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

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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.”

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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