Roger Ailes On The Departures Of Sarah Palin, Dick Morris

By Alex Weprin 

Following the release of a biography about his life and career by Zev Chafets, Fox News CEO Roger Ailes talks to Howard Kurtz in The Daily Beast about some of the things mentioned in the book. In particular, Ailes talked about the departures of contributors Sarah Palin and Dick Morris.

“I like Sarah Palin,” Ailes says. “I think she got pounded harder by the media. The only people who got it worse were Richard Nixon and George W. Bush, and that was over a longer period of time. Sarah would say she probably was responsible for some of the bad press she got and made some mistakes along the way.”

So why did he cut her loose?

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“Nothing’s forever. We purposely took a general cooling-off after the election. Everyone was exhausted from it.”

As for Morris:

Ailes says he likes Morris but that “Dick made a lot of mistakes in this thing. He looked like a jerk. He apologized.”

I ventured that Fox, in dropping those commentators while hiring former Massachusetts senator Scott Brown, seemed to be moderating its image. Ailes scoffed at the notion but added, “I also got hit from the right because I hired Dennis Kucinich,” the former Democratic congressman.

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