Former Fox News pundit Geraldo Rivera said he was personally offended by the way Tucker Carlson, another former host on the network, has portrayed the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“I wanted to speak on that, because I was very offended by it,” Rivera said during an appearance Thursday on Chris Cuomo’s NewsNation program. “Everyone knows that it was Donald Trump inciting [an] insurrection. He inspired those people, he directed those people, he encouraged those people … and I think for Fox to pretend that there was an honest debate about Jan. 6 or the 2020 election was obscene, and it needed to be said.”
He said his statement about Trump’s responsibility for the Jan. 6 attack was “counterintuitive to the direction they [Fox] were headed,” during his time at the network, adding, “I was not going to go there.”
Rivera was fired earlier this month from “The Five,” Fox’s leading daytime talk show and the most-watched on cable. He said after he was taken off the show that he decided to quit the network.
He also took part in a number of media interviews, speaking about the circumstances of his leaving the network after more than two decades.
“Fox left me,” he said at one point during his interview with Cuomo.
Carlson was taken off the air by Fox in April, days after it agreed to pay $787 million to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems over its coverage of the 2020 election.
The prime-time host had come under bipartisan criticism for his portrayal of the events of Jan. 6, which he at one point he referred to on his prime-time show as “mostly peaceful chaos.”
Rivera, 80, has not said if he has any plans for the future of his broadcasting career.
Cuomo praised Rivera’s work for Fox and spoke to his audience Thursday about his personal relationship with the longtime television news personality.
NewsNation is owned by Nexstar Media Group, which purchased The Hill in 2021.