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According to a forthcoming book, Someone at Fox News sent Donald Trump photos of the planned questions and follow-up questions before his Iowa town hall. The book also says he wanted Maria Bartiromo to be his VP.<\/p>\n
I wrote<\/a> about Fox’s Iowa town hall “cheat sheet” for Crooks and Liars today:<\/p>\n CNN<\/a>\u00a0got an exclusive look at excerpts from a forthcoming book by Politico\u2019s Alex Isenstadt. He reports that in January 2024, Trump had agreed to a \u201csit down\u201d with his \u201cgolf buddy\u201d the supposedly serious journalist Bret Baier. (Incidentally, Baier\u00a0just sold<\/a>\u00a0his D.C. \u201cFrench chateau-style estate,\u201d worth about $30 million, to Trump pick for commerce secretary and\u00a0likely crooked billionaire<\/a>\u00a0Howard Lutnick.)<\/p>\n But, apparently, Trump\u2019s aides worried that he wasn’t \u201ctaking prep for the telecast seriously.” They thought Baier and cohost Martha MacCallum might ask some tough questions and that he’dg “basically be winging it.”<\/p>\n So Fox \u201cNews\u201d did a solid for its favorite (now that Roger Ailes has died) p***y grabber. Someone texted \u201ca senior aide\u201d images of the planned questions and the follow ups \u201cdown to the exact wording,\u201d according to the book. The team then \u201cworkshopped answers.\u201d<\/p>\n Team Trump has not denied the report. Fox News says it is \u201cinvestigating.\u201d<\/p>\n I have almost no doubt it\u2019s true. You can read my full post at Crooks and Liars<\/a>.<\/p>\n But wait, there\u2019s more. Isenstadt also reported that Trump wanted Maria Bartiromo for VP. My C&L colleague, Frances Langum wrote<\/a> that one up. She noted that the critical information in Isenstadt\u2019s book \u201cwould have been useful when voters needed it, but book sales.\u201d<\/p>\n She also quoted more from CNN\u2019s report<\/a>:<\/p>\n “Isenstadt writes in his book that Trump ‘was dead serious about Bartiromo and was making the case for her during the flight to Butler (Pennsylvania). She was great with the big-donor Wall Street types and she knew how to do TV, Trump told his team.’<\/p>\n But Trump\u2019s team said ‘(t)here \u201cwas no time to vet Bartiromo, as they had spent months doing with other candidates,’ and chief of staff Susie Wiles put an end to the conversation.”<\/p>\n Check out Fran\u2019s full post at Crooks and Liars<\/a>, too.<\/p>\n The CNN article indicates that Trump’s desire for Bartiromo was an impulse decision made late in the process. That, in turn, suggests he was not entirely thrilled with J.D. Vance, a guy who once called Trump a \u201ctotal fraud\u201d and \u201cAmerica\u2019s Hitler\u201d before deciding he (Vance) loves Hitler and fraud. For what it\u2019s worth, my personal belief is that Trump Puppeteer Elon Musk told his boy to get a tech billionaire-bro loyalist, like Vance, not a mere Trump loyalist like Bartiromo.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s easy to see why Trump would have wanted Bartiromo. Media Matters<\/a> has a good reminder of this top-of-the-Fox-line of disgraces to journalism and the United States:<\/p>\n Bartiromo was instrumental in advancing 2020 election conspiracy theories that led to the January 6 insurrection, particularly the claims that Dominion and Smartmatic voting machines flipped votes. The companies sued Fox News and other conservative media outlets for spreading these bogus conspiracy theories, and Fox ultimately\u00a0settled<\/a>\u00a0with Dominion for $787 million. Bartiromo was\u00a0repeatedly<\/a>\u00a0named throughout the various lawsuits, and it was later revealed that she took\u00a0directives<\/a>\u00a0from the Trump campaign to promote the plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.<\/p>\n Bartiromo\u2019s election conspiracy theories continued into the 2024 election. In several segments, for example, Bartiromo\u00a0elevated<\/a>\u00a0an extremely flimsy claim that undocumented immigrants were obtaining drivers licenses to vote \u2014 based on the wife of a friend of a friend alleging that they saw \u201ca massive line of immigrants\u201d outside of a Texas Department of Motor Vehicles office, which Bartiromo interpreted to mean \u201cillegals.\u201d A spokesperson for the Texas Department of Public Safety noted that assuming that nonwhite Texans are undocumented is \u201ckind of racist\u201d and called her story \u201csimply false.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In 2023, Bartiromo\u00a0pushed<\/a>\u00a0a story on her show more than 200 times from an FBI informant who claimed that President Joe Biden and his son Hunter took bribes from a Ukrainian oligarch. The informant, Alexander Smirnov, was ultimately indicted for lying to the bureau and allegedly fabricated his accusations \u2014 news which Bartiromo later attempted to downplay, after using her Fox show to promote Smirnov\u2019s debunked claims as \u201cthe most serious charges ever leveled at a President.\u201d<\/p>\n Instead, we\u2019ll get the senator who endangered his own constituents<\/a> with an \u201cimmigrants in Ohio are eating pets\u201d lie, then defended lying<\/a> for the sake of defeating Kamala Harris.<\/p>\n (Trump image by DonkeyHotey<\/a>, via Flickr and Creative Commons license.<\/p>\n Follow me on Blue Sky<\/a>!<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n