Newsmax’s Coverage of Biden’s State of the Union Address Largely Negative (And Pro-Trump)

Newsmax kicked off its coverage of President Biden’s State of the Union address with a March 7 article touting how “House Speaker Mike Johnson on Thursday morning preemptively issued a message ahead of President Joe Biden’s State of the Union to cite the administration’s failures on the economy, border security, and America’s standing in the world. … The video uses numerous news clips from the past three years to remind voters that Biden’s try at a ‘reset’ is necessary because of the president’s failed agenda and failed leadership.” Mark Swanson served up a speech preview claiming that “President Joe Biden appears poised to paint Republican front-runner Donald Trump as a friend to the wealthy and large corporations as part of a plan to draw a sharp contrast between his economic vision and the former president’s in his State of the Union address Thursday night.” Newsmax also published a wire article previewing Rep. Katie Britt’s Republican response to the speech.

After an article by Swanson noting that “A large group of demonstrators protesting Israel’s war in Gaza blocked President Joe Biden’s route on the way to Capitol Hill, delaying his State of the Union address by at least 15 minutes,” it was onto the speech itself. A wire article summarized the speech — followed by gushing from Eric Mack that Trump responded to the speech in real time:

In a rare contrast between a former president and a sitting one steamrolling toward a 2024 rematch, former President Donald Trump real-time fact-checked President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech Thursday night, calling his rival “so angry and crazy.”

“That may be the angriest, least compassionate, and worst State of the Union speech ever made,” Trump wrote in his post-speech analysis. “It was an embarrassment to our country!

“Whether the Fake News Media likes admitting it or not, there was tremendous misrepresentation and lies in that speech, but the people of our country get it, and they know that Nov. 5 will be the most important day in our nation’s history,” Trump wrote just after the speech finished.

Trump’s real-time messages did not pull any punches in a presidential general election cycle that officially kicked off with Biden’s rare and controversial use of the State of the Union as a campaign speech, former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., told Newsmax in post-debate analysis.

“He’s done nothing for Israel compared to what I have done,” Trump wrote, when Biden claimed to be the most pro-Israel president in American history, a claim Trump had made for years during his administration to a word.

“It’s only words he speaks, not TRUTH!

Mack made no apparent effort to fact-check anything Trump said. The apparently unironically named Charlie McCarthy followed with an article lamenting that Biden “took aim at former President Donald Trump with many verbal attacks during Thursday’s State of the Union speech.” Then came an article credited only to “Newsmax Wires” portraying Biden as having succumbed to right-wing pressure to acknowledge the death of a woman allegedly at the hands of an “illegal”:

It was what the Republicans demanded. President Joe Biden finally said Laken Riley’s name — sort of.

He appeared to flub the pronunciation of the slain Georgia nursing student’s name when he cited her in Thursday’s State of the Union address, referring to her as “Lincoln Riley.”

“Lincoln — Lincoln Riley,” Biden seemed to say. “An innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal. That’s right, but how many of the thousands of people being killed by legals — to her parents?”

Biden had been confronted as he walked into the House chamber for his State of the Union address Thursday night by Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who wore a red Trump MAGA hat and a T-shirt emblazoned with the message, which was also on a button she pressed into his hand.

“Say her name,” it said, the phrase evoking the language used by activists after the death of George Floyd and others at the hands of police.

An article by Jeffrey Rodack noted that “the father of 1 of the 13 fallen Marines who were killed as the U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan, was arrested after disrupting President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.” Then came the usual attacks by right-wing talking heads:

• Rep. Hinson to Newsmax: Americans Live in Biden’s State of Failure
• Speaker Johnson to Newsmax: Biden Has ‘Nothing to Brag About’
• Sen. Romney Knocks Biden for ‘Cheap Shots’ at GOP
• Sen. Roger Marshall to Newsmax: Biden ‘So Angry’ During SOTU
• Rep. Steube to Newsmax: Biden ‘Straight-Up Lying’ to Americans
• Rep. Van Duyne to Newsmax: Biden the ‘Divider in Chief’
• Rep. Hageman to Newsmax: Biden SOTU Angry, Vitriolic
• Sen. Pete Ricketts to Newsmax: ‘Tone Deaf’ Biden in ‘La-La Land’

Newsmax offered no comparable articles of Democrats defending Biden’s speech.