Topic: Newsmax
On top of touting Donald Trump's election picks and defending him from the Mar-a-Lago raid, Newsmax is still obsessively covering his weekend rallies -- and gloating that it gets better ratings than Fox News when it does so. For Trump's rally in Pennsylvania over Labor Day weekend, Newsmax did so again.
First came a couple preview pieces from Sandy Fitzgerald; the first repeated whatever rant Trump posted to his Truth Social pagt the previous night, while the second parroted Trump's unironic attack on the Democratic candidates in the state as "insurrectionists and lunatics." Needless to say, Fitzgerald didn't point out that Trump could very easily have been talking about himself, but she make sure to note that "Newsmax is airing Trump's rally live." Eric Mack followed up with an article detailing Trump's latest Truth Social insult-spewing; he furthered the Trump conspiracy narrative by claiming that the Mar-a-Lago raid was done "under the guise of retrieving documents for the National Archives," though he offered no evidence anything nefarious had been done by anyone but Trump.
Then came the usual raft of articles of various Trump statements by Mack, even though a single article would have sufficed:
- Trump: MAGA 'Hopes, Dreams' Were Raided Like My Home
- Trump: Biden Is 'Enemy of the State,' Not MAGA Republicans
- Trump Teases '24 Run: 'I May Just Have to Do It Again'
- Trump: Fetterman 'One of the Most Fringe, Far-Left Freakshows Ever'
Mack didn't fact-check anything he reported Trump saying, but he did do his corporate duty by pointing out that the rally "aired live on Newsmax."
The next day, Mack served corporate purposes again by touting a Trump post on Truth Social "saying the conservative network is opening the door for competition by turning to share the 'Democrat agenda.'" Mack added that "Previously, Trump has said 'Newsmax has been really good' while claiming that Fox News coverage cost him the 2020 election." That was joined by two more articles of Trump stenography from Mack:
- Trump Blasts 'Radical Left Lunatics' for Lacking 'Love' of MAGA
- Trump Says Those Seeking to 'Destroy' Him Will Fail Again
Finally, after all this servile stenography, it was time to gloat. Jack Gornell did the job in a Sept. 6 article:
Newsmax's live coverage of former President Donald Trump's Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, rally on Saturday beat Fox News in key ratings, according to Nielsen.
Newsmax was the third most watched cable network during the Trump rally speech, with an audience so large it even surpassed the combined ratings of CNN and MSNBC, pulling in more than 21% of both networks.
Nielsen also reported that Newsmax had a total audience of 1.7 million viewers for Trump's speech, with its overall coverage drawing over 1.9 million viewers.
[...]
The Newsmax ratings were even more impressive considering the network is carried in 20 million fewer homes than Fox News, but still outpaced the cable giant.
Newsmax continues to find that fawning, uncritical coverage of Trump has an audience -- though nobody's going to call it journalism.
