'The Loudest Voice': Where Is Roger Ailes' Son These Days?
Zachary Ailes, Roger Ailes’ only son, was just 17 years old when his father died in May 2017. Today, at 19 years old, he’s still technically in his teens, but that doesn’t mean that the likely heir to his father’s $140 million fortune is an inconsequential part of the narrative. Rather, Zachary, sometimes known as Zac, is a young man after his father’s image, one whom the elder Ailes loved very much.
At Ailes’ memorial service, Zachary reportedly vowed to go after the women who had accused his father of sexual harassment and misconduct. “I want all the people who betrayed my father to know that I’m coming after them and hell is coming with me,” he said at the time, according to Variety. So who exactly is Zachary, he who wants to avenge his father’s death, and what was his relationship like to his much-older father Roger?
Zachary was the apple of the elder Ailes’ eye.
Following Ailes’ death in May 2017, former governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee wrote a tribute to the Fox News CEO, in which he mentioned that “Zach was the pride and joy of his life. Like any father, he worried a lot about his son for his teenage years.” Author Zac Chafet’s book, Roger Ailes: Off Camera, was excerpted in Vanity Fair in 2013, and the writer mentioned in part that Ailes made sure to attend his son’s basketball games whenever he could. “Zac was his only child, and perhaps the only person who could lure Ailes away from his office on a Wednesday afternoon,” Chafet wrote. “This was the third game of the season, and he had been there every time.”
Roger Ailes left behind a box of mementos for his son to remember him by.
In that same Vanity Fair excerpt, Chafets described how Ailes started the practice back when Zac was just four years old. “Ailes has been putting things away for him in memory boxes; there are now nine, stuffed with mementos, personal notes, photos, and messages from Ailes to his son. They are meant to be opened when Ailes is gone.” Other items in the boxes included a pocket-size copy of the U.S. Constitution, in which Ailes had written, “The founders believed it and so should you,” as well as photos of the family on vacation.
Ailes was paranoid about protecting his wife and son.
Ailes, who notoriously made a lot of enemies with his oft-abrasive managerial style and attitude, was also notoriously paranoid about protecting his wife, Elizabeth, and son, Zachary. In a 2014 article for The Atlantic, it was revealed that Ailes had “installed underneath his house … six months’ worth of supplies in case of a terrorist attack. But for immediate threats, Ailes has a security team, led by his dog, to protect the family.”
Ailes and Zachary dressed up and recited patriotic texts together.
According to Chafets’ book, Ailes kept a photo of Zac on his office desk that showed his son as a young boy in a school play dressed up like Teddy Roosevelt, fake mustache and all. “I never really knew much about my father’s life, what it was really like,” Ailes told the author. “I’m not going to be here forever and I want Zac to know me.” One of the things that the father/son duo did to bond, then, was “read patriotic texts aloud” on the Fourth of July.
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