Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sackett.

My guest today is a long-time journalist whose opportunism and eye for the main chance

has turned him into a significant player in America's cutthroat cable news business.

Chris Ruddy is the CEO of Newsmax. For years, it's been seen as a fringe network favoured by a small band of ultra-conservatives.

But in recent months, Newsmax's audience has grown dramatically, thanks to its unabashed, undiluted loyalty to Donald Trump. Last month, when even the much bigger

conservative network Fox News acknowledged that Joe Biden had won the presidential election,

Newsmax refused to do so. Its presenters and contributors have backed a host of conspiracy theories

and unfounded allegations about a stolen election.

For Chris Ruddy, who happens to be a good personal friend of Mr. Trump,

Newsmax now looks like a potential gold mine.

But what is its outlandish mix of far-right opinion and commentary doing to America's body politic?

Well, Mr Ruddy joins me now from New York. Welcome to Hard Talk. Great to be on with you,

Stephen. Thank you for joining a simple first question. Donald Trump has not yet conceded, but are you and is your Newsmax network now

prepared to acknowledge that Joe Biden did win the election? He is the president-elect. Yes, and it's

been our consistent statement all along on election night when the president was in a very close contest,

there were six states where the result was 1% or less, two of the states were half a percent,

one of the state, Georgia was a quarter of a percent.

We said that we should allow the president to contest these legally through recounts and other challenges.

He has been doing that, that we would

accept the state certifications in each case to declare the winner because the race was so close.

And, you know, most of the media did this back in the 2000 election with Al Gore. In this case,

they just decided they wanted to anoint Joe Biden. So we waited, and we have been calling those states for

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