Fox News Stars Forced to Issue On-Air Apology After Shark Tank's Kevin O'Leary Pushed Unsubstantiated Claim

Fox News host Maria Bartiromo issued an on-air apology after Shark Tank star Kevin O'Leary falsely alleged that China funded Utah-based opponents of his AI data center project.

The retraction, aired across multiple programs, followed legal threats and confirmed that no evidence supported the claims, clearing five specific critics.

“Mr. O’Leary has now corrected the record and explained that he has no evidence that the Alliance for a Better Utah, Elevate Strategies, Josh Kanter, Taylor Knuth, or Gabriel Finlayson are funded by China or the Chinese Communist Party,” Bartiromo said.

“Fox News Media is likewise aware of no evidence that they are funded by, acting at the direction of, or coordinating with Chinese interests in opposing Kevin O’Leary’s project. Fox News Media apologizes for the error," she concluded.

On Thursday, June 25, the Shark Tank investor-turned-actor took to X to walk back his previous accusations, clarifying he had "no evidence" that China or the Chinese Communist Party funded local groups.

O'Leary originally made the claims on various Fox News and Fox Business programs in May, alleging these local organizations were acting as "proxies for the Chinese government" to slow down American AI infrastructure.

His coordinated retraction on social media forced Fox News to go on a rare on-air apology tour. Several hosts, including Bartiromo, Johnny Joey Jones and Kayleigh McEnany, had to correct the record and read on-air apologies to the named individuals and organizations, stating the network found no proof that the critics were operating under Chinese coordination.

Journalist Oliver Darcy noted that the “coordinated cleanup effort” from Fox News is a rare “display of remorse from a network that seldom assumes such a defensive posture.”

In 2023, Fox News agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems $787.5 million and acknowledged the court's earlier ruling that Fox had broadcast false statements about Dominion claiming their voting machines were used to rig the 2020 presidential election against Donald Trump. The settlement did not require Fox News to apologize. It is the largest known media settlement for defamation in U.S. history.

“What exactly prompted O’Leary and Fox to embark on this unusual apology tour remains unclear, but it’s a safe bet that a legal threat was involved,” Darcy wrote. “Once O’Leary publicly acknowledged he had no evidence for his allegations, Fox was left in an uncomfortable position.”

The project in question is the massive Stratos data center being developed in Box Elder County, Utah.

It has faced immense local backlash over concerns about water usage, carbon emissions and electricity demands.

Following this public opposition and a recent decline in political support for the developers, the project's footprint was significantly reduced.

O’Leary has been vehement in his arguments, making his X post seem somewhat tepid.

“Who would want us to stop building our electrical grid? Who would want to stop us from having the computing capacity to develop AI? Which adversary would want that? There’s only one. It’s China,” O’Leary said during his May appearance on Bartiromo’s show while wearing a “Utah National Security” hat.