Andrea Tantaros

Andreana Kostantina Tantaros (born December 30, 1978) is an American conservative political analyst and commentator who currently rotates as a co-host on The Five and Outnumbered on Fox News Channel at 5 pm EST and 12 pm EST, respectively.^[3] Tantaros also appears regularly on the Fox Business Channel and writes a weekly column for the New York Daily News and Newsmax.^[4][5]

Biography

Personal life

Tantaros was born in Allentown in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania on December 30, 1978 to an immigrant Greek family. As a teenager, she worked as a waitress in her family's restaurant, the "Pied Piper Diner", near Trexlertown.^[6][7]

She graduated from Parkland High School^[8] in 1997. In 2001, Tantaros graduated from Lehigh University, where she majored in journalism and French and wrote political commentary for Lehigh's college newspaper.^[9] Tantaros pursued graduate studies at the Sorbonne.^[4] Tantaros lives in New York City.^[5]

Tantaros is dating musician Dave Navarro, guitarist for the band Jane's Addiction and former husband of actress and model Carmen Electra.^[10]

Professional life

Tantaros lived in the Washington, D.C. area from 2003 to 2005. She worked on Capitol Hill, where she served as Press Secretary to the Republican leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives. She has worked on political campaigns for former Governor of Massachusetts Bill Weld, District Attorney Jeanine Pirro and Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Thomas Reynolds. During her time with the House leadership, Tantaros was responsible for helping craft and execute the media strategy for the Republican majority. Tantaros also worked at CNN's Crossfire, for former Reagan pollster Richard Wirthlin, and as Deputy Press Secretary to then Congressman (now Senator) Pat Toomey.^[11]

Having moved to New York City in 2005, Tantaros is currently a vice president at the Manhattan public affairs firm Sloane and Company.^[4] Prior to this position, she started Andrea Tantaros Media, which provided crisis management and media strategy consulting to Fortune 500 companies and political campaigns.^[12]

Tantaros joined Fox News Channel in April 2010 as a political contributor.^[12] She has appeared on FOX NEWS, CNN, CNBC, and MSNBC.^[4] She appeared on the Fox channel during the morning time period where she debated Bob Beckel and Juan Williams in the political segments. She continues to co-host on The Five on Fox News.^[13] She is represented by the William Morris agency.^[14]

It was announced on December 19, 2012, that Andrea Tantaros would co-host a national radio talk show with conservative author Jason Mattera on Talk Radio Network starting on January 2, 2013, in the time slot previously held by Laura Ingraham. The show would air Monday to Friday and would be called The Andrea Tantaros Show with Jason Mattera. At the end of the August 12, 2012, episode of The Five during the "One More Thing" segment, Beckel announced Tantaros would no longer appear during the morning time period on Fox News because of her new radio show. Tantaros continued her association with the Fox news program The Five. On October 10, Tantaros discontinued her radio program, The Andrea Tantaros Show, and filed suit against the show's provider, Talk Radio Network, for breach of contract.^[15] She intends to return to Fox News full-time.

On the edition of August 20, 2014 of Outnumbered, in response to ISIL's beheading of James Foley, Tantaros, serving as co-host, spoke about Muslims, Islam and ISIS interchangeably. “They’ve been doing this for hundreds and hundreds of years if you study the history of Islam,” she said. "This isn't a surprise. You can’t solve it with a dialogue. You can’t solve it with a summit. You solve it with a bullet to the head.".^[16] In response, the Asian American Journalists Association called the comment "alarming", "inflammatory" and "Islamophobi[c]" and demanded an apology.^[17] Tantaros declared that she has "no intention of apologizing".^[18]

On October 23, 2014; in response to model Chrissy Teigen's tweet over the prevalence of gun violence in America, Tantaros said on Outnumbered: "This is the problem when models start to talk. It plays into that dumb model stereotype. Because it’s too soon for her to weigh in, and also conflate gun control and crime in America with a global war against radical Islamic jihadism. She clearly doesn’t know about the radical Islamic threat to the nation, she hasn’t educated herself, but when she does stuff like this you’ve just got to shake your head.”^[19]

In December 2014, Tantaros discussed a recently released Senate report on torture in the CIA using terms that earned mention internationally in Al Jazeera, Bustle, The Week, The Washington Post, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph, and others. Speaking to a fellow co-host on Fox News, Tantaros said: "And look, I agree with you, the United States of America is awesome. We are awesome. The reason they want to have this discussion is not to show how awesome we are. This administration wants to have this discussion to show us how we’re not awesome." ^[20]

References

External links

• Official website
• Bio on FoxNews.com