Maria Bartiromo OUT at Fox News!

0:00We're in this independent space. We both worked for at CNN, we worked for corporate media for years, for decades. And now we're in this independent space where I'm finding the trust in what we're doing really is, in many ways, not exclusively, has grown and surpassed much of the mainstream media. And so now we're talking about some of the, not only the, I think, the business models collapsing, but the way that certain news organizations are doing business collapsing as well. We'll get to CBS in a minute, but I want to start with Fox News. What the hell all of her happened with Maria Bartiroma? All of a sudden, she's out and what happened? Dawn, yesterday Fox News announced like in this very turf statement that she had basically finished her time in the network. And right after they put that out, I must have received, I don't know, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say close to 100 text messages saying, what happened? What happened? It was like the question and everyone's fine. So we went to digging and it turns out that her termination

1:03stems from an incident that happened in July. So you'll remember Donald Trump, he delivered this unhinged conspiratorial primetime speech back in July, supposedly about election security, where he relitigated the 2020 election. And he made a number of allegations about, suppose it intellect, or election interference by China. And most no one took this seriously, networks debunked a lot of the stuff in real time, shot it down, but it was interesting that Fox News also did not take this seriously. This is the president's favorite channel. And the next morning, a lot of people noticed that they didn't cover his speech one time, which is odd, right? Turns out that Fox Brass had issued a directive or guidance to the show, to top talent saying, stay away from this. They already lost this dominion lawsuit, if you remember, for $787 million, they had to settle that lawsuit, a record defamation settlement. They were not eager to go down the election,

2:04denialism, langing one more time, right? They were done with that stuff. So they told their talent, don't do it. Maria Barteromo, who is one of Trump's close friends, close media allies, she didn't like that guidance and she wanted to do it. And there was some sort of back and forth, ultimately, she told the White House that you want to know why your speech wasn't covered, why these claims weren't covered on Fox News. Well, here is a text message that we receive, saying, we're not allowed to cover this sort of thing. And eventually, I'm not really sure how, Fox News became aware of this. I think the White House must have contacted someone at the network or the company. You can imagine Donald Trump would not be pleased when he heard about this. And they deemed that to be a violation of Maria's employment agreement. You know, this dawn, when you're at a network like that, you can't share internal company information. You're not permitted to share that sort of confidential guidance.

3:06And so they terminated her employment. Of course, it didn't happen in the vacuum. Maria has been a lot of trouble for Fox News over the years because of her loyal relationship with Donald Trump. She was at the center of that Dominion lawsuit. There's also the smartmatic lawsuit that's making its way through the court. And over the summer, she hosted Kevin O'Leary, the Shark Tank kind of MAGA co-host. And he made a number of claims about China that ended up getting them sued as well. So she's been getting the network sued left and right. And I think for Fox News, she was skating on thin ice. They heard about this and enough was enough. They decided to terminate her contract. How did they, what did they do? I guess they went and they checked her text messages and emails or because look, you're not supposed to share, right? Internal emails or text messages. Was this a confidential or this was like an intercompany memo that went out? I believe this was a text message that her producer may have

4:09received for top producer, who is also f***** fired by Fox News. Oh, oh, he's OK. She or he was gone to. Yeah, he's gone. So I would suspect that Fox believed these, these, the sort of guidance to be confidential company information and did not, you know, you are not allowed to disclose these sort of things as an employee, right? If you're even an employee, let's say, of Amazon and there's a memo that goes out by your boss, you can't go and share that memo. Like that's not permitted in most workplaces. So they determined this to be a violation of her employment agreement. Now, Don, would she have been fired if she hadn't got, you know, them sued over the summer, if she hadn't been a ski player of, you know, in the election denialism lawsuits that have cost this company hundreds of millions of dollars? I don't know. Maybe that would have been a more minor infraction. But the fact is, she was on thin ice. Her show's not highly rated.

5:09No one is really watching her show on Fox Business. So much so, by the way, Don, that she had been off the air since last month and no one noticed, including myself. And I paid close attention to this sort of thing. You didn't notice? Someone else said to me, they sent me the text message. They sent me a text message and they said, she's been off the air since August, but I don't watch her. So, you know, I don't know. But you didn't even notice the me. Oh, well, Don, that's because no one watches her, right? So I don't think Fox News views this. This is not them firing Sean Hannity or even Tucker Carlson back in the day, who was the top rated host. This is them firing a host to design high-fairy high ratings. Right. This is like an agreement of B. Yeah. Wow. So what, she ran to daddy. But the thing is, let's discuss this. Come on, let's be real here. She sent them the memo. OK. They must have wanted to get rid of her. Because don't we have reporting that Laura Ingram and Sean Hannity are in text messages

6:10with the president of the United States? Sean Hannity is appearing on stage at rallies and, right? So this just seems, this seems par for the course for Fox News. I think there is a slight difference when you tattle tell on your employer to the president versus just exchanging messages. I mean, I think this was a very sensitive issue with the president that these networks were not carrying his speech. Also, if you remember, by the way, Don, there's no. There's no evidence this happened. But it was very weird. And we talked about this at the time, how CBS News was not planning on airing Donald Trump's primetime speech. And between 7 and 8 PM that night, something happened where their plans changed and they carry it. Now, did Donald Trump personally get involved? We have no idea. But we do know he was tracking who was carrying his speech because during his speech, he called out NBC and ABC and said the licensees should be revoked for not carrying his primetime speech. So this is something the president was paying very close

