April 30, 2022

Fox’s Maria Bartiromo Fed Trump Interview Questions in Advance

Bartiromo, unlike Hannity, has always presented herself as an actual, real journalist.

Maria Bartiromo, moderating a Fox Business Network Republican presidential debate in 2016.Andrew Burton/Getty

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Fox News star Sean Hannity has a go-to response for when he’s accused of flagrant violations of journalistic ethics: He never claimed to be a journalist in the first place! However unconvincing, that excuse, combined with his vaunted perch at Fox, has allowed the talk show host to survive scandals that would have blacklisted lesser stars at any normal news outlet.

Fox anchor Maria Bartiromo, on the other hand, claims that she’s a journalist all the time.

Before the Trump years, Bartiromo had developed a reputation as a serious business reporter, who, despite being a bit deferential to Wall Street, made history by becoming the first to broadcast live from the New York Stock Exchange. Punk legend Joey Ramone even wrote a song about her. 

Unfortunately, Bartiromo’s hard-won reputation started to unravel when she began to give voice to Trump’s baseless lies about election fraud. (She’s currently a defendant in a lawsuit brought by voting company Smartmatic, who was falsely accused of participating in an election-rigging conspiracy.) And on Friday, Bartiromo’s credibility took another hit when CNN published texts from the cache of correspondence that Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows handed over to the January 6 committee.

Among them was this jaw-dropping Nov. 29 exchange between Bartiromo and Meadows, regarding an upcoming interview with Trump. In the texts, Bartiromo feeds Meadows the questions she plans to ask the president, and even sketches an answer for him, suggesting that Trump cite a thoroughly unconvincing article published by the far-right news site the Federalist.

Bartiromo wrote: 

Hi the public wants to know he will fight this. They want to hear a path to victory. & he’s in control,” Bartiromo texted at 9:21 a.m. “1Q You’ve said MANY TIMES THIS ELECTION IS RIGGED… And the facts are on your side. Let’s start there. What are the facts? Characterize what took place here. Then I will drill down on the fraud including the statistical impossibilities of Biden magic (federalist). Pls make sure he doesn’t go off on tangents. We want to know he is strong he is a fighter & he will win. This is no longer about him. This is about ????. I will ask him about big tech & media influencing ejection as well Toward end I’ll get to GA runoffs & then vaccines.

Less than an hour later, Trump gave Bartiromo his first interview since Election Day. Her line of questioning was more or less the same as what she described in the texts. Despite Bartiromo’s plea for Trump to stay on message, the former president went off on a tangent, talking not about evidence of fraud but about the fact that “leaders of countries” had called him up to say that “that’s the most messed up election we’ve ever seen.”

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE ON MOTHER JONES' FINANCES

We need to start being more upfront about how hard it is keeping a newsroom like Mother Jones afloat these days.

Because it is, and because we're fresh off finishing a fiscal year, on June 30, that came up a bit short of where we needed to be. And this next one simply has to be a year of growth—particularly for donations from online readers to help counter the brutal economics of journalism right now.

Straight up: We need this pitch, what you're reading right now, to start earning significantly more donations than normal. We need people who care enough about Mother Jones’ journalism to be reading a blurb like this to decide to pitch in and support it if you can right now.

Urgent, for sure. But it's not all doom and gloom!

Because over the challenging last year, and thanks to feedback from readers, we've started to see a better way to go about asking you to support our work: Level-headedly communicating the urgency of hitting our fundraising goals, being transparent about our finances, challenges, and opportunities, and explaining how being funded primarily by donations big and small, from ordinary (and extraordinary!) people like you, is the thing that lets us do the type of journalism you look to Mother Jones for—that is so very much needed right now.

And it's really been resonating with folks! Thankfully. Because corporations, powerful people with deep pockets, and market forces will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. Only people like you will.

There's more about our finances in "News Never Pays," or "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," and we'll have details about the year ahead for you soon. But we already know this: The fundraising for our next deadline, $350,000 by the time September 30 rolls around, has to start now, and it has to be stronger than normal so that we don't fall behind and risk coming up short again.

Please consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

—Monika Bauerlein, CEO, and Brian Hiatt, Online Membership Director

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE ON MOTHER JONES' FINANCES

We need to start being more upfront about how hard it is keeping a newsroom like Mother Jones afloat these days.

Because it is, and because we're fresh off finishing a fiscal year, on June 30, that came up a bit short of where we needed to be. And this next one simply has to be a year of growth—particularly for donations from online readers to help counter the brutal economics of journalism right now.

Straight up: We need this pitch, what you're reading right now, to start earning significantly more donations than normal. We need people who care enough about Mother Jones’ journalism to be reading a blurb like this to decide to pitch in and support it if you can right now.

Urgent, for sure. But it's not all doom and gloom!

Because over the challenging last year, and thanks to feedback from readers, we've started to see a better way to go about asking you to support our work: Level-headedly communicating the urgency of hitting our fundraising goals, being transparent about our finances, challenges, and opportunities, and explaining how being funded primarily by donations big and small, from ordinary (and extraordinary!) people like you, is the thing that lets us do the type of journalism you look to Mother Jones for—that is so very much needed right now.

And it's really been resonating with folks! Thankfully. Because corporations, powerful people with deep pockets, and market forces will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. Only people like you will.

There's more about our finances in "News Never Pays," or "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," and we'll have details about the year ahead for you soon. But we already know this: The fundraising for our next deadline, $350,000 by the time September 30 rolls around, has to start now, and it has to be stronger than normal so that we don't fall behind and risk coming up short again.

Please consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

—Monika Bauerlein, CEO, and Brian Hiatt, Online Membership Director

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate