Judging Freedom - [SPECIAL]: JudgeNap w/ Newsmax CEO, Christopher Ruddy

Episode Date: August 26, 2024

[SPECIAL]: JudgeNap w/ Newsmax CEO, Christopher RuddySee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, August 22nd, 2024. Our guest today is Chris Ruddy, the founder, chief executive officer, and chair of Newsmax. How do you get a message out today in the very, very crowded digital world? But first this. A divisive presidential election is upon us, and the winner is gold. Let me tell you what I mean. Since 2016, our national debt has grown a staggering 70%, and gold has increased by 60%. Do you own gold? I do.

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Remember, hope is not a strategy, but gold is. Chris Roddy, my dear friend and my boss at Newsmax. Welcome here. Welcome to Judging Freedom. Tell us how you started Newsmax and how it grew to the giant that it is today. Judge, it's an honor to be on with you. I'm flattered that you'd have me on your show. And I know you're making huge waves.

And then you talked about digital media earlier. You have been a huge, huge player on that. And it's nice to see that the power of one is still pretty powerful. Thank you, Chris um i started newsman well i was a journalist i had started at the new york post i worked for the pittsburgh tribune review covered the clinton white house and i thought wow we really need to have more digital media fairer media more honest media more balanced i remember in the 90s judge that there was a survey of the clinton white house and they

found out that 89 of the white house had voted for bill clinton i thought to myself how is this representative of the united states he didn't even bill clinton the first election i think only got 40 42 of the vote or something it wasn't it wasn't a majority and yet the overwhelmingly so these folks are unrepresentative and we're if it was bad then it's really bad now i mean i i think uh you'd end your career if you announced that you were working that you voted for donald trump and i i think it's a danger to democracy they all keep talk about these dangers to democracy if you don't have a free press you don't have free speech and you don't have people advocate and diverse views real diversity you're in trouble and so i started newsmax and it's been a big success ever since i think well you started it it was a newsletter and then it was a magazine a very

attractive magazine now my colleagues and i many of whom I worked with happily at Fox and now work with happily at Newsmax, are in 100 million households. How did you do that? Yeah, it's a huge, well, we're an overnight success story. It's 25 years. So it was a long process. I always give a lot of credit to the viewers, the people that go to the users, the viewers, the watchers. Newsmax started as a website, Newsmax.com. That still is extremely popular. Seven million people tuned in last month to that. Then we started the cable news channel in 2012. And thought you know fox was changing why is it we only have one cable news channel in america that leans center right offers different

views and i thought let's start newsmax and people said you're crazy and that has become uh the number four cable news channel in the united states we're very close to cnn's ratings what's really interesting is reuters did a study of all the global media in june and they found that there's 12 top news brands in america that everybody's tuning to right newsmax was one of them which is you know we're the only one on the list that wasn't like abc cbs and the only one that that was new media that relatively new so and we don't have billions of dollars behind us. It's just your viewers and listeners.

We say we're reaching about 40 million people are tuning into Newsmax or our websites and other media regularly. And that's huge. How do you account? I like to think I was part of this. I'll let you be the judge, boss. How do you account

for the significant movement of viewership? I mean, significant, seven figures from Fox, where as you know, I worked for 24 years back in the days when you were at the New York Post, to Newsmax? I think there's a whole bunch of reasons including people just tired of fox but also you know i think the old fox under roger ailes actually was more um more balanced they used to say fair and balanced they've dropped that so there's less excitement in the news i think they're missing where where their audience is going. President Trump has criticized them. I think some of his criticisms are a little personal, but some of them are right on target.

I'll give an example. I was with him about two weeks ago, and I went up to his office in Mar-a-Lago, and he says to me, did you just see this Fox poll, the Marquette poll? It says we're six points behind. And I said, yeah, I saw it. And I did hear that

fox is promoting it all day long he said i'm i'm they're they're forgetting about the cb cnbc poll that's out that has me two points ahead and the rasmussen poll that has me five points ahead that are just out today too and i said well welcome to the new fox you know if newsmax we would cover all the polls does he would have do you think that the president the former president thinks that fox is doing that to pre to create a false impression the vice president harris is ahead of him because they want him to lose i think it's it seems like propaganda a bit when you don't share the polls that are showing the other they're they're they talk about push polls well there's poll results right and if you americans tend to it's a thing in marketing people like to go with the most popular choice

they don't like to think they're alone there's a lot of independent voters out there they like to sort of maybe go with where they think the majority is going so it does i i think it does possibly have some influence he certainly thinks it does right right how uh where do you see digital media going i mean roger ailes used to say to me, ah, the cord cutters are never going to cut the cord. There's always going to be cable television. I don't know. Do you think pretty soon everything is going to be on our mobile devices, Chris?

Well, it already is in a way, isn't it? I mean, even cable TV or people watching TV on their phones. But I still think cable has a shelf life maybe it's another 10 plus years as long as it has live news and live sports and it's unique content like espn and newsmax and fox as long as we're on there people will still pay for it um but we'll see we'll see what happens it's declining it's there's about 70 million people it used to be over 100 million uh and may go down to 50 may still be a pretty important marketplace newsmax's approach is to be on all the platforms that's always been our approach so we're on cable we're the fourth highest there on all major cable systems we're on the streaming roku samsung all of those devices youtube on the free side and then we're on the streaming, Roku, Samsung, all of those devices, YouTube on the free side.

