TPM’s Ryan J. Reilly reports that Ronald Kessler is leaving Newsmax due to “editorial changes.” We haven’t seen any other confirmation of this yet, but it seems to be a reliable report, and it ends six years of largely hacktastic work.
Kessler joined Newsmax in 2006, where he set the tone of his Newsmax tenure by writing fawningly about the Bush administration and bashing Democrats. He cranked that up for the 2006 election, to the point where he essentially blamed then-Rep. Mark Foley’s dalliances with congressional pages on the pages, not Foley.
For the 2008 presidential campaign, Kessler was Mitt Romney’s man, writing fluff pieces and being kinda creepy toward Romney’s wife. But when Romney lost the nomination, he was a good Republican soldier and promoted John McCain, despite having spent the previous several months bashing him to boost Romney’s prospects. He also attacked Barack Obama by obsessing over Jeremiah Wright.
Amidst trying to turn Jews against Obama and regularly turning over his Newsmax platform to his buddy David Keene, Kessler found a new cause for the 2012 election: Donald Trump. Kessler led Newsmax’s boosterism of Trump’s presidential ambitions, which led to an ill-fated attempt to host a presidential debate together.
Once it was clear that Trump would not run despite Kessler’s best efforts, Kessler returned to his once and future presidential love, Mitt Romney, going so far as to declare that Romney would beat Obama in a landslide.
If this is truly the end of Kessler at Newsmax, we bid him a sad farewell, if only because his brand of biased, obsequious reporting is one of the reasons ConWebWatch exists.