Geraldo Rivera departed Fox News in 2016 after twenty years of service. Geraldo is presently on a “media tour” and has been complaining about the alleged events that led to his dismissal from “The Five” and subsequent departure from the network.
Rivera complained to NewsNation host Chris Cuomo that his conflicts with popular FOX personality Greg Gutfeld were the primary reason for his dismissal from “The Five.”
“Fox left me. They fired me from the number one rated show ‘The Five.’ After they fired me, I said, ‘Well, wait a second. You know, I don’t want to work here anymore.’ If you are firing me from the number one show, what are you going to do?” Rivera said. “After they fired me, they gave me a plethora of options, other programs I could do … but I said, ‘No, I don’t want to do that.’”
On January 6, 2021, after former primetime host Tucker Carlson’s assessment of the violence at the U.S. Capitol, Rivera asserted that things changed for him at Fox News.
“When Tucker Carlson came up with his bizarre notion that Jan. 6 was an inside job, that it was 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 said.
“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 Catch-22 because they never clear it,” he added.
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Last week, Rivera appeared on the ABC talk program “The View” and said he had a “toxic relationship” with a co-host he had on “The Five,” but he did not specify who.
Greg Gutfeld and Geraldo Rivera frequently engaged in on-air shouting contests for several months.
The 79-year-old claimed Fox News offered to transfer him to another program when it became apparent he could no longer host “The Five,” but he declined and stated he would not accept being “demoted” from the most popular cable news program on television.
“If you fired me from the No. 1 show, then I’m going to quit. And that’s basically what happened,” Rivera said.
Joy Behar questioned Rivera about the “toxic” individual, referring to former co-host Jesse Watters by saying “Smeshy Shwaters.”
“I thought it was very unfair that I was not judged objectively in our disputes, but rather he was always favored,” he said.