Fox News Contributor Quits, Calls Network a ‘Propaganda Machine’

Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, an Army veteran and Fox News contributor, quit the network on Tuesday in an email to his colleagues, saying he was “ashamed” of working there.

As first reported by Buzzfeed News, Peters chose not to renew his contract after serving as a contributor for more than a decade, as he feels that, “Fox News is assaulting our constitutional order and the rule of law, while fostering corrosive and unjustified paranoia among viewers.”

“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 continued in the email obtained by Buzzfeed. “When primetime 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 specifically targeted Fox News’ coverage of Trump’s connection to Russia and President Vladimir Putin, noting that he was a Russia analyst for many years. “It also has appalled me that hosts who made their reputations as super-patriots and who, justifiably, savaged President Obama for his duplicitous folly with Putin, now advance Putin’s agenda by making light of Russian penetration of our elections and the Trump campaign. Despite increasingly pathetic denials, it turns out that the ‘nothing-burger’ has been covered with Russian dressing all along,” he said.

At the end of the statement, the former contributor said his criticisms did not apply to Fox Business, who he called “the grownups,” and signed off with “as our president’s favorite world leader would say, ‘Dasvidanya,'” which is Russian for “goodbye.”

In a statement, Fox News responded to Peters’ comments, saying, “Ralph Peters is entitled to his opinion, despite the fact that he’s choosing to use it as a weapon in order to gain attention. We are extremely proud of our top-rated primetime hosts and all of our opinion programming.”

In 2015, Fox News briefly suspended Peters for calling then-President Barack Obama a “p—-” on live television. He was a frequent critic of Obama’s foreign policy decisions.

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