Fox Host Is The Queen Of Trump Enablers And Apologists
In a journalism world heavily infected by trump lackeys Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo is one of the worst.
For her efforts, the once-respected business reporter is paid $15 million a year, and has a reported net worth of $50 million. She also is married to a billionaire financier.
Bartiromo’s unflinching support for trump and opposition to all things Biden have gained her kudos from the top of the far right food chain, starting with trump.
“Maria Bartiromo is unquestionably the single best person in all business media, and she is the fairest and she’s actually true MAGA,” Trump adviser Steve Bannon said in 2023. “There’s been no better supporter of President Trump or the MAGA movement.”
Bartiromo’s track record in parroting and refusing to challenge trump’s unfounded claims about widespread voter fraud have gotten her and Fox into big trouble. She has been targeted in lawsuits that claimed that Bartiromo and other colleagues knowingly lied in reporting about alleged failures in the Dominion and Smartmatic voting systems, which Fox reporters claimed had led to widespread voter fraud and trump’s 2020 election defeat.
Last April, Dominion settled its lawsuit for $787.5 million. Smartmatic is seeking $2.7 billion in damages and the lawsuit is in the discovery phase.
Bartiromo’s latest crusade is to carry water for the Republican drumbeat that President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, have taken millions of dollars in bribes and illegal payments. Curiously, Bartiromo et al have ignored trump scandals like the $2 billion investment by Saudi Arabia into a fund operated by trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
Republicans have impeached the president over the foreign business interests his son held before his election. The lynchpin of the Republican campaign has been allegations from an FBI informant. However, last week, the Justice Department indicted Alexander Smirnov, the FBI informant who allegedly fabricated his accusation that President Biden and his son took hefty bribes from a Ukrainian oligarch. The revelations did little to blunt the crusade of innuendo by the Republicans and parroted by Bartiromo and her colleagues at Fox.
Bartiromo’s initial reaction was to call Smirnov’s arrest an “intimidation tactic” aimed at silencing Republican “whistleblowers.” She has continued to interview House Republicans who argued that the Smirnov story “wasn’t an important part” of their investigations into the Bidens.
Bartiromo has carried on an irresponsible blitz based on unsubstantiated Republican reports. A review by Media Matters showed that Bartiromo’s two programs, Fox “Business’ Mornings with Maria” and Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” featured unchallenged references to Smirnov’s claims at least 219 times in 2023.
The review disclosed that 22 Republican members of Congress pushed the Smirnov tale at least 60 times on Bartiromo’s show in 2023. Rep. James Comer, R-Kent., had the most appearances and claims, with 10. Comer is chair of the House Oversight Committee that has been leading the probe into the Biden family’s finances.
Bartiromo’s guests have lathered over the attack. Rep. Russell Fry, R-S.C., said the investigation into the Bidens was “a bombshell” and “really big stuff.”
Bartiromo described Smirnov’s story as “the most serious charges ever leveled at a President” and evidence that Biden had been “compromised” via a “bribery scheme.” In interviews, that seemed more like prosecution claims to a jury, various Republican lawmakers have appeared on Bartiromo’s show, claiming that Smirnov’s claims were “the most damning piece of evidence” against Biden, and a “bombshell” establishing “a pay-to-play scheme for quid pro-Joe” that one representative said “convinced me now beyond a shadow of a doubt that Joe Biden is corrupt and he is compromised.”
Bartiromo has not shied away from putting her unprofessional bias in full view. Last May, Bartiromo told her viewers that “The Communist China threat is in plain sight and yet we have questions on whether or not Joe Biden is, you know, compromised.”
In June, Bartiromo said the alleged Biden scandal was “the most serious charges ever leveled at a President and the mainstream media will not report it at all.”
In October, Bartiromo reported on comments leaked in an FBI document concerning the since, indicted Smirnov, regarding alleged payments that Hunter Biden accepted from Burisma, a Ukraine utility company. Directing her comments at the president, Bartiromo said a whistleblower testimony “says you accepted $5 million from Burisma executives, as your son did as well” and that “we’re not going to let that go off of the front page. I’m sorry.”
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., another trump sycophant and election denier, said the unproven scandal involving the Bidens was “incredibly troubling. The deep state knows what it’s done, what it’s done wrong. They know how to hide the ball.”
In lock step with the rest was Rep. Andew Clyde, R-Ga., who said it has been “pretty evident that Burisma has bought the Bidens and they bought them both of them for $10 million. So the 10 percent for the Big Guy, I think just went to 50 percent and equal partner.” Clyde famously noted after seeing video of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection by trump supporters that it was like a “normal tourist visit.”
