President Donald Trump on Thursday chimed in on the news about former Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo’s firing.
“I can’t believe Maria Bartiromo is no longer going to have her great show(s) on FoxNews/Business,” he wrote in a post on Truth Social. “Three different shows, always number one. Maria is a total professional, and a true warrior. Her fans, of which there are many, will not be happy. God bless you, Maria!”
Fox News announced Bartiromo’s departure on Thursday, but it appears the network fired her in August, according to CNN.
The Fox News leadership team decided to remove Bartiromo in August, according to a person familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The immediate impetus was Bartiromo’s disclosure of confidential information to the Trump White House, the source told CNN.
But there may have been other factors. In a sign that the split was contentious, Fox said Bartiromo’s departure was “effective today,” meaning she didn’t have a chance to say goodbye or sign off on her own terms.
Bartiromo’s disclosure dates back to mid-July, when Trump delivered a prime time speech about the election system and made conspiratorial claims about China and the 2020 election.
According to Status and Puck, two media industry publications, Bartiromo wanted to talk about Trump’s claims on air.
But a Fox executive directed the network not to cover the conspiracy theories, the source confirmed to CNN.
Bartiromo apparently sent a text message of the network guidance to White House officials, as if to say it wasn’t her fault that the claims weren’t getting airtime on Fox.
Word of Bartiromo’s disclosure got back to Fox management, and it was deemed a violation of her employment agreement.
The former Fox Business host is a staunch supporter of the president and was a leading voice questioning the outcome of the 2020 election. She was part of two defamation lawsuits against the network related to the election.
Bartiromo was a prominent part of two separate defamation lawsuits against Fox News Media owing to the network’s coverage of the 2020 presidential election. One of those lawsuits, filed by Dominion Voting Systems, was settled in April 2023, while another case filed by Smartmatic remains ongoing.
Internal communications released as part of the Dominion and Smartmatic lawsuits showed that Bartiromo was open to the theory that the 2020 election had been rigged in favor of Joe Biden. “#1 story all trump supporters want right now is stop the steal,” she wrote in a message to a producer. “They do not believe the ejection [sic] was fair or honest. So fox needs to cover it.” (In depositions, Bartiromo denied knowledge that the claims of election fraud were false, as the voting technology companies had contended.)
Documents released in the Smartmatic case also showed that Bartiromo had made $70m in her career at Fox.
NEWS: Status is reporting Fox fired Maria Bartiromo after she leaked internal texts to the White House showing the network had told staff to stop amplifying Trump's latest election conspiracy theories. Trump has so thoroughly captured the right-wing media ecosystem that its… pic.twitter.com/GlBDnqVTxi
— Mike Nellis (@MikeNellis) September 3, 2026
Bartiromo has not yet released a public statement about her departure from Fox News.