Rarely did a day go by without OANN and Newsmax publishing election fraud stories based on the questionable opinions of Trump sycophants.
The day after the November election, Christina Bobb had good news for viewers of the One America News Network: “President Trump won four more years in office last night.”
His victory was “decisive,” said Bobb, a 35-year-old host on the pro-Trump cable network, but there was a problem – Democratic leaders in Michigan and Pennsylvania had stopped the vote counts. Why? “Because Trump is clearly winning, and they need time to find more ballots.”
“The fact is, Donald Trump won a second term last night,” Bobb insisted, even as Trump’s margins were evaporating in key states. But she had an explanation for that. “Democrats are tossing Republican ballots, harvesting fake ballots and delaying the results to create confusion.”
Never mind that the late votes being counted overwhelmingly were mail-in ballots, which leaned heavily toward the Democrats in 2020, or that they were coming from heavily Democratic cities, which tend to be the last to finish counting due to their large populations and urban inefficiency. The so-called “red mirage” election experts had been warning about for months was to OANN clear evidence of cheating.
For the next two months, OANN and Newsmax – two fledgling cable networks trying to outflank Fox News on the right – produced an almost daily drumbeat of stories and headlines seemingly designed to sow doubt about the integrity of the presidential election, and to encourage the fantasy that Trump was the real winner.
Such material was, of course, also readily available on Fox from Trump loyalists like Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs. In early January, Dobbs said on his show “we still don’t have verifiable, tangible support for the crimes that everyone knows were committed, that is defrauding other citizens who voted with fraudulent votes.” But Fox has a robust news side that remained skeptical of such wild claims.
A mid-January poll by Quinnipiac University found that 73 percent of Republicans believe the November election was marred by widespread voter fraud.
Since the riot at the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on January 6, there’s been soul-searching about how so many people could have been so badly misled about the election.
Despite the pandemic that shifted much of the 2020 vote to the mail, top government election officials declared November’s election “the most secure in American history.” Investigations by the Justice Department and the FBI found no evidence of widespread fraud. Trump’s legal challenges were all flops, even before conservative judges he’d appointed. In several cases, Trump’s lawyers withdrew claims that they could prove fraud. A signature audit in Georgia found little evidence that people had voted illegally. There was no Kraken.
Yet for two months after the election, OANN, Newsmax, and others continued to pump out smoke about allegations of widespread fraud, making it easier for Trump’s followers to believe there was an inferno.
Utilizing the Internet Archive, National Review reviewed the last two months of OANN’s and Newsmax’s coverage leading up to the electoral vote count and the riot on January 6. The review found that rarely did a day go by without the two outlets publishing stories about alleged election fraud, often based on little more than the questionable opinions of Trump sycophants like Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and L. Lin Wood, as well as D-and-E-list pro-Trump celebrities with seemingly no expertise in voting security or presidential politics.
It’s hard to see what useful insights My Pillow’s Mike Lindell could add to the conversation over election integrity, but both OANN and Newsmax found his opinions newsworthy enough to base stories on. “Mike Lindell to Newsmax TV: President Trump Will Prevail,” read a headline on December 17. Newsmax also ran stories based solely on the political insights of actor Scott Baio – “Scott Baio to Newsmax TV: Hopes ‘Brave Judges’ Can Stop Election Theft” – and even published a story in early December with the headline “Christian Prophet Predicts Trump Will Win,” the kind of “journalism” more typically associated with grocery store checkout lines.
The two networks gave credence to conspiracy theories, including the baseless claim that Dominion voting machines changed Trump votes to Biden, and published stories based on the work of known hucksters without bothering to point out their histories of hucksterism.
Not everything the two networks published promoted the election fraud narrative. They both regularly publish straight daily news reports on a variety of national issues, and they do highlight some voices that don’t toe the Trump line.
Newsmax ran stories about Chris Christie calling Trump’s legal challenges “an absurdity,” and about Jeb Bush, who tweeted in mid-December that “The election is over.” On December 1, Newsmax published a story about Georgia elections official Gabriel Sterling admonishing Trump and the state’s two Republican senators over their claims that the election had been mishandled.
But the voices promoting fraud were most prominent, and appear to have been enticing to new viewers.
In fact, if there was one story that Newsmax found as newsworthy as alleged election fraud, it was its own ratings.
