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President Donald Trump. Getty

 

  • Allies to President Donald Trump are exploring the possibility of acquiring and investing in conservative outlet Newsmax to set up a competitor to the Fox News Channel, the Wall Street Journal reported.
  • There are ongoing discussions between Newsmax and Hicks Equity Partners, an investment firm connected to the Republican National Committee.
  • CNN reported that Fox News viewers have been navigating over to Newsmax after the network declared Biden was the winner.

Allies to President Donald Trump are exploring the possibility of acquiring and investing in conservative outlet Newsmax to set up a competitor to the Fox News Channel, the Wall Street Journal reported.

There are ongoing discussions between Newsmax and Hicks Equity Partners, an investment firm connected to the Republican National Committee, according to the Journal. The deal would include a video-streaming service.

Media pundits believe regular Fox News viewers have been navigating over to Newsmax after the network declared Biden was the winner.

Business Insider called the race for Joe Biden on Friday, November 6, but Trump so far has refused to concede. Instead, he’s been blasting Biden’s victory and pushing baseless assertions that the former vice president won because of voter fraud.

Newsmax has been backing Trump up on these unsubstantiated claims. The outlet has even begun to take aim at Fox News, criticizing its hosts for going against Trump’s claim that the election results in favor of Biden are not valid.

Trump himself has turned against Fox News, an outlet he once championed as the antithesis to the “fake news media” he constantly rails against.

“.@FoxNews daytime ratings have completely collapsed,” Trump wrote last week. “Weekend daytime even WORSE. Very sad to watch this happen, but they forgot what made them successful, what got them there. They forgot the Golden Goose. The biggest difference between the 2016 Election, and 2020, was @FoxNews!”

It’s not clear whether the Newsmax deal has been solidified yet.

But since the week of the election, the outlet has received a sharp boost of 156% to its viewership, according to the Wall Street Journal. Last week, Newsmax counted 1 million viewers during prime-time TV hours, the Journal reported.

When reached for comment, Fox News referred Business Insider to its November 3 earnings call, in which Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch said, “We love competition.”

“We have always on thrived with competition,” Murdoch said. “And we have strong competition now. I would say the only difference today versus some years ago, as our audience has grown and our reach has grown, we see our competition as no longer only cable news providers, but also as the traditional broadcast networks. And, as you know, Fox News has been the number one network, including broadcast networks now, as I mentioned, through from Labor Day through to election day.”

The Trump campaign and Newsmax did not yet respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.

As reported by Business Insider