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TV Newsers and Politicians React to the Death of Roger Ailes

By A.J. Katz 

As you’ve probably heard by now, former Fox News chairman, CEO and cable news icon Roger Ailes has died at the age of 77.

Drudge Report was the first outlet to report the news, obtaining a statement from his wife Elizabeth earlier this morning.

21st Century Fox and Fox News executive chairman Rupert Murdoch issued the following statement at 10:40 a.m. ET:

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Everybody at Fox News is shocked and grieved by the death of Roger Ailes.
A brilliant broadcaster, Roger played a huge role in shaping America’s media over the last thirty years. He will be remembered by the many people on both sides of the camera that he discovered, nurtured and promoted.
Roger and I shared a big idea which he executed in a way no one else could have. In addition, Roger was a great patriot who never ceased fighting for his beliefs.
At 21st Century Fox we will always be enormously grateful for the great business he built. Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife Elizabeth and son Zachary.

Fox News’s Bill Hemmer read the following statement from Sean Hannity on-air earlier this morning. The statement is based on tweets Hannity had posted on his Twitter account.

Today America lost one of its great patriotic warriors. Roger Ailes. For Decades Roger Ailes has impacted American politics and media. He has dramatically and forever changed the political and the media landscape singlehandedly for the better. Neither will ever be the same again as he was a true American original.

Few people in this life will ever reach the profound level of impact that Roger Ailes had on the country every single day. As his opponents played checkers in life, Roger was always the strategist, playing Chess 5 steps ahead at a whole other level.

On a personal note, were it not for Roger Ailes, I would not be the person I am today. In 1996 he took a huge risk on an inexperienced, young, local radio talk show host in Atlanta. To this day I have no earthly idea why I was hired and not fired early on, as I had little television experience when I was hired by FNC, as old tapes humbly remind me.

He saw something in me and many others he hired that we never saw in ourselves, and forever changed the trajectory of thousands of people’s lives. In many ways he was like a second father after I lost my father 6 months after I started at FNC in 3/97. I am forever grateful.

His endless enthusiasm, energy, wit, humor and raw instinctive intelligence will be greatly missed.

Our thoughts and prayers now turn to him, his Wife Beth, his son Zachary, his brother and his family. He will be deeply missed.

It would be nice if the media would leave Roger and his family alone in their time of grief, but knowing people that hated him and his politics, and those that forget “all have sinned and fallen short” “and cast the first stone”I doubt that will happen.

But to his enemies know this; I say ADVANTAGE ROGER, In his mind he just has a head start in preparing to kick your ass in the next life.

God speed Roger Ailes!

Rivera referred to Ailes as “a deceitful, selfish misogynist” in September 2016.

CBS News chief White House correspondent Major Garrett provided his thoughts on CBSN. Garrett was a Fox Newser from 2002-2010, and the network’s senior White House correspondent during the first term of the Obama administration.

There were reactions from TVNewsers not connected to Fox News:


Brent Bozell, president of the conservative political analysis company Media Research Center:

“I’d like to offer my condolences to the wife and son of Roger Ailes. I knew Roger for over 30 years and from the start I was in awe of his talent. The Left would command a monopoly control of the so-called ‘news’ media but for the Fox News Channel, and FNC would not exist but for him. The good Roger did for America is immeasurable. May he rest in peace.”

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