Geraldo Rivera has spent the last few weeks dishing about his exit from Fox News at the end of June, and it was no different on Thursday night when he dropped in on Chris Cuomo’s NewsNation primetime show.
Rivera repeated some of the statements he’s made before about his former Fox News colleagues — for instance, his “Toxic” relationship with someone on “The Five.” But during the chat he also revealed a difficult relationship with the Network long before he quit.
So he tells it, long before events that led Fox News to fire Tucker Carlson, it was so protective of the primetime star that in 2021, after Rivera criticized Carlson for pushing lies about the Jan. 6 attack, Fox News suspended him and also forbade him from talking to the media again without the network’s permission.
“When Tucker Carlson came up with his bizarre notion that January 6 was an inside job, that it was a federal informants who were causing trouble, that it wasn’t the insurrection that the rest of us saw, I said that that was a bunch of BS. I called BS on it,” Rivera told Cuomo.
“I got a call as soon as that was published in The Washington Post from Fox executives, who said ‘you’re suspended. You’re not supposed to speak to the press unless you clear it with us,’ which of course is, you know, catch 22 Because they never clear it,” Rivera continued.
Rivera also called out Fox News for what he suggested is its role allowing Tucker Carlson and other network personalities to promote those lies about Jan. 6.
“So, I wanted to speak out on that because I was very offended by it. Everyone knows that it was Donald Trump inciting an insurrection. He inspired those people. He directed those people, he encouraged those people, he sicced those people on the capital of the United States, he stabbed the Constitution in the back. And I think that for FOX to pretend that, you know, there was an honest debate about Jan. 6, or the 2020 election, I think, was obscene,” Rivera said. “And I think it needed to be said.”
Rivera went on to say that he believes “what happened with Donald Trump disqualifies him from ever holding the presidency. I think Chris Christie, among others would be a terrific President of the United States. I think that Donald Trump by doing what he did, by not only denying the election, but then inspiring and unleashing that insurrection, and then encouraging this division in the country, has disqualified himself. And if I have any air left to make my point clear, it will be to that effect—that Donald Trump does not deserve should not be ever again considered for the presidency of the United States.”
Watch Rivera’s comments below:
