Donald Trump adviser Peter Navarro said Tuesday he broke Maria Bartiromo’s trust out of “duty” after forwarding her screenshot of a Fox Business edict to not dwell on a new claim of 2020 election fraud by the president in July. (Watch the video below.)
Bartiromo and the network parted ways following the revelation that the longtime Fox host had shared the confidential memo with the White House. Navarro wrote in The Washington Times earlier Tuesday that she was stymied from following up on Trump’s claim of Chinese interference during a scheduled interview with him. So she showed Navarro the restrictions placed on her by a Fox Business executive.
“Did you violate a confidence of Maria Bartiromo?” Newsmax’s Greg Kelly asked Navarro Tuesday.
“Absolutely, yeah,” Navarro replied. “The text was sent to me. It was my duty to forward it on. Maria Bartiromo was aghast at what the network was doing.”
Navarro, the senior counselor for trade and manufacturing to Trump, pivoted to attacking Fox and its management. He asserted the right-wing network was actually anti-Trump.
“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,” he continued. “[Fox News Media CEO] Suzanne Scott is the enforcer. They’ll feed ya 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.”
“This was all about talking about Trump issues,” he continued, noting he mentioned this in his Washington Times opinion piece. “You fire people like Tucker Carlson, Lou Dobbs, now Maria Bartiromo. That throws fear into all these other anchors and keeps them in line. ‘Don’t talk about kinda Trump stuff,’ right? And we know how that network has not treated Donald Trump very well.”
Pressed by Kelly as to whom he advanced the memo to, Navarro replied with a laugh, “I’m not getting into the details. Remember, I went to prison, Greg, for not violating executive privilege.” (Navarro, who spread Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, tried to lean on executive privilege as a defense for not providing testimony and documents related to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. He received a four-month prison sentence.)
Navarro added that Scott got a call from the White House voicing its displeasure and she then “fired” Bartiromo.
Navarro said he had since talked to Bartiromo. “She’s fine. She’s not happy,” he said.
Fox News declined to comment.
