Christopher Ruddy started Newsmax.com on September 16, 1998, supported by a group of investors including the family of former
Central Intelligence Agency Director
William J. Casey. Later,
Richard Mellon Scaife, Ruddy's former employer at the
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, invested in the fledgling company. One of the initial board members was author
James Dale Davidson, who edited a financial newsletter. Davidson's co-editor,
Lord Rees-Mogg, former editor of the
Times of London, later became chairman of Newsmax. Ruddy previously promoted conspiracy theories about the
suicide of Vince Foster. From its founding in 1998, Newsmax became known for its anti-
Clinton content. and a positive interview with him at Newsmax.com, followed by a positive cover story in
Newsmax magazine.
The New York Times said with reference to the event that politics had made "
strange bedfellows". Bill Clinton also visited the Newsmax headquarters in West Palm Beach in 2010. In 2014, Newsmax donated $1 million to the
Clinton Foundation and Ruddy has accompanied Clinton on foundation trips to Africa. In a January 2010 profile on the company, the
Financial Times reported that the "rise of Newsmax" had defied the media trend and said that the Newsmax website was "one of the strongest conservative voices online". The paper said Newsmax had witnessed 40 percent growth rates per annum over the past decade, closing 2009 with $36 million revenues, up from $25 million the year before. Earlier Ruddy had told
Business Insider the company expected annual 2010 revenues to reach $50 million. Newsmax contributors include
Nancy Brinker,
George Will,
Lanny Davis,
Alan Dershowitz,
Christopher W. Ruddy,
David Limbaugh,
Ben Stein,
Susan Estrich,
Laura Schlessinger,
Michael Reagan,
Dr. Mehmet Oz and
Dr. Michael Roizen. In November 2017,
Politico reported that
Fox News, facing new competitors, was giving more favorable coverage to President
Donald Trump. In an interview, Newsmax CEO
Christopher Ruddy criticized
Fox News' hosts unwillingness to criticize President Donald Trump, telling Politico that "Newsmax is very supportive of the president, but we also will publish things that are critical of him time to time", Ruddy said. "Fox seems to have decided to become very closely aligned, which seems unnatural, and it doesn't seem consistent.
Coverage of the 2020 United States presidential election During the
2020 United States presidential election, President Trump began to promote Newsmax over its rival,
Fox News. Trump's preference for Newsmax over Fox News became clearer after the latter became the first news outlet to call
Arizona for Democratic challenger
Joe Biden. Newsmax has made their more conservative leanings a selling point to disaffected Fox News viewers, as well as employing Fox News alumni to join their lineup on
Newsmax TV, such as
Rob Schmitt and
Greg Kelly.
Emily VanDerWerff of
Vox reported that the outlet "spent lots of time arguing that other media outlets jumped the gun in calling the election for Biden and that Trump still has a path to win this thing", and that it was one of the only networks that didn't call the election for Biden, citing the Trump campaign's legal challenges. However, she did write that "Newsmax doesn't go full arch-conservative" and "doesn't give airtime to QAnon paranoiacs". CNN's
Brian Stelter, in an on-air interview, asked Newsmax CEO
Christopher Ruddy why the network chose to air "election denialism" and "bogus voter fraud stuff", to which Ruddy replied that the network featured all points of view and argued that all of the other major news outlets who had reported Biden's election win were "rushing". Ruddy says the company is "moderately conservative and we will continue to have a moderately conservative viewpoint on things – including the president". Following the certification of the
electoral college of
Joe Biden as the winner on December 14, 2020, the network began using the title "
President-elect" to refer to Biden.
Acquisition reports On November 15, 2020,
The Wall Street Journal reported that Hicks Equity Partners, a
private equity firm with ties to a co-chair of the
Republican National Committee, was exploring a buyout of Newsmax. The Hicks group identified a team of executives who would manage the network, and had been talking to former
Fox News hosts including
Megyn Kelly. Media analyst Michael Nathanson reported that if a competing network took 20% of Fox News' audience, it could sap about $200 million in annual profit from the company. In an interview with
Variety, Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy stated "we are not actively selling" the company though he had expressions of interests from investors. Regarding Hicks Equity Partners, Ruddy stated, "we have no deal with them".
