#finnerty

Mathew Rodriguez at Them:

With all the problems plaguing the world today, why not take some time to complain about Elliot Page in The Odyssey? That’s exactly what Newsmax anchor Rob Finnerty did on a segment that aired this week on the far-right network. In response to rumors that Page may be playing the mythological hero Achilles in Christopher Nolan’s upcoming adaptation of The Odyssey, Finnerty used his platform to lambaste the director's too-woke decision in a transphobic rant. After first saying Elliot Page’s full name, Finnerty then refers to the actor by his deadname, going on to say: “The most famous warrior in all of history, not just Greek history, Achilles, is about to be played by a transgender woman in a brand new movie.”

Continuing to use she/her pronouns to refer to Page, Finnerty then reminds viewers that Page starred in the Academy Award-winning film Juno, for which he received an Oscar nomination, as a prelude to even more misgendering remarks. Finnerty then goes on to discuss Achilles further, emphasizing that he is described “throughout history” as a “superhuman warrior” and “deadly on the battlefield.” Though Achilles is mostly known for his lead role in Homer’s The Iliad, he does appear in The Odyssey as a spirit that speaks with Odysseus when he travels to the underworld. [...]

We should emphasize that while Page’s casting in the film is official, with the actor appearing briefly in the recently released trailer, it is not yet confirmed what role he plays — so this entire screed was based on speculation. Following his anti-Page comments, Finnerty then moves on to the fact that a Black woman, Lupito Nyong’o — whose name Finnerty mispronounces — is playing Helen of Troy.

“The woman whose face launched a thousand ships, whose beauty was unparalleled, a woman who was definitely white is going to be played by Lupita Nyong’o,”he said. “I’ve got nothing against Lupita, but I do have a problem with the complete rewriting of history. Helen of Troy was not Black.”

While Finnerty believes this is a rewriting of history, perhaps he is blithely unaware that Helen of Troy was … not a real person … and that Homer’s epic tales The Iliad and The Odyssey are more mythology than biographical history. Hello, it has Greek gods and goddesses milling about!

Despite Helen being a work of fiction, Nyong’o’s casting in the film has ruffled many conservative feathers besides Finnerty’s. Shortly after Nolan confirmed that Nyong’o would be playing Helen, as well as her sister Clytemnestra, right-wing provocateur Matt Walsh tweeted, “Not one person on the planet actually thinks that Lupita Nyong’o is ‘the most beautiful woman in the world.’” He added, “But Christopher Nolan knows that he would be called racist if he gave “the most beautiful woman” role to a white woman.” Right-wing billionaire Elon Musk responded, “True.”

Right-wingers crying over non-white males playing major roles in films is old as tale as time, with the dust-up over Elliot Page playing Achilles in The Odyssey.

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From the July 31, 2025, edition of Newsmax's Finnerty

KELLY SADLER (GUEST): It also shows you how the media is played by the deep state. All of this sourcing was anonymous.

ROB FINNERTY (HOST): Right.

SADLER: This was Jim Comey, who after all of this came out, opened Crossfire Hurricane, which was the investigation into President Trump and his collusion with Russia, which there was absolutely no evidence of at the time. But that's what gave him credence to go to the media anonymously and say, hey, he's a Russian agent. And they just ran with this story with these anonymous sources. They never checked it —

FINNERTY: Well they were thrilled to do it —

SADLER: And they all have Trump derangement syndrome.

FINNERTY: Jake Tapper, these people — you know what I think is interesting, too? It's like if somebody told you — if your doctor said, look, if you smoke another cigarette, you know, there's a chance you might not wake up tomorrow morning and you get out of the doctor's office and you light up in the car, OK?

Half of these anchors and these hosts, I mean, we can go through the list, but many of the people that propagated this for a decade no longer work in television. OK? Every time another one bites the dust and Stephen Colbert has a podcast, you know what I mean? It just keeps happening. Yet they keep doing the same thing.

People have criticized James Comer, alright? Who's been in charge of Oversight for a while now. People have criticized Jim Jordan because for whatever reason, it seems like Republicans get weak in the knees when it comes to actually going beyond investigation and recommending something to Department of Justice.

I think Comer played a role in Kamala losing the race and Joe Biden getting out of the race, ultimately. I think they've done a great job, and I think they need to keep their foot on the gas because I think they are the first Republicans that are actually relentlessly pursuing the truth.

Matt Gertz at MMFA:

A Newsmax guest said on Wednesday night that Jeffrey Epstein “got a very soft touch” from authorities in Florida who “did not prosecute Epstein correctly,” referring to the sweetheart federal nonprosecution agreement Epstein received in 2008 after he was first accused of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls. The prosecutor who oversaw that plea deal — and later served in President Donald Trump's cabinet during his first administration — joined Newsmax’s board of directors earlier this year. The Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation stated in an unsigned memo released Sunday that an extensive review of the Epstein case “revealed no incriminating ‘client list,’” that there was no “credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions,” and that investigators “concluded that Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide in his cell.” The memo repudiated several narratives heavily promoted by right-wing media and triggered a furious response from MAGA figures who accused the agencies of engaging in a cover-up.

