Peter Navarro claims that Sean Hannity “fought hard” to get Fox News to air Trump's address on election security
Navarro to Steve Bannon: “Fox News is basically censoring a prime-time address and any discussion after it. Sean Hannity fought hard to at least to get them to livestream it and he prevailed and he gave the speech five minutes afterwards in the show”
Published
As Matt Gertz documented following Trump's speech in July:
President Donald Trump promised that his Thursday night speech on election security would reveal “really, really big news” of the utmost significance, arguing that “it doesn't get bigger because without free and fair elections, you don't have a country.” But his exhortations seemed to fall on deaf ears at Fox News, which largely ignored the event in the hours before and after the White House address — and did not mention it at all on Friday’s Fox & Friends.
The relative silence from Fox’s stable of MAGA stars, who typically amplify the president’s talking points on whatever subject he discusses, suggests an unwillingness to engage with Trumpian rants about a “rigged” 2020 election — perhaps out of fear of legal repercussions or because they share the concern of congressional Republicans that Trump’s fixation on the topic won’t help them avoid a calamitous showing in the midterm elections.
Citation
From the September 8, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
STEVE BANNON (HOST): You have become a centerpiece of, I think, one of the most important stories that certain news media are trying to sweep under the rug, and that is the situation with John Solomon's task force, the stolen 2020 election, President Trump's address to the nation, which I still think is one of the most powerful addresses he's done, back in, I think, in July, a nationwide address to the nation covered by networks and, obviously cable, and then a — The Washington Times has a piece today, you were in The New York Times all weekend about this Maria Bartiromo situation, now you have a big piece in the Washington Times. Just step back for a second and walk us through the whole thing. What are we talking about here?
Maria Bartiromo, they say she was fired. She said she quit. Walk us through what's going on and why did you write this piece since you were the centerpiece of all the stories in The New York Times. Why'd you write this piece in The Washington Times today, sir?
PETER NAVARRO (GUEST): Steve, this is, I think you're right, one of the most important stories in media that you're ever going to see. Everybody knows that CNN, MS Now, New York Times, Washington Post, speak the gospel of the left-wing when – what they say is what the left wants them to say. But too many people think that Fox News speaks the gospel of Trump and conservatism, and it does not, and the the firing of Maria Bartiromo by the CEO Suzanne Scott proves it.
And the story goes like this, on July 16, President Trump is scheduled to give a a very rare prime-time address to the nation on communist China's vast capabilities — vast capabilities— to interfere in American elections. It's a big story by any measure. Prime-time addresses are sacred historically, every media outlet, left, right, or center, covers them. And I am scheduled the next morning by Maria Bartiromo to appear on her show and two hours or so after I get booked, I'm informed directly by Maria via a text that I've been taken off the air for that.
And the text is from Suzanne Scott's chief enforcer, a high ranking executive producer named Ralph Giordano. Okay? He's Fox Business's programming chief. The text says, and I quote, hi, we don't want to promote it — the president's speech — or push to the speech at all. It continues. We don't want to do 2020 election segments at all Thursday or Friday. I mean, Steve, grasp the significance of that.
Fox News is basically censoring a prime-time address and any discussion after it. Sean Hannity fought hard to at least to get them to livestream it and he prevailed and he gave the speech five minutes afterwards in the show. But the next morning, Fox & Friends, they didn't even mention that the president had addressed the nation. That was a slap at the president and every Fox viewer who tuned in for analysis and got censorship.
What did I do with the text? It was my duty to share that text with the White House. Shortly thereafter, Suzanne Scott got an angry call from the West Wing. Now, what she should have done at that point is realized that she had made a huge mistake and apologized. She did not do that.
Unrepentant, Suzanne Scott gave Bartiromo what's called the Fox golden muzzle. Maria gets paid for three years left on her contract but cannot appear on a rival network. And on September 3, Fox announced she was gone.
So, what's going on here, Steve? This is where analytics, cold, hard analytics come in.
Suzanne Scott is the major player in the firing of Maria Bartiromo. I don't know if she's a Trump-hating RINO, but I do know that her business model is. And what Suzanne Scott does to maximize profits at Fox is juggles viewers against the cadre of Fox's biggest advertisers, most of whom despise Donald Trump and the key MAGA issues.
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So what Fox does, and you know this well, Steve, because this is not what the War Room does, Fox feeds the audience the conservative red meat, the democrat socialist, biological men in women's sports, illegal alien rapists and murderers, all of that, of course, but keeps it inside guardrails that wall off the MAGA themes that are so important to us. Election integrity, big pharma, the benefits of Trump's tariffs. And Scott's, Steve, her business model shows up in the bodies she's buried.
Tucker Carlson had the highest-rated Fox News show. Lou Dobbs had the highest-rated show on Fox Business. Both, both, spoke freely to the MAGA base, both drew advertiser fire, both were fired. And you know the Chinese proverb, Steve, kill the chicken, scare the monkey.
Now that — Suzanne Scott turned that on it's head. She killed the monkeys. And what's left at Fox right now, Steve, is a lineup of chickens. No one willing to stick a neck out the way Maria Bartiromo did.
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And you've got — the people out there in War Room land need to understand how this works. Right? You've got a cadre of producers at Fox, many of them New York liberals, led by this hitman Ralph Giordano. And it's the it's the producers who decide which story is here, which gets kicked to the curb, and MAGA stories spend a lot of time in the Fox gutter never getting airtime. And then the the other way Suzanne Scott enforces the, effectively, the MAGA shadow ban, not just on MAGA, but on surrogates who would be on the show, guests like me, is to blacklist them, and the producers never call.
I'm the shadow ban poster child, Steve. I hit the Scott trifecta. I wrote the definitive and never-rebutted report on the stolen 2020 election. I'm a regular critic of big pharma, Fox's largest advertiser, and I'm the Trump's administration's most visible tariff and China hawk. But it's not just me banned.
I mean, check it out. Don Junior, Rudy, Laura Loomer, John Solomon, even Kash Patel before he became FBI director. They don't let us on to talk about the MAGA message. She disappears the messengers themselves. And so what I'm calling on in The Washington Times article, and I've got to applaud The Washington Times for the courage to run this piece because Fox is going to try to pressure them in all sorts of ways like Fox always does.
Okay? What should happen, Steve, Suzanne Scott should prostrate herself before President Trump for disrespecting the office and to Trump nation for suppressing MAGA news. She should apologize to Maria Bartiromo for punishing, at worst, a minor infraction and at best an act of journalist integrity. She should put Maria right back in the anchor chair. She should also lift the shadow ban on Trump's surrogates and do it quickly.
See, this is — the administration is going into a critical November election at full strength. She's basically choking off surrogates who could speak and help win that election. And lastly, Suzanne Scott should resign.
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BANNON: I like the fact that you're highlighting her and the other guy, but I think they want — they want us to lose the midterm elections, and they want Trump impeached.
NAVARRO: That's right.
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BANNON: Two buried ledes you had there, I just want to make sure we go because we got to bounce. Number one, you said Sean had to fight to even get live coverage of the speech. Think about that for a second. And number two, Maria's got golden handcuffs for three years.
They're going to pay her, you know, and — it — what they pay her a large amount of money because she's worth it, but they don't want Maria Bartiromo anywhere near MAGA until after the 2028 election. If you're telling me that's not well thought through, that they want to get rid of MAGA, I don't know. Peter, we got to bounce.