CNN Reports Fox News Is Suppressing 'MAGA' News

Peter Navarro

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro accused Fox News of “suppressing MAGA news” and enforcing a “shadow ban” on some of President Donald Trump’s surrogates in a Tuesday op-ed, as a dispute over coverage of Trump’s election-fraud claims intensifies.

Navarro also defended longtime Fox host and Trump ally Maria Bartiromo, whom the network ousted last week, and addressed his own role in the episode that led to her departure.

CNN reports the clash dates to mid-July, when Trump delivered a prime-time speech alleging election vulnerabilities, including supposed Chinese interference. Fox News carried the speech live, unlike some other networks, but did not linger on the conspiratorial claims. “Fox & Friends,” often described as the president’s favorite show, did not mention the speech the next day.

Bartiromo wanted to follow up and booked Navarro for her Fox Business Network morning show. Hours later, Navarro wrote, she told him Fox had blocked coverage and forwarded internal guidance sent to her producers.

Navarro published that guidance, which he attributed to Fox Business executive Ralph Giordano: “Hi – We don’t want to promote it or push to the speech at all. We don’t want to do 2020 election segments at all Thurs or Friday.”

Suzanne Scott

Giordano did not explain the ban. 

A plausible reason is legal risk. Trump’s 2020 election claims, aired on several Fox programs including Bartiromo’s, prompted multiple defamation suits. Dominion Voting Systems settled on the eve of trial in 2023 for $787.5 million. A similar Smartmatic suit remains pending.

Those lawsuits have made Fox unusually cautious when Trump revisits 2020 election claims, opening a rift with the White House that Navarro highlighted.

He singled out Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott: “I don’t know whether Suzanne Scott is a Trump-hating RINO. I do know her business model is.” Navarro argued that Fox’s largest advertisers “despise key MAGA issues,” so the network serves conservative viewers “red meat” on topics such as Democrats, transgender athletes in women’s sports, and crimes by undocumented immigrants, while avoiding “MAGA themes such as election integrity, Big Pharma and benefits of the Trump tariffs.”

The op-ed praised Bartiromo at length. She was taken off the air after Fox management learned she had shared the mid-July internal memo with the White House.