Geraldo Rivera revealed on "The View" on Thursday that the "very toxic relationship" he had with one of his co-hosts on Fox News' "The Five" contributed to his termination from the program and subsequent departure from the network. His retirement from Fox, Rivera explained, came before his contract with the network was slated to end, but he decided "if you fired me from the number one show, then I'm going to quit. And that's basically what happened."
He dodged "The View" hosts' attempts to get him to say which co-star he had the sour relationship with, whom Rivera referred to explicitly as "he," during the appearance, urging the hosts to "check the Internet" to find out. Tensions between Rivera and his former co-host Greg Gutfeld have been widely publicized both on and off air, including when Gutfeld jeered Rivera on Twitter for his comments about former Fox anchor Tucker Carlson's firing earlier this year. "Sure, and also I thought that it was very unfair that I was not judged objectively in our disputes but rather he was always favored and I was the one — I was suspended, you know, three times," Rivera said after Sara Haines asked if the toxic relationship was why he was axed from the show. "My appearances, I had two, three appearances scheduled weekly, then biweekly, then monthly, then they kind of disappeared. They were canceled in the last day right before I was supposed to go on, so I was really ticked off."
Shares