President Donald Trump’s allies have held talks in recent months to potentially buy conservative news outlet Newsmax in order to compete with Fox News, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The report comes just days after Trump was rumored to be looking into starting his own media network following several rifts between his administration and Fox News.
The network made questionable calls on Election Night that seemed to solidify Trump’s dislike of the channel, including calling Arizona for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden well before all the votes were counted, and prematurely predicting that House Democrats would win several seats.
Instead of starting his own venture, which has been rumored, it looks increasingly possible that Trump will invest in an existing one: Newsmax.
Hicks Equity Partners, a private-equity firm with connections to a co-chair of the Republican National Committee, began discussions with Newsmax recently, the Journal reported.
Hicks Equity Partners is also talking about launching a streaming video service, potentially through Newsmax.
Fox Corp.’s chief executive, Lachlan Murdoch, said in a recent earnings call that Fox News “loves competition” and that he is not worried about his company’s ratings.
“We have always on thrived with competition. And we have strong competition now,” Murdoch said. “I would say the only difference today versus some years ago, as our audience has grown and our reach has grown, we see our competition as no longer only cable news providers, but also as the traditional broadcast networks. And, as you know, Fox News has been the number one network, including broadcast networks now, as I mentioned, through from Labor Day through to election day.”
Newsmax, however, has experienced a spike in viewership in recent weeks. After Election Day, its prime-time audience rose up to 223,000 viewers, which was a 156% increase.
The network’s Chief Executive Officer, Chris Ruddy, denied that Newsmax is making a deal with Trump’s allies.
“Newsmax never had any deal with the Hicks group, and if it’s true they were using our name for the purposes of capital fundraising, that is wholly inappropriate,” Ruddy said.
