Maria Bartiromo’s exit reveals the limits of Fox’s loyalty to Trump

By Brian Stelter, CNN

(CNN) — President Donald Trump and Fox News have a mostly mutually beneficial relationship. But every so often, their interests diverge, and Maria Bartiromo is a prime example.

Fox took Bartiromo off the air after she leaked internal network guidance to the Trump White House, a source familiar with the matter told CNN. The guidance specified that Fox’s programs should not follow Trump down a conspiratorial rabbit hole relating to the 2020 election.

For all the talk of Fox being a pro-Trump media brand, which it is, the network still has lines that it tries not to cross.

One of those lines has to do with election fraud conspiracy theories that might land Fox in court again. Fox paid three quarters of a billion dollars to settle Dominion’s defamation lawsuit in 2023 and it is still fighting another such suit, from voting machine company Smartmatic.

So when Fox says Bartiromo’s exit was a “business decision,” it’s true – the business often involves promoting the president’s agenda, but when his election lies endanger the bottom line, Fox puts its corporate interests ahead of political interests.

Ousting a top star like Bartiromo serves as a message to everyone else at Fox: Don’t betray the boss.

And the boss is not Trump, as much as he’d like to be.

The people actually in charge at Fox are Rupert Murdoch, his son Lachlan and Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott. Their April 2023 dismissal of Tucker Carlson was an assertion that everyone is replaceable, even the top-rated host on Fox.

Carlson had alienated vast swaths of Fox in the run-up to his firing. Bartiromo, similarly, had become increasingly isolated at Fox, the source told CNN.

So she may have lacked internal support when management found out that she had disclosed Fox’s internal guidance to the White House.

On Thursday the network announced that “effective today, Maria Bartiromo is no longer with Fox News Media.”

Bartiromo did not comment on her ouster. But she retained a high-profile entertainment lawyer, Bryan Freedman, who issued a statement on Friday saying “the irresponsible reports that have been published stating that Maria Bartiromo was fired or is no longer an employee of Fox are absolutely and unequivocally false.”

Television networks sometimes decide to replace a host but still pay the person the remainder of their contract, which may be what Freedman is suggesting.

A question of control

The Bartiromo dust-up began in mid-July when Trump delivered a prime time speech and made conspiratorial claims about China and the 2020 election.

Major news outlets like CNN fact-checked and debunked Trump’s narrative. But Bartiromo has, for years, defaulted to trusting Trump’s claims, and has displayed an insatiable appetite for MAGA conspiracy theories, including 2020 election lies. She wanted to follow up on Trump’s election fraud stories on TV, but was told not to.

Fox’s lack of interest in Trump’s election fraud speech raised eyebrows at the time. “Trump’s Favorite News Show Totally Ignores His Election Fraud Speech,” The New Republic wrote in a headline the next day, noting that the “Fox & Friends” morning show didn’t follow up at all.

Bartiromo’s morning show on Fox Business also skirted the topic. A Fox Business executive had sent guidance to a team of executive producers directing them not to cover Trump’s conspiracy theories, perhaps due to fear of legal exposure. The written guidance was forwarded to Bartiromo, who then shared it with the Trump White House.

“Basically she was calling daddy to tell on mommy,” CNN political commentator S.E. Cupp said. “She was basically saying, ‘Mommy won’t let me do this, dad. What are you going to do about it?’ Gross.”

The media industry newsletter Status, which first reported on Bartiromo’s disclosure, said “it’s unclear whether Trump ever acted on the information, though one might imagine that upon learning of what happened, he would call Murdoch.”

Trump has a long history of complaining about Fox to Murdoch — while also coveting its support and complimenting its pro-Trump stars.

In his social media posts and public comments about Fox, Trump sometimes acts like he’s in control of the network. The Fox bosses have been known to bristle at that — which helps explain why Bartiromo’s disclosure to the White House was such a big deal internally.

When word of Bartiromo’s back-channeling with Trump got back to Fox management – in other words, when she got caught – she was benched.

But an air of mystery still surrounds Bartiromo’s departure since Fox put up with so much for so long from her.

The network renewed her contract even after her TV segments promoting Trump’s 2020 election lies contributed to both Dominion and Smartmatic suing for defamation.

Perhaps that’s because she continued to attract an audience, both on Fox Business and Fox News, with the type of Trump-is-right commentary that has come to define the Murdochs’ TV empire.

Bartiromo – once an acclaimed business journalist and interviewer – became a “true believer” in Trump years ago, numerous sources said.

Her credulousness has actually served Fox as a legal defense, since a person has to know a statement was false or show reckless disregard for the truth in order to be held liable for defamation.

In the new book “Terrible Stuff Damaging Everybody,” about Dominion’s case against Fox, author Ian Rosenberg writes that Bartiromo and other Fox stars “were exposed for caring more about protecting Trump’s claims than presenting accurate information.”

That’s the perpetual tension for Fox in the Trump era. The network and the president basically share an audience of viewers and voters. Trump might say the audience is more loyal to him, and the Murdochs might say they’re more loyal to Fox.

There’s no need to test that loyalty as long as Fox carries Trump’s water. But whenever Fox very visibly challenges Trump, things get awkward.

The mid-July directive to ignore Trump’s election claims was meant to be invisible. Fox’s shows didn’t refute or ridicule Trump’s obsession with the 2020 election on air; they simply chose other stories to talk about.

But if the plan was to let sleeping dogs lie, Bartiromo interfered by passing along the internal guidance.

Ultimately, “this is a Fox-Trump fight over his election lies,” Amanda Carpenter, a writer and editor at Protect Democracy, wrote on X. It’s about “their unwillingness to promote the lies and also publicly cross Trump over it.”

The-CNN-Wire
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