🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
In several tweets near the end of December, Newsmax host Greg Kelly wrote that President Donald Trump had won the 2020 elections and will remain president, even though neither is true.
The Quotes
On December 26, Kelly tweeted, "Damn STRAIGHT. We need TRUMP. NO ONE ELSE would ever, could ever, stand up to the CORRUPT SWAMP like TRUMP. FOUR MORE YEARS. NOT OVER." His tweet was a response to a Trump tweet issued the same day slamming the Supreme Court for being "totally incompetent and weak on the massive Election Fraud that took place in the 2020 Presidential Election."
In a December 27 tweet, Kelly wrote, "The Cabinet Room. In Term 2–no more 'coaxing' anyone out of 'retirement.' Every 'SECRETARY' who needed to be 'wooed' into Government is a Disaster. Either you Want to Serve or you don't. You either you have the skills or not. If you 'don't want to be here' we don't want you!"
In one of two Monday morning tweets, Kelly wrote, "Thing is... he didn't lose" above an image of a New York Post front page stating that Trump lost the election. In his second tweet, Kelly wrote, "DR SCOTT ATLAS FOR SURGEON GENERAL IN TERM 2," a reference to Trump's coronavirus special adviser who said that face masks do little to curb COVID-19's spread.
Why It Matters
Since Election Day, Newsmax has increasingly positioned itself as a more-conservative media outlet to Fox News. It may prove an increasingly popular and influential channel for Trump's supporters and the far-right in the years after Trump leaves office.
Fox News gained the ire of the Trump administration and conservative viewers after declaring Biden the winner of Arizona on Election Night, and declaring Biden as the winner of the entire election, contradicting Trump's claims that he could still win the election by contesting allegedly fraudulent ballots. The network's high-profile show hosts Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham also drew further ire by stating that Trump's legal challenges were unlikely to alter the election's outcome.
Since then, Trump, his surrogates and conservatives on social media have publicly railed against Fox News, suggesting that supporters should watch Newsmax instead.
"We don't take lightly the potential for competition, whether it's the existing sort of classic MSNBC or CNN or the sort of emerging ones like Newsmax and OAN (One America News)," Fox Corporation CFO Steve Tomsic said of Newsmax and other competitors at a recent investors conference.
Kelly in particular may be trying to stay in Trump's good graces as his show recently beat the Fox News program The Story with Martha MacCallum in ratings among viewers ages 24 to 54 at 7 p.m. on December 7. Trump's cooperation with Newsmax could help ensure its favored among his supporters, other right-wing viewers and the 75 percent of Republicans who believe that the election was stolen.
The Counterpoint
As of December 13, the Trump campaign and Republicans had lost 59 out of 60 court challenges alleging widespread voter fraud in the 2020 elections.
Nevertheless, as recently as December 26, Trump has continued to claim on Twitter that the FBI, Justice Department, Supreme Court, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and other Senate Republicans haven't done enough to investigate voter fraud that allegedly helped President-elect Joe Biden win the election.
On December 21, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said that Trump had met with several congressional Republicans who plan "to fight back against mounting evidence of voter fraud."
It's expected that Congressional Republicans in the House and Senate may use the Electoral Count Act of 1877 to challenge the electoral vote when Congress meets to approve the Electoral College's vote on January 6. The challenge would require all GOP Congress members to go on the record in stating whether they support Trump's effort to overturn the 2020 election. However, the challenge will likely fail as it would require the Democrat-led House to vote in favor of overturning the Electoral College.
A November 25 Newsmax poll of its viewers found that nearly 100 percent of respondents said that Trump should not concede the 2020 national election.
Newsweek contacted Newsmax for comment.
