“Catch me filling in on Center Point tonight and tomorrow at 7:30 EST on @tbn What a facility and what a crew. It will be a great show! #stinchfieldsarmy,” former Newsmax star Grant Stinchfield posted to his Instagram account late last month.
Stinchfield’s guest spot as a news anchor for Trinity Broadcasting Network was just the latest instance of this Christian television network turning to Fox News and Newsmax alumni to fill out its roster as it looks to expand its viewership with right-wing news and “lifestyle” programming.
TBN, which claims to be the largest global Christian broadcasting network, made a concerted pivot to news broadcasting this past spring when it launched Centerpoint, a weeknight news show headed by ex-Fox News staffers.
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The half-hour program, which airs at 7:30 p.m, ET, is anchored by veteran Fox News correspondent Doug McKelway, who “retired” in 2020, and produced by Michael Clemente, a former Newsmax CEO who was once right-hand man to Roger Ailes back at Fox News.
TBN has said that there are plans to expand Centerpoint to a full hour. And according to network CEO Bob Fopma, TBN felt it necessary to provide its audience with a nightly news show for perspective on the COVID-19 pandemic and the social-justice protests that emerged after the 2020 police murder of George Floyd.
“In March of 2020, the world changed so much,” Fopma told The Washington Times back in the spring. “Suddenly we realized that people were really thirsting for content that was relevant to what was going on in the world. And so we pivoted, very quickly.”
Clemente, who joined the network full-time earlier this year, also told Axios that the show “will cover news of the day and other top stories.” The network suggested at the time that the “programming isn't meant to be politically biased” but would “lean into Christian values.”
While Centerpoint may not mean “to be politically biased,” a quick perusal of the show’s guests and focal points reveal a program leaning hard into conservative culture war battles and Republican red-meat issues. The program, for instance, has repeatedly turned to far-right conspiracist Dinesh D’Souza to discuss “election integrity,” citing his widely debunked election-fraud fantasy film 2000 Mules.
That this is the route Centerpoint has taken, though, shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.
“In our approach to coverage, we’re going to reach out well beyond the Christian community,” McKelway told The Washington Times, adding, “I’ll just reach out to the same people I’ve been reaching out my whole life, in the same kind of ways that I do, and cover stories the same way I’ve always covered them.”
And prior to coming to TBN, McKelway wasn’t shy about his right-wing leanings as a journalist.
The reporter joined Fox News in 2010 after becoming a conservative cause célèbre when he was suspended and later fired by ABC’s D.C. affiliate WJLA. While right-wing media framed McKelway’s punishment as further proof of liberal media bias, the station actually terminated him for insubordination and misconduct after he got into a “shouting match” with his bosses.
Despite being part of Fox News’ so-called “straight news” division,” McKelway’s reporting at the network was marked with passionate defenses of former President Donald Trump’s rhetoric and the “alt-right” wing of the MAGA movement.
“The mainstream media is fond of portraying the alt-right as a mob of unruly, racist, bigoted, sexist, uneducated white males who have been unleashed and feel empowered by Donald Trump's rejection of political correctness,” he said in 2016. “But the alt-right is much more than that,” he continued while positively citing since-disgraced troll Milo Yiannopoulos. McKelway then added, “Well, the alt-right is using the same tactics that the left has used for generations now, basically fighting fire with fire.”
His right-wing advocacy, which was also apparent on his now-deleted Twitter account, reached a boiling point with his own Fox News colleagues in 2019. After defending Trump’s infamous “both sides” comments on Charlottesville white supremacists in emails sent to dozens of network employees, McKelway was chastised by Fox News Radio reporter Jon Decker.
“Based upon the slew of emails that I’ve received today, both of you should send an apology to your Fox News colleagues—many of whom are hurt and infuriated by your respective posts. Your posts read like something you’d read on a White Supremacist chat room,” Decker wrote at the time.
McKelway would eventually “retire” from Fox News in what Fox News staffers described as a “bizarre” Facebook video. Swigging from a bottle of what he called “Winston Churchill’s favorite champagne” while wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with “Sex, Drugs, and Flatt & Scruggs,” McKelway gushed praise for Ailes, the late Fox News mastermind who was ousted in 2016 over sexual-misconduct allegations.
In that eyebrow-raising video, McKelway also had some kind words for Clemente, who left the network shortly after Ailes’ exit—though the two exits were reportedly not linked.
Clemente, after leaving Fox, was eventually hired by Newsmax founder Chris Ruddy in 2018 in an effort to make the fledgling conservative cable channel competitive with Fox News and other cable networks. Clemente’s tenure at Newsmax was short-lived, however, as he was out as CEO after a mere 15 months.
Ironically, Newsmax’s fortunes briefly turned after Clemente’s exit when the network leaned hard into Trump’s election denialism in late 2020 to briefly compete with Fox News.
Stinchfield, who told The Daily Beast he was “just filling in” but is currently “in talks with” TBN about a permanent position, was most recently with Newsmax before the pro-Trump channel ghosted him.
Earlier this summer amid struggling ratings, the network overhauled its lineup after hiring former Fox News star Greta Van Susteren to host a weeknight program. Stinchfield’s primetime show, which debuted in August 2020, was bumped completely off the schedule. Despite Newsmax suggesting at the time that the frequently unhinged host would move to weekends, a new time slot and day never materialized for Stinchfield.
Since then, the former NRA TV host has launched a new podcast while accusing Newsmax of pushing him out because he refused to attack Fox News star Tucker Carlson, who shared the same time slot as him. “They wanted me to go after him on a nightly basis,” he declared. “They wanted me to hammer him and honestly, I gently refused.”
TBN, whose largest competitor in the evangelical TV ecosystem is Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network, has leaned on other familiar faces in the Fox News universe to appeal to religious conservatives looking for alternatives to its bread-and-butter preacher programming from stalwarts like Joel Osteen.
Following his unsuccessful 2016 Republican presidential primary run that resulted in his weekend Fox News talk show’s cancellation, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee revived the program on Trinity Broadcasting in 2017. TBN VP of Marketing Nate Daniels told Axios this spring that Huckabee’s show “gives us confidence as we move into the space there's an appetite for our audience.” (The show also airs in syndication on Newsmax.)
The network has also recently launched a 30-minute series from reality TV show host Mike Rowe, best known for his popular Dirty Jobs franchise. Rowe also currently hosts an hour-long weekly series on Fox News' sister channel Fox Business Network that showcases “the many individuals that work round the clock to keep our infrastructure in working order.”
