Peter Navarro Tells Steve Bannon Fox News Is a 'Harder Enemy' Than Democrats

Peter Navarro, a senior counselor to President Donald Trump, told Steve Bannon's War Room audience from the White House lawn on Tuesday that the Republican Party's "harder enemy" is not the Democrats but a wing of its own party that includes Fox News.

"Steve, we're fighting and we always have fought a two-front war," Navarro said. "But the harder enemy really is the RINO wing of the Republican Party, the Bush wing, the Fox News Corporation wing. That is RINO TV every day."

Navarro is not an outside commentator. At an October 9 briefing outside the White House, he described himself as the director of the White House's trade and manufacturing policy office "and a senior counselor to the president," according to a Roll Call Factba.se transcript. That makes this a White House official telling the MAGA base to tune out the conservative movement's biggest TV network two weeks before midterms in which Democrats lead PolitiKool's generic ballot average by 8.3 points.

Peter Navarro Tells War Room Viewers to 'Turn Fox Off'

Navarro went through the Fox Business and Fox News lineups by name. He said the network, "which is supposed to be our side, is trying to destroy the signature piece of the Trump agenda"—tariffs. He also singled out Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade, "whether it's Killmead with his snide crap attacking the president."

"So to the war room, you probably don't watch them much anymore. Turn Fox off," Navarro said, before praising a daytime lineup of right-wing shows. "You do not need Fox."

Bannon set up the exchange by telling viewers that Trump had said in his rally speech the night before to turn off Fox, because the network keeps "putting Democrats on" and is hostile to tariffs. "They have no interest in tariffs, in fact they're anti-tariff," Bannon said.

Trump's frustration with the network is already on the record. On October 4, he wrote on Truth Social that Fox & Friends was "not covering" his rally in Vandalia, Ohio, and warned that "Fox News will soon have the ratings of FAKE NEWS CNN or MSNOW," TheWrap reported.

Steve Bannon's Account of Maria Bartiromo's Exit

Bannon tied the attack to the departure of Maria Bartiromo, who had hosted Mornings with Maria and Sunday Morning Futures. He said Bartiromo had booked Navarro after a presidential address on foreign election interference, and he made a blunt claim: "Having you on got her dismissed from Fox."

Fox has not given a reason. When Bartiromo left on September 3 after 12 and a half years, the network said only, "We thank Maria for her work over the last 12½ years, and wish her all the best on her next chapter," PBS NewsHour reported.

Fox News Polling and Ratings: What the Record Shows

Navarro also went after the network's polling. "How is it that Fox can maintain a polling operation which consistently, factually skews Democrats?" he asked. "They missed Michigan in the last presidential election by like 10 points."

That is not what happened. Fox's final Michigan poll of 2024, conducted October 24-28, had Kamala Harris ahead 48 percent to 46 percent on the full ballot and the two candidates tied at 49 percent head-to-head. Trump won the state 49.7 percent to 48.3 percent, according to the certified results. That is a miss of about 3.4 points on the full ballot and 1.4 points head-to-head, and the poll's margin of error was plus or minus 3 points.

Fox is also still far ahead of its cable rivals, even as its audience shrinks. In September, Fox News averaged 1.717 million primetime viewers, compared with 839,000 for MS NOW and 539,000 for CNN, according to Nielsen figures reported by Adweek. Fox's primetime audience was down 32 percent from September 2025.

Navarro Promotes His Fauci Book in the Same Segment

Navarro's attack on Fox came alongside a sales pitch. "This is the official date of why Fauci must rot in prison," he said of his new book, which has a foreword by Bannon. He urged viewers to buy copies because "it's the only way we're going to put Fauci in prison."

He said the book shows "the moment that Fauci knew that he was the guy who likely created the pandemic itself." The origin of the pandemic has not been established. A 2021 declassified assessment from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, based on information available through August 2021, found the intelligence community's agencies divided over whether the virus emerged naturally or through a laboratory accident. On one point it was direct: "We judge the virus was not developed as a biological weapon."

Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was among those President Joe Biden preemptively pardoned in his final hours in office in January 2025, the Associated Press reported. Navarro said a bestseller would help "get attorneys general from Florida to Kansas to Louisiana and beyond to start filing charges against Tony Fauci."

Two weeks from Election Day, it is not yet clear whether the White House's anger at Fox will cost Republicans any of the network's viewers.