The larval ticket takers

If you want to know where the next batch of cuckservative talking heads can be found, they’re pupating in the swamp of the controlled fake opposition at Newsmax:

As the two fringe cable TV outlets battle for former President Donald Trump’s affections, several high-profile One America News staffers have jumped ship to Newsmax—not just in pursuit of a larger audience, insiders said, but also as a respite from OAN’s increasing extremism.

Already known for its cartoonishly bonkers MAGA propagandizing, OAN in recent months has veered even further into unhinged right-wing territory. And Newsmax—which is often just as obsequiously pro-Trump in its commentary—has pulled back on its wildest election conspiracy theories while hoovering up some of OAN’s top on-air talent: news anchor Alex Salvi, correspondent Jenn Pellegrino, and reporter Amanda Brilhante. Those moves followed Newsmax poaching OAN’s White House correspondent Emerald Robinson last year.

Pellegrino, who served as a White House correspondent and on-air host for OAN, abruptly left the far-right channel earlier this month, only for Newsmax to announce her debut as co-anchor of a 9 p.m. ET program called Cortes and Pellegrino, co-hosted by former Trump campaign senior adviser Steve Cortes.

In late March, meanwhile, Salvi—one of OAN’s rare “straight news” anchors—revealed during his media-focused show After Hours that he was exiting the network after hosting since 2019. A few weeks later, Salvi quietly showed up on Newsmax, revealing his new role as a Rome-based foreign correspondent with the network. Brilhante, who’d been with OAN since graduating college in 2017, was hired away in February to be Newsmax’s breaking news reporter.

Newsmax is literally the most bogus operation with which I have ever have had the misfortune of working. I have more respect and affection for both GT Interactive and Indiegogo, and we all know how those relationships turned out. Some longtime readers may recall the brief period when VP featured ads, which were small and wouldn’t have been distracting if they hadn’t so often mentioned CELEBRITY FEET! or other ridiculous topics that still puzzle me as to how they qualify as a variety of clickbait.

Anyhow, I was paid for the ads, and the contract specified a significant boost once the blog got to a certain level of traffic, which might have been one million monthly pageviews. Like I said, this was a while ago, probably 2014. Once I’d hit that target which they’d specified, I let them know, along with a screenshot proving that the target had been legitimately hit. Newsmax’s response? They immediately terminated the target and never paid the previous two months that they’d owed.

About 18 months later, they came back and tried to pitch me on working with them again. Let’s just say that I actually laughed before declining in no uncertain terms.

So, I’ve known they were shady for some time now. But as AC points out, in light of the CEO’s million-dollar donation to the Clinton Foundation and the way they are now throwing out tickets to those willing to take them, it’s pretty clear that they go well beyond shady.