Tucker Carlson’s exit from Fox News will go down as one of the more shocking developments in cable news history. However, his former colleague and now-former Fox News contributor Geraldo Rivera says the exit was warranted.
During an appearance on The Interview podcast, Rivera said Carlson was allowed to operate in a special manner by Fox News due to his strong ratings.
“He was very, very, very powerful. In discovery in the Dominion lawsuit, you see how arrogant he was; how contemptuous he was. It was pathetic, really pathetic,” Rivera said. “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 going to 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 made a mockery of the tenets of journalism,” Rivera explained.
His contempt for Carlson’s January 6th encapsulation was a factor in his exit from Fox News. After Carlson was fired, Geraldo Rivera called his reporting “bullshit”, which caught the ire of The Five panelist and Fox News late-night host Greg Gutfeld. The pair sparred behind the scenes — which he labeled a “very toxic relationship” — before Rivera’s departure.