Post-2020 United States presidential election Newsmax promoted baseless allegations that voting machine company
Smartmatic and its competitor
Dominion Voting Systems had conspired to rig the election against Trump. On
Facebook, Newsmax published a video of its host
Carl Higbie making three minutes of debunked claims against the election results, which accumulated 16.5 million views from November 7 to 10. Days later, a Newsmax host stated the company "would like to clarify its news coverage and note it has not reported as true certain claims" made by Newsmax interviewees about Dominion and Smartmatic. Newsmax declared that it had "no evidence" of certain claims made on its programming, including the claim that the two companies have a business relationship, the claim that either company used each other's software, and the claim that either company "manipulated votes" in the 2020 American general election. Newsmax also stated it had "no evidence" that Smartmatic software was used anywhere except Los Angeles during the 2020 election. Newsmax additionally said viewers should be aware of "several facts", including that both companies have no relationship with
George Soros, and that "Smartmatic is a U.S. company and not owned by the Venezuelan government" or any other foreign entity.
Mediaite's Rudy Takala wrote that conservatives disgruntled with
Fox News could potentially be disappointed by Newsmax due to CEO
Christopher Ruddy's friendship with former Democratic president
Bill Clinton and positive remarks about a
Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. Newsmax has previously donated $1 million to the
Clinton Foundation. When reached for comment, Ruddy said, "Like Donald Trump, Rupert Murdoch and other business people, I have donated to the Clinton Foundation and a few Democrats, but over 90 percent of my political contributions have been to Republicans, including ones to President Trump." Regarding coverage of the Biden administration, CEO Christopher Ruddy told
Adweek "I think Newsmax's job is to be loyal opposition, to question the policies, the programs and the people that are coming into the Biden administration. We're going to take a very careful look at that. I think we were pretty fair with Barack Obama. We were tough on him, but we never called for his impeachment", he said. Newsmax TV momentarily exceeded Fox News in viewership in December 2020, but lost viewers after the conclusion of the election cycle. A
Pew Research Center study found that Newsmax's reach (10% of American adults) continued to trail Fox News's reach (43% of American adults) in March 2021. In July 2021,
Vox noted that "Newsmax's effort to out-Trump the competition has been less successful since Trump left the White House for Mar-a-Lago. Newsmax's viewership is down more than 50 percent from January (from an average of about 300,000 viewers then to about 114,000 on July 18), and following a significant slump in December and January, Fox News has reestablished itself as not just the most-watched right-wing cable news network but the most-watched cable news network, period." In November 2021, a study by the
Center for Countering Digital Hate described Newsmax as being among "ten fringe publishers" that together were responsible for nearly 70 percent of Facebook user interactions with content that
denies climate change. Facebook disputed the study's methodology. Also in November 2021, Newsmax White House correspondent
Emerald Robinson falsely tweeted that the
Moderna COVID-19 vaccine contained
luciferase "so that you can be tracked". This echoed earlier false social media claims that the vaccine supposedly had satanic links due to "
lucifer" in luciferase and alleged references to "
666". Robinson's tweet began with the salutation "Dear Christians" and referred her over 400,000 followers to the
Book of Revelation; in a tweet days earlier, she equated vaccines with the
Mark of the Beast. Twitter removed the tweet that day and suspended Robinson's account for seven days, citing "repeated violations of our
