(Bloomberg) -- Former President Donald Trump said he will meet with media mogul Rupert Murdoch and urge him not to allow negative ads against the Republican nominee or provide airtime to his critics on Fox News in the final stretch before Election Day.
“I’m going to see Rupert Murdoch,” Trump said at the end of an interview Friday on Fox News’ Fox and Friends.
“I’m going to tell him something very simple, because I can’t talk to anybody else. Don’t put on negative commercials for 21 days. Don’t put them and don’t put on — they’re horrible people. They come and lie,” the Republican presidential nominee added, seemingly referring to allies of his election rival, Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump said he was not sure Murdoch would be “thrilled” he had announced their meeting on air but added, “I’m going to say, ‘Rupert, please do it this way,’ and then we’re going to have a victory because I think everyone wants that.”
Murdoch owns about 40% of the voting stock in Fox Corp., which is the parent of Fox News, as well as News Corp., whose holdings include the Wall Street Journal and the Times of London.
The former president has stepped up his criticism of Fox News, a conservative-leaning network that is largely friendly territory for him and his allies, bristling in particular at negative ads that have aired as well as airtime given to Harris campaign officials and other liberal voices.
Trump has made numerous Fox News appearances in recent months and his aides and allies are also frequent guests on the network.
Opponents of the Republican nominee have been airing ads on the network seemingly in an effort to needle Trump, who is known to be an avid watcher of cable news programming.
“In the old days you never played negative ads. In other words, when I leave here, I’ll then be hit by five or six ads,” Trump said Friday. “When I leave, I’ll have 12 people from Kamala on and, you know, it’s pretty much unopposed for 19 days. I don’t think we should do that anymore. I think you shouldn’t play negative ads. It’s very tough.”
The criticism comes as Harris ramps up her outreach to disaffected Republicans and independents, an effort which saw her take part in her first sitdown interview with Fox News earlier this week, a combative affair with Fox chief political anchor Bret Baier.
Ahead of the interview, Trump criticized Baier and the network on Truth Social, writing that he “preferred seeing a more hard hitting journalist, but Fox has grown so weak and soft on the Democrats, constantly polluting the airwaves with unopposed Kamala Representatives, that it all doesn’t matter anymore.”
Federal Communications Commission rules prohibit radio and television broadcast stations from “censoring or rejecting political ads that are paid for and sponsored by legally qualified candidates,” but that does not cover cable networks, who have broader discretion over what advertisements they accept.
Trump has lambasted the network and many of its prominent on-air figures in speeches and on his social-media platform Truth Social in recent days.
“How much time does Ian Sams, Senior Advisor to Lyin’ Kamala Harris, spend on FoxNews?,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Monday, claiming the senior spokesman for the Harris campaign, was allowed to spend “much of the weekend hitting ‘TRUMP,’ totally unopposed.”
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