Conservative online publisher says Trump facing rough water
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Christopher Ruddy, the influential online conservative publisher who sometimes serves as an oracle for the whims of President Donald Trump, warned Wednesday that his friend faces difficult days ahead.
“The Republicans had a catastrophic wake-up call with the Virginia election,” in which Republicans were routed this week, the publisher of online site Newsmax.com told an audience at Oakland’s Pittsburgh Playhouse. And if current trends continue, “The Republicans will probably lose control of the Senate, and maybe even the House.”
During the event, hosted by Point Park University’s Center for Media Innovation, Mr. Ruddy counseled a more centrist approach on issues such as health care and education. “He is a mor e bipartisan person,” said Mr. Ruddy of the president, who routinely castigates political foes.
Mr. Ruddy launched Newsmax in 1998 after working for Pittsburgh Tribune-Review publisher Richard Mellon Scaife, who later invested in the online venture. The site, a leading voice in
conservative media, was an early champion of Mr. Trump. It is, however, less strident than such hardright sites as Breitbart.
Mr. Ruddy expressed concern that “there’s so many voices” in online media now, and they “are often times speaking in meaningless ways.” He also complained about increasing media consolidation being enabled by the current Federal Communications Commission, an area in which he criticized the president.
Still, his gentle portrayal of Mr. Trump frustrated some. When Mr. Ruddy said that in all his conversations with Mr. Trump, “I’ve never heard him say anything racially improper,” there were groans. One audience member erupted, “Why didn’t he apologize to the Central Park Five?” — a reference to five black teenagers falsely accused of a 1989 rape. Mr. Trump had publicly called for their execution. Mr. Ruddy said he wasn’t familiar with the case.
There were no other disruptions, though students protested in the lobby beforehand with a banner that said, “Hate $peech is not Free Speech.”
While working for Mr. Scaife during the 1990s, Mr. Ruddy wrote stories that questioned official accounts of the 1993 death of Clinton White House aide Vince Foster. That reporting, which helped fuel a generation of Clinton conspiracy theories, has been roundly criticized, and authorities have definitively ruled that death a suicide. Mr. Ruddy touched briefly on the case in response to an audience question, calling the death a suicide and saying his reports focused on problems with the police investigation.
Andy Conte, who moderated the event and who directs Point Park’s Center of Media Innovation, called Mr. Ruddy’s appearance “a fantastic opportunity to converse with somebody who is a media pioneer, and who has the ear of the president.” The Tribune-Review is a lead sponsor of the center.
Mr. Conte noted that despite the Foster controversies, Mr. Ruddy later struck up a personal relationship with Bill and Hillary Clinton.
“He has had the ear of the Clintons and President Trump,” Mr. Conte said. “There aren’t many people who can say that.”