Stephen Hayes and Jonah Goldberg were apparently holding out hope that the post-Trump era of Fox News, where they have both been paid contributors for over a decade, was just a moment in time. Discussions with network executives had given The Dispatch founders the impression that Fox would “right the ship” in the wake of Donald Trump’s 2020 defeat, as Goldberg told the New York Times. But of course, that never came to pass. In fact, corners of Fox have only grown more extreme (and factually challenged) since Trump dragged his heels out of Washington—an escalation made plain by opinion star Tucker Carlson’s Patriot Purge special on the January 6 riot, which features debunked conspiracy theories about the insurrection’s origins without any factual rebuttal. “I can’t do the rationalizations anymore,” Goldberg told the Times’ Ben Smith, who on Sunday revealed that the conservative commentators had resigned from Fox News last week. To NPR Goldberg added, “We don’t regret the decision. But we found it regrettable that we had to make the decision.”
The plan reportedly started to coalesce last month, the night Carlson’s trailer debuted, when Goldberg texted Hayes, “I’m tempted just to quit Fox over this.” Hayes was of the same mind. “It will lead to violence. Not sure how we can stay,” he replied, according to the Times. (Fox News did not reply to a request for comment on the resignations.)
Carlson’s Patriot Purge has been criticized by everyone from congressional Republicans to Fox’s own correspondents; even Fox News has seemingly tried to distance itself from its contents in emphasizing that the series was not for the channel but for Fox Nation, Fox’s paid streaming service. But “the release of Patriot Purge wasn’t an isolated incident, it was merely the most egregious example of a longstanding trend,” Hayes and Goldberg wrote in a Dispatch blog post Sunday, emphasizing “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.”
Carlson cheered the resignations as “great news” in a statement to the Times, claiming, “our viewers will be grateful,” while never-Trump Republicans took Hayes’s and Goldberg’s side:
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The departure of Hayes and Goldberg, members of a kind of old guard of conservative media, leaves fact-based commentary in even shorter supply at the outlet—not that Fox had been making much use of them lately. CNN’s Brian Stelter noted that the pair, formerly editors at the Weekly Standard, were rarely booked by network producers this year. The post-Trump era at Fox has instead seen a series of programming moves looking to double down on MAGA-aligned voices, with the network giving former Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow a daily show on Fox Business and hiring Kayleigh McEnany, Trump’s former White House press secretary, as an on-air commentator. Meanwhile, Fox News has laid off personnel such as Chris Stirewalt—the political editor who came under fire after the network accurately called Arizona for Joe Biden—and replaced Martha MacCallum’s 7 p.m. show with an opinion program.
Though they are the first to resign over Carlson’s Patriot Purge and the broader radicalization of Fox News that it represents, Hayes and Goldberg are reportedly not alone in their concerns. “According to five people with direct knowledge, the resignations reflect larger tumult within Fox News,” NPR reports, frustration both specific to Carlson’s three-part docuseries and “over the network’s willingness to let its opinion stars make false, paranoid claims against President Biden, his administration and his supporters.” Longtime political anchors Bret Baier and Chris Wallace are said to be among those on the news side who have voiced objections to Fox’s top brass. Carlson’s special was, Goldberg told the Times, “a sign that people have made peace with this direction of things, and there is no plan, at least, that anyone made me aware of for a course correction.”
Though Fox manganate Rupert Murdoch has not weighed in on such worries publicly, he has said he wants Trump to move on from his obsession over his 2020 loss—a fixation that Fox News has helped to inflame. “The current American political debate is profound, whether about education or welfare or economic opportunity,” Murdoch told listeners during the annual News Corp. meeting. “It is crucial that conservatives play an active, forceful role in that debate, but that will not happen if President Trump stays focused on the past. The past is the past, and the country is now in a contest to define the future.”
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