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Christopher Ruddy started Newsmax.com on September 16, 1998, supported by a group of investors including the family of former Central Intelligence Agency Director William J. Casey. Later, Richard Mellon Scaife, Ruddy's former employer at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, invested in the fledgling company. One of the initial board members was author James Dale Davidson, who edited a financial newsletter, Strategic Investment. Davidson's co-editor, Lord Rees-Mogg, former editor of the Times of London, later became chairman of Newsmax. The prior year, Ruddy’s book, The Strange Death of Vince Foster, was published by Simon & Schuster/Free Press, about the suicide of Vince Foster.

Other news figures who later joined the Newsmax board included Arnaud de Borchgrave, the longtime Newsweek chief correspondent who also serves as editor-at-large of United Press International (UPI), and Jeff Cunningham, former publisher of Forbes. Admiral Thomas Moorer, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and chief of naval operations during the Vietnam War, also served as one of the company's founding board members. Former United States secretary of state and Nixon and Ford administration chief of staff General Alexander M. Haig, Jr. served as special adviser to Newsmax.

Although since its founding, the company had been known for its anti- Clinton content, in the fall of 2007, Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy published a favorable review of former president Bill Clinton 's book Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World and a positive interview with him at Newsmax.com, followed by a positive cover story in Newsmax magazine. The New York Times said with reference to the event that politics had made " strange bedfellows ". Bill Clinton also visited the Newsmax headquarters in West Palm Beach in 2010. In 2014, Newsmax donated $1 million to the Clinton Foundation and Ruddy has accompanied Clinton on foundation trips to Africa.

In a January 2010 profile on the company, the Financial Times reported that the "rise of Newsmax" had defied the media trend and said that the Newsmax website was "one of the strongest conservative voices online". The paper said Newsmax had witnessed 40 percent growth rates per annum over the past decade, closing 2009 with $36 million revenues, up from $25 million the year before. Earlier Ruddy had told Business Insider the company expected annual 2010 revenues to reach $50 million.

A profile on Newsmax in The New York Times described the company as a "potent force in conservative politics" and noted the company's headquarters had become a must stop for Republican candidates seeking the party's 2012 nomination.

Starting in April 2013, Newsmax.com and its affiliated sites drew 14.4 million unique visitors, leading comScore's News/Politics category over such sites as The Huffington Post Politics, Fox News Politics, CNN Politics, NBCNews.com Politics, and Politico in monthly viewership for two consecutive months.

Newsmax contributors include Nancy Brinker, George Will, Lanny Davis, Alan Dershowitz, Christopher W. Ruddy, David Limbaugh, Ben Stein, Susan Estrich, Laura Schlessinger, Michael Reagan, Dr. Mehmet Oz and Dr. Michael Roizen.

In November 2017, Politico reported that Fox News, facing new competitors, was giving more favorable coverage to President Donald Trump. In an interview, Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy criticized Fox News ' hosts unwillingness to criticize President Donald Trump, telling Politico that "Newsmax is very supportive of the president, but we also will publish things that are critical of him time to time", Ruddy said. "Fox seems to have decided to become very closely aligned, which seems unnatural, and it doesn't seem consistent.

Coverage of the 2020 United States presidential election

During the 2020 United States presidential election, President Trump began to promote Newsmax over its rival, Fox News. Trump's preference for Newsmax over Fox News became clearer after the latter became the first news outlet to call Arizona for Democratic challenger Joe Biden. Newsmax has made their more conservative leanings a selling point to disaffected Fox News viewers, as well as employing Fox News alumni to join their lineup on Newsmax TV, such as Rob Schmitt and Greg Kelly. Emily VanDerWerff of Vox reported that the outlet "spent lots of time arguing that other media outlets jumped the gun in calling the election for Biden and that Trump still has a path to win this thing", and that it was one of the only networks that didn't call the election for Biden, citing the Trump campaign's legal challenges. However, she did write that "Newsmax doesn't go full arch-conservative" and "doesn't give airtime to QAnon paranoiacs".

CNN's Brian Stelter, in an on-air interview, asked Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy why the network chose to air "election denialism" and "bogus voter fraud stuff", to which Ruddy replied that the network featured all points of view and argued that all of the other major news outlets who had reported Biden's election win were "rushing".

In an interview with Variety, Ruddy stated that, "We are waiting for the states' certification and the electoral college, but we will at some point when that happens" and insisted: "We will be supportive of whoever the next president is." He added "Newsmax would never become Trump TV. We have always seen ourselves as an independent news agency" but would be willing to Trump having a weekly show. Ruddy says the company is "moderately conservative and we will continue to have a moderately conservative viewpoint on things – including the president".

