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The bad blood between News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch and former President Donald Trump has been simmering for months, but in the past week, it’s finally boiled over, with Trump blasting out sizzling Truth Social posts criticizing the man in charge of Fox News, the NY Post, and the Wall Street Journal.

Fox News is being sued by Dominion Voting Systems in a $1.6B defamation suit that claims the channel knowingly slandered the company by promoting stories questioning the accuracy of their voting machines.

Last week, Murdoch testified that he had serious questions about the story, and that he “would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it, in hindsight.” This apparently infuriated Trump, who hit back with two posts, the first blasting former Speaker of the House and Fox Board Member Paul Ryan:

He then went on to personally challenge Murdoch:

On Monday, Trump was at it again, arguing that the “2000 Mules”  movie by Dinesh D’Souza and the Twitter Files showing big-tech censorship was proof of a rigged election:

Trump’s animosity probably had been building for some months. Last November, I reported that Murdoch had turned the page on The Donald and was throwing the considerable weight of his news empire behind Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, even sending his son and Fox News co-chairman Lachlan to inform DeSantis of the decision.

After the midterm elections, meanwhile, both the Wall Street Journal and the NY Post published mocking pieces against Trump, with the former calling him “the Republican Party’s biggest loser” and the Post going with the headline, “Trumpty Dumpty.”

Now there are reports that the network has gone so far as to impose a soft ban on Trump:

The news startup Semafor reports that the cooling of relations between the former president and his once-beloved cable news channel has gone so far that a “soft ban” or “silent ban” is now holding Trump at arm’s length. The former US president has not made a weekday showing on Fox News since he chatted with his closest friend among the network’s star hosts, Sean Hannity, in September. [It should be noted, however, that Trump phoned into Hannity’s show Monday night.]

Meanwhile, potential presidential contenders DeSantis, Nikki Haley, and Vivek Ramaswamy have been seen regularly on the outlet in recent weeks.

The problem for Murdoch is he’s caught between a rock and a hard place. Clearly, both he and Lachlan are big fans of DeSantis, but his top anchors and many of his viewers aren’t ready to give up on Trump just yet. Murdoch may be able to keep talk of Trump quiet during the day, but if he tries to tell his primetime moneymakers like Jesse Watters, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham to pipe down, he’ll start an internecine war.

Many viewers, meanwhile, have still not forgiven Fox for calling Arizona for Biden before polls closed in the 2020 election, and could potentially drift off to outlets like Newsmax, OAN and Right Side Broadcasting Network

Trump’s visibility is seriously lessened by not having the network cover him, and since the ex-prez has thus far refused to return to Twitter after his ban was revoked, his news presence simply isn’t as strong as it once was.

It will be interesting to see if the two sides can find a peaceful resolution because this feud does not appear to be in either of their best interests. Many people may prefer DeSantis as the eventual Republican nominee, but few argue that he is as charismatic as Trump and will draw as many viewers.

Conservatives routinely complain about the open bias we see at so many of our mainstream media outlets like the New York Times and the network news. Fox makes no secret of its conservative bent, but I’m not a fan of them openly backing one GOP candidate over another—and placing a soft ban on Trump. That doesn’t seem “fair and balanced” to me.