Longtime Fox News Analyst Calls It Quits, Saying He Is ‘Ashamed’ Of The Network
A longtime strategic analyst for Fox News has quit the network and released a searing email to his colleagues there, saying that he is “ashamed” of his association with them and that the network has become a “propaganda machine” for the Trump administration. In his email, Col. Ralph Peters placed particular emphasis on Fox’s primetime lineup for their handling of the Robert Mueller investigation and their attacks on the FBI and intelligence community.
Buzzfeed was the first to report on Peters’ resignation on Tuesday, publishing his entire email to his former coworkers at Fox. In it, he says he was previously proud of his time spent at the network but, in recent times, has become “ashamed,” accusing Fox of “assaulting our constitutional order and the rule of law” as well as “fostering corrosive and unjustified paranoia among viewers.”
He leveled his most intense criticism at what he feels the network has become since the election of Donald Trump.
“In my view, 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.”
He doesn’t mention Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, or Laura Ingraham by name but takes direct aim at the Fox primetime hosts for launching “profoundly dishonest assaults” on the Justice Department and the FBI, and particularly Robert Mueller, whom Peters refers to as “a model public servant and genuine war hero.” He also attacks these hosts for perpetrating paranoia and “scaremongering” about the evil conspiracies of the so-called “deep state.”
The New York Times reports that Peters became an analyst for both the Fox News and Fox Business networks after spending more than two decades as a lieutenant colonel in the army who specialized in Russian intelligence. They point out that he has been considered particularly hawkish and was a strong critic of Barack Obama’s foreign policy, especially what Peters regarded as Obama’s “weak” handling of Vladimir Putin and his “duplicitous folly” in regards to Russia.
Apparently, however, it was his capacity as a Russian analyst and fierce opponent of Putin that truly soured him on Fox News’ current tactics and led to his break from them. Peters claims in his email that the Fox hosts now “advance Putin’s agenda,” saying that the information contained in the Steele Dossier “rings true” to the way he has observed the Russians doing things and that, in Donald Trump, we have an “American president who is terrified of his counterpart in Moscow.”
“Despite increasingly pathetic denials, it turns out that the ‘nothing-burger’ has been covered with Russian dressing all along.”
Fox News has responded by saying that they are “extremely proud of our top-rated prime-time hosts,” and that while Peters was “entitled to his opinion,” he was only making it public to attract attention to himself.
