Republican Lawmakers Threaten DirecTV For Considering Dropping Newsmax

A group of more than 40 Republican members of Congress have sent a letter to DirecTV both begging and threatening them to leave Newsmax alone. The satellite TV carrier is currently in negotiations with Newsmax to renew their license, but the talks aren't going well and could result in Newsmax leaving the platform, which has conservatives in Congress up in arms at the thought of losing yet another conservative outlet. Farron Cousins explains what's happening and why it is appalling that members of Congress are trying to strongarm DirecTV.

Link - https://www.thedailybeast.com/is-directv-on-the-cusp-of-dropping-conservative-cable-channel-newsmax?ref=scroll

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*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.

Apparently there's a big fight right now happening between DirecTV and the conservative outlet. Newsmax, and I don't know if fight's the right word, maybe intense negotiations because apparently NEWSMAX is contract with DirecTV to be carried on. The satellite providers, uh, uh, uh, platform expired last night at midnight. So technically DirecTV could at any minute just take Newsmax off the air done with it. And there's been some very tense negotiations. And according to, you know, my understanding of this is that back when DirecTV first brought newsmax in in 2014, they waived all the fees. Like, we're not gonna charge you anything, we're not gonna pay you anything. But we're also not gonna charge you to be on DirecTV because you're new, you're young, you ain't got the ratings, but eventually you'll do great and you know, we can renegotiate from there. So time came for them to renegotiate.

And by the way, conservatives whining about censorship, they literally told the network, we're gonna give you special favors just to put you on the air. So remember that when I continue onto this story, they gave them special favors to make sure they could get on the air. And now newsmax popular now and they're telling DirecTV, Hey listen, uh, first of all, again, this is my understanding of it. Uh, we don't wanna pay fees, we want you to pay us, right? We're giving you good content. We got a lot of good advertisers. You clearly get a cut of that. So you should be paying us and DirecTV's like, yeah. Um, pro, probably not gonna happen. I mean, again, we did give you guys a special favors, you know, and then you made a lot of money off it. We didn't, so we'd kinda like to get some money back.

Yeah, we took a big risk just like you do with any investment, it paid off. Let's also not forget, by the way, the DirecTV parent company at t um, paid a lot of money to get one America off the ground and onto their platform. And then of course they had to de platform them last year. But anyway, that's beside the point. The point of this story is not the fight between Newsmax and DirecTV. The, the point of it is the fact that you have a group of 42 Republicans in the House of Representatives led by freshman Republican, Wesley Hunt from Texas, who have sent a letter to DirecTV, both begging them to not cut newsmax and threatening them that if you cut newsmax, bad things will happen. Here is what part of the letter said again, Wesley Hunt is the guy that wrote it. 41 other Republicans signed onto it. Um, freshman representative Wesley Hunt, who has been a regular guest on newsmax, this from the Daily Beast, send a letter on Friday to DirecTV and its corporate owners at and t and TPG Capital that accused the satellite provider of moving to de platform newsmax by denying it cable fees on a fair and equitable basis. Letter

Was co-signed by 41 Republicans signing the caros cancellation of one American News last year. The letter further claimed that DirecTV is quote, actively working to limit conservative viewpoints on its system while accusing the company of actively colluding with Democrats in the White House to demonetize right-wing outlets. So right there, by the way, Republicans, if you ain't got any evidence to back that up, that there is literal collusion between the White House and Direct tv, then you've just defamed a company and y'all could be sued and I hope you are. The letter continues. This is, that was like kind of the threatening part, like, oh, we know you're colluding, we're gonna get you. Here's the begging. If Newsmax is removed from DirecTV in less than a year house, Republicans will have lost two of the three cable news channels that reach conservative voters on a platform that primarily serves conservative leaning areas of the country.

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