Stephen Hayes and Jonah Goldberg, Fox News contributors since 2009, have resigned from the network in protest over Fox News star Tucker Carlson’s recent Patriot Purge docu-series. The special, which is currently airing on Fox’s online streaming service Fox Nation, pushes a range of conspiracy theories about the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, including the baseless claim that the deadly riot was a “false flag” orchestrated by the federal government.
Revealing their departures to The New York Times’ Ben Smith on Sunday, the now ex-contributors—who founded the center-right Never Trump publication The Dispatch in 2019—called Carlson’s documentary “truly dangerous” and factually inaccurate. “Whether it’s ‘Patriot Purge’ or anti-vax stuff, I don’t want it in my name, and I want to call it out and criticize it,” Goldberg said. “I don’t want to feel like I am betraying a trust that I had by being a Fox News contributor.”
The pair’s views in recent years, however, have fallen by the wayside of the Republican mainstream. As a result, they have been unwelcome on the network’s primetime opinion shows while being seen only occasionally on Fox’s so-called straight news programs like Special Report and Fox News Sunday. Goldberg also said he had some hope that Fox News would “right the ship” after Donald Trump’s 2020 election defeat but that Patriot Purge was “a sign that people have made peace with this direction of things, and there is no plan, at least, that anyone made me aware of for a course correction.”
Carlson, for his part, celebrated Hayes and Goldberg leaving after 12 years, saying it was “great news” and that the network’s “viewers will be grateful.”
Read it at The New York Times
