Christopher Ruddy, a longtime friend of Donald Trump, is the chief executive officer of Newsmax Media, a repository and purveyor of disinformation, misinformation, falsehoods, and bogus conspiracy theories.
Newsmax also serves as a rehabilitation center for disgraced journalists, commentators, and former Trump administration officials.
Newsmax surged in the ratings by repeating President Trump’s baseless claims that he had really won the 2020 Presidential Election but had been denied re-election because of widespread election fraud that didn’t happen.
Christopher Krebs, Trump’s top elections security chief, called the 2020 Presidential Election “the most secure in American history.”
Trump attorney Joe DiGenova responded on Newsmax by saying that Krebbs “should be shot.”
Howie Carr, who interviewed DiGenova, did not challenge the death threat, giving his implicit support to someone calling for the murder of another person.
SEE JOE DIGENOVA
Newsmax, facing a lawsuit by Dominion Voting Services over claims that the electronics voting technology company had shifted votes from Trump to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, issued a retraction and an apology to Dominion Voting in April 2021.
“Newsmax subsequently found no evidence that such allegations were true. Many of the states whose results were contested by the Trump campaign after the November 2020 election have conducted extensive recounts and audits, and each of these states certified the results as legal and final,” the company said in a statement.
Newsmax had probably hoped the apology would result in Dominion Voting, whose reputation had been shredded by the cable channel’s repeated false claims, dropping the lawsuit and saying, “we’re good now.”
But, alas, no.
A court denied Newsmax’s request to dismiss the lawsuit against Dominion Voting.
https://casetext.com/case/us-dominion-inc-v-newsmax-media-inc
The civil suit is expected to go to the court in 2024.
Fox News settled a defamation lawsuit with Dominion Voting Services for $787 million in April 2023.
Newsmax is also being sued for defamation by Smartmatic, another election technology company.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/23/media/smartmatic-newsmax-lawsuit/index.html
Newsmax had staked its claim as a news organization on the claim of election fraud and had repeated the falsehood to grab right-wing conservatives.
Newsmax, which was created by Chris Ruddy in 2014, as a cable channel for viewers who think Fox News is too progressive.
This is a bit like preferring moonshine to Jack Daniels because you begin throwing up a lot quicker with moonshine.
The Washington Post described Newsmax as “a landing spot for cable news personalities in need of a new home.”
The Post cited the cable channel’s hiring of Mark Halperin and Bill O’Reilly after they resigned from other networks because of allegations of sexual harassment.
SEE BILL O’REILLY
Newsmax also hired Diamond and Silk, who were stiffed by Donald Trump – who hasn’t been? — and fired by Fox News
SEE DIAMOND AND SILK
Other staffers hired by Newsmax include political consultant Dick Morris, the toe-sucking pervert who was fired by the Clinton Administration for cavorting with prostitutes and was then hired by Fox News because who else would hire a toe-sucking pervert who cavorts with prostitutes? He was then fired by Fox News for, as he put it, “always being wrong.”
https://www.newsweek.com/morris-meltdown-177794
Morris then began appearing on Newsmax.
Newsmax also hired Sebastian Gorka, Steve Bannon, and Sean Spicer – all of whom had been booted out of the Trump White House.
SEE SEBASTIAN GORKA
SEE SEAN SPICER
SEE STEVE BANNON
Chris Ruddy created Newsmax in his own image.
Ruddy established himself as conspiracy peddler by writing the book, The Strange Death of Vince Foster: An Investigation, which involved the same investigatory skills that one would use on a Ouija board.
https://slate.com/culture/1997/10/the-strange-case-of-christopher-ruddy.html
Vince Foster had followed his boyhood friend Bill Clinton to Washington, D.C., from Arkansas, where Clinton had served as governor and Foster had worked as one of the state’s top attorneys.
Foster served as the new president’s personal attorney, where he struggled mightily over a series of failures that made him the focus of partisan attacks and a number of editorials in the conservative newspaper, the Wall Street Journal.
