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Joe Biden has been elected the new president of the United States, but Donald Trump does not see him. Since November 3, he has been cracking down on the election results and stubbornly claiming to have won himself. Biden’s results can only be explained by massive voter fraud and the falsification of ballots. In addition to this rather desperate fight, there is another one that Trump is also massively pushing: the fight of the American media.
For years, the right-wing television station Fox News was something of Trump’s outstretched arm into the living room of the Republican electorate. A win-win situation: Trump was able to broadcast his political views almost unfiltered, Fox News in turn had the president exclusively, which guaranteed huge audience ratings.
But months ago, the impression emerged that Fox no longer wanted to maintain the relationship in this way. It was only right after the lost election that Fox became more critical of Trump, which, as expected, the president did not like. He began to criticize Fox and found alternatives.
The events that followed turned the US media market upside down and showed Trump’s power in mobilizing his supporters. A Twitter crackdown of a few weeks was enough to make old special interest channels like Newsmax TV big. So big that it even partially competed with Fox News.
An example of Trump’s approach is a tweet from November 15, in which he speaks ill of Fox and recommends Newsmax and One America News Network (OAN).
Because these two television stations did not proclaim Joe Biden as the winner of the election and, according to CNN, they declared that there could have been electoral fraud.
On December 7, a late-night show on Newsmax was, for the first time in the station’s history, more successful in the major age group than a show on Fox News that aired at the same time. As of 7 p.m. that Monday, Greg Kelly Reports on Newsmax followed an average of 229,000 people ages 25 to 54, while Fox News’ The Story with Martha MacCallum saw only 203,000 viewers in that age group.
The Newsmax showmaster’s recipe for success is simple: Greg Kelly is convinced of Trump’s election victory. His program consists of extensive comments glorifying Trump and denying other outlets.
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However, Kelly’s show is by far the most successful show of the day on Newsmax. According to data from the market research company Nielsen, Fox News has an audience four times higher than Newsmax on all other programs that are distributed throughout the day.
The fact that Newsmax was able to achieve this remarkable success also has to do with the fact that the number of viewers of Fox News is generally decreasing. For years, Fox dominated the news in the United States, thanks in part to exclusive Trump content. In the weeks after the election, however, CNN consistently outperformed Fox, for the first time since 9/11.
Ruddy, founder of Newsmax, is friends with Trump
In early December, for example, an average of 1.73 million people watched CNN every day for a week, Fox only 1.56 million. MSNBC is also following in the footsteps of media mogul Rupert Murdoch with 1.53 million viewers.
The man behind Newsmax’s success is Christopher Ruddy, a good friend of Donald Trump, who is a member of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and the West Palm Beach Golf Club. Ruddy founded Newsmax in 1998, initially only as a news site. Newsmax can only be received on linear television since 2014.
Newsmax’s success is not limited to television content: shortly after the November election, Newsmax surpassed Breitbard News and became the most visited website in the US for right-wing populist content. “It felt like an earthquake on election night,” Ruddy told Axios. “The walls were broken.”
As of late October, an average of 63,000 viewers were still watching Newsmax shows in prime time between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. A week later, on election week, that number had tripled to more than 180,000. In the following week there was an average of 330,000 viewers.
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Fox News, on the other hand, lost nearly half of its viewers during this time, from 3.1 million a day to less than 1.6 million. Because CNN also won, it’s clear: there was a clear camp formation. Many people who accepted Biden’s choice switched to CNN. And those who believed in Trump’s fraud theories got what they wanted: from Newsmax.
After the Electoral College vote, a Newsmax moderator spoke of “President-elect Joe Biden” in mid-December, but that was an exception. The second broadcaster Trump bragged about in his tweet completely ignored the Electoral College vote. According to the Washington Post, One America News Network instead broadcast a Senate hearing in Arizona, dealing with the voting process that Trump denounced.
OAN presenter claims Biden lost election
In late November, an OAN moderator even claimed that Biden had lost the election and that Trump would take up his second term on January 20. Using statements like this to get attention on the Trump camp and among his constituents seemed to have always been the station’s goal.
The station was founded in 2013 by right-wing businessman Robert Herring and has since been run by his son, Charles Herring. OAN has always spread messages that Trump may like and that Trump could even share via Twitter. That worked too. The White House correspondent, Chanel Rion, also spread the conspiracy theories of QAnon.
Both stations also shared Trump’s theory that the makers of the voting computers used rigged software, which Biden won the election. When the manufacturers threatened a defamation lawsuit, Newsmax at least distanced itself from the shared allegations, with a moderator reading a live statement that there had been no tampering with the voting computers. OAN did not share and continues to share such theories to this day.
According to the British Guardian, the sympathy of the Trump family is not only so great that Donald Trump Jr. is said to have been willing to buy OAN. Although founder Robert Herring rejected these rumors, they reappeared after Trump’s electoral defeat.
Similar rumors about Newsmax persist even longer. The Trump family is said to have been so pleased with this station that they want to have even more influence. Yet founder Chris Ruddy denied it over and over again. “Newsmax will never become Trump TV,” Ruddy said.
But of course the broadcasters don’t want to scare Trump. After all, it is clear that your success is based on your love for them. Ruddy himself said that Trump will continue to be a political and media force. Therefore, he is “open to talking to him about a weekly show.” And their plans go further. Next year Ruddy doesn’t want to compete with Fox News just once with Newsmax, he says he’ll take over completely.