In a later interview with The New Yorker, Ruddy stated, "I do think that Donald Trump should concede when the certifications come in", he said, adding that he "would not support going to state legislators to overturn the electors". Following the certification of the electoral college of Joe Biden as the winner on December 14, 2020, the network began using the title " President-elect " to refer to Biden.

Acquisition reports

On November 15, 2020, The Wall Street Journal reported that Hicks Equity Partners, a private equity firm with ties to a co-chair of the Republican National Committee, was exploring a buyout of Newsmax. The Hicks group identified a team of executives who would manage the network, and had been talking to former Fox News hosts including Megyn Kelly. Media analyst Michael Nathanson reported that if a competing network took 20% of Fox News' audience, it could sap about $200 million in annual profit from the company. In an interview with Variety, Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy stated "we are not actively selling" the company though he had expressions of interests from investors. Regarding Hicks Equity Partners, Ruddy stated, "we have no deal with them". Ruddy stated that "We would like to overtake Fox News in 12 months, and I think it's doable."

Post-2020 United States presidential election

Newsmax promoted baseless allegations that voting machine company Smartmatic and its competitor Dominion Voting Systems had conspired to rig the election against Trump. On Facebook, Newsmax published a video of its host Carl Higbie making three minutes of debunked claims against the election results, which accumulated 16.5 million views from November 7 to 10. In December 2020, Smartmatic sent a letter to Newsmax threatening legal action and demanding "a full and complete retraction of all false and defamatory statements and reports".

Days later, a Newsmax host stated the company "would like to clarify its news coverage and note it has not reported as true certain claims" made by Newsmax interviewees about Dominion and Smartmatic. Newsmax declared that it had "no evidence" of certain claims made on its programming, including the claim that the two companies have a business relationship, the claim that either company used each other's software, and the claim that either company "manipulated votes" in the 2020 American general election. Newsmax also stated it had "no evidence" that Smartmatic software was used anywhere except Los Angeles during the 2020 election. Newsmax additionally said viewers should be aware of "several facts", including that both companies have no relationship with George Soros, and that "Smartmatic is a U.S. company and not owned by the Venezuelan government" or any other foreign entity.

Mediaite 's Rudy Takala wrote that conservatives disgruntled with Fox News could potentially be disappointed by Newsmax due to CEO Christopher Ruddy 's friendship with former Democratic president Bill Clinton and positive remarks about a Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. Newsmax has previously donated $1 million to the Clinton Foundation. When reached for comment, Ruddy said, "Like Donald Trump, Rupert Murdoch and other business people, I have donated to the Clinton Foundation and a few Democrats, but over 90 percent of my political contributions have been to Republicans, including ones to President Trump."

Jeffrey McCall, a journalism professor at DePauw University, told Mediaite that "Ruddy is a pragmatist unlikely to allow his operation to be a fully ideological platform. Trump allies who want to bend the arc of media progressivism will need a much more comprehensive national strategy than just trying to take over one particular media outlet."

Adweek reported that Newsmax's TV ratings grew tenfold in the fourth quarter of 2020 compared to the previous quarter. Its top two shows, Spicer & Co. and Greg Kelly Reports (at 7 p.m.), averaged 816,000 total viewers during the same November 7–18 interval. Regarding coverage of the Biden administration, CEO Christopher Ruddy told Adweek "I think Newsmax's job is to be loyal opposition, to question the policies, the programs and the people that are coming into the Biden administration. We're going to take a very careful look at that. I think we were pretty fair with Barack Obama. We were tough on him, but we never called for his impeachment", he said. Newsmax TV momentarily exceeded Fox News in viewership in December 2020, but lost viewers after the conclusion of the election cycle. A Pew Research Center study found that Newsmax's reach (10% of American adults) continued to trail Fox News's reach (43% of American adults) in March 2021.

In July 2021, Vox noted that "Newsmax's effort to out-Trump the competition has been less successful since Trump left the White House for Mar-a-Lago. Newsmax's viewership is down more than 50 percent from January (from an average of about 300,000 viewers then to about 114,000 on July 18), and following a significant slump in December and January, Fox News has reestablished itself as not just the most-watched right-wing cable news network but the most-watched cable news network, period."

In November 2021, a study by the Center for Countering Digital Hate described Newsmax as being among "ten fringe publishers" that together were responsible for nearly 70 percent of Facebook user interactions with content that denies climate change. Facebook disputed the study's methodology.

