People often brandish opinions about TV programmes or films they have not seen. It’s a terrible habit, but one that is to be reproduced here.

I didn’t watch Donald Trump’s inauguration, lacking the willingness or inclination, but I read the ‘reviews’ and sifted the snippets with one wary eye.

Trump the Redux: Racist Grandpa’s Revenge is clearly going to be a difficult watch.

I am not going to list all the disreputable credits.

Here are a few slipping by: the drilling for oil and ignoring the climate crisis, the threatened mass deportations, the tax cuts for the very wealthy, the proposed ending of the right to citizenship to the children of migrants either in the US illegally or on temporary visas, and so on, wearily, scarily, until this mafioso film finally ends.

Oh, and not forgetting the pointless and petulant renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.

As with many films nowadays, it is difficult to concentrate with the volume up so loud.

Let’s ignore the shouting and instead look at Trump and media money, old and new.

After the inauguration was moved indoors because of the cold, Trump’s possible worries about crowd size, and/or the integrity of his ‘hair’, there wasn’t much room for ordinary people.

Instead assorted tech leaders crammed into the front row, including Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, Jess Bezos of Amazon, Bill Gates of Microsoft and Sam Altman of OpenAI.

Not forgetting (if only we could) Elon Musk, owner of X/Twitter and much else besides.

Musk spent $277m supporting Trump at the election – and now the world’s richest man has an unelected seat in the White House, where he decides who gets money from the government, while himself earning a fortune from the government.

Whether that cosy arrangement fits the definition of corruption is entirely up to you.

Oh, and not forgetting (part two), that Trump has launched his own bitcoin named $TRUMP – an unfitting wheeze, but those magic digital beans could make him a fortune.

As for the tech bros, they all bustled over to Trump once they saw where the wind was blowing, donating to his inauguration fund as they snuffled after a good return and hoped-for protection for their already bloated industry.

But there is another interesting strand here, to be found by following what the Trumpian venture capitalist Peter Thiel insists on calling the DISC (the “distributed idea suppression complex”, aka the media).

I never knew that’s what my industry was called. Thanks to Lady Liberty in Private Eye for that corker. Thanks, also, to editor Ian Hislop for the spot-on cover to the new edition. Do try to enlarge this picture. Or, better still, buy a copy.

Rupert Murdoch is an old, nay ancient, hand at this game. Just yesterday, Murdoch spent a reported £10m to settle his legal dispute with the Duke of Sussex, delivering a “full and unequivocal apology” to Harry.

News Group Newspapers, publisher of the Sun and the Times, has spent a reported £1bn over 15 years to settle 1,300 complaints alleging phone hacking and other unlawful activities.

In settling, Murdoch will hope to have silenced further revelations that could have arisen in a full court case.

But here’s another old ink stain.

Thanks to Zeto News for the reminder that Murdoch spent a fortune in the US setting up the propaganda factory known as Fox News. Trump was obsessed with Fox during his first presidency. And now he has handed out a reported 18 roles in his administration to current or former Fox employees.

As Zeto puts it, Trump is using Fox “as a staffing agency”. As for Murdoch, he used Fox to misshape the news to a form he found pleasing, much as he has done for decades with our newspapers here.

It’s not far-fetched to suggest that if Murdoch hadn’t founded Fox News, Trump would never have been president once, never mind twice.

Sharper minds than mine will dwell in detail on the cause of Trump’s victory. But I think it mostly came down to storytelling. Trump had a story to tell. It was filled with holes, lies, conspiracy theories, rage, fury, nastiness, and mad exaggeration. But it was a story with a shape.

The Democrats lacked a matching narrative of their own, even if Joe Biden did much good in the US (if not internationally).

Trump listened to what people were saying, what they were worrying about. Now that he’s elected, he almost certainly won’t feel any loyalty towards the ordinary voters who backed him, being too busy in his billionaire boys’ club.