Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
- President-elect Joe Biden is finally being recognized as such by Newsmax, a pro-Trump cable network that has been disputing the results for weeks.
- President Donald Trump has lavished praise on Newsmax, along with their competitor One America News Network, for their willingness to entertain his election fraud conspiracy theories.
- “As a result of the Electoral College vote Joe Biden is the president-elect and will be referred to as such on Newsmax,” a Tuesday statement from Newsmax reads. “We also recognize President Trump continues to contest the results and we will cover aspects of that news story.”
- Newsmax gained more national prominence following the election after Trump waged war on Fox News once they called the race for Biden.
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After weeks of staking their claim as the network most willing to dispute the legitimacy of the 2020 election, the pro-Trump cable network Newsmax will now refer to Joe Biden as “president-elect.”
The news came in a statement released by the network Tuesday, first reported by the Washington Post’s Jeremy Barr.
—Jeremy Barr (@jeremymbarr) December 15, 2020
“As a result of the Electoral College vote Joe Biden is the president-elect and will be referred to as such on Newsmax,” the Tuesday statement reads. “We also recognize President Trump continues to contest the results and we will cover aspects of that news story.”
President Donald Trump lavished praise on Newsmax for weeks, championing their most fringe hosts and touting the network to his supporters as a viable alternative to Fox News. Trump soured on Fox once their decision desk called the race for Biden, with tensions playing out on the network over how much credence to give Trump’s unsubstantiated election fraud theories.
—Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 6, 2020
Until this week, Newsmax had no such issues.
However, some of its hosts have been acknowledging Biden as the victor this week, while others continued to posit the election as an ongoing affair on Tuesday despite the statement from top brass.
Several segments running on Tuesday were framed around Trump's next steps in the legal battle, with hosts occasionally referring to Biden as president-elect while guests would claim the election was not over. A chyron running on Newsmax late Tuesday morning read "LIBERAL JUSTICES DISMISS FRAUD CONCERNS IN WISCONSIN."
Just because the network is officially recognizing Biden as the winner does not mean there is a drastic shift away from its clearly pro-Trump ethos (its CEO, Christopher Ruddy, recently described how central Trump is to their business model).
Another chyron took a dig at Biden's speech following the Electoral College vote on Monday: "BIDEN CALLS FOR UNITY, WHILE DELIVERING DIVISIVE SPEECH."
Nevertheless, one of Newsmax's afternoon anchors, John Bachman, tried to level with his viewers on Monday.
"What I'm trying to do is manage everyone's expectations," Bachman said, according to the Washington Post's roundup of the message shift underway at Newsmax. "These judges don't seem to be taking up these cases.
"This is the reality. This is the motion set in place."