Conservatives’ weekly political show starts Sunday on Newsmax
There’s a new player in the Sunday TV talking-heads game.
“Save the Nation,” a play on the name of the long-running CBS show “Face the Nation,” premieres Sunday on Newsmax.
The genre has been around since the beginning of the TV era — NBC’s “Meet the Press” describes itself as the longest-running program on television.
But don’t expect what appears on Boca Raton-based Newsmax’s cable channel to sound like the other shows, where a range of views and guests are featured.
Newsmax caters to the political right — especially to fans of former President Donald Trump.
The channel generated massive amounts of attention, and support from Trump, after the election, when Fox News Channel joined the rest of the mainstream media and said Joe Biden won.
That angered many Trump fans who had preferred Fox, with some switching their viewing to Newsmax, which waited for weeks to acknowledge Biden as the winner. (Nielsen prime-time ratings for January showed Fox was in third place, behind MSNBC and CNN — the first month it’s been in last place since 1999.)
There isn’t any pretense of balance in “Save the Nation.”
The 11 a.m. Sunday show is coming from the conservative polit
ical group FreedomWorks, best known as an organization that helped build up what was billed at the time as the “grassroots” tea party movement.
Sunday’s guests include a Republican U.S. senator, two Republican congressmen, one former Republican congressman and Trump’s favorite pollster. Also on tap is FreedomWorks senior economist Stephen Moore. Trump had planned to nominate Moore to the Federal Reserve but there was insufficient support in the Republican-controlled Senate.
FreedomWorks president Adam Brandon, who will host the new program, said in a news release Friday that the show “will give the clear political and economic analysis they deserve. “We can think of no better venue to reach people across the country than Newsmax TV and look forward to the partnership.”
Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy, a longtime friend of Trump, will appear on the first edition of the Sunday show. “We look forward to bringing our rapidly-growing audience exclusive content from the team at FreedomWorks,” he said in a statement.
Ruddy founded the Newsmax website in 1998 and launched Newsmax TV in 2014. It’s become a home for some not especially well-known personalities who used to work at Fox News, including Rob Schmitt, who disappeared as the co-host of the early morning program “Fox & Friends First” in August. Another Newsmax personality is Sean Spicer, who was Trump’s widely ridiculed first press secretary.
Viewers don’t like deviation from what they expect. On Tuesday, Newsmax anchor Bob Sellers objected when Trump supporter and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell attempted to bring up false conspiracy claims about a voting machine company.
The anchor left the set when Lindell wouldn’t stop. Newsmax viewers took to social media to object to the way Lindell was treated, and Sellers apologized the next day.