Greta Van Susteren’s exit from Fox News came as a bit of a shock, but it seems the most surprised person in the whole situation could be Susteren herself. The long-time Fox News host reportedly expected to leave the network after a few weeks according to CNN Money, but her husband is claiming that the end came a bit more sudden than previously alluded to:
A courier arrived at Van Susteren’s Washington, D.C. home at 9 a.m. Tuesday, hand-delivering two letters that said that Van Susteren “was being taken off the air” immediately, according to her husband, John Coale, who is a high-profile Washington lawyer.
Van Susteren was already planning to leave, but she thought she would be hosting her 7 p.m. program “On the Record” for a few more weeks.
Yanking her off the air without a chance to say goodbye was “a bit immature,” Coale remarked.
Coale also says that there could be possible litigation in the future stemming from this decision, claiming this was a message from Rupert Murdoch allegedly stemming from tense contract negotiations. And the courier reportedly wasn’t the end of it according to CNN Money:
The network announced her departure less than an hour after the courier arrived. Van Susteren was not quoted in the press release.
Fox then deleted the “On the Record” web site, Van Susteren’s biography, and her pioneering Gretawire blog — essentially erasing her from FoxNews.com.
Susteren’s swift exit is connected to a clause in her Fox News contract that gave her 60 days to leave the network following Ailes departure. Her decision came on Thursday following the end of the contract negotiations mentioned above, but the report says she might’ve been contemplating an exodus long before Ailes left the network:
Van Susteren was motivated to leave in part because she had been unhappy and uncomfortable with the way Ailes ran the network the past few years, and with the way the network was perceived, two of the sources said.
Even while vocally defending Fox in public, she had concerns in private.
“It didn’t appear it was getting better” after Ailes left, one of the sources said, so she looked to the exit.
This all seems to add a lot of weight to the reports that circled the former Fox figurehead after Gretchen Carlson’s lawsuit went public. It also might add fuel to the speculation that Megyn Kelly could be the next to go.
(Via CNN Money)