What happened to Maria Bartiromo?

Los Angeles Times

Both The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times today have articles today with the same headline: "What happened to Maria Bartiromo?" The veteran business journalist who became an iconic TV personality on CNBC celebrated in the Joey Ramone song "Maria Bartiromo" has descended into, as one journalist put it, “basically a North Korean news anchor now" who's helping promote President Trump's unsubstantiated voter fraud claims. "While such a stance may not be surprising for a right-wing commentator or opinion host, Bartiromo has a reputation as a respected business journalist," says The Times Stephen Battaglio. "Even at Fox News, where she headed in 2014 for a lucrative $6-million-a-year contract, she has followed her own path. She reported on the threat of a coronavirus pandemic in early March when other talking heads on the network suggested it was a political weapon being used against Trump." Bartiromo has been criticized for allowing Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell to make false statements about election voter fraud without pushback last month. She also became the butt of late-night jokes for not pushing back in her Nov. 29 exclusive interview with Trump that was filled with baseless claims about election fraud. “She used to be the Larry King of the business world,” said Joe Lockhart, Bill Clinton's White House press secretary who's now a paid contributor for CNN. “But I think she saw the ratings for the likes of Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity and even Lou Dobbs, and she saw that the way to survive at Fox is to go all-in for Donald Trump.” For her part, Bartiromo insists she's not a MAGA die-hard, telling The Post: “Ever since I started covering President Trump and covering the coup and the effort to take him down, I became the enemy of the media and the activists and the mobs. I have an edge. I mean, I stick to my guns and I’m not easily blown off.” In an interview with The Times, Bartiromo insists Trump and his attorneys have a right to be heard. “Let’s remember where we are and what has taken place in the last four years, and that is a complete collusion narrative that was not true,” she told The Post. “And anybody who you’re talking to on TV, on all these networks, I would say probably 85% of the media was saying things that were not true. So when you’re going to say things are being said that are not true, I think it requires some context in terms of where we are and what we’ve seen from the media and from a cabal of individuals who have just been toeing this line in an attempt to take Donald Trump down.” ALSO: Bartiromo duped this morning by an animal rights activist posing as the CEO of food processing company Smithfield.