“Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul who controls some of the most powerful organs in conservative media, appeared to make clear Wednesday that he would prefer to cast aside former President Donald Trump in favor of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as the leader of the Republican party,” CNN reports.

New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman told Pro Politics that she believes the conservative media landscape “has shifted” away from Donald Trump.

Said Haberman: “Jeanine Pirro is an old friend of his. Sean Hannity is an old friend of his. Will say I’ve notice he’s barely been on Sean Hannity’s show, you know, in recent weeks whereas you got used to having him on whenever he felt like it.”

She added: “I noticed he’s not there. I don’t know what the reason is. He’s barely been on Fox in general.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) “partly blamed Fox News for fueling the vitriol against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her husband, Paul, who was attacked by an intruder with a hammer at the couple’s San Francisco home last week,” CBS News reports.

Said Newsom: “I’ve seen the dehumanization of Nancy Pelosi. I don’t think anyone’s been dehumanized like she has consistently. Now I watched this one guy, Jesse Watters or something on Fox News. What he’s been saying about Paul Pelosi the last five, six months, mocking him consistently. Don’t tell me that’s not aiding and abetting all this. Of course it is.”

“Chris Cuomo is demanding that his bosses at NewsNation move his new show to a different time slot — his latest, desperate bid to improve his sagging viewership on the fledging cable-TV network,” the New York Post reports.

Said an insider: “Cuomo is getting nasty about the ratings and he’s starting to blame everyone but himself. He’s blaming the network, staff that he personally hired, his lead-in, the promo department and even the press department!”

“Google is funneling revenue to some of the web’s most prolific purveyors of false information in Europe, Latin America and Africa,” a ProPublica investigation has found.

“The company has publicly committed to fighting disinformation around the world, but a ProPublica analysis, the first ever conducted at this scale, documented how Google’s sprawling automated digital ad operation placed ads from major brands on global websites that spread false claims on such topics as vaccines, COVID-19, climate change and elections.”

The New York Post‘s website was hacked pretty badly this morning.

New York Magazine: “It’s unclear who the culprit was or what their motivations might have been. The offensive material was framed as coming from the Post and right-wing politicians like Lee Zeldin, so perhaps the hacker was clumsily attempting to bring attention to the outlet’s partisan leanings. In any case, after less than an hour, the offending posts had been deleted and the Post acknowledged that it had been compromised.”

CNN contributor Scott Jennings called former Obama campaign manager Jim Messina “an absolute jerk” on the network Wednesday during a heated exchange.

Said Jennings: “I tell you what, man, do you have a single friend?”

Donald Trump tore into his former communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin, saying she should be fired by ABC as a co-host of its hit daytime political talk show The View.

“An irate Tucker Carlson phoned Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN), chairman of the House Republican campaign committee, with an ultimatum on Friday: Either reveal which staff member took a swipe at Carlson’s son, a Capitol Hill aide, in an article about internal House GOP politicking — or the Fox host would assume Emmer himself was to blame for the quote,” Axios reports.

“The source of the Fox News host’s anger was a Daily Beast article, published early Friday, detailing the already vicious backroom jousting over leadership slots in a potential House Republican majority.”

Donald Trump announced at a Texas rally that he is going to “sue” within two weeks to snatch away Pulitzer Prizes from The Washington Post and New York Times for coverage of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Said Trump: “Within the next two weeks, we’re suing the Pulitzer organization to have those prizes taken back.”

The right-wing channel Newsmax has banned Lara Logan from its air after she went on a QAnon-style rant during an appearance on the network this week, CNN reports.

In a bizarre interview, Logan told host Eric Bolling that “the open border is Satan’s way of taking control of the world,” and later added that the world’s elites “want us eating insects [and] cockroaches” while they “dine on the blood of children.”

New York Times: “The particular media format he has chosen, one that prizes inquiry and favors those with a gift for talking to people rather than at them, is not his natural métier. You don’t get the sense that he compensated by studying up, listening to countless hours of Preet Bharara or Radiolab while he was restoring an old motorcycle. Mr. Cuomo’s affect is flat and heavy, coming to us with all the spontaneity of someone delivering a keynote at a hematology conference.”

Just after finishing an interview with Tory MP Steve Baker, British news anchor Krishnan Guru-Murthy called the conservative lawmaker a “cunt” on a hot mic, Deadline reports.

Channel 4 said Guru-Murthy would be taken off air for a week.

Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is launching a new podcast on the subscription podcast platform Quake, Axios reports.

The first two episodes will be free, but the others will be paywalled.

His first guest will be Anthony Scaramucci.

A friend of mine made a very cool word game and offered to create a version just for Political Wire readers.

Guess the political word of the day. If you get stuck, invite your friends to help.

Check it out.

Let us know what you think in the comments.