7:11attention to, who was covering my primetime speech. And if it's a sensitive issue in Maria goes and basically tattle tells on her employer and says, I want to cover it, Mr. President, but they won't let me. And here's the internal guidance they said, you're not allowed to cover this. I think that would rub Fox executives the wrong way, especially on an issue like election denialism and election conspiracy theories, which they have paid hundreds of millions of dollars in a settlement fee with Dominion. And there's still going through litigation and it's because largely of Maria Barbarraomo. So they're like, we're not going to do this again, Maria. We have been paying the price of letting you talk about these crazy conspiracy theories, the president likes them, but we're not going to pay for this again. And then she goes and tattle tells them to Trump. And I just think that's a key part of this. But also done, again, as we were talking about, she's not Sean Hannity. She's not a top rated host. She's just a person on Fox business who has a close relationship with Donald Trump. And she has an outsized, I think, profile

8:14because of not what she's doing right now, but because she was considered once upon a time to be a very prominent business journalist back on CNBC. Remember? And I used to watch her Oliver. And so I think a lot of people know Maria Barbarraomo from those days, especially in the Wall Street finance media industry. I was going to ask you, do you think she's a household name? Because you know when we put these things up, do we say Maria Barbarraomo, do we say Fox anchor? You know, I think Maria is a household name, again, not because of her actual show content, but because of that close relationship with Donald Trump and because of how she was a trailblazer back in the day, particularly for women generals, we treat you as the first to broadcast from Wall Street back. And I mean, she was a trailblazer. And so I don't know what's happened to her in recent years. It seems like she's obviously gone off the deep end. But this was a very prominent respected journalist who had established a high profile

9:15and has that close relationship with Donald Trump, who really, you know, he praises her all the time. So. Yeah, he did. And he praises her. And this is what he tweeted, or posted, or light socialed. He says, I can't believe that Maria Barbarraomo is no longer going to have her great shows on Fox News business. Three different shows, always number one, Maria's to professional and true warrior. And anyway, and then he signs it. Always number one, like what is. I mean, that's a questionable claim, I'd say, because definitely not number one on cable news during that hour because Fox News' mothership would be number one there. But, you know, maybe in the business, you know, CNBC doesn't track ratings in the same way most networks do. So it's very difficult to tell these things, but maybe in that regard. But, you know, the bottom line is no one was really watching her Fox business show. It's just not a well-washed show. Yeah.

10:16Here's this is her at the White House. And women have done a lot for us, right? This is an honor. We have a wonderful woman here, Maria Barbarraomo. Thank you so much. Nice to have you, Maria. Thank you very much, Mr. President. And thanks for all that you're doing for women. Thank you, Bill. You're going to do an interview of me later. Maybe I shouldn't do this interview. I should be like Biden, not doing the interviews. That's great. That's great. Women, we love you. You love me too. Yeah. Oh, God. Anyways, I couldn't get past the orange makeup. But, yeah, I mean, so they were very close now. Imagine that that's the thing. Oliver, when we talk about journalism, real news, objectivity, people, there are people even in the C-sweets, even the corporate owners who think that Fox News is the objective

11:18or should be the objective standard of what journalism is. Can you imagine CNN or NBC or anyone ever letting their anchor go to the Oval Office and stand there for whatever he's signing with a Gulf of America sign behind them or be on stage at a fundraiser or a Biden rally or any kind of rally. But it's okay for Fox News and they think that that is a journalistic standard. We're way off here. The standards are way off. That's why I'm like, that doesn't seem like that seems like nothing to me that they did. I'm not saying they shouldn't have fired her. But this just, again, this seems like part of the course for Fox News for me. I mean, if any, if any CNN journalist or NBC journalist behave like you just saw Maria behave and I think that would be a fireable offense. That would certainly warrant them being suspended and it would be a huge scar on their entire career. But like you said, it's part for the course over at Fox News where this sort of thing happens and you don't even blink, right? Like it's just like that's just a normal occurrence.

12:20I do, again, I do think that this was a confluence of factors, but her sharing that memo was the fact, you know, the straw that broke the camel's back. It was just like, this had been adding up for a long time. She was trouble. She wasn't a valuable asset in their eyes and she's gone. The question now, Don, is where does she go next? And does that man we just saw on the Yolufus? Does he try to save her in some way? You know, he does have the White House press secretary job that job currently is open. Ah, hold on. Don't get ahead of yourself there. Albert Darcy rolling Andy. News, news week news week. News week. Can you tell me, are you ever a role model just left Fox News? Is she going to be the next White House press secretary? I don't know, man. No, I don't think so. You know, I just saw the news literally as I walked out of where I love Maria.

