Do European Navies Traditionally Perform Well?

The USN's ability to thus far repel the Iranian antiship ballistic missile attack should not conceal the fact that virtually no other European navy could do so to the same degree.

Consider the French Charles de Gaulle. A normal CdG group includes at least one Horizon-class…

— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) September 10, 2026

The post above raises interesting historical questions. Note its conclusion: "To those steeped in the tradition of European maritime superiority these [that European navies would not fare well against Iranian drone attacks] are surprising results." I've been asking myself for a while whether "the tradition of European maritime superiority" is overrated. This brings us to A T Mahan:

In 1890, Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, a lecturer in naval history and the president of the United States Naval War College, published The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783, a revolutionary analysis of the importance of naval power as a factor in the rise of the British Empire. Two years later, he completed a supplementary volume, The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793–1812.

Mahan argued that British control of the seas, combined with a corresponding decline in the naval strength of its major European rivals, paved the way for Great Britain’s emergence as the world’s dominant military, political, and economic power. Mahan and some leading American politicians believed that these lessons could be applied to U.S. foreign policy, particularly in the quest to expand U.S. markets overseas.

If the UK was "the world’s dominant military, political, and economic power", why did it fight itself to exhaustion in the Great War? The one Mahan-style decisive naval engagement of that war, the Battle of Jutland, was essentially a draw, with both sides determining that any such future engagement would result in one side, as Winston Churchill put it, "losing the war in an afternoon". But wasn't this precisely Mahan's point? In effect, Churchill acknowledged that the UK wasn't realistically capable of forcing a Mahan-style decisive victory. So much for the might of the British Empire.

As a long-ago English major, I would point out tbat the American expatriate Henry James had observed the exhaustion of UK society by 1900:

"Mrs. Medwin" is a short story by Henry James, first published in Punch in 1900. The story slyly satirizes fashionable society in fin-de-siècle England. The central characters are an American brother and sister who both entertain and live off this society, which has grown bland and bored and almost exhausted.

Admiral David Beatty, who famously remarked at the Battle of Jutland, "There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today", was definitely part of that bland, bored, almost exhausted society.

But let's move to World War II. Winston Churchill's experience in the Great War seems to have shaped his strategy for the next one: from the start, his aim was to hold out only long enough to get the US into the war. The loss of the HMS Hood -- which had precisely the same thing wrong with it as the British dreadnaughts lost at Jutland -- was a tactical loss for the UK but a potential propaganda disaster if it convinced the US public that the UK couldn't continue the war; this was the reason for Churchill's urgency in sinking the Bismarck.

In fact, the only Mahan-style decisive victory for the Royal Navy in World War II was the Battle of Cape Matapan, where rhe UK defeated the Italian navy in the Mediterranean; the British had radar, the Italians didn't. Much more important was the Mahan-style defeat of the Royal Navy off Malaya on December 10, 1941:

Part of a British naval squadron known as Force Z, the Royal Navy battleship HMS Prince of Wales and battlecruiser HMS Repulse were sunk by land-based bombers and torpedo bombers of the Imperial Japanese Navy.

. . . The objective of Force Z, which consisted of one battleship, one battlecruiser and four destroyers, was to intercept the Japanese invasion fleet in the South China Sea north of Malaya. The task force sailed without air support. Although the British had a close encounter with Japanese heavy surface units, the force failed to find and destroy the main convoy. On their return to Singapore they were attacked in open waters and sunk by long-range torpedo bombers.

. . . The sinking of the two ships severely weakened the British Eastern Fleet in Singapore. . . . Singapore itself fell to the Japanese on 15 February, leading to the largest surrender in British history.

According to Wikipedia,

The deployment of the ships was a decision made by Winston Churchill. He was firmly warned against it by the First Sea Lord, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound, and later by his friend, Field Marshal Jan Smuts, Prime Minister of South Africa, who prophesied the fate of the capital ships, when he addressed the crew of HMS Repulse just before she left Durban for Singapore.

. . . The earlier grounding of the carrier HMS Indomitable left the capital ships without naval air cover. [Admiral Sir Tom] Phillips[, who had ingratiated himself with Churchill,] had long held the opinion that aircraft were no threat to surface ships, and so he took Force Z, consisting of HMS Prince of Wales, HMS Repulse, and four destroyers. . . to intercept the Japanese without air cover.

The best thing that can be said about Churchill is that he recognized the war was unwinnable without the US coming in, but the end effect of that was that the US Navy had eclipsed the Royal Navy and all other combatant navies by the end of the war. The only Mahan-style engagements after the Royal Navy's loss at Malaya were US vs Japanese.

It's intriguing that the post embedded above suggests that currently, only the Japanese navy, and possibly South Korea, could do an equivalent job to the US Navy in opposing Iranian drones. But since 1940 -- and maybe since 1916 -- the Royal Navy, as well as the French, German, and Italian navies, haven't potentially done as well against the US Navy as the Japanese.

A Business Contrarian's Take On Harvard

The YouTube video embedded above is from Michael Girdley, who is an entrepreneur who speaks frequently on the declining value of an MBA degree and whose videos often cover the rise and fall of well-known brands. In this case, he takes on Harvard. At 12:48, he offers a new take on Harvard and other elite schools' selectivity:

As the 1980s happened, Harvard acceptance rate went from nearly 20% down to 4%. In economics, we refer to this thing as a Veblen good.

I double-checked his selectivity numbers. According to AI,

During the 1970s, Harvard University's undergraduate acceptance rate hovered around 15% to 20%. This is significantly higher than today's hyper-competitive acceptance rates (which currently sit at roughly 3% to 4%), but it still made Harvard one of the most selective institutions in the United States at the time.

Also, according to AI,

A Veblen good is a luxury item for which demand increases as its price rises, defying the standard economic law of supply and demand. Named after American economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen, these goods break regular market rules because they serve as status symbols. People buy them not just for practical use, but to display wealth and success—a concept Veblen called conspicuous consumption.

Via AI again,

In 1970, the total annual cost to attend Harvard was $2,600. If Harvard's price hikes had perfectly tracked the U.S. consumer price index, that $2,600 would adjust to roughly $21,000 today. For the 2026–2027 academic year, the total sticker price (including tuition, room, board, and fees) has climbed to approximately $91,600. Ultimately, an undergraduate education at Harvard costs more than four times higher in real, inflation-adjusted dollars today than it did in the 1970s.

Girdley continues,

In a situation like this in 2008, in which they're short, basically, revenue, you would think they would bring in more students, charge them a lot of money, but it turns out they can't. If they did, they would ruin the whole idea of Harvard being exclusive. And also, coming due at the time for the bill here was in 2008-2009 was all the other universities that had seen the Harvard model and totally copied it. If you're a college graduate, especially one from a private liberal arts college like I am [Lafayette}, decent chance they're managing a couple hundred million dollars worth of money donated to the university.

And most importantly, they watched the scarcity game that Harvard played. Despite the United States going from 80 or 90 million residents back 100 something years ago, and now being at 360 million, most of these elite universities have exactly the same enrollment. Harvard had the idea, promoted it all, and it may just in this case be a story of one university doing a rise and fall. But actually, if you look at it, they're emblematic of the entire system coming down and leaving you and me and other folks with $1.7 trillion in student loan debt.

. . . And there's a mental model of college that you should have that is explained by one number, 33%. Remember I told you that the normal admittance rate is low single digits for a place like Harvard? Well, the legacy admittance rate, like if your relative or parent went there, is 33%. If you're a white student, you tend to fall into one of four buckets if you get into the university. And there's a 43% acceptance rate for these people. They're often called ALDC: Athletes, Legacy, Dean's interest kids, meaning a dean sponsored them in, or faculty Children.

. . . Harvard even runs a thing called the Z list, like Zebra. And that is where students who are not qualified to get into the university but have incredibly powerful parents, like a Clinton or a Gates or a Bush, are suddenly accepted to the university, just because they happen to be connected to the very most powerful and the wealthiest.

While actual Ivy admissions criteria, the ones that factor in the ALDC buckets, are a closely guarded secret, the cases I've looked at here suggest ALDC admissions are typically more than 25% -- how much more could well be a shocking surprise. Combine this with tbe percentage of foreign students, currently 15% of Harvard undergraduates. Although there is currently a ban on explicitly DEI or affirmative action admissions, as of fall 2025, 11.5% were black, while 11% were Hispanic. These represent significsnt declines from immediate prior years.

The result suggests that well under half the available admissions slots in each Harvard undergraduate entering class are available to US-born white males applying under merit-based criteria, including grades, SATs,and extracurriculars. Elsewhere I've estimated this proportion at something closer to 25%. One of Girdley's big takeaways in his video is that there's a pretty good chance someone with an elite degree is actually, as he puts it, a "doofus". Others are beginning to notice this as well.

A lot of guys my age and older don’t realize how much the world has changed over the past 20 years. Young, talented white guys have been shut out of every institution in America and told their only hope for a future is clearing toilets for their new female and Third World…

— Dale Stark (@DaleStarkA10) September 9, 2026

But this is actually nothing new. F Scott Fitzgerald, a Princeton dropout, depicted this in The Great Gatsby. I saw it at an Ivy in the 1960s, but at the time, the numbers weren't available to help me understand it. They certainly are now.

UK Authorities Blur The Migrant Issue; BBC Won't Cover It Anyhow

Donna Jones, police and crime commissioner for Hampshire spoke to #BBCBreakfast about Portsmouth.
The BBC later deleted her last 15 seconds.
Listen and see why …. pic.twitter.com/EDmDfCZFW6

— Robert Abel (@rj_abel) September 7, 2026

Sundance at Conservative Treehouse calls attention to this post, but he takes it too seriously:

This is what they call one of those dangerous ‘ah-ha‘ moments. A British Police Commissioner from Hampshire, was discussing the newest illegal migrant influx that has been happening on the eastern coastline of the U.K. During the final 19 seconds of Donna Jones remarks, she identified the core issue that has perplexed many:

”This is a real wake up call to the government, yet again, that the British people are fed up with the lack of control of our borders. Which is why, we really need to be looking as a country about our membership in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), because that’s why we can’t turn the boats around and send them back to France”

That 19-seconds was immediately cut out of the BBC rebroadcast of the interview. However, the moment was caught and shared on the X platform.

But someonme named John Davies replied,

Of course the excuse about ECHR is crap.
UK sovereign law outranks

— John Davies (@MrAlignIT) September 8, 2026

I asked Chrome AI Mode, "Does UK sovereign law outweigh the European Court for Human Rights?" It replied,

Yes, UK domestic law ultimately outweighs the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) within the UK’s own legal system, but the UK remains bound by it under international law. To understand how this works, it helps to look at the relationship through two different lenses: UK constitutional law and international law.

Under the UK's unwritten constitution, the principle of Parliamentary Sovereignty means that the UK Parliament is the supreme legal authority.

The UK Supreme Court and lower domestic courts cannot strike down or invalidate an Act of Parliament just because it conflicts with human rights.

The Human Rights Act 1998 incorporates the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) into domestic law. Under Section 4 of this Act, if a UK law breaches human rights, senior UK judges can only issue a "Declaration of Incompatibility." This is essentially a formal warning to Parliament. It is entirely up to Parliament to decide whether or not to change the law.

While the UK Parliament can legally pass any law it wants domestically, the UK is still a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights.

Under international law, the UK has agreed to abide by the final judgments of the ECtHR in cases to which it is a party. If Parliament passes a law that violates the Convention and ignores a Strasbourg ruling, it is not "breaking UK law," but it is breaching international law. This can damage the UK’s diplomatic standing and create international political friction.

What current UK and international law permit regarding whether migrants can be sent back to France is unclear:

Ahead of the start of the party's conference, Reform UK's MPs have been repeating their claim that migrants who are intercepted while crossing the English Channel can just be taken back to France.

It's part of the party's four point plan to "stop the boats".

Both the party's leader Nigel Farage and deputy leader Richard Tice have claimed that the UK is legally entitled to do this.

But BBC Verify has found no evidence that this is the case.

. . . On 19 September [2024], Nigel Farage told BBC Radio Kent that part of Reform's plan for migrants crossing the Channel in small boats would be to "take them back to France".

In June, he said on Question Time: “We’ll pick them up in the Channel and take them back” to France.

. . . According to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue (SAR Convention), states are allowed to pick people up from boats if they are "found at sea in danger of being lost".

But these laws do not allow them to be taken to another state without that country agreeing.

. . . On 3 September, Richard Tice said about his policy of taking people intercepted in small boats straight back to France: "We know it's legal because the Belgian authorities have done it."

BBC Verify spoke to the Belgian police when the claim was first made in May, and they confirmed that they have intercepted small boats, treating them "as a rescue operation".

I suspect that if the UK had a leader with the political will to do this, the mere threat of returning migrants to France would force France to revisit the question of controlling its own borders in much the way Trump forced Mexico to control migrants. Since the boats are launched in France in French territorial waters, it ought to be possible to argue that they already had French permision to be there. One thing that's certain is that current UK leadership doesn't have the political will to do this.

"Unofficial" Population Policies?

The video embedded above raises inchoate questions about unofficial or quasi-official UK and French policies on migrants. On the arrival of the super-dinghy in Portsmouth that spurred anti-migrant demonstrations over the weekend, Grannyopterix says at 4:20,

The important thing for a non-Brit to know, any Brit who has taken a ship between Dover and France knows that this neck of water is where the Atlantic and the North Sea bump into each other. It is notoriously rough and dangerous water. And this dinghy went from here, down here, along here, and up there. That's a long journey, and it's not like the short route, is it? . . . It would have had to have been escorted. Apparently it took ten hours for that dinghy to get from here to there. That requires a certain amount of planning and support, I'd say.

OK, so, they went from Gravelines to Portsmouth, and started off by the French police. Now, after that, when they landed in Portsmouth, there was this entire line of buses waiting to ship them out. That again, logistics, planning, you could see this was a well-coordinated operation. I have also read that there were tents there full of new clothes, pajamas, shoes, other necesssary equipment for people who'd jst come and were probably rather damp by that time.

OK, so these buses were waiting for them, the buses left Portsmouth with apparently a police escort, as you can see, and this was all done very late at night. . . and then they arrived at this hotel in London and unloaded. Apparently there were about ten or 15 women in that crew, but as you can see, most of the people coming off there appear to be, well, fighting-age young men.

At least officially, according to the House of Commons Library,

The UK and France deploy resources to detect and disrupt movements of migrants, boats and engine parts, and to prevent them from coming together at the coastline. Law enforcement tactics include conducting checks at road and transport connections, using roadblocks and buoys in waterways, destroying boats near crossing points, and carrying out beach and coastal patrols. Law enforcement extensively uses surveillance technology including drones and thermal imaging cameras.

Actions to deter unauthorised migrants from travelling to coastal areas or staying in northern France include measures to prevent informal living areas being established, rolling eviction operations and a significant police presence in the area.

Nevertheless, in practice, the embarkation into this particular mega-dinghy at Gravelines appears to have been facilitated by Franch police. News reports say 140 migrants were in the dinghy, which reflects the recent change in strategy by traffickers to increase the size of the boats. Buit it's difficult not to surmise that that change in trafickers' strategy is accompanied by much geater tacit cooperation by official and quasi-official actors in the UK and France; the dinghy was escorted over its full voyage across the channel:

FRENCH rescue boats and two helicopters helped a mega-dinghy carrying 140 migrants cross the Channel to a UK beach yesterday.

Five rescue boats escorted the inflatable as it completed the unprecedented 70-mile English Channel crossing on Sunday.

The “safety operation” involved handing out lifejackets to everyone on board, including 20 women and eight “very young children”.

The flimsy inflatable reached Eastney beach, in Portsmouth, intact on Sunday afternoon, with nobody being injured after 14 hours at sea.

This parallels another question that's come up in the Canadian trade dispute: Prime Minister Carney insists he was protecting Francophone Canada by rejecting the recent trade agreement -- but observers have made the point that Canadian immigration policy, which involves widespread immigration from India, threatens to flood out Francophone Canada. The Century Initiative, a project with widespread support from the Laurentian Elite, aims to increase the population of Canada, currently 41 million, to, 100 million by 2100. While it has not been passed by the Canadian parliament, current immigration policy there seems generally consistent with it.

In effect, with the native birth rate stable but current residents leaving, this would add 60 millon migrants from India to the current population of 41 million, with roughly 9 million whose first language is French. This would create a far larger language group whose primary language is Hindi or Punjabi, although Canadian Charter Rights (a weaker version of the US Bill of Rights) currently recognize only English and French as official languages.

If the Century Intiative is implemented, oficially or not, it would simply redefine Canada -- population of Indian heritage would be 60% of the country, certainly overwhelming the French and at least out-voting English speakers. At least in theory, it would require Ottawa to rewrite the Charter Rights, equivalent to a US constitutional amendment, but it would require only a majority in parliament. What's behind this? What's behind the quasi-official encouragement of illegal migration in the UK? Prime Minister Burnham is officially against it:

Andy Burnham will begin the process of courting European leaders when he welcomes Emmanuel Macron as the first foreign head of state to visit him in Downing Street.

The prime minister will meet the French president at No 10 on Thursday as he looks to make inroads on a number of foreign policy objectives, including curbing irregular migration and sealing a new deal with the EU.

. . . Burnham said in a statement on Wednesday: “The progress we have seen this summer [in bringing down the number of small boat crossings] shows what can be achieved when the UK and France work together.

“But I am clear that we cannot be complacent. Smuggling gangs are constantly adapting their tactics, and the UK and France need to respond quickly and stay one step ahead of the criminals facilitating the dangerous crossings.

“The small boats crisis is a shared European challenge, and no country can solve it alone. Working with France and our international partners, we will restore order and control to our borders and prevent smugglers exploiting vulnerable migrants.”

But on the ground, UK and French authorities appear to be not just facilitating, but working fully hand-in-glove with, migrant traffickers and their new policy of using mega-dinghies to regularize migration across the Channel. But neither the UK nor the Canadian parliament is willing to go on record making this level of migration official policy. Why not?

Bartiromo Update

Via PJ Media, citing a source behind a paywall,

It starts with President Trump’s primetime address in July on the 2020 election, in which he laid out allegations of Chinese interference and calling on Congress to tighten voting rules before the midterms. Seeing as how it was a big primetime speech, Bartiromo naturally planned to cover it on her show.

. . . However, the night before the speech, Ralph Giordano, Fox Business Network's senior vice president of programming, texted Bartiromo's production team, instructing them not to cover the speech.

When Bartiromo renewed her Fox News Media contract in February of last year, she reportedly negotiated language specifically barring Giordano from having any say over her show. He kept meddling anyway.

Navarro told Byers in a Friday interview that Bartiromo sent him a screenshot of Giordano's instructions to prove management was blocking her coverage, which he described as "censoring" it. Navarro said he passed the information "up the chain" to senior administration officials. An unnamed high-ranking White House official then called Fox News leadership to complain, effectively outing Bartiromo as the source of the leaked guidance.

It came on the heels of a report from the outlet Status claiming Bartiromo had shared internal editorial guidance with the administration, a report both Fox News and a representative for Bartiromo declined to comment on. Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott and President Jay Wallace were reportedly furious, though they let her show continue through the summer before pulling her off the air on August 9.

Bartiromo was named as a defendant in the Dominion and Smartmatic defamation lawsuits, both stemming from 2020 election coverage. Puck also noted that Giordano and Bartiromo already had a tense relationship at the network.

In Friday's post, I tied this to what is simply standard corporate policy, that if anyone reveals internal company documents to anyone outside the company without going througn corporate PR, it can be a terminable offense. This is something whistleblowers have to reconcile with their consciences, but even if they have e-mails that tie the company to murdering toddlers or something, they've got to understand they can be fired for releasing them fair and square.

This is where, on Friday, I couldn't understand why Maria Bartiromo didn't ask Askalawyer.com about it, or failing that, simply talk to her own lawyer about this. Based on the link above, it sounds like she had already anticipated that Ralph Giordano, Fox's Senior VP for programming, would try to meddle in her reporting, and her contract, at least based on the story, already barred him from this.

So as far as I can surmise, Bartiromo did what YouTube lawyer Bruce Rivers advises people against, she turned a misdemeanor into a felony. What was basically a contract dispute that she could have just referred to her agent and her lawyer became a terminable offense. At least, this is what I speculate is the case based on this timeline: (1) She wants to do a story on the 2020 election; (2) Giordano sends her staff a text or e-mail telling them not to; (3) Bartiromo forwards this e-mail to the White house.

Prudence and temperance would have inserted a step (2.5), Bartiromo talks to her agent and attorney and suggests they discuss her contract with Fox's legal. Now, even if Giordano had done something to get Bartiromo's dander up, and she was really, really, really done with Fox, it would have enhanced her value in looking for different work if she'd done this all quietly. Now she's controversial. Walter Cronkite and Edward R Murrow both fully understood they had brands to protect. They didn't let themselves become controversial, at least beyond certain limits, and they were never petty in public.

So even if the Giordano spat was the straw that broke the camel's back for Bartiromo with Fox, her response has damaged her value on the post-Fox job market. Living well is the best revenge, and she seems to have blocked that avenue off.

The Laurentian Elite

Not long ago, I ran across the term "Laurentian Elite" in the context of contemporary Canada. It turns out there's a Wikipedia entry:

The Laurentian elite, also referred to as the Laurentian Consensus, is a Canadian political term used to refer to individuals in the upper class of society who live along the St. Lawrence River and watershed in major Central Canadian cities such as Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto, an area which represents a significant portion of Canada’s population. The term has been used to describe the belief that a general governing political consensus existed in Canada due to the influence of the Laurentian elite from Confederation until the early twenty-first century.

The term is generally attributed to John Ibbitson[.]

. . . Ibbitson described the Laurentians as "the political, academic, cultural, media and business elites" of central Canada who were responsible for shaping Canadian identity. He argued that Laurentians viewed Canada as "a fragile nation" kept together by the federal government but protected from the United States of America.

The entry goes on to say the Laurentian Elite is generally connected to the Liberal Party, but the 2011 election, in which Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party of Canada won a majority, is regarded as a turning point in Canadian politics. However, the Liberals returned to power in 2015 and have retained it ever since, returning to a full majority governmenmt in just this past week's elections. It is thought that Mark Carney was able to exploit traditional anti-Americanism via the trade war with Trump to do this. But let's put this in context:

In an address to the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa some 80 years ago, President Harry Truman declared, “Canada and the United States have reached the point where we no longer think of each other as ‘foreign countries.’ We think of each other as friends, as peaceful and cooperative neighbors on a spacious and fruitful continent.”

Since that press conference, US-Canadian relations have taken a quantum leap backward and are now at their lowest ebb since the War of 1812.

Let's go back to my post here on August 25, when I discussed Canada's strategy in the incipient trade war. I cited Chrome AI mode:

The Ontario provincial government launched a television ad campaign in U.S. border markets invoking the legacy of Ronald Reagan to criticize modern protectionism. By using a conservative icon, the ad specifically targets right-leaning and moderate American voters, warning that tariffs on Canadian goods will ultimately hurt American consumers and destroy local automotive and agricultural jobs.

The Impact: These ads have directly provoked the White House, with President Trump publicly condemning them as "foreign-funded propaganda" at campaign rallies.

How is this going? The video embedded above suggests that the Canadian psyop has been overwhelmed with memes. At 0:49:

"When the Americans stop doing memes, stop throwing shade . . . we can have those discussions." Fresh off his three by-election wins, of course Mark Carney's ready to come back to the trade table, but he wants President Trump and the Americans to stop bullying him. Stop making memes! Well, you knbow what happens when you ask the internet to stop making memes? Well, they start actually making more memes. Oh, boy.

He then posts a succession of memes like the one below:

I'm not sure if the traditional Canada of the Laurentian Elite can survive this, and let's not ignore that the tariff threat to Canada is also existential. If the Canadian establishment is portrayed this way from south of the border -- and let's keep in mind that there are Canadians who find this entertaining as well -- it's hard to avoid thinking Canada's existence, at least as it once thought of itself -- is indeed under threat.

The Maria Bartiromo Flap

NEW: The Maria Bartiromo backstory, per multiple sources familiar....

