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After spending two decades at the network, Geraldo Rivera is no longer part of Fox News. Now, Geraldo is on a “media tour” and has been whining about the reasons he claims got him fired from “The Five,” which prompted him to quit the network.
Rivera took his complaints to NewsNation host Chris Cuomo, where he claimed his spats with popular FOX host Greg Gutfeld was the main reason he was fired 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.’”
Rivera said things took a turn for him at Fox News after former primetime host Tucker Carlson’s assessment of the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“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.
WATCH:
Rivera appeared on the ABC talk show “The View” last week and said he had a “toxic relationship” with a co-host he had on “The Five,” but he didn’t name any names.
Rivera’s departure came after sparring on-air for months with Greg Gutfeld, with the two often getting into shouting matches on the air.
The 79-year-old said Fox News offered to move him to another show after it became apparent he could no longer do “The Five,” but he declined and said he would not accept being “demoted” from the most popular cable news show on TV.
“If you fired me from the No. 1 show, then I’m going to quit. And that’s basically what happened,” Rivera said.
In what was obviously a reference to former co-host Jesse Watters, Joy Behar asked Rivera if the “toxic” person was “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.
When he was asked if the person was Judge Jeanine Pirro, Rivera said that he actually discovered her and adored her.
At another point on the show, Rivera said he could “never forgive” Carlson for his coverage of Jan. 6, in which he surmised that there were federal agent provocateurs in the crowd that day.
GERALDO: “I will NEVER forgive Tucker [Carlson] for what he did about January 6th…”pic.twitter.com/DOpEy2QbAl
— Suburban Black Man 🇺🇸 (@niceblackdude) July 13, 2023
In an appearance last week with commentator and comedian Russell Brand on Brand’s podcast, Carlson said he interviewed Steven Sund, who was chief of the Capitol Police on the day of the riot, but that he was fired before the interview aired.
Carlson also praised former President Donald Trump’s stance on Ukraine, noting that he seems to be the only major political figure in Washington right now that is against the war and wants to stop it.
That was apparently too much for Rivera.
“Due respect to Tucker Carlson, but he’s as full of s**t about Ukraine as he was about January 6th,” he tweeted. “His smiley face doesn’t change fact Russia invaded sovereign Ukraine; 1000’s are dead, including women & children, the world order is assailed and Putin is a punk.”
