Top Trump aide Peter Navarro is railing at Fox News after his correspondence with host Maria Bartiromo helped get her the boot, accusing the network of “suppressing MAGA news.”
“The muzzling of Maria Bartiromo by Fox News Media Chief Executive Suzanne Scott should be a wake-up call to every Fox viewer who believes the network is pro-Trump and pro-MAGA,” Navarro, President Donald Trump’s senior trade adviser, declared in an op-ed published in The Washington Times on Tuesday.
In his op-ed, Navarro also claimed that he had been banned from the Rupert Murdoch-owned network as he laid out his version of the events that led to Bartiromo’s ouster last Thursday.
Sources told Status that the longtime host was fired because she had violated her employment agreement by tipping off the White House about Fox’s secret instructions not to promote Trump’s election conspiracies on air.
Navarro, 77, later bragged to Puck that Bartiromo had, in fact, sent him a screenshot of the Fox directive following Trump’s primetime July speech about his baseless election fraud claims.
On Tuesday, he elaborated, claiming Bartiromo, 58, had booked him for her Fox Business Network show the morning after Trump’s speech, only for Fox to shut down the appearance.
The White House adviser—who continues to promote Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen—shared internal guidance he said came from Fox Business executive Ralph Giordano and that Bartiromo forwarded to him:
“Hi – We don’t want to promote it or push to the speech at all. We don’t want to do 2020 election segments at all Thurs or Friday.”
Navarro argued that it was his “duty to share that text with the White House,” and said, “Ms. Scott got an angry call from the West Wing.”
“Unrepentant, Ms. Scott gave Ms. Bartiromo the Fox ‘Golden Muzzle,’” he added, claiming that he was subsequently “banned.”
“I don’t know whether Suzanne Scott is a Trump-hating RINO. I do know her business model is,” he continued. “Ms. Scott feeds the audience conservative red meat — Democrat socialists, biological men in women’s sports, illegal alien rapists and murderers — but keeps it inside guardrails that wall off MAGA themes such as election integrity, Big Pharma and benefits of the Trump tariffs.”
Despite the network’s steady drumbeat of pro-Trump coverage, Navarro said, “What is left at Fox is a lineup of chickens, nobody willing to stick a neck out the way Ms. Bartiromo did.”
Calling himself the “shadow ban poster child,” he concluded, “If this story were to end in a triumph of journalistic ethics, Ms. Scott would prostrate before Mr. Trump for disrespecting the office and to Trump Nation for suppressing MAGA news.”
Fox News did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Like Navarro, Trump’s base has been revolting against Fox News after Bartiromo’s ouster, with many placing blame for her axing on former House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican on Fox’s board of directors who privately disagreed with the conspiracy-spewing Bartiromo in the aftermath of the 2020 election.
