Geraldo Rivera’s Appearances on Fox News Show Abruptly Canceled

Geraldo Rivera (L) and Erica Levy attend the Cartier Fifth Avenue Grand Reopening Event at the Cartier Mansion in New York City, on Sept. 7, 2016. Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images for Cartier

Fox News host Geraldo Rivera said that all his appearances on “The Five” have been canceled for this week with no explanation why.

“My appearances today and tomorrow on The Five have been canceled. I’m sure there’s a good reason. Never fear, I’ll be back week after next. Stay safe and happy. Thanks,” Rivera wrote, although he did not offer an explanation for why he was removed.

Rivera, 79, has the “liberal” seat on “The Five,” the highest-rated show on the cable news network. Others who sit in the seat include contributor Jessica Tarlov and former Democrat Rep. Harold Ford Jr.

The announcement comes days after Fox News announced the departure of popular host Tucker Carlson, who had previously clashed with Rivera on the air. When Carlson left the network, Rivera appeared to praise the decision in a rare comment from a Fox News host about the move.

“I don’t wish ill on anybody, but there is no doubt—as I said at the time—Tucker Carlson’s perverse January 6 conspiracy theory was [expletive]. Having lost the election President [Donald] Trump incited an insurrection that sought to undermine our Constitutional process,” he wrote last week after Carlson’s confirmed exit.

His co-host, Greg Gutfeld, replied to the Twitter post: “You’re a class act Geraldo. A real man of the people.”

After alleging that his appearances on “The Five” were canceled, Rivera responded to Gutfeld’s reply a week later. “Thank you @GregGutfeld for your kind remarks,” he said.

Both Rivera and Gutfeld have publicly sparred on “The Five,” with the two recently shouting at one another about electric vehicles. At one point during that exchange, Rivera yelled at Gutfeld to “stop pointing at me.”

The Epoch Times has contacted Fox News for comment about Rivera’s Twitter post. The company has not released a public statement about the move.

On Thursday, Rivera responded to The Daily Beast about a question regarding the possible reasons for his being canceled for the week, saying that he couldn’t comment beyond what he said in the public Twitter post.

Rivera’s announcement comes as Fox News continues to see its ratings drop in the wake of Carlson’s departure. While Carlson had averaged about 3 million viewers per show in March, the replacement program, “Fox News Tonight,” was down considerably last week. On Monday evening, MSNBC topped Fox News in overall ratings, data shows.

“We averaged the seven days that Tucker’s been gone from Fox News and compared it with just the last week he was in the seat at 8 p.m. His overall number, that’s everybody who is watching, is down almost 50 percent ... it’s down 47 without him,” former Fox News host Megyn Kelly said on her podcast Thursday. “The key advertising demo, which is the number they care about—25 to 54-year-olds—is down 59 percent at 8 p.m. Fifty-nine—they’ve lost almost two-thirds of the audience that helps pay their bills. They’re left with about a third of their audience.”

Since Carlson’s exit, Fox News has offered no comment on why he left, if he is still under contract, or the nature of the parting. Carlson, too, has remained mostly silent on the departure. Carlson appeared at a fundraiser event in Alabama on Thursday night in his first public appearance since leaving the network.

“I’m probably the first unemployed person you ever invited to speak,” he joked on Thursday. “It’s funny. I never give speeches because I’m working. When I accepted this speech six months ago or something, I didn’t realize how much free time I would have. One never knows, does one?”

Rather than focusing on Fox News and political issues, Carlson spoke about dogs, family, and highlighting charitable work, according to local media outlet AL.com.

“We went through this weird, kind of mass hypnosis where everyone was convinced we had to move to some horrifying concrete city in order to make a living and forgot that actually you need to see green, or else you’ll go insane. If you’re alienated from God’s creation, you become fundamentally alienated. Nature is the most beautiful thing,” Carlson said at one point.

“Driving around here today, I thought to myself, you think of Alabama, if you don’t live in Alabama, as a place that has a lot of past attached to it. And I thought today, especially reading the numbers about what’s happening in your state, Alabama is not the past, Alabama’s the future.”