Newsmax loves its shenanigans, but we don’t always note them at the time. Here are a few worth noting, as reported by others.
Last year, two Newsmax hosts got busted airing a photo of who they claimed was the perpetrator of a gun massacre at a Texas outlet mall, Mauricio Garcia — but it was actually someone else who happened to share his name. Newsmax had to quickly follow that blunder up by stating that “regrets the error and will be issuing a correction on air this evening,” though we could find no statement to that effect on the Newsmax website. Well, that may not be good enough, because the non-criminal Garcia has filed a lawsuit against Newsmax and other far-right online agitators who pushed the photo, seeking $1 million in damages.
Newsmax felt sufficiently shamed by fellow right-wingers after tweeting a link to a wire article quoting Donald Trump calling immigrants “animals” — he was purportedly referring only to those who commit crimes — that it rushed to delete the tweet, invoking the standard go-to excuse that it was done by a “low level social media staffer.”
Newsmax host Chris Salcedo accused rapper Ice Spice of making “satanic hand gestures” while hanging out with Taylor Swift at the Super Bowl.
On the sexual harassment beat, Newsmax’s vice president of programming, Chris Knowles, was accused by co-workers of sexual harassing female subordinates, with one employee stating that “Knowles is known to prey on the youngest female staffers” and another saying, “It’s a man’s club. They’ve known for a long time about this guy.” A Newsmax spokesperson tried to weasel out: “Newsmax has never had a single complaint about Mr. Knowles having sexually inappropriate activity with any staffer, either formally or informally. And based upon our knowledge, we don’t believe any comments you claim he made constitute sexual harassment.” Still, a couple months after the allegations against Knowles went public, Newsmax held a mandatory and company-wide sexual harassment training session for employees.
On a related matter, Newsmax2 host Ed Henry — who has been devolving down the right-wing-media food chain as his history of sexual harassment keeps catching up with him — was reportedly pulled from Newsmax’s coverage of June’s presidential debate in the wake of yet another sexual harassment complaint against him.
Newsmax host Lidia Curanaj fell for “a random Facebook comment purporting to be the cousin of a juror in Donald Trump’s New York criminal trial”; her guest did at well, demanding a mistrial. The writer of the post later noted that he’s a “professional shitposter.”
And it wouldn’t be Newsmax if it wasn’t trying to correct for all the election lies it spread after the 2020 election:
- Host Carl Higbie had to state after a speech by Trump that “Newsmax as a network believes the results were legal and final.”
- During an interview Trump conducted with host (and future Trump campaign manager) Corey Lewandowski, Newsmax ran on-screen text stating that “Newsmax accepts the 2020 election results were legal and final.”
Meanwhile, Newsmax is still battling lawsuits by Dominion and Smartmatic over those election lies, which explains why the channel is perhaps a little sensitive about that.