Bartiromo’s Breakup & Bari’s ‘60’ Debut

Dylan Byers (0:02)

All I will say is that I think there were a lot of people in the building who had grown really tired of dealing with Maria Bartiromo and saw this as an opportunity to finally bring that relationship to an end.

Peter Hamby (0:17)

Welcome to The Powers That Be Daily, Puck's podcast focused on the intersection of Wall Street, Washington, Silicon Valley and Hollywood, and the players who run it all. I'm Peter Hamby. It's Wednesday, September 9th. Today, I'm joined by Dylan Byers, who breaks down the expectations and hate raid around the new look, 60 Minutes, which debuts on Sunday, facing enormous scrutiny under the leadership of Bari Weiss and Nick Bilton.

Dylan also tells me why Maria Bartiromo was fired from Fox, and whether the conservative network actually has some editorial guardrails, despite its constant pro-Trump cheerleading. We'll discuss all that and much more on today's episode of The Powers That Be.

Happy Wednesday, everybody, and welcome to The Powers That Be. I'm joined today by my colleague, Dylan Byers. We're going to break down Maria Bartiromo getting fired from Fox News for apparently contradicting Fox's orders and communicating directly with the Trump White House after Fox Hancho's told her not to cover a story about Trump and his election denials. We'll get into the nitty gritty there. We're also going to talk about the forthcoming premiere of 60 Minutes under Bari Weiss and Nick Bilton, the new executive producer that goes live on Sunday after football. CBS Brass put out a fancy new PR photo by famed portrait artist Mark Seliger. I'm sure Nick Bilton had something to do with that, featuring all of their new talent. They've been teasing some stories, including a profile of the Rams. I guess they're tying it to football. As well as a behind the scenes accounting of a US pilot who was shot down behind enemy lines in Iran. Anyway, we'll get into all of that in the hype machine surrounding 60 Minutes, the new look 60 Minutes. But first, Dylan, when I saw Maria Bartiromo was fired, and you and Oliver Darcy were reporting this when it happened, she, like many other people at Fox News for years, has been a Trump cheerleader, plenty of Fox hosts and talent, not only talk to Trump privately and on air, of course. Sean Hannity will show up at his rallies.

And so, you know, I'm curious, well, one, you can tell us why she got fired. I want to ask you that. But two, a larger question I had is, what are the standards at Fox News? Because there is so much partisan pro-Trump cheerleading. Maria Bartiromo obviously was one of the lead cheerleaders in that sense. But, you know, sometimes they enforce journalistic integrity. I remember back in 2020, when the network called Arizona early for Joe Biden and not Donald Trump. Plenty of people were erupting at Fox News. Other Fox personalities were wondering about it. But they stuck with their elections team to make that call. They also, you know, after getting into a huge legal fight over lying about Dominion voting systems and repeating the president's lies about Dominion voting back in 2020, it seems like they cracked down on election conspiracies there too. But at the same time, like I said, you know, there's just an open bias there. A lot of these hosts we know communicate with President Trump himself and senior staff. So why was Maria Bartiromo fired for doing just that, communicating with the Trump White House?

Dylan Byers (3:50)

Peter, you are asking the exact right question. And thank you for starting with a question, but do not let me get out of here with asking you a question about your new podcast, Peter, The Making of a President, because I have that. We'll save it for the end. It's a good question too.

Look, you're absolutely right. There are so many Fox News hosts who are deeper in the Mar-a-Lago scene than many administration officials themselves. The idea that somehow betraying the internal workings of Fox News was in and of itself an egregious, fireable offense, that is certainly what Fox is saying officially. Do we think that if Sean Hannity or if Jesse Waters, or if Dana Perino had done something along these lines, that they would have found grounds for firing that talent? I don't think so. I know I'm going to get a lot of hate mail from Fox News folks for that, but I don't think so. Here's what I think really happened, Peter. You have in Maria Bartiromo, someone who is at the heart and center of every defamation lawsuit that this network was facing, because she was advancing the election fraud narrative. She was eager to do that. She's named in the Dominion case, she's named in the Smartmatic case. There's another case being brought against Kevin O'Leary, the investor and Shark Tank co-host, that she somehow involved in too.