Last month, newscaster Geraldo Rivera was fired from his co-hosting gig on Fox News Channel’s The Five, and shortly after that, he quit the network entirely.
Now, Rivera is speaking out as to his reason for leaving… and whining and crying about others at the network, including some of his own co-hosts.
Rivera went on ABC’s The View Thursday to discuss his old job. He cited an unnamed co-host as a contributing factor to his exit.
“I was fired from The Five. I had a very toxic relationship with another of the cast members.”
One host on The View asked whether Rivera was referring to Jesse Watters, a talk show host preparing to move to primetime. She asked, “Which one? Does it rhyme with Smeshie Shwaters?”
“I may get there. Check the internet,” Rivera simply said. “It was very unfair… He was always favored in our disputes.”
Some pundits speculated that Rivera was referring to Greg Gutfeld, not Watters.
Gutfeld has butted heads with Rivera not only on the air, but also on social media. In particular, Gutfeld took issue with Rivera’s comments about former co-worker Tucker Carlson. In April, Gutfeld tweeted sarcastically, “You’re a class act Geraldo. A real man of the people.”
Rivera was bashing not only his former co-hosts, but also his former employer. He accused Fox News of treating its staffers as disposable.
“It seems to me there is a period now of fear at Fox,” Rivera said. “They’re cutting back. They’re firing a lot of people… It’s the little guy and girl who are the object of the accountants’ wrath… The high-profile journalists are fine. What happens to the staffers — young and old — I wonder and I worry about them.”
However, Rivera still described his exit as his own decision.
“I got a call from two of the female executives, and they said, ‘You’re off The Five, but there are plenty of other things you could do.’ I had a year and a half left on my contract,” Rivera said. “They were so kind to me, [but] my ideology does not fit Fox. So they always kind of squeezed me in.”
Behar sounded skeptical.
“At first, you said that you left voluntarily. We all say that,” Behar said. “You don’t want to burn a bridge. You don’t want to say, ‘They fired me.’ Then it’s a nasty … You were fighting with one of your co-hosts on that thing, and yet they wanted you out?”
Take a look at his whining and crying —
After being fired from Fox News' 'The Five,' @GeraldoRivera tells #TheView exclusively he left the network because his "ideology does not fit Fox."
"If you fired me from the number one [Fox News] show, then I'm going to quit," he says he told executives. https://t.co/cVclFZQmjA pic.twitter.com/xmTjjsGfvr
— The View (@TheView) July 13, 2023
You’re a class act Geraldo. A real man of the people. https://t.co/20LOwVzXwS
— GregGutfeld (@greggutfeld) April 26, 2023
The Horn editorial team