With the world on edge as Russia inches seemingly closer to war and continues to amass troops at the Ukraine border, Fox Business Network host Maria Bartiromo declared multiple times on Wednesday that the White House has been fabricating the threat to Ukraine to distract from a much bigger issue.
That issue, of course, is the filing by Special Counsel John Durham, which Fox News has relentlessly and misleadingly suggested reveals that Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign “infiltrated” and “hacked” Trump’s White House servers, all in order to “plant evidence” that the former president colluded with Russia.
Over the past few days, the conservative media ecosphere has exploded over the “bombshell” Durham probe motion, which was filed late Friday night. Despite Fox’s spin that the “massive scandal” demonstrates once and for all that Clinton “spied” on Trump, the reality is that the new filing was largely a rehash of old news that did not actually show the Clinton campaign paid anybody to hack into Trump servers. (The New York Times and others have provided detailed explainers on what the filing actually revealed.)
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Bartiromo, once a respected financial journalist turned shameless Trump lackey, remains unconvinced. And so on Wednesday she waded further into the fever swamps to uncover a global conspiracy to protect Clinton at all costs—including war.
Speaking with grocery store giant and conservative talk-radio mogul John Catsimatidis, the Fox host unleashed her theory that the rising tensions in Eastern Europe are largely a fabrication by the Biden administration to protect a domestic political ally.
After saying Russian President Vladimir Putin isn’t going to put his country’s economy in “jeopardy” by invading Ukraine, she then took aim at national security adviser Jake Sullivan for warning over the weekend that Russia could attack “any day now.” Sullivan also said he held out hope that a diplomatic solution would prevail with Putin.
“Which is why I questioned whether or not the whole thing was a ruse with Jake Sullivan coming out so hysterical over the weekend, telling us to get out of Ukraine and that Russia is going to invade today,” she exclaimed. “Obviously, in retrospect, he was trying to change the conversation from Hillary Clinton and her bad behavior and her dirty tricks against Donald Trump.”
Agreeing with the Fox host, Catsimatidis added that “Putin was never going to invade” before invoking the 1997 movie Wag the Dog, which detailed a fictional president’s attempt to distract from political scandal by making up a war in Europe.
“I've said that President Biden needs a war and Putin was afraid that President Biden was going something stupider,” he declared. “And that's why he withdrew the troops because President Biden needs a war.” (On the contrary, NATO has accused Russia of increasing troops at the border despite Russian claims of a pullback on Tuesday, noting that they’ve “not seen any de-escalation on the ground.”)
“Have you watched the movie Wag The Dog? That’s what it’ all about,” Catsimatidis continued. “If he starts a war and it takes inflation off the front page of The New York Times.”
An excited Bartiromo interjected: “Yeah, yeah, and it takes—that’s right. It takes off the front page inflation, it also takes off the front page Hillary Clinton and Jake Sullivan pushing the Russia collusion hoax for so many years.”
The Fox host was obviously attempting to imply that Sullivan—based on his work for Clinton as a foreign policy adviser during her 2016 campaign—is concerned about the Durham probe coming for both him and Clinton.
In a later interview with Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), Bartiromo once again pushed her wide-ranging conspiracy theory about Ukraine’s troubles being a fabrication.
“Was this a ruse? Was this whole thing an effort to take everybody’s attention away from what Hillary Clinton did and what we know to be a complete hoax over this Russia investigation?” she wondered.
“What are your thoughts? Because I know Jake Sullivan worked for Hillary Clinton,” she added. “He was one of the people who was peddling this Russia collusion lie for four years, and there he is now as NSA, coming up with this hysteria over Russia.”
This was not even the first time she proposed this particular line of reasoning (which, of course, is starting to gain traction with other right-wing pundits): During her Sunday morning broadcast on Fox News, Bartiromo claimed “White House leakers have been running around” saying there’s going to be an invasion before suggesting it was a cover-up for Clinton.
“So, is it all a ruse that they are really going to invade this Wednesday,” she rhetorically asked. “Or are they trying to create all of this drama because we were getting this Durham information and we just saw 40-year highs on inflation?”
