Longtime Fox News correspondent-at-large Geraldo Rivera said Wednesday that he is officially done with the cable network’s most-watched show and that next week will be his last as a regular rotating panelist on The Five.
“Morning, it’s official, I’m off @TheFive. My last scheduled show appearances are Thursday and Friday June 29th and 30th,” Rivera tweeted.
“It’s been a great run and I appreciate having had the opportunity. Being odd man out isn’t always easy. For the time being, I’m still Correspondent at Large,” he ominously added.
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In a conversation with the Associated Press later on Wednesday, Rivera claimed that it was his decision to leave The Five, but added that Fox management “didn’t race after me to say, ‘Geraldo, please come back.’”
Rivera’s announcement that he’s gone from the late-afternoon panel show comes a month after he took to Twitter to grumble that his appearances on The Five had begun to dry up.
In early May, he complained that he’d “been canceled” from upcoming broadcasts of the program, adding that he was “sure there’s a good reason” before noting that he’d be back later in the month. The alleged cancellations came after his The Five co-host Greg Gutfeld, whom Rivera has frequently run afoul of, mocked the veteran Fox personality for criticizing Tucker Carlson following the network’s firing of the right-wing star.
While a Fox News insider at the time speculated to The Daily Beast that Rivera’s frequent clashes with Gutfeld may have played a role in Rivera’s reduced appearances, other network sources stated that Rivera hadn’t been on the show’s calendar in the first place.
Early last year, alongside Fox News contributors Jessica Tarlov and Harold Ford Jr., Rivera was named one of the rotating “liberal” co-hosts of The Five. The trio was tapped to take over for longtime panelist Juan Williams, who had vacated the liberal seat months before. Sources told The Daily Beast that Gutfeld, who regularly engaged in heated on-air arguments with Williams, had pushed the progressive commentator of the show.
During his AP interview, Rivera would not comment directly on his relationship with Gutfeld. He did note, however, that there “has been a growing tension that goes beyond editorial differences and personal annoyances and gripes.” He added that as he approached his 80th birthday, it is no longer “worth it to me” as the show is “too intimate a place and it gets too personal.”
Whether Gutfeld played a role in Rivera’s sidelining or not, it is clear that Rivera had become increasingly absent from the show’s panel in recent months. According to a transcript search, Rivera hasn’t been on The Five since May 24 and has only appeared a handful of times since he first publicly groused about being “canceled.”
Rivera, meanwhile, also revealed to the AP that he’d been suspended by the network several times, including as recently as early May. This incidentally came after he tweeted that he’d always found Carlson’s Jan. 6 coverage to be “bullshit,” shortly after Fox fired the star host and prompting the sharp online rebuttal from Gutfeld.
Fox News and Rivera did not respond to The Daily Beast’s requests for comment.