Newsmax regularly used the breaking news bar at the top of its website to tout its Nielsen ratings, and to take shots at Fox. “WOW! Newsmax TV Beat Fox Business, CNBC Combined,” read a breaking news bar headline in mid-November.
In a statement to National Review, Newsmax denied that it intentionally sowed doubt about the integrity of the election. “Newsmax has always reported on all sides of the news. We reported on the electoral challenge claims made by President Trump, his attorneys and others, often relating to court documents, about election issues and irregularities. Newsmax has consistently stated we were not claiming any of these to be true, and we reported on evidence challenging these claims,” the statement read.
OANN President Charles Herring did not respond an email from National Review.
The election fraud narrative on OANN and Newsmax began even as votes were still being counted. On November 5, two days after the election, when the vote counts in key swing states were finishing and mainstream news outlets were preparing to call the election for Biden, OANN’s lead headline read, “Trump Campaign: Victory Possible By Friday.” That story has since been removed from the OANN website.
Trump campaign: victory possible by Friday – https://t.co/wxNOlL3lNZ #OANN pic.twitter.com/EDsnYiNTmt
— One America News (@OANN) November 5, 2020
At about the same time, Newsmax ran a story announcing that Dick Morris – the one-time Democratic, Bill Clinton political strategist turned rightwing prognosticator turned Trump apologist – had declared the election a “setup.” The Democratic Party had been involved in a conspiracy to rig the polls to disguise the theft of the election, he said, offering no evidence.
“They knew they were likely to lose this election. So, the first thing they did was to fake the polls that talked about how they were going to win,” Morris explained. “And that was to set up the presumption that Biden was going to win, so that when he won, based on fraud, everybody would say, ‘Yeah, he was winning anyway.’”
In the two months after the election, Morris in particular became a go-to voice for Newsmax, willing to spin conspiracy theories and tell the Trump faithful what they wanted to hear.
He was a regular guest on Greg Kelly’s nightly show, where the host – a one-time straight TV news anchor – became a leading defender of Trump’s claims that the election was rigged.
Newsmax regularly ran headlines based only on Morris’ questionable hot takes.
“Dick Morris: Trump Can Still Win” (Nov. 8); “Dick Morris to Newsmax TV: Confident Election Stolen, Not About Fixing It” (Nov. 16); “Dick Morris to Newsmax TV: ‘Georgia May Well Be Overturned’” (Nov. 18); “Dick Morris to Newsmax TV: Stats Prove Ballot Stuffing” (Nov. 23); “Dick Morris to Newsmax TV: Texas Lawsuit is ‘Brilliant’” (Dec. 9)
Heading into late November, weeks after every mainstream news outlet and Fox News, too, had called the election for Biden, Newsmax and OANN refused to do so.
Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy explained that his network wouldn’t call the race for Biden until Trump’s election challenges in five states had been exhausted. He also cited alleged evidence of “vote manipulation,” and the possibility some states could fail to certify their electors.
“There have been clear-cut examples of voting irregularities. State authorities took clear liberties with their mail-in ballots and may have violated the law,” Ruddy wrote. “For example, Republicans allege that in several counties Democrats blocked their ability to actually observe and monitor the initial counting of mail-in ballots. And, across several contested states, we saw strange patterns related to mail-in ballots.”
Ruddy has admitted that the election fraud storyline has been “great for news,” and that Newsmax has an editorial policy of being supportive of Trump and his policies.
Newsmax wouldn’t affirm Biden’s status as president-elect until mid-December. In a tweet, OANN founder Robert Herring said his network would not recognize Biden as president-elect until at least January 6, because “all of our investigations indicate there was fraud in voting.”
One America News will not recognize Biden as the President-elect as all of our investigations indicate there was fraud in voting.
There will be no decision until Jan. 6, 2021. @OANN
— Robert Herring (@RobHerring) December 16, 2020
Through December, Newsmax and OANN continued to highlight voices willing to discredit the presidential election, and to report on alleged evidence of fraud with little skepticism. OANN reported false claims by Lin Wood that “Trump Won 400 Electoral College Votes,” and Newsmax highlighted his insistence that “Trump Should Declare Martial Law” after the Supreme Court declined to take up a Texas lawsuit challenging the election results in several states.
Lin Wood: President Trump won 400 electoral votes – https://t.co/KoxJgzgVLz #OANN pic.twitter.com/Mk7NE5aNKB
— One America News (@OANN) November 20, 2020
They reported, often with little pushback, on Giuliani and Powell’s conspiratorial claims that Dominion voting machines stole Trump votes, and that “Evidence Ties Vote Machines to Iran, China.”
