Briefnow
Sep 12, 2026

Trump Admin’s Navarro Reveals Real Reason Behind Bartiromo’s Dismissal From Fox News

White House senior trade adviser Peter Navarro is offering new details about Maria Bartiromo’s abrupt split from Fox News, claiming the longtime anchor was sidelined after an internal network directive involving President Donald Trump’s election-security speech made its way to the White House.

Navarro laid out his version of events in a Washington Times opinion column this week, directly accusing Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott of “muzzling” Bartiromo following Trump’s nationally televised July 16 address.

The account adds another layer to the still-disputed circumstances surrounding Bartiromo’s departure after more than 12 years at Fox. Fox News Media announced Sept. 3 that Bartiromo was “no longer with” the company, effective immediately, but offered no detailed explanation. The network subsequently described the move as a business decision. Navarro says the dispute began before Trump’s July 16 prime-time address on election security.

During that speech, Trump released declassified materials that he said showed extensive Chinese acquisition of U.S. voter information and other vulnerabilities in the American election system. He also repeated broader concerns about the integrity of the 2020 election and urged Congress to enact tighter voting requirements.

Trump’s assertion that China interfered with the 2020 election in ways that affected the election process went beyond previous U.S. intelligence assessments, which did not find evidence that a foreign government altered vote totals or changed the election outcome. According to Navarro, Bartiromo had booked him to appear on Mornings With Maria the following morning to discuss Trump’s speech.

That plan changed after Fox Business senior vice president of programming Ralph Giordano sent guidance to Bartiromo’s production team instructing them not to emphasize the address or devote segments to the 2020 election. Navarro said Bartiromo then forwarded him a screenshot of the instruction.

The message, according to Navarro, said Fox did not want to “promote” Trump’s speech or conduct 2020 election segments on Thursday or Friday. Navarro acknowledged that he subsequently sent the internal Fox message to other officials inside the White House. “It was my duty to share that text with the White House,” Navarro wrote.

He further claimed that Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott then received an angry phone call from the West Wing complaining about the network’s handling of Trump’s address. Navarro portrayed what happened afterward as retaliation.

He alleged that Bartiromo was effectively given what he called a Fox “Golden Muzzle,” while Navarro himself was barred from appearing on the network. Fox has not publicly confirmed Navarro’s characterization of those events. But independent reporting has corroborated important portions of the sequence he described.

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