Also in November 2021, Newsmax White House correspondent Emerald Robinson falsely tweeted that the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine contained luciferase "so that you can be tracked". This echoed earlier false social media claims that the vaccine supposedly had satanic links due to " lucifer " in luciferase and alleged references to " 666 ". Robinson's tweet began with the salutation "Dear Christians" and referred her over 400,000 followers to the Book of Revelation; in a tweet days earlier, she equated vaccines with the Mark of the Beast. Twitter removed the tweet that day and suspended Robinson's account for seven days, citing "repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation policy", as Newsmax sought to distance itself from her remark and removed her from the air pending an inquiry. Robinson returned to Twitter after her suspension to continue spreading COVID-19 misinformation, causing Twitter to permanently ban her within hours. Newsmax announced the next month that it would not renew Robinson's contract when it ended in January 2022.

DirecTV dropped Newsmax from its lineup in January 2023, after the companies failed to agree on contract terms. In response, 42 House Republicans signed a letter to DirecTV executives attacking the removal as an act of "suppressing politically disfavored speech". The two companies resolved their dispute and DirecTV resumed broadcasting Newsmax in March 2023.

In May 2023 the "small conservative cable news channel saw its ratings surge" once again in response to actions by Fox News: "Fox's decision to fire [Tucker] Carlson ". Newsmax's viewership during the prime-time spot vacated by Carlson more than doubled. This increase surpassed the 2020 post-election surge and on a night-by-night basis they challenged CNN through the month to be the third-most-watched cable news channel (behind MSNBC and Fox). On November 1, 2023, Newsmax placed its live content behind a paywall on YouTube ("Newsmax+") while still offering a free streaming channel ("Newsmax 2").

In March 2024, The Washington Post reported that between 2019 and 2020, a member of the Qatari Royal Family had invested $50 million in the network in the midst of the Qatar diplomatic crisis. It also reported that network leaders had told staffers to soften coverage related to Qatar following the investment, a claim the network later denied in response to the report. The investment was made by Sheikh Sultan bin Jassim Al Thani, a former Qatari government official and the owner of a London-based investment fund, with Newsmax looking for outside investors to better compete with Fox News.

In April 2024, Newsmax was included as a defendant in a defamation lawsuit by a man who was falsely identified as the perpetrator of the 2023 Allen, Texas mall shooting, alongside others such as Fox News and InfoWars personality Owen Shroyer. The man alleged the defendants had "recklessly disregarded basic journalistic safeguards and published the photo of an innocent man, branding him as a neo-Nazi murderer to his local community and the nation at large".

2020 election lawsuits

In December 2020, Newsmax was included as a defendant in a defamation lawsuit by Dominion executive Eric Coomer. Coomer asserted that the defendants had characterized him as a "traitor" and that as a result he was subjected to "multiple credible death threats". In April 2021, Newsmax published a retraction and apology on its website, saying it "found no evidence" to support the allegations against Coomer.

In August 2021, Dominion sued Newsmax for "knowingly and continuously" promoting false election fraud narratives. Newsmax said in a statement that it had "simply reported on allegations made by well-known public figures, including the President, his advisors and members of Congress", adding: "Dominion's action today is a clear attempt to squelch such reporting and undermine a free press". On April 9, 2025, a Delaware judge determined that Newsmax's coverage of Dominion was defamatory and consisted of false claims that Dominion had manipulated votes during the election, among other incorrect allegations. To evaluate whether Newsmax acted with actual malice and determine possible damages, the case was set for a jury trial later in April, but the judge postponed it. On August 15, a $67 million settlement was reached; the documents were filed with the court on August 18.

In November 2021, Smartmatic sued Newsmax for defamation. In August 2023, a Delaware judge rejected Newsmax's bid to narrow the alleged defamatory statements cited by Smartmatic. The trial was set to begin on September 30, 2024. Newsmax and Smartmatic settled the suit on confidential terms on September 26. In March 2025, it was revealed that Newsmax had agreed to pay $40 million to settle the lawsuit.

Initial public offering

On June 10, 2024, during its coverage of a rally organized in Las Vegas by former and current president Donald Trump, Newsmax announced it plans to file for an initial public stock offering either in late 2024 or early 2025. The plan was confirmed on September 5, 2024, with the company expected to be listed under the ticker symbol "NMAX" on the New York Stock Exchange in the first quarter of 2025. In November 2024, Newsmax offered preferred stock to accredited investors in an effort to raise $100 million. On January 25, 2025, the offering was extended to $200 million, surpassing $220 million by March 2025. The company made its stock market debut on March 31, 2025. The shares, priced at $10 in the IPO, closed their first trading day at $83.51, an increase of over 700%. The shares closed their second day of trading at $234—with a market capitalization of almost $30 billion, surpassing that of Fox Corporation.

Newsmax's stock price declined 77.5% on April 2 and closed at $52.71. Financial commentators described the rapid rise and fall of Newsmax's stock price as the trajectory of a meme stock, and some traders compared Newsmax to GameStop in online discussions, referencing the 2021 GameStop short squeeze.