Former Newsmax host says the network cancelled his show after he refused to attack Tucker Carlson
Grant Stinchfield: “Tucker Carlson, I would say is number two to President Trump as the leader of the Republican Party”
Published
Citation From the October 10, 2022, edition of Stinchfield, posted to Rumble
GRANT STINCHFIELD (HOST): I am excited for my new podcast. This is really great stuff. So I wanted to come out of the gate right out of the bat and address – I don't know what they call the elephant in the room or whatever – why did I leave Newsmax? Why did they cancel Newsmax? Was it my choice?
In many respects, folks, it was not my choice. I wanted to stay at Newsmax. And I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt, my primetime show at eight o'clock was a dream job. And with that, I'll never speak ill about Newsmax. They gave me the opportunity of a lifetime. I wouldn't have the opportunities that I'm now looking at ahead. And there are many opportunities, by the way, we'll talk about more as the days and weeks go on. I would never would have had all this if it wasn't for the last two years and a prime-time show that in my mind was very, very successful.
So I was certainly upset. There was talk about a weekend show that never formulated. I was upset with Newsmax for telling viewers that a weekend show was coming. They had never talked to me about a weekend show. I think that was mostly to subdue all of you, Stinchfield's Army, who was – who were complaining about the departure of the show. And again, I was upset about it.
But so – let's go through what happened. I took over the eight p.m. slot at Newsmax with zero viewers. They were literally running documentaries, reruns, whatever. There was no show in the eight o'clock slot. And then what happened? We started to build an audience sixty, seventy, eighty thousand, a hundred thousand. We were up around a hundred ten, a hundred and fifty thousand, and we were growing.
And then the election happened in 2020 and Fox News lost a lot of viewers, didn't call the election, or excuse me, Fox News did call the election. Newsmax didn't call the election. And we had patriots come to us like we had never seen before. My show, Greg Kelly's show we were doing, you know, he was doing over a million people a night. I was doing 800,000, 900,000. We had one show where we did over a million people in one night. The ratings were through the roof and then things started to drop back off.
But we held steady. We got to anywhere 250,000, 300,000 times. 400,000 ratings were great. When I left, they were at around 300,000 people a night just under that. On any given day, we were the number two or number three-rated show on the network
So why would they cancel me? Why would they cancel Stinchfield? To this day, I don't really have a reason. They told me that I didn't make inroads, ratings inroads that is, against Tucker Carlson. And Tucker Carlson's doing three million people a night. We were doing 300,000. To me, actually, that's great inroads against a beast. I mean, Tucker Carlson is probably the best conservative talker on cable TV there is out there right now. And we were making strides against him, but Newsmax was not happy. We weren't making enough strides against him.
So what did Newsmax want me to do to make those strides? Well, if you can believe it, they wanted me to go after Tucker Carlson – to attack him. And I had a real hard time with this because to me, Tucker Carlson, I would say, is number two to President Trump as the leader of the Republican Party. Really, there's not a politician, a Republican politician in America today that does not take a cue from Tucker Carlson over on Fox News. That's just the reality of things.
Were there little things I could find disagree with him on? Yeah, conservatives don't agree on everything, but by and large, I had always believed there is strength in numbers and the fight that we are taking to the left, the fight to save America, especially now with President Trump gone, was far too important than to go after Tucker Carlson. Him and I were fighting for the same thing.
Yes, Fox News is our competitor. Yes, Fox News strayed from the conservative values that it was founded on. But Fox News wasn't really the enemy. And honestly, Tucker Carlson isn't the enemy either, by far. So this idea that their strength in numbers – Newsmax didn't want me to follow that. They wanted me to go after him.
So in the beginning, I would find little things that I would go after Tucker Carlson on, mostly surrounding some Ukraine stuff, but it was really hard for me to find anything because for the most part, I agreed with just about everything.
So to square that with myself, I'd find something really little – wasn't good enough for Newsmax. They wanted me to go after him on a nightly basis. They wanted me to hammer him and honestly, I gently refused.
I'm not an egotistical talent, as they call us – a host that thinks, "oh, man, it's my show, I won't –"
I put up a gentle fight against this. I tried to say, here's why this is not going to work. My viewers, Stinchfield's Army – all of you – do not want me to go after Tucker Carlson. You're either taping him and watching me or watching me and taping him.
But going after him would be a nightmare. And sure enough, any time I even approached the idea of disagreeing with him, I would get hammered with emails. And believe me, I don't mind getting hammered from the left, but I hate getting hammered from the right. I really do. I look at us as a unified front, as a team, as an army, we're dropping truth bombs every night – what we're going to do on this podcast,
I don't want to get hammered from the right. This wasn't working. I told them it's not working. So here's what they did. They dispatched Dick Morris to come onto my program and attack Tucker Carlson. Now, let me say this about Dick Morris. I think he is a brilliant guy. I look at the polling that he's doing, a lot of the political analysis that he's doing. I think he's brilliant. I've become friends with Dick Morris. He wanted to go after Tucker Carlson. He embraced that role. Fine. To me, it made my stomach churn. It made me literally sick to my stomach. Not a way you want to go to work every day. So there was the first thing that I was a thorn in the side of Newsmax leadership because I didn't want to go down this role of attacking Tucker Carlson.