Newsmax continued its largely one-sided feud with Fox News on Thursday night when host Grant Stinchfield speculated that longtime Fox star Lou Dobbs was benched by the network in an effort to hide its close ties and dealings with China.
“Fox News continues to disappoint conservatives across America. I want to know, why did Fox News can Lou Dobbs?” Stinchfield rhetorically asked Thursday evening.
Dobbs’ long-running and highly-rated Fox Business show was abruptly canceled in early February, just a day after a voting software company named Dobbs and other Fox hosts in its $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against the network. Dobbs, one of Fox’s loudest boosters of former President Donald Trump’s election denialism and voter fraud lies, has not appeared on any Fox programming since his show’s cancellation. The network, for its part, said the show’s demise was due to “planned changes.”
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Stinchfield, however, suggested that Dobbs’ hawkish attitude towards China and rabid support for Trump’s foreign policy stance is the real reason why the ultra-conservative host is no longer on Fox airwaves.
“I have come to the conclusion Fox News no longer supports President Trump’s America first principles, which is why they couldn’t stand Lou Dobbs on their air,” he blared.
“Maybe Fox News banishing Dobbs from their network is more sinister,” Stinchfield continued. “Maybe it’s about China. The Murdochs’ investments and business ties to that rogue nation, maybe that’s what this is about.”
Laying out his theory, the primetime Newsmax host eventually brought up the fact that Murdoch’s third wife—they have since divorced—is “a mainland Chinese,” adding that “Murdoch’s own Wall Street Journal raised the question, could she be a Chinese spy?” and noting she’s “well-known for managing elite connections in China.”
Furthermore, he said, it is “well known the Murdochs have spent decades trying to capitalize off the Chinese media market.”
“Maybe, this is why Fox News could not tolerate Lou Dobbs doing this,” Stinchfield concluded, throwing to a montage of Dobbs trashing China.
This isn’t the first time that Newsmax has tried to capitalize on Fox’s cancellation of Dobbs in an effort to appeal to conservative viewers. Days after the pro-Trump Fox host’s benching, Newsmax anchor Rob Finnerty suggested Dobbs was dumped because he supported Trump while mocking Fox’s then struggling ratings.
Openly embracing election denialism, the fledgling right-wing channel briefly saw its ratings skyrocket after the 2020 election as it openly courted disgruntled Trump supporters angry with Fox News acknowledging President Joe Biden’s victory. Following Biden’s inauguration, however, Newsmax has seen its ratings collapse, and Fox News insiders once again see the network as “a non-threat and essentially irrelevant.”
