Bob Beckel Bashes Fox News and His Old Show ‘The Five’ in Accidentally Leaked Rant

Former Fox News host Bob Beckel railed against his ex-employer this week in what appeared to be private messages unwittingly made public.

On Monday evening, Beckel posted a series of tweets which seemed to be intended as direct messages for Tom Rogan, the host of a re-launched version of political talk show The McLaughlin Group (the original series ended in 2016 after namesake host John McLaughlin died).

Rogan told The Daily Beast that he had asked the former co-host of The Five to appear as a guest on his weekly political talk show.

In his messages, Beckel wrote that he would be happy to appear on The McLaughlin Group, but suggested that another guest presumably suggested by Rogan—fellow Democratic pollster Pat Caddell, a Fox News contributor—would not work because “Fox will say no.”

Fox News, Beckel continued, would “say no to everything they don’t have a piece of.”

Beckel was fired in 2017 after allegedly making an insensitive comment to a black co-worker, resulting in a racial-discrimination lawsuit. It wasn’t the first time he was fired by Fox: In 2015, the network kicked him to the curb (in particularly vicious form) amid rehab following back surgery.

In his accidentally public rant, the former Democratic TV personality characterized his firing as a “setup.”

“The last thing they want is a successful McLaughlin to upstage my old show The Five,” Beckel wrote. “Despite being setup this is not sour grapes. The Five is getting a bit tired.”

Beckel’s most famous role at Fox was as the curmudgeonly, ostensibly liberal panelist on the network’s mid-afternoon gabfest The Five. He became known for his controversial, often too-honest takes on the news, which included frequent descriptions of his past cocaine and alcohol abuse, as well as calling a Bachelorette star a “slut” and referring to Chinese citizens with the racist slur “Chinamen.”