Foster was not used to the vicious nature of Washington, D.C. He quit eating, couldn’t sleep, and discussed his depression with family and friends. He considered seeing a psychiatrist but feared that he would lose his security clearance if he did.
Foster died from a single gunshot to the mouth.
https://slate.com/culture/1997/10/the-strange-case-of-christopher-ruddy.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/whitewater/stories/wwtr940701.htm
To Chris Ruddy, a suicide wasn’t a tragic, horrible story that deeply affects the families of conservative and liberals and leaves families forever shattered, it was a way to make a name for himself.
And he did.
What do you call someone who drags the body of a suicide victim through the filth of political mudslinging?
Chris Ruddy, of course.
Ruddy said that Foster had not committed suicide, as reported, but the police had staged his death to appear that he had committed suicide.
He included a number of questions about Foster’s death that were easily answered by people with no personal connection to the case.
https://www.nytimes.com/1997/09/28/books/body-politics.html
Conservative firebrand Ann Coulter reportedly called Ruddy’s book “a conservative hoax book that was discredited by conservatives.”
https://conwebwatch.tripod.com/stories/2005/earle.html
Michael Isikoff wrote that Ruddy “has virtually single-handedly spawned a cottage industry of conspiracy buffs dedicated to the proposition that a foul and monstrous cover-up surrounds the circumstances of Foster’s death.”
https://slate.com/culture/1997/10/the-strange-case-of-christopher-ruddy.html
An autopsy on Foster concluded that he committed suicide.
Special counsel Robert B. Fiske Jr. investigated Foster’s death. The Washington Post reported that the Fiske investigation involved several lawyers, five physicians, seven FBI agents, about 125 witnesses, and “DNA tests, microscopes and lasers.”
It concluded that Foster had committed suicide.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/whitewater/stories/wwtr940701.htm
Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr also investigated Foster’s suicide as part of his investigation into the Clinton White House and concluded that the cause of death was suicide.
This is the same Kenneth Starr, whose investigation of perjury by Clinton, led to the president’s impeachment.
https://slate.com/culture/1997/10/the-strange-case-of-christopher-ruddy.html
Ruddy’s theory of a vast left-wing conspiracy behind Foster’s death was fully discredited.
Foster’s family had finally received some measure of peace until another conspiracy-minded fabulist Donald Trump, a Ruddy friend, revived the conspiracy.
Trump brought up Foster’s death during the 2016 Presidential Campaign, referring, in an interview with the Washington Post, to the “very serious” allegations that foul play was responsible for Foster’s death.
Trump called the circumstances of Foster’s death “very fishy,” adding that Foster “knew everything that was going on, and then all of a sudden he committed suicide.”
Post fact-checker writer Matthew Yglesias added the following:
“In truth, there is nothing fishy about Foster’s death.”
Sheila Foster Anthony, Vince’s sister, wrote an op-ed for the Post that called Trump’s remarks “beyond contempt.”
“How wrong. How irresponsible. How cruel,” she wrote.
Mary Trump, the former president’s niece, who is clinical psychologist, has called her Uncle Donald a “sociopath.”
“Donald’s pathologies are so complex and his behaviors so often inexplicable that coming up with an accurate and comprehensive diagnosis would require a full battery of psychological and neuropsychological tests that he’ll never sit for,” Mary Trump wrote in her book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.
Trump appeared on Newsmax in August 2023, where he repeated his debunked claims that he had won the 2020 Presidential Election.
“I believe I won that election by many, many votes, many, many hundreds of thousands of votes,” he said. “That’s what I think.”
After the interview, Newsmax anchor Eric Bolling came back on camera with what Yahoo News called a “super awkward disclaimer.”
“All right, folks, now just to note: Newsmax has accepted the election results as legal and final,” he said.
https://news.yahoo.com/newsmax-ends-trump-interview-super-045703232.html
