Newsmax Flip-Flops On Carlson, Stops Criticism To Woo Him And His Viewers

Posted on May 10, 2023

After Russia invaded Ukraine last year, Newsmax repeatedly called out Fox News for not being as pro-Ukraine as it should have been — and, in particular, host Tucker Carlson for his pro-Putin attitudes. That criticism largely faded away in recent months; a Feb. 27 column by Allan Ryskind criticized Carlson’s stance on Russia and Ukraine, though he framed it around praise for him:

Where would conservatives be without Tucker Carlson?

Though clearly a man of the right, he takes on conventional political wisdom espoused by all sides. He’s pro-family, pro-marriage, pro-God, a deadly enemy of the cultural left.

Every week he takes on the Leviathan, causing federal bureaucrats to quake. And he’s outspoken against those who seem eager to involve us in useless foreign wars. It’s hard to think of a crusade Tucker pursues that most conservatives don’t endorse, or, at the very least, take seriously.

Still, many of his loyal fans aren’t happy with how he has dealt with the Ukrainian issue. His opposition to sending American troops to “save Ukraine” is what the overwhelming majority of U.S. citizens believe. (And Ukraine’s leaders assure us aren’t needed.)

But Tucker frequently teams up with Fox News contributor Tulsi Gabbard, Hawaii’s Democrat former House member, to verbally abuse any and all who think military or economic aid should be given to the Ukrainian resistance.

[…]

Tucker is surely right to fear that the U.S. may be involved in a war with Putin and Xi no matter what we do to confront them. But he has to ask himself this question honestly: Can any credible historian point to a single time in history that any nation that dismantled its military arsenal and abandoned its military alliances while two of its most deadly, brutal, and expansionary foes were on the march?

A March 8 article did note a text from Carlson released as part of the Dominion lawsuit stating that he “passionately” hated Donald Trump. The tide continued to turn, however, in a March 13 column by Deroy Murdock, who gushed that “My Fox News colleague Tucker Carlson last week refuted multiple lies that Democrats and their dinosaur-media bodyguards have trafficked since Jan. 6, 2021.” That praise ignored the fact that the footage Carlson aired to manufacture that narrative was cherry-picked and misleading.

But when Carlson was fired from Fox News last month, Newsmax wanted you to forget it had ever critricized him at all. After an initial wire story on his departure as well as an unusually balanced article on the departure by Eric Mack, Newsmax took a two-prong approach: bashing Fox News for dumping their highest-rated host (with an eye toward luring those viewers away from Fox to Newsmax’s TV operation) and touting what a great guy Carlson is (with an eye toward luring Carlson to be a host). The boss himself set the tone in an April 24 article:

Christopher Ruddy, CEO of Newsmax issued the following statement following Tucker Carlson’s departure from Fox News:

“For a while Fox News has been moving to become establishment media and Tucker Carlson’s removal is a big milestone in that effort,” Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy said. “Millions of viewers who liked the old Fox News have made the switch to Newsmax and Tucker’s departure will only fuel that trend.”

In-house pundit Dick Morris went there even more the same day:

Political author Dick Morris on Monday said that with Tucker Carlson out at Fox News, Newsmax is now the number one network for conservatives.

Speaking on Carlson’s departure, Morris says, “The obvious fact is that Newsmax has won — has won.”

“Newsmax is now the sole conservative voice in media,” Morris told “American Agenda” during his appearance. “And Fox News can talk about that, but by firing Carlson, they have decidedly moved to the left and to the center.”

[…]

“The other big win here,” Morris says of Carlson’s departure, “is Donald Trump because Newsmax covers all of Trump’s rallies. Fox News did not cover any of them because [News Corp Owner Rupert] Murdoch hates Trump. Because when Trump was President and Murdoch was the media boss, Trump didn’t let him run the country — didn’t let him call the shots.”

Numerous articles over the next couple days served up some combination of those two talking points:

And because Newsmax is effectively the Trump News Network, Donald Trump was allowed to comment too:

The ouster of Tucker Carlson at Fox News has left former President Donald Trump “shocked,” but perhaps the libertarian just needs “free rein,” Trump told Newsmax on Monday.

“Well, I’m shocked, I’m surprised,” Trump told “Greg Kelly Reports” in an exclusive interview just hours after the news broke. “He’s a very good person, a very good man, very talented, as you know, and he had very high ratings.”

Mack surprisingly noted that Carlson had bashed Trump as released in the Dominion lawsuit filings:

Trump told Kelly he had seen Carlson come around after some reports of a distaste for the former president.

“But I think Tucker’s been terrific; he’s been, especially over the last year or so, he’s been terrific to me,” Trump said.

“Maybe he left because he wants to be given his free rein. He wants free rein maybe, but I was surprised by it.”

In several messages revealed in the lawsuit, Carlson suggested he had distaste for Trump at the time, but feared the network was losing viewers among the former president’s fans, particularly to Newsmax.

Newsmax very much knows on which side its extremist bread is buttered, and it isn’t afraid to cater to those viewers.