Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo set off a firestorm of criticism on social media Sunday for a conspiracy theory she pitched during an interview with failed, one-term former President Donald Trump.
Trump began the lying by asserting that the government official who shot Capitol insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt “was the head of security for a certain high official. A Democrat. It’s gonna come out.”
That was all Bartiromo needed to start spewing bullshit, claiming (with zero substantiation) that she had asked Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) for “answers,” but had been rebuffed by the senator.
Maria Bartiromo strongly hints that someone associated with Chuck Schumer shot Ashli Babbitt. Completely irresponsible stuff. pic.twitter.com/CDEvkpK64N
But as many on Twitter pointed out, both Trump and Bartiromo are both clearly trying to incite more violence. One Twitter user noted:
“This is incredibly sick stuff. Maria Bartiromo’s show has become the go-to platform for the most malevolent garbage the MAGA crowd wants to circulate.”
Others also lit up Bartiromo (who pretends to be a journalist) for her irresponsible remarks:
Maria Bartiromo not only blamed the Democrats for Ashli Babbitt’s death but a Jewish Democrat at that, doubling down in anti Semitic rhetoric promulgated by conspiracy theory Republicans! https://t.co/3c7Udh5XWv
Maria Bartiromo needs to be arrested if something happens to that officer. https://t.co/I0uSYMdGXz
— Only two choices, Biden or Fascism! Ebony Noor ✊🏿 (@DarlingEbony) July 11, 2021
Maria Bartiromo is one sick puppy. She called an insurrectionist a wonderful young woman today and described her climbing through a jagged just broken window in the off-limits Capitol as an everyday routine action. This is disgusting!
This is incredibly sick stuff. Maria Bartiromo’s show has become the go-to platform for the most malevolent garbage the MAGA crowd wants to circulate. https://t.co/kV9H6vs3sK
A week and a half ago, Fox News host Tucker Carlson announced on his nightly show that the National Security Agency (NSA) had been spying on him, telling his viewers:
“Yesterday, we heard from a whistleblower within the U.S. government who reached out to warn us that the NSA — the National Security Agency — is monitoring our electronic communications, and is planning to leak them in an effort to take this show off the air. Now, that’s a shocking claim, and ordinarily we’d be skeptical because it is illegal for the NSA to spy on American citizens. It’s a crime. It’s not a third-world country. Things like that should not happen in America.”
Tucker is making serious accusations with no proof and is basing corroboration on a story he allegedly is working on that none of us know about.
Maybe his comms were picked up. We know DOJ collected comms of journos during Obama and Trump presidencies. pic.twitter.com/JQCYuURNpt
Why would the NSA be the least bit interested in Tucker Carlson? Granted, he’s on television nightly, but he lies so much and pumps out so many bogus conspiracy theories that nothing he says can be taken seriously.
Unless, of course, Carlson was reaching out to an adversarial government in an attempt to arrange an interview with one of the most despised men on the face of the planet.
“Tucker Carlson was talking to U.S.-based Kremlin intermediaries about setting up an interview with Vladimir Putin shortly before the Fox News host accused the National Security Agency of spying on him, sources familiar with the conversations tell Axios.”
Think about that for a moment: An American going through intermediaries who contacted the Kremlin, either via phone or email, about meeting with Putin, who is believed to have personally signed off on a deliberate attack on the 2016 election and who is also in charge of various Russian intelligence agencies that continue to target the United States via computer hacking and ransomware attacks.
Quite frankly, Carlson’s lucky the FBI hasn’t paid him a visit and asked why he’s making contacts with sources inside of Russia.
“Those sources said U.S. government officials learned about Carlson’s efforts to secure the Putin interview. Carlson learned that the government was aware of his outreach — and that’s the basis of his extraordinary accusation, followed by a rare public denial by the NSA that he had been targeted.”
In other words, Carlson knew he’d gotten busted reaching out to Russia and tried to suggest he was being set up by U.S. intelligence. But it also begs the question of why Carlson or Fox didn’t make the government aware of their contacts in advance, which is often done by reporters who are attempting to communicate with foreign leaders.
Something about Carlson’s paranoid ramblings suggests there’s more to this story that has yet to come out. And when it does, don’t be surprised if the Fox host and his network are proven to have been on the brink of having broken the law.
This story isn’t over with, and that should terrify Tucker Carlson.
One thing you have to give to Fox News: No one hires more delusional crazies than Rupert Murdoch. From Tucker Carlson to Sean Hannity, the Fox hosts and “reporters” are all cut from the same batshit bonkers bolt of cloth.
One of the Fox conspiracy theorists who sometimes gets lost in the hoopla generated by the network’s primetime stars is Maria Bartiromo, who is normally seen on Fox Business but also has a show that runs on the main Fox network two each weekend.
Bartiromo was in rare form recently, inviting Moscow’s favorite senator, Ron Johnson (R-WI) to join her as they both suggested that the January 6 Capitol insurrection was non-violent because the rioters weren’t carrying guns, with the host telling Johnson:
“Armed insurrection is what Nancy Pelosi keeps calling Jan. 6, Senator. How many guns were actually taken up on that day since she says it was armed?”
