Andreana Kostantina Tantaros (born December 30, 1978) is an American conservative political analyst and commentator. She was a co-host of ''
Outnumbered'' on
Fox News
The Fox News Channel (FNC), commonly known as Fox News, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Conservatism in the United States, conservative List of news television channels, news and political commentary Television stati ...
from 2014 to 2016 and an original co-host of ''
The Five''.
Early life and education
Tantaros was born December 30, 1978, in
Allentown, Pennsylvania
Allentown (Pennsylvania Dutch language, Pennsylvania Dutch: ''Allenschteddel'', ''Allenschtadt'', or ''Ellsdaun'') is a city in eastern Pennsylvania, United States. The county seat of Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, Lehigh County, it is the List o ...
, where she attended and graduated from
Parkland High School in
South Whitehall Township, Pennsylvania. Her father is a
Greek immigrant, and her mother is of Italian descent. Her family owned the Pied Piper Diner, where she worked.
Tantaros graduated from
Lehigh University
Lehigh University (LU), in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, United States, is a private university, private research university. The university was established in 1865 by businessman Asa Packer. Lehigh University's undergraduate programs have been mixed ...
in
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
Bethlehem is a city in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, Northampton and Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, Lehigh counties in the Lehigh Valley region of eastern Pennsylvania, United States. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, Bethle ...
with a degree in French and journalism, and is also fluent in Greek and Spanish. As she was finishing her degree, she worked as an intern for
CNN's ''
Crossfire'' program, and assisted in covering the
Republican National Convention
The Republican National Convention (RNC) is a series of presidential nominating conventions held every four years since 1856 by the Republican Party in the United States. They are administered by the Republican National Committee. The goal o ...
in
Philadelphia
Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...
. Her journal notes during the experience describe her advising herself to "Make yourself invaluable. Ask questions...Be a jack of all trades." She attended the
University of Paris
The University of Paris (), known Metonymy, metonymically as the Sorbonne (), was the leading university in Paris, France, from 1150 to 1970, except for 1793–1806 during the French Revolution. Emerging around 1150 as a corporation associated wit ...
, where she earned a master's degree. After returning from
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
in 2003, Tantaros moved to
Washington, D.C.
Career
Tantaros worked as a spokeswoman for Massachusetts governor
William Weld, then Congressman
Pat Toomey, and former
National Republican Congressional Committee
The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) is the United States Republican Party, Republican Hill committee which works to elect Republicans to the United States House of Representatives.
The NRCC was formed in 1866, when the Repub ...
chairman
Thomas Reynolds. In 2005, she moved to New York City and launched Andrea Tantaros Media, which provided crisis management and media strategy consulting to
Fortune 500
The ''Fortune'' 500 is an annual list compiled and published by ''Fortune (magazine), Fortune'' magazine that ranks 500 of the largest United States Joint-stock company#Closely held corporations and publicly traded corporations, corporations by ...
companies and political campaigns.
Fox News
In April 2010, Tantaros joined
Fox News
The Fox News Channel (FNC), commonly known as Fox News, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Conservatism in the United States, conservative List of news television channels, news and political commentary Television stati ...
as a political contributor.
In 2011, she was named a co-host of ''
The Five''. Several months after its launch, ''The Five'' audience exceeded that of competitors
MSNBC
MSNBC is an American cable news channel owned by the NBCUniversal News Group division of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. Launched on July 15, 1996, and headquartered at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan, the channel primarily broadcasts r ...
and
CNN combined. By 2013, ''The Five'' was the second-most watched program on United States cable news.
In 2014, Tantaros went on to co-host ''
Outnumbered'' on Fox News. In December 2014, in response to a
U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee report on
CIA torture programs, Tantaros said on ''Outnumbered'', "The United States of America is awesome. We are awesome, but we've had this discussion ... about torture." "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." This is because "they apologized for this country, they don't like this country, they want us to look bad. And all this does is have our enemies laughing at us, that we are having this debate again."
Sexual harassment complaints and departure
Tantaros filed formal complaints of sexual harassment against
Fox News
The Fox News Channel (FNC), commonly known as Fox News, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Conservatism in the United States, conservative List of news television channels, news and political commentary Television stati ...
personnel. On April 25, 2016, she was pulled from the show for what Fox News said were "contract issues". In August 2016, Tantaros filed a lawsuit claiming that she approached Fox News executives about
Roger Ailes sexually harassing her in 2015. She said that her allegations resulted first in her being demoted from ''The Five'' to ''Outnumbered'', and then in her being taken off the air in April 2016. The lawsuit also claimed that
Bill O'Reilly,
Dean Cain, and
Scott Brown made inappropriate comments to her, and that Brown and Cain touched her without her consent. Brown, Cain, and O'Reilly all denied her allegations. Her amended complaint, filed on January 29, 2018, contained details intended to back up her claims of a culture of harassment, including spying on employees, at the network. However, that complaint, too, was rejected; on May 18, 2018, Judge
George B. Daniels threw the case out, citing lack of "factual support." Without any formal legal training, Tantaros represented herself in the case after having gone through three lawyers.
Book
In 2016, she authored ''Tied Up in Knots: How Getting What We Wanted Made Women Miserable'', published by Broadside Books (). Later that year, in October 2016, Tantaros' editor
Michael Malice sued her under his original name Michael Krechmer, claiming that he was the
ghostwriter
A ghostwriter is a person hired to write literary or journalistic works, speeches, or other texts that are credited to another person as the author. Celebrities, executives, participants in timely news stories, and political leaders often h ...
of the book, and Tantaros did not pay him the full amount to which they agreed. Tantaros responded that she wrote the book herself, and her attorney at the time said, "We have good reason to believe Fox News is behind this case." Tantaros said that Malice fed information about her and the book to Fox News in violation of her confidentiality agreement with him as her editor.
The lawsuit was dismissed.
Malice appealed the dismissal and lost.
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Tantaros, Andrea
1978 births
Living people
21st-century American women journalists
21st-century American journalists
21st-century American women writers
American columnists
American political commentators
American political writers
American women columnists
American women non-fiction writers
American writers of Greek descent
American writers of Italian descent
Fox News people
Journalists from Pennsylvania
Lehigh University alumni
Parkland High School (Pennsylvania) alumni
Pennsylvania Republicans
University of Paris alumni
Writers from Allentown, Pennsylvania