Right around the time Barack Obama won re-election, Roger Ailes signed a new contract to continue as chairman and CEO of Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network. A week after the election we sat down with Ailes in his Fox News office. It was graduation day for the Ailes Apprentice Program and Ailes agreed to an extended interview. We started by asking him if he wanted the minority journalist program to be a part of his legacy: “I don’t care about my legacy. It’s too late. My enemies will create it and they’ll push it,” he told us.
With his resignation Thursday, following an internal investigation related to a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by former anchor Gretchen Carlson, we took a look back at that interview. We asked the then-72-year-old Ailes why he wanted to stay on at Fox:
Ailes: Too much pressure on me to leave. Too many people who’d been happy if I left finally pissed me off. If everbody’d shut up I probably would have quietly gone off. I was sitting on my terrace up there and looking at the [Hudson] river and I’m reading a book about the Civil War and I thought, you know, this is not bad. I mean, there’s no use going back to work for money. They’re already taking 55% of what I earn and they’re about to take 60. So it wasn’t the money. But I felt that Fox News was making a contribution to the country.
We also got to talking about Megyn Kelly, who made a name for herself on election night 2012. Her contract was soon to be up:
Ailes: Megyn has a great future. A lot of people will try to recruit her. I think she wants to stay with Fox News. We’ll talk. We have a great relationship. Eventually, we’d love her to stay here and be even a bigger star.
Kelly did stay. And she moved to prime time. Her current contract is up next summer. Kelly’s name surfaced earlier this week in relation to the internal investigation into Ailes. New York magazine reported Kelly was among those who accused Ailes of unwanted sexual advances.
TVNewser: People are very loyal to you…
Ailes: I think talent to some degree see me in that kind of fatherly role and they understand I will get there if they are in trouble. And it’s useful for everybody in life to have somebody that they believe will move heaven and earth to get there and I will. It’s just who I am. I’ll do it, even if I don’t like them, I’ll do it. And If I like them it’ll be even better.