Newsmax, a Trumpist competitor to Fox News, has participated in that backlash, and during a Wednesday night segment, host Rob Finnerty asked former Fox host Bill O’Reilly whether he believed that “really powerful people” had gotten “to somebody at DOJ or the FBI or maybe the president himself and made this story go away.” “I don't waste my time on stuff like that, Rob, because I don't have any information indicating that,” O’Reilly replied. “I do know that in Florida, the authorities did not prosecute Epstein correctly. And there, that's a fact.”

“Now, there hasn't been any charges of bribery or anything like that,” O’Reilly continued. “But Epstein got a very soft touch in Florida when this whole first thing broke. And so that is a fact.”  Finnerty did not respond to O’Reilly’s remarks about Epstein’s Florida prosecution, instead asking him whether Attorney General Pam Bondi should resign over her handling of the Epstein disclosures. Newsmax revealed in a June 11 press release that “former U.S. Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta … was appointed to the Board upon the closing of the Company's initial public offering in March of this year.” Biographical information for Acosta included in the release notes that “from 2005 to 2009, Mr. Acosta served as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida” and states that President Donald Trump nominated him for labor secretary in February 2017.

Appearing on Wednesday’s edition of Newsmax’s Finnerty, de facto NewsNation contributor, former Fox host, and sexual harasser Bill O’Reilly correctly noted that Jeffrey Epstein “got a very soft touch” from authorities in relation to his 2008 plea deal.

The architect of the 2008 Epstein plea deal was Alexander Acosta, the former US Department of Labor Secretary under Donald Trump during his first stint and is now a Newsmax board member.

From the 07.09.2025 edition of Newsmax's Finnerty:

Ben Blanchet at HuffPost:

Newsmax host Rob Finnerty on Wednesday questioned Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) over speculation that the Trump administration could attack Cuba after a recent Axios report about the threat of a drone strike. “And I’ll be honest ... to me, this just sounds like we’re trying to make the case to attack Cuba. I don’t buy it. It sounds like a false flag operation,” said Finnerty in his interview with the MAGA-friendly chair of the House Oversight Committee. “Would you support military action in Cuba if it came to that?” Finnerty’s “honest” on-air assessment came hours after Cuba’s former President Raúl Castro was indicted over a 1996 downing of planes operated by Miami-based exiles.

[...] Earlier in the interview, Finnerty asked Comer about “this Cuba thing,” pointing to Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s urging the Cuban people in Spanish on Wednesday to embrace a “new chapter” in their relationship with the U.S. “I get it. The ayatollah is gone. Nicolás Maduro is in jail. ... Look, I think people struggle with how this is America first when gas is $4.55 a gallon right now,” Finnerty said.

Comer told Finnerty that Cuba has always been a national security threat, and since Cubans “clearly want a regime change,” the country’s proximity to the U.S. presents a “strategic problem.” Finnerty chimed back in, “Do you really think that Cuba’s a threat?” Comer responded with a big “if.”

On Wednesday’s edition of Newsmax’s Finnerty, host Rob Finnerty presses Rep. James Comer (R-KY) on a potential attack on Cuba.

From the 05.20.2026 edition of Newsmax's Finnerty:

Ramon Antonio Vargas at The Guardian:

Donald Trump says he considers Sean ‘“Diddy” Combs “sort of half-innocent” despite his criminal conviction in federal court in July – but the president called pardoning the music mogul “more difficult” because of past criticism. Trump spoke about Combs during an interview on Friday night on the friendly environs of Newsmax. Combs was found guilty on 2 July of two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution, with each leaving him facing up to 10 years in prison – but he was acquitted of more serious sex-trafficking and racketeering conspiracy charges. “He was essentially, I guess, sort of half-innocent,” Trump remarked to Newsmax host Rob Finnerty. “He was celebrating a victory, but I guess it wasn’t as good of a victory.” A number of media outlets reported that Trump has been weighing a pardon for Combs, with whom he had partied in public and exchanged mutual declarations of friendship before winning his two presidencies.

Trump has built a track record of pardoning convicted political supporters in what has been widely seen as a broader rebuke of a justice system that found him guilty of criminally falsifying business records less than six months prior to his victory in the 2024 White House election. Yet Combs evidently complicated matters for himself by having told the Daily Beast in 2017 that he did not “really give a fuck about Trump”. And in 2020, when Trump’s first presidency ended in defeat to Joe Biden, Combs – who is Black – told radio host Charlamagne tha God that “white men like Trump need to be banished”.

“The number one priority is to get Trump out of office,” Combs said. Trump seemingly alluded to those comments in his interview on Friday with Newsmax when asked to revisit the concept of pardoning Combs. “When I ran for office, he was very hostile,” Trump said of the Bad Boy Records founder. “It’s hard, you know? We’re human beings. And we don’t like to have things cloud our judgment, right? But when you knew someone and you were fine, and then you run for office, and he made some terrible statements. “So I don’t know … It makes it more difficult to do.”

Speaking to Newsmax’s Rob Finnerty on his show last Friday, Donald Trump admitted that Sean Combs’s past Trump-critical comments could make it harder to get him pardoned. P. Diddy is not deserving of a pardon.

