On Tuesday, when the president* went to the zoo in public, never to return, one of the ancillary phenomena was the fact that Rupert Murdoch apparently is urging the president* to lose political adviser Steve Bannon on the grounds that Bannon is too revolting even for Murdoch's cast-iron political stomach. This was interpreted as the moment when the president*'s primary media support system was calling in its marker. But, across the world, in the antipodes, another part of the Murdoch media empire was doing even more serious damage.

The Australian was one of Murdoch's first big plays, a third national newspaper for his homeland, launched in 1964. This week, the newspaper obtained a secret New South Wales police board report concerning the proposals to build Sydney's first casino back in 1987. One of the bidders was Donald Trump, just then becoming a casino mogul in Atlantic City. (He'd already opened two casinos there and he'd just picked up the bankrupt Taj Mahal that same year.) The report advised against granting the casino to Trump. The reasons it gave are…how you say?...piquant.

Cabinet minutes from May 4, 1987, contain a summary of the Police Board's position and show they considered the Kern/Trump bid to be unacceptable. "Atlantic City would be a dubious model for Sydney and in our judgment, the Trump mafia connections should exclude the Kern/Trump consortium," the report concluded…"The board is firmly of the view that on tests of sound repute, probity and integrity, none of the three consortia discussed above (HKMS, Kern/Trump, Federal/Resort/Sabemo) can be considered acceptable; indeed each would be dangerous," the Police Board found. A retired businessman ­involved in the bid — and who originally met with Mr Trump in New York to negotiate the joint venture — last night said he was unaware of the findings of the police probity check. "All of us had to undergo police investigation; we were told that everyone had to be cleared from a police perspective,'' he said, before declining to be named. "The plan was for the Kern Corporation to build the casino, and for Trump to run it because he had the licence and experience in Atlantic City. I was not aware of the police report; it is the first I've heard of any mafia connections.''

There also seem to have been some questions about whether the Trump-connected proposal was financially sound.

According to the cabinet minutes, a report by Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce Australia found the Kern/Trump proposal was financially viable on the basis that the projected financial structure put forward by Kern/Trump was reasonably based. "However, the projected casino revenue estimates are not soundly based and the quantum of the ­potential overstatement is so mat­erial that the tender is not financially viable," the CIBC report found. "Also, the tender is not fin­ancially viable on the basis of expected returns to equity investors."

To me, anyway, it seems significant that a Murdoch flagship publication would drop this story at this particular point in time. Trump's rise to New York celebrity almost perfectly dovetails with Murdoch's all-in dive into American media. They were part of the same go-go New York of the 1980s. They know all about each other, but Rupert Murdoch is 86 years old now and Donald Trump is President of the United States. If things between them go sideways, they know a great deal about each other, and I know who has the least to lose.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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