Fox News unceremoniously shitcanned longtime Fox Business and Fox News host Maria Bartiromo Thursday without saying why. The terse announcement offered little information, simply saying that Bartiromo was “no longer with” Fox News Media, thanking her for her work, and wishing her “all the best on her next chapter.” The rest of the press release detailed how the network will rename her three regular shows and who’ll take over hosting them for the time being.
The announcement said the “last episode” of Mornings With Maria ran Thursday morning, leading folks who don’t watch Fox because they respect their brain cells to assume Bartiromo had been fired after leaving the set, but in fact she hasn’t appeared on any of the shows she hosts since early August.
It was an abrupt end to Bartiromo’s dozen years at Fox, where she squandered her reputation as a serious CBNC financial reporter in favor of pushing conspiracy theories and fluffing Donald Trump at every opportunity. Bartiromo was such a True Believer — and so sycophantically gullible — that she was genuinely puzzled by how Iran continued fighting after Trump said he’d “obliterated Iran’s military.” She simply couldn’t consider the possibility he was just lying. Billionaires don’t lie!
The lack of detail in Fox’s announcement led to a brief flurry of speculation that Bartiromo might have left to work at the White House (nope), or that her firing was somehow related to her part in pushing Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election. But that appears not to be the case either; Bartiromo was just too fucking stupid and gullible to know she was libelslandering Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic.
Instead, as NPR reports, Bartiromo got the boot because she blabbed earlier this summer to the White House that Fox decided not to help Trump hype his weird conspiracy speech about the 2020 election in July. The Status newsletter seems to have broken the story first, but it paywalled the Big Reveal, so screw ‘em; NPR’s media guy David Folkenflik appears to have reported it independently, based on an anonymous “person with knowledge of events,” so good on him.
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Folkenflik explains that when Trump made it known he wanted live network time to repeat his bullshit lies about the rigged and stollen 2020 election — with some new lies about China being behind it — Fox made clear that it wanted no part of that $787 million shitshow:
A Fox Business executive texted the executive producers atop several major network shows to say the speech would not be carried live - given the network's history, and Trump's, on the subject.
Folkenflik here refers to Fox’s big libelslander settlement in 2023 and the subsequent shitcannings of Tucker Carlson, Lou Dobbs, and others.
Per the “person with knowledge of events,” whose eventual book should be a doozy, the executive producer for Bartiromo’s daily business show forwarded the ixnay on the eech-spay memo to Bartiromo. Selfless Trumphumper that she is, the host then sent a screenshot to a “Trump associate,” and then the White House got shirty with Fox about its not carrying the great speech, which after all included information vital to saving America.
And now Bartiromo is toast, because snitches get … well, probably a job hosting a web “radio show” and a bunch of rightwing money to keep doing her thing.
Or maybe a White House comms job after all, who knows? Dear Leader professed to be shocked, shocked, that Fox would oust his good friend, although Crom only knows whether his flunkies briefed him on how she’d told tales out of school. On his fake Twitter knockoff last night, Trump very subtly hinted that Fox viewers should rebel at the network’s betrayal.
As of this morning we haven’t seen any reports of angry fans storming Fox’s New York headquarters, but we don’t watch Fox anyway.
[NPR / Politicus USA / Joe.My.God.]
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Fox just solved a problem like Maria.
Sure, NPR can't say "fuck" on the air, but they could invite Maria to taste some Schweddy balls. Although I suppose she's been gargling tiny orange nuggets for a number of years now.