Fox News Channel’s Maria Bartiromo and Donald Trump pushed baseless theories on her Sunday show about the shooting death of Ashli Babbit, the insurrectionist who was killed breaking into the U.S. Capitol – and online observers immediately took her to task with one person saying, “Maria has gone full cuckoo.”
On this week’s “Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo,” she and Trump’s conversation about Babbit and what lead up to her being shot by Capitol police on Jan. 6 provoked a wave of backlash with their inaccurate account of the events and conspiracy theories at the center.
In particular, viewers took issue with how the two whitewashed Babbit’s participation in the riot — Trump called Babbit a “wonderful, innocent woman,” and both he and Bartiromo called the Capitol riot that injured 140 officers and left Babbit and four other people dead a “peaceful protest” multiple times.
“‘This wonderful woman, young woman… who went to a peaceful protest.’ ‘Peaceful protest’? Sorry, Maria Bartiromo is a disgrace to journalism and Fox is not a news organization. This is reckless, dishonest, inflammatory stuff,” MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan noted on Twitter Sunday.
Trump and Bartiromo agreed they think that a high-level Democratic operative was somehow involved in Babbit’s killing. Bartiromo went further, saying that her team at Fox has targeted Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who’s been an outspoken advocate for establishing a commission to investigate the cause of the riot.
“I want you to know that my team reached out to Senator Chuck Schumer’s office to check on what he may know about who shot Ashli Babbitt. We have not heard back from Chuck Schumer’s office,” Bartiromo told Trump.
Political reporter Andrew Solender pointed out that it wouldn’t really make sense for Schumer’s detail to be on the House side of the Capitol, since he’s a Senator, but that logic evidently flew over both Bartiromo and Trump’s heads.
Bartiromo went on to describe Babbit as “a wonderful woman fatally shot on January 6, as she tried to climb out of a broken window,” and added Babbit’s family “want answers as far as why this wonderful woman young woman who went to peaceful protest was shot.”
The Fox Business host repeatedly asked Trump if he had any information on the killing, and said, “There is speculation that this was a security detail in a leading member of Congress’s security detail a Democrat, what can you tell us in terms of who shot Ashli Babbit?”
“I will tell you they know who shot Ashley Babbitt, they’re protecting that person,” Trump replied. “I’ve heard also that it was the head of security for a certain high official, a Democrat, and we’ll see because it’s going to come out. It’s going to come out.”
Ironically, the establishment of a bipartisan commission to examine the violent events on Jan. 6 would likely help solve the mystery of how Babbit died… but it would also almost certainly point a finger of blame at Trump and his supporters.
Check out the clips of some of Trump and Bartiromo’s interview below.
And the comments flowed in: