Vivek Ramaswamy Says Newsmax Tried to Hustle Him for Advertising in Exchange for More Coverage: Report | CPT PPP Coverage

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Amid a year defined by distribution disputes with DirecTV and continuing legal battles over 2020-election defamation lawsuits, right-wing media outlet Newsmax is now being accused of running a payola scheme on at least one Republican presidential candidate. 

Vivek Ramaswamy, a GOP presidential hopeful, has privately told associates that Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy asked him to pay up if he wished to appear on the network more, Semafor reported Sunday. According to the outlet, Ramaswamy was on a call with Ruddy, lamenting the humdrum daytime slots he was receiving on the channel, when the executive advised Ramaswamy to buy more ads on the network if he wanted more coverage. 

Newsmax has vehemently denied the claim. “That Newsmax is asking candidates to advertise in order to ensure coverage as some quid pro quo…is categorically untrue and incorrect,” network spokesperson Bill Daddi told Semafor. “There is no correlation between advertising and editorial visibility for any candidate on Newsmax.” Daddi continued: “If candidates want to reach our audience outside of our programming, then, of course, advertising would be a good way for them to do this. That is the basis of all political advertising.” 

Per Semafor, Ramaswamy also told people that Ruddy said such an ads-for-coverage arrangement was already doing wonders for the campaign of Perry Johnson, an obscure Republican presidential candidate who is polling at 1% nationally. Johnson, as noted by Semafor, has bought campaign ads on Newsmax and received favorable coverage, including recurring behind-the-scenes segments on his campaign. Other Newsmax reports on Perry have hailed his platform’s connection to young voters and likened his candidacy to that of Ross Perot, the third-party candidate who managed to garner nearly 19% of the popular vote in the 1992 presidential election between Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush. 

Meanwhile, Newsmax is still fighting a defamation lawsuit brought by voting-technology company Smartmatic, as well as a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit filed by  election hardware and software company Dominion Voting Systems, both over the network’s role in promoting election lies pushed by Donald Trump and his allies. In April, Dominion settled a similar suit with Fox News for a whopping $787.5 million. 

Newsmax and the Johnson campaign did not respond immediately to Vanity Fair’s requests for comment.

As for Ramaswamy, his campaign has seen steady gains of late. A Fox News poll released last week found his national support at 11% among Republican voters, putting him solidly in third place behind Florida governor Ron DeSantis, at 16%, and Trump, at 53%.