Fox News has fired Maria Bartiromo, a longtime anchor and ally of President Donald Trump who joined the network in 2013 after two decades at CNBC, according to an announcement made last week. Political columnist Liz Dye wrote that Bartiromo’s mistake was forgetting that Trump was not her boss: Fox News was, despite the network’s long-standing relationship with the president.

As Dye explained on Wednesday, “Bartiromo got axed for leaking confidential company information to the White House. She made the mistake of thinking that the network and the administration were one and the same — an understandable error, since they operated as a seamless entity for almost a decade. Bartiromo believed that her job was to support Trump and use her platform to let his agents spread their message. And for many years, it was. But now Trump is a lame duck whose disastrous policies are driving the country into a ditch, and Fox is trying to execute a delicate pivot. Bartiromo doesn’t do delicate, and she’s not about to pivot. So now she’s out.”

Dye argued that the split between Trump and Fox has been developing for years. The network has served as both a launching pad and a landing spot for Trump-world figures, and Trump has maintained a close relationship with its hosts, with Fox previously retreating from disciplining commentators after Trump intervened.

Dye cited the example of Jeanine Pirro, who was suspended in 2019 after questioning whether Rep. Ilhan Omar’s hijab was “indicative of her adherence to Sharia law, which in itself is antithetical to the United States Constitution.” Pirro returned to her job after Trump publicly demanded her reinstatement and warned Fox against going “politically correct” and surrendering its ratings lead to competitors. Pirro is now the U.S. attorney for D.C., while former Fox host Pete Hegseth serves as secretary of defense. The relationship has also worked in the other direction: Trump’s former press secretary Kayleigh McEnany has her own show, and Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah previously served for years as a Fox senior vice president.

The relationship was strained further after Fox accurately called Arizona for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. Trump responded on social media by urging his followers to consider “great alternatives,” including OANN and Newsmax, which were then emerging as far-right competitors to Fox. The criticism alarmed Fox executives, who made “the calculated decision to push Trump’s flagrant lies about a stolen election.”

Bartiromo became one of the network’s principal conduits for Trump’s election claims. The day after the election, she hosted election denier Sidney Powell. Powell’s purported “evidence” of voter fraud included a rambling email reviewed by Bartiromo. Its author claimed that “The Wind tells me I'm a ghost” and that “it appears that I was shot in the back shortly after submitting a tip to the FBI two years ago.” The email also said its writer had dreams that were “clearly predictions” and claimed that former Supreme Court Justice Antony Scalia had been shot and killed during a “weeklong human hunting expedition.”

When Fox was later taken to court over its promotion of Trump’s election lies, Bartiromo acknowledged that the email was “kooky.” However, she did not challenge Powell’s claims on air, and Fox did not pressure its hosts to do so. The network ultimately paid nearly $800 million in damages to voting-technology company Dominion Voting Systems to settle the defamation case over its role in the election-denial campaign.

Although Fox remains a “conservative behemoth,” Dye wrote that the network learned a lesson about promoting Trump’s most blatant falsehoods. Fox fired Tucker Carlson in 2023 for several reasons, including his participation in the “big lie,” and has retreated in other instances when Trump’s allies pushed claims too far.

“And while the network remains comically pro-Trump,” Dye wrote, “it seems to have dawned on management that yoking itself to a president whose approval ratings are sinking like a stone is not a long-term growth strategy. On July 16, Trump gave what he promised would be a blockbuster speech proving his electoral fraud claims once and for all. Fox dutifully aired it live during primetime, then instructed staff to give the fraud claims no further oxygen.”

Bartiromo nevertheless continued promoting Trump’s conspiracy claims. She scheduled an interview with Trump aide Peter Navarro, who had been convicted of contempt after refusing to testify before the January 6 Committee — the congressional probe into the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

According to Dye, “When Bartiromo canceled on Navarro, she forwarded the internal text from management warning against covering Trump’s speech. Navarro then passed it to the White House as evidence of Fox’s perfidy, inadvertently sealing Bartiromo’s fate. Bartiromo subordinated the needs of her employer to those of her real boss in the White House,” and learned who her real boss was the hard way.

For a network that spent nearly a decade operating in sync with the administration, the episode shows what happens when internal editorial guidance meant for staff ends up in the hands of the very people it covers. How Fox manages the exit of one of its most prominent business anchors while recalibrating its Trump coverage — without triggering the kind of audience backlash Trump once threatened — is the question Dye’s account leaves open.

Source: https://www.alternet.org/trump-fox-bartiromo/