Peter Navarro, President Trump’s senior counselor for trade and manufacturing, unloaded on Fox News this week over the abrupt departure of longtime anchor Maria Bartiromo, telling Newsmax’s Greg Kelly that the network “has not treated Donald Trump very well.”
Bartiromo’s exit from Fox News Media was announced last Thursday after more than 12 years with the network, following reports that she had shared confidential internal guidance with the White House. That guidance had reportedly instructed Fox Business staffers not to lend credibility to a July primetime address in which Trump revived 2020 election fraud claims and alleged Chinese interference. Bartiromo had planned to cover the speech and interview Navarro about it, but after management pulled the coverage, she sent Navarro a screenshot of the internal guidance. Fox has publicly described her departure as a “business decision.”
Navarro told Kelly he felt it was his “duty” to forward the screenshot along, and voiced anger that Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott “didn’t want to have anything to do” with Trump’s address. “The bigger story here is, forget about anybody thinking that Fox is a conservative network that’s friendly to MAGA, that’s friendly to Trump,” Navarro said. “Suzanne Scott is the enforcer. They’ll feed you some red meat over there — the easy stuff, the trans stuff, stuff like that — but when it comes down to MAGA things, Suzanne Scott gets rid of everybody over there who wants to talk about MAGA issues.”
Notably, the guidance to Bartiromo’s team was reportedly issued by Fox Business senior vice president of programming Ralph Giordano, and Fox Business itself falls under Fox News Media President Jay Wallace’s purview rather than Scott’s alone, according to a separate report from Puck.
Navarro pointed to past Fox departures, including Lou Dobbs, fired in 2021, and Tucker Carlson, ousted in 2023, arguing the pattern sends a message to remaining anchors to steer clear of pro-Trump commentary. His television remarks echoed a Washington Times op-ed he published hours earlier titled “Fox News Muzzles Maria Bartiromo.”
For its part, Fox News aired Trump’s July primetime address in its entirety — something ABC, NBC, and CNN all declined to do live on their main networks. CBS joined partway through and cut away before it ended, while another network aired only the opening minutes.
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