It was only a few weeks ago when media honcho and Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch took to Twitter and asked when Donald Trump was going to stop being an embarrassment to his friends and to the whole country. That exchange elicited a rather negative response from The Donald (who seems to have a team monitoring the entire planet for any time anyone mentions his name and is never shy about firing back) and the situation has been simmering ever since. That seems to have come to an end last week, when Murdoch reached out to the GOP frontrunner for a bit of fence mending.

The two men recently spoke for the first time since Trump entered the presidential race back in June, according to people with direct knowledge of the call.

It was just a phone conversation, not an in-person meeting, but it was cordial and forward-looking, the people said. One person described it as a peace making effort. The call took place about a week ago.

Why does it matter? Because Trump has become the Republican presidential front-runner and a political force to be reckoned with, despite eye-rolling from establishment figures like Murdoch.

At first glance this sounds like more of a tabloid headline featuring Conservative on Conservative violence, but the fact that it was Murdoch doing the reaching out (allegedly) makes me wonder. Rupert is never shy about sharing his opinions to put it mildly, and his Twitter account has never been what you would call a bastion of reserved decorum. He tends to shoot from the hip. His previous comments came at a time when nearly everyone (including yours truly) was writing off Trump as toast and probably wondering whether he was even serious about running. But there have been approximately a bazillion polls too many for people to continue predicting that The Donald would be dropping out any day now and declaring that it was all a big joke.

Trump is going to be at the center podium for the debate this week and very possibly for several debates to come after that, barring some completely narrative changing collapse. (And even then, is there really anything that would make Trump slow down?) Fox News and Murdoch’s other media outlets are the traditional go-to stops for Republican and conservative news makers. Having that level of bad blood hanging around between them could become awkward in the extreme.

But Murdoch is no babe in the woods when it comes to American politics. If he honestly still believed that Trump was just going to flame out and go away I doubt that he’d invest the personal, social capital to reach out in this manner, particularly when pretty much every phone call Trump gets mysteriously makes it into the news in short order with the best spin possible applied to it. (Reince Priebus could likely attest to that.) So does this mean that Murdoch has concluded that Trump is not only in it for the long haul but might actually win the whole thing? He’d certainly know there would be some serious incentive to be on Donald’s good side if that were the case.

So… exit question: Is Murdoch honestly ahead of the curve here and thinking he sees a winner in the making, is he just covering all his bets or is this something else entirely? (Possibilities include the oft discussed theory that Trump is angling for a show on Fox when this is all over which could be a ratings bonanza for Rupert.) You make the call.