From the 08.01.2025 edition of Newsmax's Finnerty:

Ken Klippenstein:

Donald Trump’s incoming counterterrorism czar wants you to join the government’s war on terrorism. That’s the message he conveyed yesterday in a little-noticed interview following the reportedly ISIS-inspired vehicle ramming attack in New Orleans. The remarks paint an alarming picture of the incoming administration’s plans to take the war on terrorism to “the streets of America” — a war in which “you are the first responder,” as the Trump nominee put it. “You are on the front line of the war against global jihadism,” Sebastian Gorka, Trump’s incoming senior director for counterterrorism, told Newsmax. His rhetoric reminds me of the post-9/11 paranoia of the Bush administration, during which the national security state crept into American civic life in all sorts of ways that remain with us today. In much the same fashion, Gorka stressed that preventing terrorism is a responsibility you — not in the plural sense but you personally — share with even the elite operators like the Navy SEALs(!) As he told Newsmax:

[“You need to understand — every single one of our Newsmax viewers. You are on the front line of the war against global jihadism. It's not just our tier one operators. It's not just the guys at Dam Neck, the SEALs, or the guys over the wire at Bragg. You. You, like the people on Bourbon Street, are on the front line. So be aware. Keep your head on a swivel…it's not about warzones 8,000 miles away in Central Asia. It's about here on the streets of America. You are the first responder.”]

Several troubling implications arise from Gorka’s counter-terror vision. Deputizing ordinary people as volunteers for the national security state induces them to view the world through that framework, which just doesn’t map onto civic life. Should a teacher really adopt the worldview of a Navy SEAL? Also, Gorka’s rhetoric implies that terror attacks happen because the public wasn’t vigilant enough, rather than that our lavishly funded national security state failed to anticipate them. (There’s already plenty of signs that New Orleans authorities failed to properly deploy barriers that would have prevented the attack.) Gorka’s extreme views may well make him the most dangerous figure in the incoming Trump administration, as I’ve previously reported. While the major media have tended to obsess about Tulsi Gabbard and her supposed ties to the Russians (despite there being no hard evidence), Gorka has basically completely avoided scrutiny. Particularly alarming are his views on “radical Islamic terrorism,” a phrase he is fond of. When asked if Trump believes Islam is a religion, for instance, Gorka has repeatedly declined to answer. “Anybody who downplays the role of religious ideology,” Gorka said in 2017, “they are deleting reality to fit their own world.”

Conover Kennard at Crooks and Liars:

Donald vowed to “immediately bring prices down, starting on day one” of his presidency, and on Truth Social, he specifically mentioned egg prices and grocery items while blaming Joe Biden. He also said, "We will make America affordable again because the prices are too high." He mentioned that that will happen "on day one." Instead, the prices for gas, groceries, cars, and eggs are skyrocketing. But Newsmax host Rob Finnerty said that Trump “can't magically lower gas prices, mortgage rates, food prices, inflation, or egg prices," and that you should "get over it," Media Matters reports. After bashing Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, Finnerty said that Donald isn't a "magical wizard." "It's also important to point out that Donald Trump is not some magical wizard," he said. It took Joe Biden 48 months to ruin the country. Donald Trump can't just fix it in 48 days. He's not a wizard. He can't magically lower gas prices, mortgage rates, food prices, inflation, or egg prices." "And to Democrats worried about egg prices today, get over it," he added. "And why weren't you worried about the prices of everything else when your guy was in the Oval Office? Why suddenly now? And why egg prices?"

Newsmax host Rob Finnerty is out of touch by telling those complaining about the high cost eggs to “get over it.”

From the 03.06.2025 edition of Newsmax's Finnerty:

Travis Gettys at Raw Story:

A Newsmax anchor lavished praise on Donald Trump for acting like a "dictator" in the first days of his second presidency. Rob Finnerty began his prime-time program on the right-wing news network with effusive adulation of the newly inaugurated president, saying that Trump had already delivered on a number of campaign promises with a blizzard of executive orders dealing with immigration, government diversity initiatives and other conservative priorities. "I have no idea how Donald Trump does what he does," Finnerty said. "The man who was made for this job is doing exactly what he said he would do. Yes, Donald Trump was dictator on Day One, but a dictator that the American people voted for. They all asked for this and voted for this, and according to our border czar today, Tom Homan, over 300 criminal illegal aliens were arrested on Day One. It took one day, and did you hear anything negative about it? I didn't. Did you hear about roundups? Did you hear about ICE agents going into the ghettos and banging down doors? No, because that didn't happen, and that is exactly what the American people voted for, and if you don't believe me, just ask the only guy over at CNN that should work at Newsmax. There's real uniformity here, that's what I really think you see you see real uniformity."

On Wednesday’s edition of Newsmax’s Finnerty, host Rob Finnerty admitted that Donald Trump was a “dictator on day one” and gave praise to it.

Trump didn’t stop acting like a dictator on day two.

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MMFA: Newsmax host Finnerty: “Donald Trump was dictator on day one, but a dictator that the American people voted for”

From the 01.22.2025 edition of Newsmax's Finnerty: