‘These people are freaks’: Former Fox News analyst compares network to bar scene in Star Wars

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United States Army Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters called Fox News guests “freaks” in a special tell-all programme about working for the network.

On the show titled Fox and the Big Lie: Trump returns to campaign trail amid ‘stolen election’ lawsuits, for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Mr Peters said: “When I left, the guests got more and more bizarre, more distasteful”.

Mr Peters worked at Fox News for years as a military analyst, until 2018 when he accused the network of “assaulting our constitutional order and the rule of law”.

In the room where talking heads would wait to speak to pundits on the show, it became “like the bar scene in the first Star Wars film,” said the colonel. “These people are freaks. Ah, and then you realise, you’re one of the freaks!”

A reporter behind the scenes asked what he means by “freaks”? Mr Peters replied: “People with no qualifications who could not even speak cogently, who could only speak the lines they’d memorised praising Trump, as though he were a heathen God that had to be appeased with slavish rhetoric,” Peters explained.

“Fox isn’t immoral, it’s amoral,” he later said in the interview before referring to his ex-colleagues on the network as “prostitutes” and accusing President Trump of being “enthralled to a foreign power, a hostile foreign power”.

In 2018, after he quit the network he told CNN: “I am convinced that Vladimir Putin has a grip on President Trump,” adding, “I hope I’m wrong”. He’s also criticised the network for “doing it for ratings and profit” and “doing a great grave disservice to our country”.

Mr Peters was initially glad to be associated with the brand, and thought it a necessary conservative and libertarian source, but, he said “with the rise of Donald Trump, Fox did become a destructive propaganda machine, and I don’t do propaganda for anyone.”

A Fox New representative responded with the following statement regarding Mr Peters’ claims in Fox and the Big Lie

“The episode clearly violates the basic tenets of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s published standards by exhibiting bias and a failure to maintain any level of impartiality in the presentation of news and information. The use of five former deeply disgruntled employees, only one of whom was part of the company during our coverage of the 2020 US presidential election and its aftermath, single-handedly discredits all credibility of the programme.

As for the events of 6 January, implicating Fox News in any way is false and malicious. Congressional hearings this past February and the Biden Justice Department not only did not implicate Fox, but other media companies were cited as platforms for inciting and coordinating the Capitol riots. We stand by our coverage with our millions of viewers who have made us the most-watched cable news network in the US for nearly two decades.”