(NewsNation) — Explaining his departure from Fox News after more than two decades, journalist Geraldo Rivera said he decided to leave after network signaled there wasn’t a place for him anymore on it’s top-rated show.
“Fox left me,” Rivera said Thursday on “CUOMO.”
Rivera, who joined Fox in 2001 as a war correspondent, tweeted last month that he had been fired as a co-host on “The Five.” Earlier Thursday, Rivera said on ABC’s “The View” that he had a “toxic relationship” with one of the other co-hosts, but did not disclose which one.
Rivera frequently sparred with panelist Greg Gutfeld, and their battles recently grew increasingly personal, USA Today reported.
“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 Thursday night in his first prime-time interview since leaving Fox.
Rivera spent 10 years covering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for Fox. When he returned, he made frequent appearances on shows before being installed as a rotating co-host on “The Five.”
“I enjoyed doing the program, but the program apparently didn’t enjoy me,” he said.
Asked by “The View” co-host Sunny Hostin why he wasn’t given the opportunity to host his own show, Rivera said his “ideology does not fit at Fox.”
Rivera had been critical of former anchor Tucker Carlson’s coverage of the 2020 election conspiracy theories and the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the U.S. Capitol.
Carlson was also taken off the air in April shortly after the network settled a defamation lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million. Dominion alleged that Fox harmed its reputation by allowing hosts, including Carlson, to perpetuate lies about the 2020 election.
“I wanted to speak out on that because I was very offended by it,” Rivera said of criticism of Carlson. “Everyone knows that it was Donald Trump inciting an insurrection. … He stabbed the Constitution in the back, and I think that for Fox to pretend that, you know, there was an honest debate about January 6th or the 2020 election, I think was obscene, and I think it needed to be said.”