OPINION | This article contains commentary that reflects the author's opinion.
Jonah Goldberg and Steve Hayes regularly appear on Fox News over the past 12 years.
After Tucker Carlson released his documentary called “Patriot Purge,” the pair have announce their resignations.
Goldberg and Hayes explain the documentary was the catalyst for leaving Fox.
Tucker Carlson said their resignations are “great news” and “our viewers will be grateful.”
Carlson added that the two are out of touch. “These are two of the only people in the world who still pretend the Iraq war was a good idea,” Carlson wrote to NPR. “No one wants to watch commentary that stupid.”
According to sources, Fox News said they had no intentions of renewing their contracts in 2022 anyways.
The controversial documentary argues, in Goldberg and Hayes’ opinion, that the U.S. government “is targeting patriotic Americans in the same manner —and with the same tools—that it used to target al Qaeda.”
“This is not happening,” they write. “And we think it’s dangerous to pretend it is.”
Goldberg and Hayes attack Fox News by claiming the network does some “real reporting,” but that the “voices of the responsible are being drowned out by the irresponsible.”
Speaking about Carlson, they said, “If a person with such a platform shares such misinformation loud enough and long enough, there are Americans who will believe—and act upon—it.”
Goldberg and Hayes also take a dig at President Donald Trump.
“Over the past five years, some of Fox’s top opinion hosts amplified the false claims and bizarre narratives of Donald Trump or offered up their own in his service,” they explain.
“In this sense, the release of Patriot Purge wasn’t an isolated incident, it was merely the most egregious example of a longstanding trend.”
“Patriot Purge creates an alternative history of January 6, contradicted not just by common sense, not just by the testimony and on-the-record statements of many participants, but by the reporting of the news division of Fox News itself,” they wrote.
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) November 22, 2021
“It’s basically saying that the Biden regime is coming after half the country and this is the War on Terror 2.0,” Goldberg said.
“It traffics in all manner of innuendo and conspiracy theories that I think legitimately could lead to violence. That for me, and for Steve, was the last straw.”
“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. And I also don’t want to be accused of not really pulling the punches. And then this was just an untenable tension for me,” Goldberg concluded.
