Guilfoyle’s dating Donald Trump Jr. created a quandry for the network
Jon Levine | July 20, 2018 @ 12:37 PM
Last Updated: July 20, 2018 @ 1:57 PM
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FOX News host Kimberly Guilfoyle will leave the network, a spokesperson for the channel confirmed to TheWrap on Friday.
“FOX News has parted ways with Kimberly Guilfoyle,” read a statement.
Guilfoyle, a popular co-host of “The Five,” is in an increasingly serious relationship with President Donald Trump’s son, Don Jr., which raised questions about whether she could cover politics for the network without the appearance of bias. When asked if she will be on “The Five” on Friday night, Fox News confirmed she will not be back on the program to say goodbye and Katie Pavlich will be filling in this evening.
The network would not comment on anything further regarding a potential full-time replacement.
“Look, they seem to be a cute couple and I love a good love story. But doesn’t this radically affect her day job?” CNN media reporter Brian Stelter said on an episode of “Reliable Sources” earlier this month.
“How can any of her colleagues criticize Trump when the president’s son’s girlfriend is sitting right there at the table? Doesn’t this complicate the entire network’s coverage of the Trump family?” he added.
Don Jr. filed for divorce from his wife of 13 years, Vanessa, in April. Guilfoyle, who is several years older than Don Jr., had previously been romantically linked to former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci.
Though Fox News was slow to provide an official confirmation, news of the departure began to leak out early Friday morning. Gabe Sherman was the first with the news, while Yashar Ali published a piece for the Huffington Post citing source who told him Guilfoyle had been forced out and had left unhappily.
Fox News' Jesse Watters: His 10 Most Offensive Moments (Videos)
Shortly after O'Reilly was ousted from Fox News, Watters took his own vacation from the network after coming under fire for making a comment about First Daughter Ivanka Trump, which some interpreted as inappropriate sexual innuendo.
Watters' recurring segment on "The O'Reilly Factor" involved sending the host out to various events and locations across the country for man-on-the-street style interviews that mock various cultural subgroups in their own communities. In a 2016 segment, Watters went after Italian Americans at the Feast of San Gennaro festival.
One of Watters' most controversial segments came in the form of a 2016 venture into New York's Chinatown. In the heavily criticized piece, Watters turned his signature schtick on Chinese Americans, resulting in a blatantly racist segment that played on Asian stereotypes and openly mocked its subjects.
Watters' October 2016 venture to the Amish community in Pennsylvania was turned into one recurring punchline -- over the fact that the Amish don't vote or pay much attention to presidential politics. "Lucky you," he tells several people.
In 2007, O'Reilly sent Watters to ambush Bill Moyers in the street after the PBS host released a documentary criticizing the Bush administration for the Iraq War. Bill O'Reilly would later go on to call that segment a contributing factor in Moyers' decision to retire.
Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com
In 2015, Watters went to Penn Station to criticize the "rise of homelessness" in New York City, pointedly asking those sleeping at the station about their drug habits and what they did to make money on the streets.
On the anniversary of 9/11, Watters went to a convention for Muslim Americans to ask them about terrorism and Islamic radicals. When a woman criticized the media for linking terrorism to the Islamic religion, Watters and O'Reilly both balked at the suggestion that "Christian terrorism" could even exist.
In 2009, Amanda Terkel, then the managing editor of Think Progress, wrote a column in which she said she was "followed, harassed, and ambushed" by Watters while on vacation after she ran a column criticizing Bill O'Reilly for his comments toward rape survivors.
Watters was caught on video getting into a fight at the 2016 White House Correspondents' Dinner afterparty with The Huffington Post's Ryan Grim. It was later reported that Grim approached Watters with a camera asking him to apologize to Terkel for his behavior in 2009.
O'Reilly sent Watters to Philadelphia for a tone-deaf segment about racism in which he mocked the Black Lives Matter movement, criticized political correctness and generally failed to elevate the conversation surrounding race relations in America.
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Bill O’Reilly protégé will have permanent seat on network when “The Five” moves to primetime
Shortly after O'Reilly was ousted from Fox News, Watters took his own vacation from the network after coming under fire for making a comment about First Daughter Ivanka Trump, which some interpreted as inappropriate sexual innuendo.