13:21I think she's an amazing person, amazing talent. I don't get involved in the personal drama of media stations. In fact, I'd like to invite Peter Ducey to come up here and ask an answer question about what happened to Maria. But I think whatever she does, look, she's going to do great and I wish her all the best. She's a very, very dear friend. I haven't even talked to her so I don't know the backstory about why she's decided to leave Fox News. Okay. Clearly, Oliver, you said you got over 100 text messages. Tell me in those text messages, what's the percentage of people who said, oh my God, maybe she's going to be the next White House press secretary because that's what I was hearing. A lot of people were asking that yesterday. And I think it made sense because everyone was trying to just make sense of why Fox News would just send this random statement out on a Thursday afternoon saying that she had ended her career and we thank her for her, you know, 12 and a half years of service. And so everyone was wondering what's happening and maybe she's going, I mean, everyone else it seems like has has gone from Fox to the White House and some capacity.

14:23So maybe that was it. That's not the plan that hasn't been the plan. That wasn't the reason she left. But done. Now that she is on the free market now that she does need a job and she has this very close relationship with Donald Trump. Unlike a lot. I mean, I think we, we assume that everyone has a close relationship over at Fox News with Donald Trump. There are certain people who have long standing personal relationships that extend beyond, you know, the airwaves and his last 10 years in public office or public life. And Maria is one of them. She's known him from his New York days for a long, long, long time. And they're very close. So perhaps Donald Trump will find a position for her in the White House. So she has maybe like a bit of a landing pad or a parachute as she's thrown out of the Fox News airplane. We'll see. I would not be surprised just because of that relationship. And because so many people have gone from Fox News to the White House or working the

15:27administration. Yeah. So Oliver, a couple of things that I want to talk about some of the great things that you're doing in independent in the independent space. But I just, I just got in word from my trusty technical director that we have the opening to Maria Bartoromo show this morning. And I think that let's see if there is a grand send off for her. Let's see. Let's see what happens. Good morning. I'm Cheryl Cassone. It is Friday. It is September 4th. Your top stories at 6 a.m. Eastern time. Today, the labor market and focus is we wait for the August jobs report. Take a look at futures right now. You got to mix back. Dow is lower, but the S and P and the NASDAQ are ticking higher. This follows a reversal of functional. Andy, the doubt. I know this is breaking news, but do they mention her here before we listen on this? Does she? Oh, and Don, you know, that's the ultimate insight or insults from a network when they don't let you say goodbye on air.

16:27It's the way the network says. I know. They say that is our air. We control this air wave. That is not your air. You might have been under this conception that it was your show, Maria, because you had your name on it. But it's actually our show. And we're not going to let you say goodbye. We're not going to even acknowledge this sort of thing on air. You are just gone. And I think that in the business that's considered a pretty big insult to the talent, not even letting them say goodbye from their show. Let's see. Hold on one second. I think we're getting some breaking news coming in here from the Don Lemon Show newsroom. And it says, okay. Andy, do you have that? Should we report this? What? We can report it if you want it. We have it. I can't see from here. We do have it. Okay. Let's read to you what it says from my thing.

17:30It says because everyone is saying it was she was fired. And even our thing said that. So look, this is a correction or just an explainer. The irresponsible reports that have been published stating that Maria Bartiroma was fired or is no longer an employee of Fox or absolutely an unequivocally false. Friedman, this is Brian Friedman. He's an entertainment attorney and attorney in Los Angeles. So the Daily Mail, that's what he told the Daily Mail, make no mistake. We have the receipts and witnesses and they will come out whether through the courthouse or otherwise. Those reporting, her firing or the incredulous facts supporting that fiction have exhibited a complete and utter reckless disregard for the truth. Okay. All right. So look, the reports that we have are reports from the reports. And the other thing is is that Brian is saying that she's no longer an employee. Do we have the statement from Fox News? Right.

18:30We have the Fox News original statement because the Fox News statement said explicitly that they have parted ways with Fox News. It says, I think they said Maria Bartiroma is no longer a part of ways with Fox News media. And then they said we wish her the best for 12 and a half years of service. This is a statement. Effective today, Maria Bartiroma is no longer with Fox News media. It did not specify a reason for the abrupt departure. We thank Maria for her work over the last 12 and a half years and wish her all the best on her next chapter. I mean, feel free to, I mean, Andy, what does that sound like to you? It seems like she was let go, fired or whatever and that she's no longer with the company. That sounds to me. Yeah. Sounds like that to me too. So say that Maria Bartiroma was fired or is no longer an employee of Fox.

19:35Okay. Maybe, maybe, maybe is that she still has a contract with them and they have to pay her contract out. But the company said no longer with. So what are people to report from that? That's what Fox News said. Thanks for watching everybody. I appreciate you. Make sure you like, subscribe and turn on notifications so you don't miss anything. We're live weekdays at 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. Eastern with new content at 2 p.m. Eastern, sometimes at 8 p.m. So follow the down limits. You'll wherever you are, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitch, Substacks, Spotify, IHR radio, Apple Podcasts, we are everywhere and we're there every day. And if you want a little more, join the lemon community, exclusive posts behind the scenes, live chats, just hit join or check the channel pages. All right. I'll see you next time.