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Greta Van Susteren, the veteran cable news anchor whose career included stints at CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC, is in talks to join Newsmax, sources tell Mediaite.
Newsmax staffers, however, remain in the dark as to whether Van Susteren will host her own show. Next week, she’s expected to moderate the Republican Senate primary debate in Pennsylvania for the network.
A spokesman for Newsmax told Mediaite: “As a matter of policy, we don’t provide comment on future talent plans.” Van Susteren did not respond to requests for comment.
Van Susteren has appeared on the conservative network frequently in recent weeks. Earlier this month she delivered a report for Newsmax from a field hospital in Ukraine with evangelical pastor Franklin Graham, though she was introduced on air only as an “award-winning journalist.”
If she moves to Newsmax, Susteren would join a number of her former Fox News colleagues, including Eric Bolling, who now anchors The Balance at 4 p.m., and Robert Schmitt, who has a 10 p.m. show. In recent years the network has filled out its ranks with the likes of Sean Spicer, the former White House press secretary under President Donald Trump who hosts Spicer & Co. at 6 p.m.
Van Susteren spent 14 years at Fox News, anchoring On the Record, a well-rated prime time show broadcast out of Washington D.C. She interviewed a series of big names during her time at Fox and mostly avoided the right-wing opinion that dominated the network’s prime time slate. In 2016, just before the presidential election, Van Susteren abruptly left Fox after a bitter dispute over her contract.
Newsmax TV emerged as a contender in the cable news ratings race for the first time in its 8-year history in the aftermath of the 2020 election, when Trump supporters furious with Fox News calling the race for Joe Biden defected to more stridently pro-Trump alternatives.
The surge was significant — with some shows topping one million viewers — but fleeting. Fox News is back on top in the cable news ratings, while Newsmax has leveled off with an audience larger than its pre-2020 numbers, but still far off from Fox. In April, Newsmax averaged 178,000 viewers in prime time, and 128,000 viewers in total day.
While Newsmax’s election coverage earned the network an audience, it also attracted legal peril. Two election tech companies, Dominion and Smartmatic, sued Newsmax and other right-wing networks for falsely claiming they rigged the election against Trump.
Van Susteren, a former trial attorney who made her name covering the O.J. Simpson trial for CNN in the 1990s, joined Fox News in 2002. She was poached from CNN by then-Fox News chief Roger Ailes amid a heated competition between the two networks for talent and ratings.
After leaving Fox News, she landed at MSNBC in 2017, anchoring a 6 p.m. show called For the Record With Greta. It was met with lackluster ratings, and just six months after it first aired, Van Susteren was let go from MSNBC. She subsequently worked as a host at Gray TV and Voice of America.
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