Sunday Morning Features host Maria Bartiromo drew fire on Twitter from a prominent MSNBC host and others after she claimed that some Americans were questioning whether President Joe Biden truly views Russia’s Vladimir Putin as an adversary.
Bartiromo made the comments on Fox and Friends, the network’s flagship morning show, on Sunday while interviewing Sen Lindsey Graham. Mr Graham, a longtime loyalist of former President Donald Trump, has been a chief purveyor of the bizarre claim that Mr Trump’s administration was somehow putting up a stronger resistance to Mr Putin’s whims than does the Biden White House.
“I was on the phone all weekend with various people about this conflict right now. What I took away from all of my phone calls is the strategy of this administration has been underwhelming and not enough,” she told Mr Graham.
The anchor added: “Some people have told me over the weekend that they feel that at the end of the day this administration does not see Putin as the enemy, they see him as a partner on many issues.”
That comment drew pushback on Twitter from a number of critics, including MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle who launched into a personal criticism of Bartiromo’s career arc.
“For every female business journalist watching this downward spiral, it’s like believing in Batman all your life & then one day realizing … he’s actually The Joker,” wrote the MSNBC host.
Others were equally disdainful in their criticism. A professor at the US Army War College, Steve Metz, wrote: “Some people have told me that they feel that Maria Bartiromo is an idiot.”
Former Rep Joe Walsh, a voice on the anti-Trump conservative right, tweeted at Bartiromo directly and accused her of feeding her audience “lies”.
The Fox host’s comments are illuminative as they are another example of the divide that exists on the US political right on the issue of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Her remarks, which she did not attribute to her own views, nevertheless specifically fall into the same vein as criticism of the Biden administration that has been levelled by the likes of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and other establishment-aligned Republicans as well as some centrist Democrats who have outpaced the White House in calls for further action to be taken against Moscow and Russia’s economy. Mr Graham is another member of that camp, having joined the chorus of GOP lawmakers who have charged that an invasion of Ukraine by Russia would not have occurred under the presidency of Donald Trump.
That wing of the party lies in direct opposition to the growing far-right of the GOP, whose prominent voices like Fox News host Tucker Carlson have taken a far more sympathetic tone towards Mr Putin. At a far-right alternative to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) hosted by a white nationalist and attended by two members of Congress last month attendees were heard enthusiastically chanting Mr Putin’s name during a speech.
Mr Trump himself has continued following his long-held reluctance to criticise Mr Putin amid the invasion and referred to a deployment of Russian troops to separatist regions shortly before the war began as a “genius” move by the Russian leader.
Those comments and actions taken by Mr Trump throughout his presidency have detracted from the arguments of Mr Graham and other Republicans who strangely continue to insist that the president who famously took Mr Putin’s side against US intelligence agencies regarding the culprits behind election interference in 2016 would have prevented the invasion of Ukraine.