In late November, OANN published an interview with a rightwing activist in Colorado who claimed to have infiltrated an Antifa conference call in the fall. He alleged, while providing no evidence, that on the call a Dominion executive told the Antifa members they shouldn’t worry about Trump winning re-election because “Trump is not going to win. I made f-ing sure of that.”
The Dominion executive denied the accusations, and claimed that after the OANN piece and others, he received death threats, and was driven into hiding. He filed a defamation suit against OANN, the Trump campaign, Giuliani and Powell, and media figures who spread the story.
OANN also published a story stating that an alleged tech expert named Jovan Pulitzer had “unveiled key vulnerabilities” in Georgia’s voting machines. Pulitzer told a state assembly committee that he had hacked into the state’s Dominion machines, even though state officials have said the machines do not connect to the internet. Pulitzer provided no evidence that he’d hacked the machines, and elections officials deemed his claims “patently false.”
Before testifying about Georgia’s election security, Pulitzer’s previous claims to fame were being a failed treasure hunter and inventing the CueCat, dubbed by PC World magazine as one of the “25 worst tech products of all time.” OANN made no note of that in its reporting.
The two networks seemingly took the worst aspects of Fox as a model. While some of the network’s reporters and anchors have helped to debunk Trump’s voter fraud allegations, top opinion host Sean Hannity regularly highlighted what he described as “serious claims” of voting irregularities.
In late December, both Newsmax and Fox News aired segments walking back their coverage of election fraud centered on voting machines after they were threatened with legal action. In a statement on its website, Newsmax said that “no evidence has been offered” that voting machine technology companies Dominion or Smartmatic “used software or reprogrammed software that manipulated votes in the 2020 election.”
Last week, the American Thinker also issued an apology for publishing “completely false” statements about Dominion that “have no basis in fact.”
At one point in December, the lead story on Newsmax’s website was actually about a piece from The Federalist. In the Federalist piece, senior editor Mollie Hemingway claimed that security footage from a Georgia ballot-counting location allegedly showing ballots being counted in secret after poll watchers were told to go home “was not ‘debunked.’ Not even close.” But additional reporting from local and national reporters showed the boxes of ballots in question had, in fact, followed the proper chain of custody, and that the poll watchers in question mistakenly had thought vote counting was done for the night.
The Federalist, an online conservative magazine, also has published several stories casting doubt on the integrity of the November presidential election, including stories with headlines like “Yes, Democrats Are Trying To Steal The Election in Michigan, Wisconsin, And Pennsylvania,” “We’re Supposed To Believe The GOP Had a Great Election Night Except For President,” and “5 More Ways Joe Biden Magically Outperformed Election Norms.”
Heading into late December and early January, as lawmakers prepared and maneuvered before the official certification of Biden’s victory, Newsmax and OANN continued to highlight voices willing to mislead people about alleged fraud and Trump’s chances of overturning the election.
Morris insisted that Biden would be an “imposter” president, and that Trump was winning the argument on voter fraud. Evangelist Franklin Graham was featured in a Newsmax story, saying that when Trump alleges the election was rigged or stolen, “I tend to believe him.”
“In 2020, Vote Fraud Claims Were Not ‘Baseless’” according to a Newsmax story from January 2. That same day, Ric Grenell, Trump’s former intelligence director, told Newsmax that Trump was in a “really good position” for the challenge to the Electoral College vote, adding that “everybody knows this election was full of fraud.”
The next day, newly elected Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a supporter of the QAnon conspiracy theory, appeared on Newsmax and said that challenging the Electoral College vote was “about truth and defending the people’s vote.”
On January 4, Kelly on Newsmax interviewed Ohio congressman Jim Jordan about the Republican strategy of objecting to the Electoral College vote. “You’re on the ground,” Kelly said to Jordan. “You’ve got Democratic colleagues. Are they a little bit nervous? Are they saying ‘Oh boy, yeah, this is something and it could change?’”
That Wednesday, as lawmakers gathered to debate the election results, and as Trump prepared to rally his supporters, Newsmax ran a headline claiming that Vice President Mike “Pence Could Still Upend the Electoral Vote.” Like so many other claims that the website had repeated and amplified, it was not true.