Trish Regan Parts Ways with Fox Business After Dismissing Coronavirus as an 'Impeachment Scam'
Trish Regan, the anchor who previously dismissed the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak as an “impeachment scam” to throw President Donald Trump out of office, has left the Fox Business network.
The network announced her departure on Friday, saying in a statement, “FOX Business has parted ways with Trish Regan – we thank her for her contributions to the network over the years and wish her continued success in her future endeavors.”
“We will continue our reduced live primetime schedule for the foreseeable future in an effort to allocate staff resources to continuous breaking news coverage on the Coronavirus crisis.”
Regan, 47, said in a statement of her own, “I have enjoyed my time at FOX and now intend to focus on my family during these troubled times. I am grateful to my incredible team at FOX Business and for the many opportunities the network has provided me. I’m looking forward to this next chapter in my career.”
The former Trish Regan Primetime host made waves earlier this month when she accused liberals of using the coronavirus to “demonize and destroy the president” on a March 7 episode of her show.
In front of a graphic reading “Coronavirus Impeachment Scam,” Regan told viewers, “The chorus of hate being leveled at the president is nearing a crescendo as Democrats blame him and only him for a virus that originated halfway around the world. This is yet another attempt to impeach the president.”
“This is a time to be united, not to be pointing fingers, not to be encouraging hate,” she said, before accusing the liberal media of “using coronavirus in an attempt to demonize and destroy the president.”
After showing a video montage of members of the media criticizing Trump’s response to the outbreak, Regan told her viewers, “They want to blame him for literally anything they can and they have no real interest, shall we say, in finding who’s to blame — who is the root cause of this. From what we can tell, this all originated out of China.”
A post shared by Trish Regan (@trish_regan) on Feb 11, 2020 at 8:24am PST
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The first cases of a mysterious respiratory illness — what is now known as COVID-19, a form of coronavirus — began in Wuhan, China in late December. Since then, the virus has spread worldwide, leading the World Health Organization to declare a public health emergency, the first since the zika epidemic in 2016.
At first, this coronavirus was contained to China, but Wuhan is a major transportation hub with hundreds of flights leaving and landing from the city of 11 million each day. Soon, as people flew from the area to different countries, the coronavirus reached more countries, including the United States.
The first U.S. case was found in Everett, Washington, just outside of Seattle, in a man who had recently returned from Wuhan. The number of cases grew slowly from there and the virus began to spread more rapidly in communities across the U.S.
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While Trump had earlier claimed Democrats were trying to politicize the coronavirus as a “hoax” to damage him, the president has pointedly changed his tone when discussing the seriousness of the virus in recent days.
Trump had also previously downplayed the virus in comparison to the seasonal flu, though experts say it is much more dangerous if it is able to infect as many people.
As of Friday afternoon, there have been at least 101,819 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the U.S., with 1,619 deaths from coronavirus-related illness. The U.S. now has the most coronavirus cases in the world, ahead of China and Italy.
As information about the coronavirus pandemic rapidly changes, PEOPLE is committed to providing the most recent data in our coverage. Some of the information in this story may have changed after publication. For the latest on COVID-19, readers are encouraged to use online resources from CDC, WHO, and local public health departments and visit our coronavirus hub.