And then we're on all the apps. So we have, and then we have a website, a magazine. So Newsmax is very, more than most companies, we were ahead of the curve, I would say, on that. And I think we're going to continue to be. Chris, if I or anybody watching now wanted to invest in Newsmax, people who see our numbers getting better and better, is now the time to do it? And if so, how would they do it? Well, it's a good question. It plays into some news that we had this summer, which is that Newsmax is going public. And they were planning to go public later this year, early next year in an IPO. That has to be approved by the SEC, obviously. We hope to get that.

And what's really exciting is we announced that it got picked up pretty favorable press, even the Wall Street Journal, that we were going public. You look at the success of President Trump's public offering. He did $4 million a year and the company is worth four billion dollars in in market cap you know it's amazing right that shows to me it doesn't mean that'll apply to newsmax we will do 180 million in revenue this year but um what it shows to me is there's tremendous interest in companies like newsmax that are fighting the liberal tide giving people fair news. And President Trump, I think, was a pathfinder. I think we'll follow in that, hopefully.

And then one of the great things is we are also, people can actually buy early shares, what they call preferred shares, if they're eligible, before the IPO. And we have a website set up. It's called Newsmaxinvest.com newsmaxinvest.com they get all the information from our uh banker investment banker and how they'll get learn about the ipo they can sign up for information about that but they could actually if they're eligible buy shares now even with a credit card which is pretty amazing um and the eligibility rules are not set by us. They're set by the SEC. So don't be upset if you can't. But a lot of people,

we've had thousands, we've had over 40,000 people go on Newsmaxinvest.com. They want to join with us in one way or another, and we're working through that process. Now, in doing a little research on Christopher Ruddy, I came across a terrific lecture speech that you gave on March 2nd, 2016 at Liberty University. We're going to play a little clip. This is vintage, classic, since I've known you for 15 or 20 years, I think I can say this, Chris Ruddy. The mission is actually not to give people the whole truth, and this might surprise you. Nobody has the whole truth. Well, God does. God is the truth, but we all fall short. Our job is to give as much of the facts so that people can find the truth themselves and seek the truth.

Winston Churchill famously said that if you don't look the facts in the face, they have a way of stabbing you in the back. I thought that was beautiful, Chris. Well, I thought you said I was beautiful. That's what I want to hear. You're going to have to call my, if you want me on this show, call my agent in Hollywood. I always joke with John Voight, who's been on Newsmax,

and I'm like, John, I just don't have the time to be the leading man in your next movie. I'm sorry. I just don't have the time to do it. But talk to my agent. Talk to me about the future, radio, podcasts, simulcasts, some of that stuff that you're doing now on N2. I think some of our people simulcast their radio shows am I right we have some folks Chris Salcedo's show for instance and right David Harris Jr who's a phenomena he does

an eight o'clock show Rick Leventhal uh Ed Henry was very famous at Fox News is on Newsmax two so two is the streaming channel is where we're a regular cable channel. We can't offer the regular channel free anymore. So we offer Newsmax 2. And that's, we had 40 million viewers tune into Newsmax 2 in July, which is like just off the charts. So I made a list of all my former Fox colleagues that are now stars on Newsmax and N2. Bob Sellers, Jen Pellegrino, Rick Leventhal, Ed Henry, Greta Van Susteren, Greg Kelly, Rob Schmidt, and to a lesser extent, yours truly. Well, and we have, and you're still a star. i was just out with one of our producers for lunch and

he was saying you know the great thing about the judge is he's always got interesting things to say he says it with a sense of humor and interest and you were you were you know the the famous story is you were judge in new jersey and roger ailes saw you on a press conference and said that guy knows television, bring him on. You know, I used a funny one liner that Ailes loved when one of the reporters said to me, why are you resigning from the bench? You're the youngest judge in state history. And I said, you know what? I can live on $100,000 a year. I don't want to die on it oh i always thought that was hilarious the rest for my tv career uh is history um but you know you speak the truth and it's important you don't always uh agree with your audience which i also think is really important people

should have a diversity of views and opinions and i've known you for years you've been on newsmax i'll never say to you, we need you to have this opinion or that opinion. You've never done that. You know that I am a libertarian. You have called yourself a libertarian. You probably believe, as I do, that that government is best which governs least.

I don't want to put words in your mouth. Well, less government is definitely better. I think that in heaven, we're all libertarians. I'm not sure it applies completely in this existence, if that form of perfect government can exist. But I tend to veer more on the libertarian viewpoint on things. But I'll tell you you sometimes it gets a little vexing you know i'm hearing we have our tv in manhattan you smell the marijuana all over the place oh yes i personally have no problem if somebody wants to speak smoke i have no i'm not sure government

should be getting a lot of cigarettes smoking or any of this stuff. But to be just all over the place, I just think there's some dangers in it. And there should be appropriate behavior that everybody doesn't have to smell it as they're walking down the street. But there's things like that. I'm not for big government. I'm for lesser government. And freedom is why we're all here and why America is such a great nation. Reagan was a libertarian, you know, and he understood the importance of,

the nanny state was not a good thing. Your and my late friend, Bill Rusher, used to say Reagan was a Western libertarian. Unfortunately, he surrounded himself in the White House with people who weren't, but in his heart, he truly was. Rusher said that to me several times. Chris, I've enjoyed this, and I hope you'll come back and visit with us again. Well, always glad to be on with you, and we love you, your audience. If they want to learn more about uh joining with newsmax in our pre-ipo and i up planning our planned ipo just go to newsmaxinvest.com

and you can get all the information there thank you chris all the best to you thank you judge Thank you, Judge.