Fox News chief Roger Ailes, who was profiled on the front page of the Sunday New York Times this past weekend, has spent much of the time since in the headlines — namely over the remark from Rupert Murdoch's son-in-law, Matthew Freud, that the Murdoch family is "ashamed and sickened" by him.
The Daily Beast's Lloyd Grove reported that Murdoch's wife, Wendi, encouraged Freud to make the comment and Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff used that quote as the basis for a prediction that Ailes — despite helming one of News Corp's most profitable divisions — would soon be on his way out.
But Ailes tells the Los Angeles Times that that couldn't be further from the truth, and disses Freud in the process.
Freud's comments "didn't make sense to me," Ailes told the LAT. ""I couldn't pick him out of a lineup ... most people who have a problem at least walk up to me and talk to me about it."
The LAT also reports that Ailes described stories that "I'm a dead man" as "manufactured."
Ailes added, "I'm obviously not going to be invited to [Freud's] house ... with him home anyway." He further said that Freud, who is married to Murdoch's daughter Elisabeth and is a descendant of Sigmund Freud, "needs to see a psychiatrist."
News Corp President and COO Chase Carey offered his support of Ailes to the LAT as well, saying, "News Corp. is 100% behind Roger Ailes" and adding, "we hope and expect he will continue to lead Fox News well into the future."