FOX’S BARTIROMO LANDS ONE-ON-ONE INTERVIEW
Nearly four weeks after Fox News drew the ire of President Donald Trump by becoming the first network to project his loss in Arizona, he gave his first post-election interview to one of the network’s hosts.
Trump broke his relative silence by calling into Maria Bartiromo’s “Sunday Morning Futures” show for 45 minutes. It was a major exclusive that he handed to Bartiromo, a veteran financial journalist who has emerged over the past four years as one of the biggest backers of Trump’s presidency within Fox News.
In doing so, he bypassed upstart networks such as Newsmax and One America News Network that are trying to eat into Fox’s dominance in conservative media.
But Bartiromo’s questions were few and far between. Trump spoke for much of the interview, which ran so long that her other scheduled guest, Fox News contributor Ken Starr, was given two minutes to appear at the end of the show.
At many points during the interview, Bartiromo seemed poised to ask the president a question, but he kept talking, a dynamic similar to the interplay between Trump and supportive Fox News opinion host Jeanine Pirro in the interviews she has conducted.
The host nodded agreeably throughout the conversation, saying “right” after the president relayed a claim about “cheating ” in Pennsylvania’s elections, particularly in the Philadelphia area, claiming that “you have to allow 5 points for cheating.”
Bartiromo did not ask for proof when Trump declared, decisively, “This election was a total fraud.” At another point, Trump said, “We won the election easily.”
The president praised Bartiromo, whom he called “brave” for covering claims about election fraud, claiming that the media do not want to cover the story.
Trump’s treatment by Bartiromo highlights the always present but seemingly increasing gap between the network’s opinion side and the news division.
Despite Trump’s charge that the media are ignoring his claims, the news division at Fox News has extensively covered the charges leveled by the president and his team of legal advisers, updating viewers on the Trump campaign’s beleaguered legal challenges and broadcasting events held by the campaign.
The president seems to have noticed the network’s news coverage; he tweeted on Saturday that “@FoxNews daytime is virtually unwatchable, especially during the weekends,” part of his recent rhetorical attacks on the company — even as he still makes time for his friends on the channel.
Bartiromo also seemed to obliquely call out her own network, when she criticized “the media” — a group that included the Fox News Channel’s nonpartisan Decision Desk — for calling the election for Biden.
“The media declared Joe Biden president-elect on November 7,” she said. “They set the narrative that the election was over and discredited any challenges.”
On Sunday, Bartiromo’s toughest line of questioning amounted to requests to hear Trump’s strategy for making his case to judges across the country and preventing the election certification process in states.
Seeming to buy into Trump’s claims of widespread fraud, Bartiromo said, “Elections are the reason that our young men and women go on battlefields across the world and in some cases lose their lives. Because they believe that their vote, my vote, matters just as much as your vote. And if that is not true, this is a very serious turning point for America. So, this is no longer about you, President Trump. This is about America.”