Fox News host, Maria Bartiromo banned members of her staff from referring to Joe Biden as ‘president-elect’ after he was declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election, according to NBC News.
This latest revelation was among the hundreds of private text messages and emails from top Fox News journalists and executives that were made public Tuesday as part of Dominion Voting Systems $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the company.
Three days after Biden was projected as the winner of election, Bartiromo texted former Trump advisor Steve Bannon lamenting how upsetting it was to watch the “world move forward” according to NBC.
“Omg I’m so depressed. I can’t take this” she wrote. “I want to see massive fraud exposed. Will he be able to turn this around,” she added, referring to Trump.
“I told my team we are not allowed to say pres elect at all. Not in scripts or in banners on air. Until this moves through the courts,” she wrote.
“You are our fighter. Enough with the sad! We need u,” Bannon replied.
The latest revelation adds to the trove of damning text messages and documents released in the case last month showing Fox News stars privately condemning Trump’s bizarre claims of election fraud while promoting those claims on their program.
Bartiromo invited former Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell on her show to spread lies about Dominion’s “algorithm” switching votes from Trump to Biden from a source claiming to be a headless time traveler.
The Fox News host later admitted in a deposition with Dominion lawyers that Powell’s claims were “nonsense”.
