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Newsmax employees are furious after an anchor falsely said in the air that Russia had surrendered to Ukraine as part of an April Fool’s Day joke, report says

    Some volunteers search for traces to help identify the corpses at Kramatorsk train station after the missile strike in Ukraine's Kramatorsk.

    Some volunteers search for traces to help identify the corpses at Kramatorsk train station after the missile strike in Ukraine’s Kramatorsk.Andrea Carrubba/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

    • Newsmax presenter Rob Finnerty joked about a ceasefire in Ukraine as an April 1 joke.

    • Finnerty interrupted his show with the false news that “Russia has apparently surrendered”.

    • CEO Chris Ruddy was “furious” at the prank, sources told The Daily Beast.

    Employees of the conservative news network Newsmax are angry with anchor Rob Finnerty after he falsely reported on air that Russia surrendered to Ukraine as part of an April Fool’s Day joke, multiple sources told The Daily Beast.

    Finnerty made the comment on an episode of the morning show “Wake up America” ​​that aired April 1. He played along with the other host and guests as they joked about the April Fools’ Day jokes when he grabbed a fake earpiece as the words “Breaking News” flashed on the screen.

    He then falsely claimed that “Russia has apparently surrendered” and that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin had reached a preliminary ceasefire agreement.

    Finnerty asked Mark Halperin, one of the show’s guests, for his thoughts. Halperin started to react, apparently not realizing it wasn’t true, until Finnerty quickly interrupted him to cheerfully say it was all a joke and ridicule the others for falling for it.

    Halperin replied, “Rob, you know why I fell for it? I was more confident that you wouldn’t misuse the Newsmax name by pretending something was so serious and so real. I had too much faith in you.”

    Sources told The Daily Beast that executives such as CEO Chris Ruddy are “furious” over a joke being made about an ongoing conflict that has involved possible war crimes and has claimed thousands of lives since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.

    “How anyone would think that was remotely acceptable is beyond me,” a Newsmax employee told The Daily Beast.

    Other employees told the outlet that control room personnel were unaware of the material Finnerty would use for the joke, but that he instructed them to have the “Breaking News” chyron ready.

    Newsmax did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.

    Read the original article on Insider