After airing an interview during which Donald Trump denied losing the 2020 election, conservative-leaning cable news network Newsmax has issued an on-air statement clarifying that the network accepts the election results.
“Now just a note: Newsmax has accepted the election results as legal and final,” Newsmax TV host Eric Bolling said to the camera following the premiere of his interview with Trump.
The former president implied in the interview that aired Wednesday that his election loss happened because Democrats cheated after being asked if he will take part in the second Republican primary debate, hosted by Fox Business. Trump noted that he’ll give his answer “next week.”
“We just have to make sure they don’t cheat on the elections because that’s the question I get more — ‘Sir, will they do it again? Will they cheat again?’ We’re not going to let them. We can’t let them because that election will be the most important election in the history of our country,” Trump said.
Newsmax’s official videos of the interview do not include this response. Instead, the network’s YouTube page has posted two different clips from the interview: one six-minute clip entitled “TRUMP: If elected, would clean house ‘like you wouldn’t believe’” and another clip under four minutes entitled “TRUMP: Would love to do GOP debates, won’t sign RNC pledge.”
“Newsmax has always accepted the 2020 election results and never disputed them at any time,” the network said in a statement provided to TheWrap on Thursday morning. “We have used that disclaimer often since the 2020 election when guests make claims otherwise.”
But the network didn’t issue statements about any of Trump’s other misleading claims nor did Bolling push back on them. In the same interview, Trump repeated that President Biden has 1,850 boxes of classified documents in “Chinatown” and “under his Corvette, right behind his Corvette, sitting on a wet garage floor.” That claim has been proven to be baseless. Likewise, Trump repeated his accusation that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis had an affair with a “gang member,” another baseless claim.
This pointed on-air clarification comes in the wake of Dominion Voting System’s lawsuit against Newsmax. The organization sued Newsmax and One America News in 2021 for defamation. Dominion’s lawsuit revolved around the network spreading “disinformation” and a “barrage of lies” around the results of the 2020 election.
Dominion also sued Fox News over similar on-air claims, a lawsuit that resulted in a $787 million settlement for the company.
