The fallout from President Donald Trump’s Big Lie initially hit Fox News hard. The Rupert Murdoch-owned broadcaster was one of the first major outlets to call Arizona for Joe Biden on election night in 2020, enraging the president. He set out to trash the right-wing network as far and wide as possible.
“Once you do something like that, you’re done in our book,” Jenny Brethen, a loyal Fox News viewer of 20 years who switched to Newsmax the day after the election, told the Washington Post at the time. “We’re permanently switched.” Brethen said that she and her husband exclusively consumed Fox’s conservative cable news competitor “from the time she [got] up to the time she [went] to bed.”
She was one of 15 former Fox News viewers the Post interviewed as part of what they labeled a “dramatic uptick” in Newsmax watchers following the election — and after Trump “encouraged his followers to flip the channel to Newsmax or One America News.” Newsmax, the story reported, was “capitalizing on conservative frustration with Fox, and, some say, a desire from President Trump’s fans to keep alive the flailing narrative that he will ultimately serve a second term, despite Biden’s coming inauguration.” The network, which was founded in 2014, beat Fox News in television ratings for the first time in December 2020. Over time, Newsmax eventually wound up hiring a number of former Fox News anchors and commentators, including Greta Van Susteren, Eric Bolling, Greg Kelly and Rob Schmitt.
Fox, though, fought back. After the 2020 election and the revolt of viewers who were angry about the Arizona call, the network catered to Trump and his MAGA base by pushing out Trump-skeptic voices like politics editor Chris Stirewalt. Longtime anchor Neil Cavuto, who regularly found himself the subject of Trump’s ire for his sometimes critical coverage, departed after reportedly declining a contract extension that offered a lower salary. The network hired Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump and former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany.
Still, the network suffered another setback when primetime star Tucker Carlson was fired in the aftermath of Fox’s $787.5 million settlement of Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation suit. Discovery documents from that case exposed internal communications in which Carlson and Fox’s executives privately acknowledged the election fraud allegations were false — even as they were aired on the network. A 2023 poll of likely GOP primary voters in New Hampshire found that while 95% of Newsmax viewers had a favorable view of Trump, only 64% of Fox viewers did.
But while Newsmax’s popularity has risen steadily since 2020 — this year, the network went public and partnered with Trump Media to expand streaming services — Trump’s vengeance on Fox News was short-lived. Sure, he never really gave up on hate-watching Fox and rage-posting about it. And he is still at war with the Murdoch empire, even recently filing a libel lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal, its publisher Dow Jones and News Corp.
After announcing in November 2022 that he would be a candidate for president in 2024, Trump knew he had to make a tentative peace with the network. Four months later, he made a high-profile return to Fox by giving an extensive interview to Sean Hannity. Since Trump’s inauguration, Fox’s ratings have soared.
After announcing in November 2022 that he would be a candidate for president in 2024, Trump knew he had to make a tentative peace with the network. Four months later, he made a high-profile return to Fox by giving an extensive interview to Sean Hannity. Since Trump’s inauguration, Fox’s ratings have soared. The New York Times reported that Fox News has attracted more viewers in primetime all summer than any other network on television, including major broadcasters ABC, CBS and NBC. Trump’s second administration has nearly two dozen former Fox News employees.
Despite the boom times for both conservative news outlets following Trump’s election victory, Newsmax executives apparently feel slighted. “But for Fox’s anticompetitive behavior, Newsmax would have achieved greater pay TV distribution, seen its audience and ratings grow sooner, gained earlier ‘critical mass’ for major advertisers and become, overall, a more valuable media property,” they wrote in a new lawsuit.
Filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida earlier this week, the case landed on the docket of Judge Aileen Cannon, who became infamous for dragging out Trump’s classified documents case. On Friday she dismissed Newsmax’s suit and gave the network until Sept. 11 to refile. “Each count must identify the particular legal basis for liability and contain specific factual allegations that support each cause of action within each count,” Cannon ordered.
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Accusing Fox of running an “exclusionary scheme” to “maintain its dominance” in “right-leaning pay TV” that resulted “in suppression of competition […] that harms consumers,” Newsmax was seeking damages under Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, the Florida Antitrust Act and the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. The network asked for three times the amount of damages it claimed to have suffered, although those were not specified in the suit, as well as an injunction and pre- and post-judgment interest “at the highest legal rate.”
Newsmax cited internal Fox messages that became public via the defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems, where Fox News president Jay Wallace wrote in a text to CEO Suzanne Scott that the network was on “war footing” with Newsmax, and Tucker Carlson warned that “an alternative like Newsmax could be devastating to us.”
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If you can’t beat them, sue them, apparently. The irony of the conservative underdog crying out for help from the courts because unfettered capitalism is so unfair can’t be missed — yet it still deserves a shout-out.
“Newsmax cannot sue their way out of their own competitive failures in the marketplace to chase headlines simply because they can’t attract viewers,” a Fox News spokesperson said in a statement this week. Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy shot back in an interview with CNBC, “If Newsmax was such a ratings failure, why has Fox spent so much time, energy, and resources to suppress us, block us, and denigrate us? The answer is obvious. Also, please note that Fox in its statement does not deny any of our serious allegations.”
Since Trump returned to office in January, Newsmax has helped launder the uglier aspects of Trump’s presidency, like when host Greg Kelly took a bizarre pro-Ghislaine Maxwell turn after the convicted sex trafficker was moved to a minimum security prison. As payback for the network’s blind loyalty, Newsmax apparently thinks it is owed a bigger slice of the MAGA media pie.
But Fox News has proven too powerful for even Trump to take down. After Cannon’s dismissal of Newsmax’s suit, the ball is now back in the network’s court.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story inaccurately implied that a number of former Fox News hosts had moved directly from that network to Newsmax. The article has been updated to provide clearer context.
