The news that FOX business reporter Maria Bartiromo was fired by Fox surprised many people, but unfortunately it came a decade too late.
That’s because Bartiromo has been a shill for right-wing economists and the MAGA Trump agenda for years. Bartiromo, along with Larry Kudlow and Stuart Varney, were all Trump’s main economic apologists during his two terms.
Whatever the economic news or policy, the FOX shills could put it in the best light. The most authoritative propagandist was Kudlow, an actual economist who knew how the markets worked. As the chief economist for Bear Stearns, Kudlow would be called into client meetings to spin the long-term profitability of the derivatives, equities, or bonds being sold. Kudlow later was director of the National Economic Council in the first Trump administration from 2018 to 2021.
Bartiromo’s financial background is much thinner, so she had to rely more on the persuasive propaganda side of the business as she learned more about the markets. Bartiromo, who has an attractive TV screen presence, gained the attention of day traders in the 1980s on CNBC.
FOX attracted her with more money, and she was reportedly paid $10 million annually for hosting programs on FOX. She earned about $70 million from FOX during her stay there from 2-14 until 2025. That’s a huge amount of money for being a shill, and it gives people an idea of how much people get paid to lie to their audiences. A traditional straight journalist would never earn that kind of money unless they worked for an entertainment network rather than a journalism operation.
Bartiromo’s mentor was Stuart Varney, a British conservative, who taught Bartiromo about the markets and how to present business news. Public sources say Varney was not as well compensated as Bartiromo. His annual salary at FOX was between $2 million and $4 million, and his net worth is estimated at $10 million.
Bartiromo’s Big Attraction
Aside from her screen presence, Bartiromo was a welcome interviewer for the conservative and MAGA propagandists that FOX paraded through the airwaves in its broadcasting heyday. That heyday ended when a flurry of sexual harassment lawsuits tarnished the reputations of FOX management and some of its on-screen hosts.
In one example, Bartiromo interviewed Frank Langone, one of the three co-founders of The Home Depot and a successful investor in his own right. The interview was billed as an “exclusive, “) which meant that in FOX world, the interview would be friendly and serve as a platform for Langone’s conservative business perspective. ,
In the interview, Langone goes off about excessive regulation and, not surprisingly, Bartiromo joins in by adding some pro-corporatist slogans herself. She has even challenged Elliot Spitzer, the former Attorney General of New York, about his prosecution of AIG in this interview. Amazingly, others consider her opinion valuable even though she has no industry experience and a very short industry history.
Bartiromo was also involved in the major lawsuit involving Fox and Dominion Voting Systems, and his on-air anchors promoted lies about the 2020 election, which MAGA politicians still cannot say on the record who won.
FOX agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems $800 million to avert a trial. Accounts at the time said the network wanted to avoid the damaging testimony that FOX owner Rupert Murdoch, Sean Hannity, Bartiromo, and Tucker Carlson, all discredited propagandists, would have to testify under oath about the inner workings of the FOX entertainment network’s political agenda. Bartiromo could also be expected to testify at the trial.
In the suit, she was charged with promoting the “stolen election” lie in 2020, which is still being repeated today.
