Maria Bartiromo: Does The Media Have The Power To Cause A Recession, Crash The Economy?

FOX News host Maria Bartiromo weighs in on the president's charge that the "Fake and Disgusting News... are trying to 'will' America into bad Economic times... to make my Election more difficult to win."





....bad Economic times, the worse the better, anything to make my Election more difficult to win. Well, we are having very good meetings, the Leaders are getting along very well, and our Country, economically, is doing great - the talk of the world! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 25, 2019







MARIA BARTIROMO: Well, let's talk about the consumer being two-thirds of economic growth, consumer spending is incredibly important and if you constantly hear gloom and doom on the media you may very well say, you know what, a recession is coming, I better pull it in. I better be more conservative with my spending, be a little more prudent right now because I hear what's going on in the news that there's a recession coming so I'm going to pull it in, if everybody starts pulling it in at the same time, yes, you actually can have the media talking us into a recession, so there's truth to that because consumer spending represents two-thirds of economic growth.



I think the broader picture is that the media continues to have an incredible amount of influence in terms of explaining to the world what is going on. When you go back to the fact that we just came off of the 2 years of collusion delusion where the media was all about President Trump colluded with the Russians, et cetera, et cetera, you know, "Sunday Morning Futures," my program right before this program was every week poking holes into that narrative for 2 years and I got slammed in the media as a result of the fact that every like Congressman John Ratcliffe and Devin Nunes, the congressmen who actually saw the redacted document, the people who were there interviewing the FBI officials and they knew the story better than anybody, so I featured them every Sunday on my program and everybody else in the media, I mean, on television was talking about the president colluding, it's no secret or no surprise to me that China, earlier this year reneged on everything. You had a deal with China in place... in March earlier this year, in April, and the Chinese reneged, why? Because they are watching on CNN that the president colluded with Russia, it may very well be the Chinese thought we are going to be done with this guy in a year, so, yes, the media has an incredible responsibility to seek the truth, Howie, and that write it is narrative.



HOWIE KURTZ: Let me turn back to question of recession and I certainly understand how talking down the economy could affect consumer confidence, consumer spending as you just pointed out, but when the president talks or tweets about China or Jay Powell, and the market goes 623 points or when there are bond indicators that say recession could be down the road, that's not the same thing as saying we are verge of a recession. Isn't it the media's responsibility to report those developments?



MARIA BARTIROMO: The media's responsibility is to report the truth and seek the truth, but Howie, how many programs do you hear the media saying the unemployment rate is at 51-year low, how many media outlets are you hearing saying we had 4 plus percent growth for one quarter last year, 3.1% in the first quarter and 2.1% in the second. A recession is two quarters of negative performance, meaning negative, not positive. We are only seeing positive readings, so the fact that we are talking about a recession being on the horizon and not even talking about the facts reminds me of editorial meeting that took place at New York Times two weeks ago where the editor there said, well, for two years we were putting all of our resources into Russia collusion, the story changed on us. The story didn't change, Howie, the story is the same story, but they put all resources in collusion and now they decided that they will put all resources on racism. That's a disappointment for me being a journalist when I see something like that and it should be a disappointment to everybody journalist because a journalist is supposed to cover the story, seek the truth, not write the story.