“She used to be the Larry King of the business world,” mused Joe Lockhart, a former press secretary for President Bill Clinton and a paid contributor at CNN. “But I think she saw the ratings for the likes of Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity and even Lou Dobbs, and she saw that the way to survive at Fox is to go all-in for Donald Trump.” (In response, a Fox News representative pointed out that Bartiromo’s Sunday show has been No. 1 in its time slot since it debuted in 2014.)

What happened to Maria Bartiromo? She maintains she’s no MAGA die-hard – just a journalist motivated by a search for truth. Her take on Trump: “Here is this guy who comes from Queens, New York, doesn’t care what he says and who he says it to, goes into Washington to drain the swamp. … And I think his presence threatened some people’s viability.”…

In Bartiromo’s telling, it was her doubts about the Russia investigation that drew her closer to the Trump worldview. She openly criticized Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, repeatedly claiming that the origins of the investigation were politically motivated and “a coup to take him down,” as she said in an April interview with Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif.

Like many Trump allies, she speaks as though the fact the investigation led to no criminal charges against the president means the entire enterprise was bogus from the outset. Mueller made it clear that the investigation did not exonerate Trump, citing 10 incidents in which Trump potentially obstructed the investigation, a matter that Mueller said was Congress’s responsibility to pursue.