Conservative pundit Jonah Goldberg threw a wrench into the works at Fox News on Sunday after he accused network hosts of lying about the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election.
February 1, 2021

Conservative pundit Jonah Goldberg threw a wrench into the works at Fox News on Sunday after he accused network hosts of lying about the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election.

Fox News host Howard Kurtz began the segment by asserting that liberals are engaging in "cancel culture" in an effort to silence conservatives.

"I have to be honest about this," Goldberg replied. "This is an American problem. There is a vast and thriving right-wing cancel culture. There's a vast and thriving left-wing cancel culture."

"President Trump was a huge fan of cancelling people," he continued. "He tried to have me fired from Fox and from National Review because he didn't like what I wrote. This is a problem that we have in America of just widespread intolerance for disagreement."

Kurtz pushed back: "He personally tried to have you fired?"

Goldberg reminded the Fox News host that Trump "expressed a burning desire to not see me on Fox anymore and he definitely tried to have me fired from National Review."

Kurtz responded by complaining that liberals are trying to cancel "certain opinion people" at Fox News.

"It's absolutely true that there are people who want to see Fox nuked from orbit," Goldberg agreed. "I think that's ridiculous. And at the same time, it should not be surprising -- and you're right to single out the news division as different. But it should not be surprising when people from the opinion division perpetuate lies about the election being stolen, who are more concerned about cancelling Liz Cheney than they are about cancelling Marjorie Taylor Greene."

"This is a problem all over the place," he said. "And it's incumbent upon institutions to police their own in responsible ways and turn things down a little bit and not push out misinformation and lies lest you invite that kind of backlash, which would make everything worse."

Goldberg added: "There's a real moral panic right now about cancel culture only applying to conservatives when everybody is in the game and it's ruining the country and ruining our politics in short order."

Kurtz refused to allow the segment to end without suggesting that conservatives are the true victims of "cancel culture."

"What really troubles me, for most of my career, journalists were fierce defenders of free speech and now I think, ideology or whatever view it is -- I think we're seeing a lot aimed at the right -- is in favor at times of suppressing free speech," he concluded.

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