Johnson was only too happy to extrapolate on what Bartiromo had just said, adding:
“They always talk about thousands of armed insurrectionists. I asked the FBI witness. Not one gun was recovered either in the Capitol or on the Capitol grounds, according to the FBI witness. So that’s just one of the latest big lies.”
Thing is, PolitiFact says Johnson and Bartiromo’s claims that none of the insurrectionists were armed is a blatant lie and earned the site’s “Pants On Fire Rating.” They noted:
“Police stopped only a fraction of the violent protestors Jan. 6, but we still know of guns and explosives seized in and around the Capitol. And we know rioters brought knives, brass knuckles a stun gun, and other weapons. Just as notable, video plainly shows the mob using all manner of makeshift weapons to attack police and force their way in, including hockey sticks, flagpoles, fire extinguishers, and a police shield stolen from an officer.”
All of this led to Bartiromo having an on-air meltdown as she acknowledged that she too has been criticized for things she says about the rioting that led to the deaths of five people, including a police officer. Bartiromo told her viewers:
“I am so incredibly proud of this team on Sunday Morning Futures and of working alongside you. We have been telling every story. We’ve been on the right side of it for seven years going. I’ve been trashed every day along the way.
“Keep trashing me! I’ll keep telling the truth.”
Actually, Maria, no one has to try and trash you. You’re doing a helluva fine job of trashing what’s left of your pathetic career.
It all started, oddly enough, with a reporter for Fox 26, a Houston affiliate station, being introduced so she could report on the upcoming Texas heat wave and possible power outages that could potentially endanger the lives of thousands of Texans.
But by the time reporter Ivory Hecker had finished what she had to say (and it had nothing to do with the weather), Twitter had exploded with comments and hashtags that all had right-wing Fox News heading for some very choppy waters in the days ahead.
According to Hecker, she has damaging recordings of Fox News officials and is about to make them public, Newsweek reports, and she broadcast her intentions on live TV, telling viewers:
“I want to let you, the viewers, know that Fox Corp has been muzzling me to keep certain information from you, the viewers.
“From what I’m gathering I am not the only reporter being subjected to this. I am going to be releasing some recordings about what goes on behind the scenes at Fox because it applies to you, the viewers.
“I found a non-profit journalism group called Project Veritas who’s going to help put that out tomorrow. So, tune into them.”
You’ve probably heard of Project Veritas, and what you’ve heard should indeed make you skeptical of any “news” they disseminate. They’re the clowns who tried to entrap doctors into discussing the sale of “body parts” taken from aborted fetuses, as Think Progress noted in 2017:
“The videos themselves were strongly influenced by conservative activist James O’Keefe, the founder of Project Veritas. That organization has been linked to recent efforts to market a false sexual assault allegation targeting Republican U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore, seemingly in an effort to discredit the numerous allegations made by other women. The videos made by CMP have had a long-lasting impact themselves, inspiring a wave of legislative efforts around the country, in addition to a deadly attack on a Planned Parenthood in Colorado.”
Hecker’s remarks and the pending release of tapes from her set tongues wagging among right-wingers and conspiracy theorists on social media:
Ivory Hecker accuses Fox of muzzling her, and says that Project Veritas will tell her story tomorrow.
Is anyone surprised that Fox News has been silencing their own reporters? The station that turned its back on its viewers when it mattered most, when the election was fixed?
Here in Houston a local Fox 26 reporter named @IvoryHecker is going to out her employers to Project Veritas. Ivory deserves our full support. What she’s doing takes guts. pic.twitter.com/GIX3MNKVOQ
So this local reporter and Project Veritas are going to “crush the Murdochs”? As much as many of us would love to see Fox News deposited into the nearest trash receptacle, it seems unlikely that this will be what brings about their demise.
Perhaps you thought Fox News couldn’t possibly get any lower or more disgusting, If so, then you might be interested to know that Fox host Greg Gutfeld is actually saying he hopes Russian President Vladimir Putin kills President Joe Biden when they meet for a summit on June 16 in Geneva.
During a discussion of recent cyber attacks by Russian entities on the United States according to Crooks and Liars, most of the co-hosts said Biden should refuse to meet with Putin, even though they had no problem with failed, one-term former President Donald Trump doing so and kissing Putin’s butt every chance he got.
Co-host Dagen McDowell was adamant, insisting that meeting with Russia was a gift that Biden should refuse to grant Putin.
That’s when Gutfeld spoke up, proudly declaring:
“I gotta disagree, if he holds firm you know, there’s going to be something we can get out of this. There’s going to be something. If Putin decides to have them killed. That’s something. You know? It’s possible.”
The director of the show immediately cut to a commercial, but Gutfeld never said he was kidding or clarified what he had wished for. And worst of all, he still hasn’t been taken off the air and fired!
If nothing else, Gutfeld should get a visit from the Secret Service and have the shit scared out of him.
UPDATE: Jessica Ketner of the Fox News media relations department insists Gutfeld wasn’t referring to Putin killing Biden:
“Greg does not suggest Putin may kill President Biden. Greg said Putin could have the hackers killed.”