Fox Analyst Quits Over Trump, Network Cowardice
Fox News has been selling lies for decades. They have never had trouble finding willing anchors and analysts to spread their agenda. Until recently that is. Fox has lost multiple personalities to sexual misconduct allegations (most notably Bill O’Reilly). The current line up on Fox News features stuffed suits like Tucker Carlson and blowhard/ intellectual lightweight Sean Hannity. With weak personalities as the faces of the franchise, Fox is relying more than ever on collaboration with analysts. One such analyst (who had no trouble towing the company line for years) has had enough. For Ret. Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, the failure of Fox to report honestly regarding Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential Election has crossed the line from political shenanigans to “assaulting our constitutional order and rule of law”.
A longtime Fox News commentator on Tuesday let the network have it in a scathing letter to colleagues announcing his departure.
In an email to Fox News staff, first obtained by BuzzFeed News, strategic analyst Ret. Lt. Col. Ralph Peters claimed he decided not to renew his contract earlier this month because of how “ashamed” he is of Fox.
Peters attributed his decision to Fox’s defense of President Trump amid alleged Russian collusion in the 2016 presidential election, declaring that the network was increasingly “wittingly harming our system of government for profit.”
“Fox News is assaulting our constitutional order and the rule of law, while fostering corrosive and unjustified paranoia among viewers,” he wrote in the email. “Over my decade with Fox, I long was proud of the association. Now I am ashamed.”
He continued: “Fox has degenerated from providing a legitimate and much-needed outlet for conservative voices to a mere propaganda machine for a destructive and ethically ruinous administration.”
The retired colonel did make carve-outs for some colleagues.
He exempted the increasingly political Fox Business Network—which The Daily Beast has reported as even more pro-Trump than its sister channel—as well as some hosts and reporters who have “shown courage” by standing up to the “propaganda mouthpiece.”
But for a negative association, Peters singled out Fox’s primetime hosts for repeatedly running block for Trump by dismissing and agitating against federal law enforcement and Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
“When prime-time hosts—who have never served our country in any capacity—dismiss facts and empirical reality to launch profoundly dishonest assaults on the FBI, the Justice Department, the courts, the intelligence community (in which I served) and, not least, a model public servant and genuine war hero such as Robert Mueller—all the while scaremongering with lurid warnings of ‘deep-state’ machinations—I cannot be part of the same organization, even at a remove,” Peters wrote.
