Maria Bartiromo would never ever hold Donald Trump accountable by asking him a tough question, as we saw today.
President Obama "is a terrible negotiator," tweeted Donald Trump. "He bails out Chrysler and now Chrysler wants to send all Jeep manufacturing to China--and will!"
Chrysler Group Vice President for Product Design Ralph Gilles responded with admirable restraint, tweeting: "You are full of shit!" It's a nice way of saying that Trump is a pathological liar, which is not exactly news.
Of course, CNBC's Maria Bartiromo would never ever ask Trump to account for his most recent lie, or his panoply of smears about Obama's birth certificate and his school transcripts or any other part of Trump's race-baiting. Apparently, she thinks her job is to enhance Trump's platform and his current anti-Obama meme.
This afternoon Trump came on to CNBC to explain that Obama, "is out there campaigning, standing in any puddle he can find" Trump says the hurricane is positive for Obama, because now people are not talking about his record."
"How much do you think all these photo ops with the President is worth to Governor Christie and his State?" asked Maria, ever eager to pile on.
"Well, it's certainly worth a lot to the President," says Trump.
Maria brings up Bloomberg's endorsement of Obama, noting that, "He [Bloomberg] says Sandy reshaped his thinking about climate change."
This is the perfect setup for Trump's talking point, which is that Obama is selling us out to the Chinese. He says, "Climate change is very, very good for the Chinese, because we have to adjust all our factories and manufacturing, making them non-competitive. The Chinese laugh at us." (As they proceed to shut down Jeep factories in Ohio?)
"Who do you think is going to win the race?" asks Bartiromo. "It absolutely would have been Mitt had it not been for the hurricane," say Trump.
It all raises an interesting question. Who is better at unearthing the truth, at speaking truth to power:
Maria Bartiromo,
Stephen Colbert, or
Bill Maher?
Watch the videos and decide who of these three deserves to be taken more seriously.