Juan Williams, the longtime liberal co-host of Fox News’ late-afternoon panel show The Five, announced on-air Wednesday that he was leaving the program.
According to multiple sources familiar with the matter, one major driver of Williams’ sudden departure from the highly-rated opinion show was his run-ins with colleague Greg Gutfeld, who had wanted The Five to return to studio and felt Williams was the main reason they were filming remotely.
A Fox News spokesperson denied that “Gutfeld had anything to do with the move whatsoever” and referred to a statement from the showrunner Megan Albano who explained that Juan wanted to stay in D.C.
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Williams, who has been with the show since 2011, was diagnosed with COVID-19 months ago, forcing the program to return to remote filming. The hosts had briefly resumed broadcasting from the Fox News studios in New York to the in the fall of 2020.
“This is my last day hosting The Five,” Williams said at the end of Wednesday’s broadcast.
“Covid taught me a lot of lessons,” he added. “As the show goes back to the New York studio, I’ll be staying in D.C. I’ll be working for Fox out of Washington. My work as a Fox News political analyst will continue.”
Fox also intends to try out a rotating series of liberal commentators in the immediate aftermath before settling on a permanent replacement for Williams.
“As Juan Williams announced on air today, he will be leaving The Five to live in Washington, D.C. full time. We are incredibly grateful for his commitment to the show and its success over the last several years,” Megan Albano, VP for The Five and Weekend Programming, said in a statement. “As we started planning The Five’s return to its New York City studio at our headquarters a few months ago, Juan decided to stay in Washington, DC permanently.
“We accommodated his request, understanding and appreciating his desire to remain closer to his family and recognizing that a remote co-hosting role on a roundtable in-studio program was not a long-term option,” Albano added. “While we will miss his insightful contributions each night and look forward to welcoming him on set whenever he’s in New York, we are pleased to have him continue his longtime role as a senior political analyst with Fox News Media.”
While Williams’ presence on The Five as the lone liberal pundit had always lent itself to fiery on-air debates and clashes, the tension seemed to ramp up in recent months, especially after the show went back to filming remotely after Williams’ December covid diagnosis. And generally, the tension was highest with co-host Greg Gutfeld.
Besides having near-daily shoutfests with Williams during Five broadcasts, Gutfeld was also outspoken both behind the scenes and on the air about his desire that the program fully return to the studio.
One network insider told The Daily Beast that Gutfeld had been pushing Albano for a while to get Williams removed from The Five, adding that Gutfeld was “really pissed they’re not all back in the studio together and he blames Juan for not being back.”
A former Fox News producer further elaborated, stating they were “very confident” that Gutfeld was behind Williams’ exit. A current staffer also added: “[Gutfeld’s] been wanting the show back in the studio for quite some time.”
Furthermore, Gutfeld and Williams rarely ever spoke with one another off-set, going to great lengths to avoid interacting with each other, something both former and current Fox employees could attest to.
“I heard that their on-air brawls are turning personal,” another ex-Fox News producer said. A current employee further noted that when “you have multiple narcissists on a show, this is the type of shit that goes on.”
“It doesn’t surprise me that much,” a recently departed Fox News staffer said of Williams’ exit. “Gutfeld has been a rising star at Fox for some time and Juan has been known to get in some pretty heated debates. So with those two egos going at each other regularly, I could see it happening.”
The bickering appeared to grow more heated following the January 6 Capitol insurrection, especially when Williams would accuse Gutfeld and his other conservative colleagues of downplaying Donald Trump’s role in the violence. “Don’t mind-read me, Juan!” Gutfeld yelled in February when Williams said he was ignoring the impeachment trial because it was a “reminder” of what Trump did.
But Gutfeld wasn’t the only one that seemed to enjoy mocking Williams on-air. Fox News star Tucker Carlson memorably ridiculed and belittled Williams during a Five segment, complete with his signature high-pitched cackle.
Williams, who has been at Fox since 1997, always seemed acutely aware that he was nothing more than a foil on the show. At the same time, he apparently thought it was important for someone to keep up the fight for the liberal point-of-view at Fox. Some Fox News insiders shared that opinion.
“I’m probably in the minority though of people who think Juan should be on there,” a recently departed staffer said. “I think it’s important to actually have a discussion and not just Jesse and Greg rattling off canned lines.”
The exit of a prominent liberal from one of the network’s most-watched shows comes on the heels of Fox News’ concerted hard-right shift post-election. After Fox News’ early election-night projection of Arizona for Joe Biden angered much of its MAGA viewership, for instance, the network eventually “purged” much of its digital-news staff. Among those laid off was political editor Chris Stirewalt, who was tasked with defending the ultimately accurate election night call.
The network has also restructured both its weekday and weekend programming to incorporate more conservative opinion and less “straight news.” At the same time, it has also gone out of its way to make another roundtable show almost completely devoid of any liberal voices.
Starting in December, the midday panel show Outnumbered benched its two most prominent liberal voices in favor of conservatives firebrands such as Tomi Lahren. Since then, left-leaning voices have very rarely appeared on the show while the network named former Trump press secretary and known liar Kayleigh McEnany as one of the program’s permanent co-hosts.
“They could also go the Outnumbered route and not book Democrats at all for all we know,” one current staffer said of The Five. “Echo chambers are popular these days.”
—Additional reporting by Lachlan Cartwright and Noah Shachtman.