Maria Bartiromo wanted to pursue a story related to China and 2020 election voting conspiracies... a major sensitivity for the network given its Dominion and Smartmatic lawsuits.

A Fox Business executive sent…

— Dylan Byers (@DylanByers) September 3, 2026

One of the sponsors to Bruce Rivers's often-hilarious Criminal Lawyer Reacts YouTube Channel is Askalawyer.com. For $50 a month, you can get an AI answer, assisted by a real attorney, to your legal questions, and depending on your business, it could be a real bargain. But Rivers often plugs it when discussing some bizarre arrests and convictions, saying "For $50 a month, he could have used Askalawyer.com to find out if it's OK to rob a bank." Somehow, I get this feeling about Maria Bartiromo.

I don't subscribe to Askalawyer.com -- I'm married to a retired attorney who can just as easily explain why I shouldn't rob a bank -- but I did ask Chrome AI mode, "I want to release a text I got from my boss without going through corporate PR. Is there a potential downside?" It answered,

Yes, releasing a text from your boss without going through corporate PR carries massive potential downsides, including immediate termination, legal exposure, and long-term career damage. Going rogue and bypassing your company’s established communication channels means losing the protection of the organization and exposing yourself to personal liability.

According to AOL,

Bartiromo, fifty-eight years old, has since retained Bryan Freedman. Bryan is a Hollywood attorney who has represented the likes of Tucker Carlson, Don Lemon, and Megyn Kelly following their own exits from major media employers.

For $50 a month, she could have asked Askalawyer.com if it was a good idea to send a copy of rhe message from her boss to the White House and avoided the need to pay millions to Bryan Freedman. I think we can be pretty sure that a non-disclosure and non-disparagement clause were both in her contract -- again, for $50 a month, she could have asked Askalawyer.com if either was a good idea. Now she's gotta pay Bryan Freedman to try to fix this.

Here's another reaction:

Maria Bartiromo has learned a lesson that others at Fox News have learned over the years: the patience of the Murdochs is not unlimited, and while they may be conservative and align with Trump in many areas, their ultimate loyalty is only to themselves and their own interests.… pic.twitter.com/x04YfdZG6E

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) September 4, 2026

Sundance at Conservative Treehouse has another insightful reaction:

Maria Bartiromo became increasingly popular amid the MAGA base during the research and revelations surrounding the ‘Spygate’ and ‘Russiagate’ storyline. Bartiromo often had several guests on her Sunday Morning Futures program that highlighted evidence of the corruption in the DOJ, FBI and U.S Intelligence Community. However, it also became more visible that Bartiromo was navigating between sensitive topics that often ran counter to the professional republican class interests in Washington DC.

Over the past few years Bartiromo softened her focus toward corrupt endeavors and began staying away from the most controversial aspects of how the structures of government operate. In a time when nearly all U.S. institutional credibility has crumbled, Bartiromo found herself in that awkward spot where you try to act like you’re not noticing the moment in the show when the marionette strings become visible.

. . . There is always that moment of choice, that time when your influence and affluence no longer run in alignment with uncomfortable truth. It’s a strange dynamic to watch unfold and even more strange when your proximity to the person gives you a different perspective than the average.

Bartiromo did as much as she could, until she couldn’t.

The problem I see is that like it or not, she's voluntarily gotten into the same boat as Tucker Carlson, Don Lemon, and Megyn Kelly, which is to say that her ego may have taken over. We didn't normally think of her in that same media-narcissist category, but maybe we just didn't know her well enough. The problem for anyone in her income bracket -- the AOL link estimates her net worth at $50 million and her annual salary at Fox at $10 million -- is that she's being paid to be a team player. If she no longer wants to be on the team, she really ought to keep her mouth shut and be grateful for what she's had.

Sometimes well-known journalists with reputations for integrity, like Catherine Herridge, find themselves in personnel actions that may raise questions about the reasons for their leaving a network, although Herridge left Foz simply because her contract expired, and she left CBS as part of a larger downsizing. Maria Bartiromo doesn't seem to be quite in Herridge's league, and like Tucker Carlson, Don Lemon, and Megyn Kelly, she'd gotten rich as a team player before her eventual high-profile departure.