Reprinted with permission from MediaMatters

Fox News anchor Maria Bartiromo hosted President Donald Trump for an extended appearance on her show, where he told numerous lies as part of his democracy-undermining effort to claim that he actually won the 2020 presidential election. Bartiromo offered no pushback to Trump's lies, and in fact encouraged him to lie at length about the election.

Bartiromo, who is ostensibly part of Fox News's "news side" -- a distinction the channel claims exists between its anchors and opinion hosts -- is known for pushing conspiracy theories and propagandistic interviews of Trump.

The president joined Fox News program Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo for 45 minutes of the hour-long program. The extended appearance, where no commercial breaks were aired, largely consisted ofTrump going on repetitious monologues where he promoted his attempt to steal the 2020 presidential election, which is premised on his false claim that President-elect Joe Biden secured his victory because of widespread voter fraud. During the first several minutes of the interview, Trump pushed conspiracy theories about dead voters, voter fraud in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, specifically, and Dominion Voter Systems, setting the stage for the rest of his appearance.

Trump also called Bartiromo "brave" for having him on the show to push his deranged conspiracy theories that seek to undermine democracy.

Bartiromo made no attempt to ask that Trump provide any evidence to back up the multitude of lies he told on the show. In fact, she egged Trump on, claiming Biden's victory was the result of "impossible statistics" and claiming that what is happening to Trump is "disgusting" because "we cannot allow America's election to be corrupted."

Bartiromo's interview was rightfully derided: