CNN anchor Brianna Keilar tore into Fox Business Network anchor Maria Bartiromo on Tuesday over the pro-Trump host’s penchant for using “conspiracy theories” and “propaganda” to boost the president.
In recent weeks, Bartiromo—who has evolved from respected financial reporter to “conspiratorial and occasionally alt-right-assisted Trump” cheerleader—has gone out of her way to amplify some of the more sordid conspiracies in Trumpworld, including baseless smears about Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s health or accusations surrounding pedophilia.
Kicking off her segment by bringing up Bartiromo’s recent interview with Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) that featured the Fox host and senator “elevating a smear” against the Bidens, Keilar noted that pedophilia insinuations “have the hallmarks of QAnon,” which is an unhinged cult that believes there is a satanic cabal of high-profile Democrats engaged in child sex trafficking.
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“It’s being aired and fertilized by Fox,” she said. “Maria Bartiromo, their high-profile business host, floated it. And it’s part of a pattern as she pushes many other conspiracy theories that can only be described as propaganda.”
The CNN anchor then played clips of Bartiromo interviewing President Donald Trump and loudly declaring there was a Democratic “coup” against him and that the Mueller investigation was “just a coverup” for what they did to Trump, all while calling it “the biggest political scandal” in history.
“That so-called biggest political scandal they’ve seen evaporated into what it was all along—nothing,” Keilar stated. “The Justice Department under Bill Barr, who we note weathered criticism for acting more like the president’s personal attorney than an independent law enforcement official, reportedly found no wrongdoing in the Obama administration unmasking drama.”
She went on to air more footage of Bartiromo credulously claiming Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe’s release of unverified Russian intelligence proved that Hillary Clinton had an election scheme to tie Trump to Russia, even though Ratcliffe himself wrote that the intelligence community doesn’t know the accuracy of the intelligence or whether the Russians fabricated it.
Eventually, Keilar highlighted Bartiromo breathlessly asserting during a recent Trump interview that her “solid medical sources” had told her that Biden had suffered two brain aneurysms, setting the table for the president to attack Biden’s mental fitness and health.
“Maria, it is true, because Joe Biden revealed that he suffered aneurysms decades ago,” the CNN host pointed out. “Maybe one of Maria Bartiromo’s sources is the Biden campaign website. Click. It’s all on there. Two aneurysms in the 1980s and a 2014 brain imaging giving him an all-clear.”
The outspoken CNN anchor wrapped up the segment by snarking that like all Trump sycophants at Fox, Bartiromo has also made sure to hawk her latest Trump-based book during her friendly chats with the president while also ending her interviews by “greasing the hinges of the Oval Office door.”
She then played a clip of Bartiromo telling Trump that she’d “like to come back to the White House soon to do another interview,” which prompted the president to reply that he’d try to do that for her.
“I’m sure it can be arranged,” Keilar snarked in conclusion.
