Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy seems to be okay with the fact that his channel’s post-election news coverage has been inaccurate and in an interview on Peacock’s The Mehdi Hassan Show, he defended this by saying the output is simply providing the public’s opinion, Newsweek reports.

Newsmax is the current object of Trump’s affection and the network is seeing a definite uptick in public viewership. It’s a quagmire of conspiracy theories and misinformation. Hasan pushed Ruddy, asking how he can continue to justify this, and he likened the network’s post-election coverage to “watching a parallel universe” because it keeps pushing debunked claims of widespread voter fraud, especially the patently ridiculous theory that a glitch by Dominion voting systems handed Biden the victory.

Then Hasan played a clip featuring Diamond and Silk (who were drop-kicked by Fox News for spreading conspiracy theories about COVID-19). That clip, he noted was “especially ridiculous,” because the two can be heard claiming the “China Virus” and the “scamdemic” are part of a plot rigged by the Democrats to win the election.

“Given you, yourself have been a journalist Chris for more than 30 years, do you feel embarrassed to be running nonsense like that on your network and calling it news?” Hasan asked Ruddy.

“Like all the networks and networks you’ve been on, there’s a lot of opinion hosts, and they have all sorts of things that I don’t subscribe to,” Ruddy responded.

“I do believe in free discourse, I believe in people having their opinion,” he added. “We’re not saying that that is accurate.”

Now Hasan seemed incredulous, and he interrupted Ruddy to ask “You’re not saying your own shows are accurate?” Which Ruddy promptly ignored, saying instead:

“We have gone out of our way to say we have no evidence that the Dominion software was manipulated in any way.

He adds: “We are reporting what people are saying like the Trump campaign, we’re not necessarily embracing it.”

Maybe Newsmax is just the Parler of network TV, where anybody can just say whatever they like and the facts be damned. That’s sure what it seems like here.

You can watch Hasan’s interview with Ruddy below.

Here's full @MehdiHasanShow spirited interview, on @YouTube, with Newsmax CEO and Trump ally, Chris Ruddy, dubbed 'The Trump Whisperer', on his network's promotion of election conspiracy theories, Sidney Powell, Diamond & Silk, and the rest:https://t.co/NSpbWIRhNW

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) November 25, 2020