Former Fox News personality Geraldo Rivera dished the scoop on his calling it quits at the conservative network and took more cheap shots at his former colleagues, reserving his most contemptuous words for Tucker Carlson.
Rivera, who has been a fixture of American television journalism for decades, talked about his post-Fox life with Aidan McLaughlin and Diana Falzone of Mediaite on the latest edition of “The Interview” podcast, telling the hosts about why he chose to sever ties with his employer of 23 years after he was booted from “The Five” where he clashed with his co-hosts.
“I should have left a long time ago,” he said. “But for various reasons, not the least of which was my own insecurity about where I would end up, I stuck around and I stayed too long at the dance.”
Rivera also opened up about his fighting with “The Five” co-host Greg Gutfeld with whom he feuded, saying that he was suspended multiple times over the fighting. “They always took his side,” he recalled. “I could sense that I was hanging by a thread.”
He didn’t seem to hold any grudges with the network itself over his ouster from the top-rated show.
“They made a very pragmatic decision, a business decision. And it looks in retrospect that they made the right decision,” he said.
“Was I satisfied with how Fox handled the tensions?” Rivera asked. “No. The other cast members were perceived to be far more significant to the overall thrust of the program than I was. And so I became a kind of collateral damage. If you look at how well that program has done since I’ve left,” noting that ratings are “back up.”
“So I can’t say that they’ve made the wrong decision.”
He was far less charitable when it came to Carlson, a man whom he has a history of criticizing.
“I was nauseous over Tucker Carlson’s premise that January 6 was an inside job,” he said. “I was shocked and outraged.”
(Video: Grabien)
“He was very, very, very powerful,” he said of Carlson. “In the discovery in the Dominion lawsuit, you see how arrogant he was, how contemptuous he was….”
“It was pathetic, really pathetic,” Rivera added. “He really got way too big for his britches…The worst thing about what he did was the ruthless pragmatism that he displayed. I’m gonna do this because that’s what the audience wants. In other words, it wasn’t the malevolent media leading the audience. It was the audience leading the malevolent media.”
“What he did was unforgivable,” he said. “He made a mockery of the tenets of journalism”
“I don’t like to be unkind, but that’s what he did, just as I would never vote for Donald Trump, I will never forgive Tucker for what he did about January 6th,” Rivera – who is fully invested in the official “insurrection” narrative, told the harpies on “The View” last month.
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