MAGA propagandist channel Newsmax announced on Thursday morning that it would not pull a Fox News and will indeed carry the Jan. 6 House committee’s primetime hearing live.
This news must have come as a shock to Newsmax anchor Rob Finnerty, who just hours earlier declared on-air that “you won’t be able to see” the hearing on his channel.
During a panel segment on his morning show Wake Up America, Finnerty said that there was no greater “proof that the media was in the bag for the Democrats” than the fact that the select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection was able to convince broadcast and cable networks to carry Thursday night’s hearing live.
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“‘Listen, will you give us your primetime air time so we air these sham partisan hearings?’ They all said yes,” the Newsmax personality dramatically intoned. “They all said yes!”
After mockingly noting that the committee has commissioned former ABC News executive James Goldston to oversee the production of the televised hearing, Finnerty then informed the network’s viewers: “You won’t be able to see it on Newsmax.”
Hours later, though, Newsmax officially announced on its website that the channel will air the hearing—which will feature at least two witnesses present at the Capitol riot—live during its primetime slate “without the spin.”
The channel, which has recently provided a sympathetic platform for Republicans to blast the hearing as “performance art,” said in a statement: “This is an important news event and the reason Newsmax will carry it live, but it will also be important for us to make sure the public is aware of any and all partisan bias that results from the hearing.”
Newsmax host Rob Schmitt will anchor the network’s live coverage of the event, which is expected to last about 90 minutes.When reached for comment about Finnerty’s assertion on Thursday morning, a Newsmax spokesperson said “that is not the case” and pointed The Daily Beast to the network’s recent press release.
Newsmax’s decision to carry the hearing live comes on the heels of Fox News’ announcement that the conservative cable giant will not preempt its top-rated primetime programming for the Congressional testimony. Rather, Fox will relegate the hearing to its little-watched sister channel Fox Business Network while allowing its pro-Trump opinion hosts to provide counter-programming that is sure to toe the GOP line and rail against the committee.
Tucker Carlson, for instance, has already produced a lengthy special that suggests Jan. 6 is a “false flag” carried out to marginalize “legacy Americans.” Hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, meanwhile, sent multiple text messages to former President Donald Trump's chief of staff following the 2020 election and during the seditious attack on the Capitol.
Finnerty’s suggestion that his network won’t air the hearing, only for the wannabe Fox News rival to immediately refute his claim hours later, comes just months after he came under internal fire over an “embarrassing” April Fools’ prank he played on-air.
Staffers and insiders told The Daily Beast in April that they were “furious” with Finnerty after he joked that Russia had just surrendered and called a ceasefire in its bloody and unprovoked war with Ukraine, only to reveal it was all just an April Fools’ Day stunt.
