Newsmax Kept Pro-Trump Focus In Iowa Caucus Coverage

Posted on March 5, 2024

In the runup to the Iowa caucuses, Newsmax did its usual job of Trump-fluffing:

Newsmax did include some coverage of non-Trump candidates, such as a Jan. 13 article noting that an Iowa newspaper endorsed Ron DeSantis.

Caucus day on Jan. 15 kicked off with a column by John Gizzi predicting a Trump win but noting that cold and snow in the state could be a factor. When Trump unsurprisingly won, Newsmax slapped a gushy headline on a wire article proclaiming the win as a “Historic 30-Point Landslide.” Then came even more pro-Trump gushing:

A Jan. 16 column by Gizzi hyped how Trump “genuinely made history”:

He is now the biggest-ever winner in the first-in-the-nation event in the GOP presidential nominating process since it began in 1976, beating Bob Dole’s 37-to-24 percentage win over Rev. Pat Robertson in 1988. (Eventual nominee and President George H.W. Bush placed third in Iowa with 18% that year).

But much more significantly, Trump also demonstrated that — at least among Republicans in the Hawkeye State — there was a new coalition required for winning and one that he clearly knew how to woo.

Gizzi also noted that Trump broke the religious right that has dominated Republican politics despite not exactly being religious: “Although he was an occasional churchgoer with three trips to the altar, his Supreme Court appointments and other bows to voters considered ‘religious’ prove, as one evangelical minister once put it, ‘he’s someone we can do business with.'”

Another article that day by the apparently uniroinically named Charlie McCarthy noted that “Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday morning turned his attention from the previous night’s landslide victory in the Iowa caucuses to his defamation trial in New York.” Newsmax also gave space to right-wing pollsters mad that Nikki Haley said mean things about Trump:

McLaughlin & Associates President Jim McLaughlin and Trafalgar Group Chief Pollster Robert Cahaly told Newsmax on Tuesday that Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley was “totally off base” when she attacked GOP front-runner and former President Donald Trump, who won a resounding victory in the Iowa caucuses Monday night.

“First of all, it was a landslide victory for Donald Trump, and I think one of the things that we’ve been seeing that’s been going on here is, throughout this campaign, whether it’s the general election or the Republican primary, Donald Trump’s popularity has been consistently underestimated by the mainstream media,” McLaughlin said during an appearance on Newsmax’s “The Chris Salcedo Show.” “That victory last night, with his speech, and you look at, not just the speech, but the recent town hall, he’s been very unified. And the truth of the matter is, Nikki Haley last night, when she was attacking Donald Trump, it was totally off base and you could almost hear kind of the gasps.”

Cahaly said the contrast between Trump and Haley in the aftermath of the Iowa caucuses was notable.

“I think he is acting like a front-runner, acting like the presumptive nominee,” he said of Trump. “He is talking in unifying language and, meanwhile, Nikki Haley’s giving a speech like she actually came in second. I think she had the wrong speech at the teleprompter. When you underperform … by six points, it’s not a winning night. Attacking him just seemed off base and it seemed kind of tacky. And with what had already happened that night, with [former Republican presidential candidate] Vivek [Ramaswamy suspending his campaign and] getting behind Trump, it just seems like it’s time for the GOP to unify, and Trump was playing that tune and Haley was singing off key.”

Writer Nicole Wells failed to quote what, exactly, Haley said that so upset these biased pollsters, at least one of whom actually works for Trump (which she also didn’t disclose).