Fox News' Maria Bartiromo is getting slammed for her friendly interview with Trump

Screenshot/Fox News

President Donald Trump and Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo

• Fox Business Network host Maria Bartiromo is facing particularly fierce criticism over her latest interview with President Donald Trump, during which she let Trump make unsubstantiated and false claims. 
• A barrage of critics online accused Bartiromo of peddling Trump's propaganda and following an administration-approved script. 
• "Almost every time Trump said something shocking or unsubstantiated, Maria Bartiromo let it slide. Sometimes she didn't just fail to follow up, she encouraged it," wrote CNN's Brian Stelter.

Fox Business Network host Maria Bartiromo is facing particularly fierce criticism over her latest interview with President Donald Trump, during which she lobbed what critics called softball questions and repeatedly agreed with the president's controversial, false, or misleading statements.

At one point, Trump asserted that there was no collusion between his campaign and the Russian government and that the special counsel investigation has "found nothing." 

"I know," Bartiromo responded, despite the fact that 20 people - some who worked at high levels of Trump's campaign - and three companies have either pleaded guilty or been charged with crimes in Robert Mueller's investigation. 

The morning host later asked Trump if he would bring up Russian interference in the election during his upcoming summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump ignored the question, instead saying he would like to know "why the FBI didn't take the server from the DNC," apparently referring to the unsubstantiated claim that the Democratic National Committee refused to cooperate with federal law enforcement during its investigation of its hacked server during the 2016 election. 

Bartiromo did not follow up on the question, instead agreeing with Trump that the DNC didn't want to give its server to the FBI, and that the investigation into former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's private email server was somehow corrupt. 

A barrage of critics online accused Bartiromo of peddling Trump's propaganda and following an administration-approved script. 

Aaron Blake, a Washington Post political reporter, tweeted out segments of the interview in which Bartiromo failed to challenge Trump's claims. 

"Almost every time Trump said something shocking or unsubstantiated, Maria Bartiromo let it slide. Sometimes she didn't just fail to follow up, she encouraged it," CNN's Brian Stelter wrote in his Monday newsletter. 

Stelter pointed to Trump's statement claim that Immigration and Customs Enforcement - which has come under fire from immigrant rights activists and left-wing politicians - has liberated towns from MS-13 gang members. Bartiromo did not ask for any evidence for Trump's unsubstantiated claim, instead moving on to a question about North Korea. 

"When Trump supporters say the media is biased, they simply mean that most journalists don't unequivocally agree with Trump when he makes false/subjective claims," tweeted Brian Klaas, a Washington Post columnist and author of How to Rig an Election. "Their vision of good journalism is Bartiromo's sycophancy, which would fit in very well in authoritarian state media."

Brian Jones, the president of Fox Business, defended Bartiromo in a statement to Business Insider. 

"Maria Bartiromo's wide-ranging interview with President Trump made news on multiple fronts and elicited answers to numerous questions," Jones said. "We are proud of her hard work and continued success across each of her FBN and FNC programs."

White House reporters, including Fox's own John Roberts, have criticized the president for refusing to participate in sit-down interviews with anyone other than his friendliest allies in the media. 

"I will say that I am a little bit frustrated that the last time I interviewed the president was in Lacrosse, Wisconsin, in August of 2016," Roberts told Business Insider in April. "I've been asking for an interview with the president since the day he was elected and they have not complied ... And I tell them - by this time in the Bush administration, I'd done four sit-down interviews with him. And in the Clinton administration I'd done a number of sit-down interviews with him as well."