Bartiromo’s fealty to trump has paid off. She landed his first interview since he lost the 2022 election. The Nov. 29, 2022, “interview” was filled with the typical trump lies that Bartiromo did not challenge.
Bartiromo opened the interview with a question about election fraud and told trump, “The facts are on your side.”
Trump responded, “This election was a fraud; it was a rigged election.” To which Bartiromo responded, “This is disgusting and we cannot allow America’s election to be corrupted.”
Well into the interview, trump discussed the COVID-19 pandemic that continued to spiral out of control with new records of hospitalizations and deaths in the U.S.
“We’re doing better than the rest of the world,” Trump told Bartiromo, speaking about the way the coronavirus has been handled in the United States.
As of that day, there were more than 13 million COVID-19 cases in the United States and more than 266,000 people in the United States had died from the disease.
Bartiromo’s retort? Silence.
Trump said that he “came up with vaccines that people didn’t think we’d have for five years.” That statement belied the reality that the pharmaceutical companies Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Novavax created the vaccines. Still no trace of accountability from Bartiromo.
In January 2021, after the storming of the U.S. Capitol by supporters of trump, Bartiromo hosted trump economic advisor Peter Navarro on her show. He falsely claimed in the interview that trump had won the election. Bartiromo agreed and said, “We know that there were irregularities in this election.” In a broadcast on January 19, she falsely claimed that Democrats wore MAGA clothing and were behind the storming of the Capitol.
At a salary of $15 million, Bartiromo is among the highest paid at Fox. According to published reports, Fox News anchor Sean Hannity is at the top, with a salary of $45 million a year and his net worth is estimated at around $250 million. Another anchor, Laura Ingraham, matches Bartiromo and also earns $15 million. Other FOX personalities and their salaries include Neil Cavuto, $7 million; Greg Gutfeld, $7 million; Jesse Watters, $5 million; Judge Jeanine Pirro, $3 million; Bill Hemmer, $3 million; Shannon Bream, $3 million; and Dana Perino, $1 million.
Bartiromo was not always a shill. She worked at CNN as a producer for five years before joining CNBC in 1993, where she worked on-air for 20 years. With CNBC, she was the host of “Closing Bell” and “On the Money with Maria Bartiromo.” She was the first television journalist to deliver live television reports from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and she won several awards for her work on the programs, including two Emmy Awards.
Bartiromo, 56, is married to Jonathan Steinberg, chief executive officer of WisdomTree Investments and son of billionaire financier Saul Steinberg, who owned Reliance Group Holdings in Manhattan. The couple own a beach house in the hamlet of Westhampton, N.Y. and have also lived in a five-story townhouse on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
In a recent message to stockholders, Jonathan Steinberg said the company had achieved $100 billion in assets in 2023 and expected similar growth in 2024.
Saul Steinberg was among New York’s super-rich. A 1990 photo shows him at the Dance theater of Harlem Spring Gala, flanked by Deborah Norville and Blaine Trump.
Blaine Trump was the wife of Donald trump’s brother, Robert. In October 2004, Blaine trump overdosed on pills and was hospitalized at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, after she learned her husband had bought a $3.7 million house on Long Island for his girlfriend, Ann Marie Pallan, who was his secretary for many years. They were involved in a lengthy divorce battle. The divorce was filed in 2007, went to court in 2008, and they reached a secret settlement in 2010.
Norville is the anchor of Inside Edition, a syndicated television news magazine, a position she has held since March 6, 1995.
The other founding partner of Wisdom Tree Investments is 83-year-old Michael Steinhardt, one of the nation’s most “prominent” hedge fund managers. Forbes Magazine reported Steinhardt’s net worth at $1.1 billion as of October 2018. Steinhardt is part of the “Mega Group,” a loosely organized club of 20 of the most wealthy and influential American businessmen. The “Mega Group” was formed by Leslie Wexner, chairman of Limited Inc. and Charles and Edgar Bronfman Sr., chairmen of Seagram.
Steinhardt’s father, Sol “Red” Steinhardt, worked for the Genovese organized crime family and spent a number of years in Sing-Sing prison after a New York prosecutor pegged him as “the biggest Mafia fence in America.”
Michael Steinhardt is an art collector, especially of antiquities. In November 2014, Christie’s withdrew a prehistoric sculpture from Sardinia, valued at $800,000 to $1.2 million. The sculpture had been put on auction by Steinhardt and previously put on sale by the convicted antiquities dealer Giacomo Medici. In January 2018, investigators raided Steinhardt’s New York City apartment and seized a large amount of stolen antiquities which had been illegally purchased by Steinhardt.