A few weeks after Senator Marco Rubio joined a bipartisan push for
an immigration overhaul in 2013, he arrived alongside Senator Chuck Schumer at
the executive dining room of News Corporation’s Manhattan headquarters for
dinner.
Their
mission was to persuade Rupert Murdoch, the owner of the media empire,
and Roger Ailes, the chairman and chief executive
of its Fox News division, to keep the network’s on-air personalities from
savaging the legislation and give it a fighting chance at survival.
Mr. Murdoch, an advocate of
immigration reform, and Mr. Ailes, his top lieutenant and the most powerful man
in conservative television, agreed at the Jan. 17, 2013, meeting to give the
senators some breathing room.
But the media executives,
highly attuned to the intensifying anger in the Republican grass roots, warned
that the senators also needed to make their case to Rush Limbaugh, the king of conservative talk
radio, who held enormous sway with the party’s largely anti-immigrant base.
So the senators supporting the legislation turned to Mr. Rubio, the
Florida Republican, to reach out to Mr. Limbaugh.
The
dinner at News Corporation headquarters — which has not been previously
reported — and the subsequent outreach to Mr. Limbaugh illustrate the degree to
which Mr. Rubio served as the chief envoy to the conservative media for the
group supporting the legislation. The bill would have provided a pathway to
American citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants along with measures to
secure the borders and ensure that foreigners left the United States upon the
expiration of their visas.
It is a history that Mr.
Rubio is not eager to highlight as he takes on Donald J. Trump, his rival for the Republican
presidential nomination, who has made his vow to crack down on illegal
immigration a centerpiece of his campaign. Read More HERE
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