COVID-19 misinformation policy", as Newsmax sought to distance itself from her remark and removed her from the air pending an inquiry. Robinson returned to Twitter after her suspension to continue spreading COVID-19 misinformation, causing Twitter to permanently ban her within hours. Newsmax announced the next month that it would not renew Robinson's contract when it ended in January 2022. DirecTV dropped Newsmax from its lineup in January 2023, after the companies failed to agree on contract terms. In response, 42 House Republicans signed a letter to DirecTV executives attacking the removal as an act of "suppressing politically disfavored speech". The two companies resolved their dispute and DirecTV resumed broadcasting Newsmax in March 2023. In May 2023 the "small conservative cable news channel saw its ratings surge" once again in response to actions by Fox News: "Fox’s decision to fire Tucker Carlson|[Tucker] Carlson". Newsmax's viewership during the prime-time spot vacated by Carlson more than doubled. This increase surpassed the 2020 post-election surge and on a night-by-night basis they challenged CNN through the month to be the third-most-watched cable news channel (behind MSNBC and Fox). On November 1, 2023, Newsmax placed its live content behind a paywall on YouTube ("Newsmax+") while still offering a free streaming channel ("Newsmax 2"). In March 2024,
The Washington Post reported that between 2019 and 2020, a member of the
Qatari Royal Family had invested $50 million in the network in the midst of the
Qatar diplomatic crisis. It also reported that network leaders had told staffers to soften coverage related to Qatar following the investment, a claim the network later denied in response to the report. The investment was made by Sheikh Sultan bin Jassim Al Thani, a former Qatari government official and the owner of a London-based investment fund, with Newsmax looking for outside investors to better compete with Fox News. In April 2024, Newsmax was included as a defendant in a
defamation lawsuit by a man who was falsely identified as the perpetrator of the
2023 Allen, Texas mall shooting, alongside others such as Fox News and
InfoWars personality
Owen Shroyer. The man alleged the defendants had "recklessly disregarded basic journalistic safeguards and published the photo of an innocent man, branding him as a
neo-Nazi murderer to his local community and the nation at large".
2020 election lawsuits In December 2020, Newsmax was included as a defendant in a
defamation lawsuit by Dominion executive Eric Coomer. Coomer asserted that the defendants had characterized him as a "traitor" and that as a result he was subjected to "multiple credible death threats". In April 2021, Newsmax published a retraction and apology on its website, saying it "found no evidence" to support the allegations against Coomer. In August 2021, Dominion sued Newsmax for "knowingly and continuously" promoting false election fraud narratives. Newsmax said in a statement that it had "simply reported on allegations made by well-known public figures, including the President, his advisors and members of Congress", adding: "Dominion's action today is a clear attempt to squelch such reporting and undermine a free press". the case was set for a jury trial later in April, but the judge postponed it. On August 15, a $67 million settlement was reached; the documents were filed with the court on August 18. In November 2021, Smartmatic sued Newsmax for defamation. In August 2023, a Delaware judge rejected Newsmax's bid to narrow the alleged defamatory statements cited by Smartmatic. The trial was set to begin on September 30, 2024. Newsmax and Smartmatic settled the suit on confidential terms on September 26. In March 2025, it was revealed that Newsmax had agreed to pay $40 million to settle the lawsuit.
Initial public offering On June 10, 2024, during its coverage of a rally organized in Las Vegas by former and current president Donald Trump, Newsmax announced it plans to file for an
initial public stock offering either in late 2024 or early 2025. The plan was confirmed on September 5, 2024, with the company expected to be listed under the ticker symbol "NMAX" on the
New York Stock Exchange in the first quarter of 2025. In November 2024, Newsmax offered preferred stock to accredited investors in an effort to raise $100 million. On January 25, 2025, the offering was extended to $200 million, surpassing $220 million by March 2025. The company made its stock market debut on March 31, 2025. The shares, priced at $10 in the IPO, closed their first trading day at $83.51, an increase of over 700%. The shares closed their second day of trading at $234—with a market capitalization of almost $30 billion, surpassing that of
Fox Corporation. Newsmax's stock price declined 77.5% on April 2 and closed at $52.71. Financial commentators described the rapid rise and fall of Newsmax's stock price as the trajectory of a
meme stock, and some traders compared Newsmax to
GameStop in online discussions, referencing the 2021
GameStop short squeeze. == Lawsuit against Fox ==