Talk show host Tucker Carlson made some enemies while working at Fox News… and now some of those rivals have spilled
On Tuesday, former Fox News host Geraldo Rivera went on Mediaite’s The Interview podcast to tell all about Carlson.
Rivera said that some Fox News staffers had secretly agreed with his critiques of Carlson.
“I can tell you what happened vis-à-vis me and Tucker, because that was the real substantive part of it. I was shocked and outraged. I mean, I was nauseous over Tucker Carlson’s premise that Jan. 6 was an inside job. So, Tucker Carlson began floating the idea that Jan. 6 was fake… that it was government agents that staged it… to make Trump look bad,” Rivera said.
“It was ridiculous. I actually said it was bulls**t. That’s what I said to either The Washington Post or The New York Times.”
Rivera also accused Carlson of pandering to his audience.
“The worst thing about what he did was the ruthless pragmaticism that he displayed. ‘I’m going to do this because it’s what the audience wants,” Rivera said. “In other words, it wasn’t the malevolent media leading the audience. It was the audience leading the malevolent media… He seemed to me to wilfully embrace something he did not sincerely believe in because it resulted in higher ratings.”
He went on to talk about the staffers secretly nodding along.
“I got calls within Fox, ‘Right on. We’re shocked, we’re outraged by what Tucker is trying to do. Thank you for speaking out,’ people that could not speak out. I even advised some prominent people just to cool it. I could take the heat because I felt I was more bulletproof,” Rivera said.
“I felt that I could say things that others, perhaps more vulnerable or early in their careers, could not say. And so I was suspended for that.”
However, Rivera praised the leadership at Fox.
“They didn’t exactly chase me out the door. Then, they were very, very generous in my leaving. They gave me a party on Fox & Friends that lasted 20 minutes on the air. It was just really love-fest,” Rivera said. “Certainly not mad with anybody at Fox News!”
Rivera also slammed a former co-host on The Five. “Over time, I had a very toxic relationship, as I described it with one or more cast members. The friction was very visible, very tense on the set,” Rivera said. He was presumably referring to former co-host Greg Gutfeld, who berated him on Twitter for distancing himself from Carlson.
Rivera quit Fox News in June after being fired from his co-hosting gig on The Five earlier that month. Tucker Carlson was fired from Fox News in April.
In an interview last year, newscaster Chris Wallace also cited Carlson as his reason for leaving Fox News.
The Horn editorial team