was a plan settled decades ago.

About 25 years ago, when Rupert was divorcing his then-wife Anna,

...