Newsmax criticizing Fox News from the left is not something that I had on my 2022 Bingo card. Last year, Newsmax was attacking Fox anchors as “liberal” and — ironically — accusing the channel of abandoning Trump in an effort to “compete with the mainstream liberal media like CNN and MSNBC.” Just a few months ago, Newsmax hosts were lampooning Fox for “going woke,” and describing their counterpart’s “lurch to the left” as “maddening for nearly every conservative,” as anchor Grant Stinchfield put it in December. Stinchfield went on to suggest that “the leftist leaders of this Trojan horse of a so-called conservative network have compromised Tucker Carlson,” in reference to Carlson’s “defense of Russia’s Vladimir Putin.” (Attacks on Carlson’s coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine are commonplace at Newsmax: In February, a spokesperson released a statement maintaining that ​​“Newsmax strongly opposes Putin . . . and has strongly criticized Fox News’ top host Tucker Carlson for supporting Putin and Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine.” Earlier this week, Newsmax host Eric Bolling echoed the sentiment, saying that Carlson had “gone too far.”)

Why the change of heart? One explanation for the pivot — and the attempt to explicitly emphasize that “Newsmax is not One America,” as Ruddy told Forbes — might have something to do with the channel’s business interests. A paragraph here is telling…