Longtime conservative commentators Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes made a public break with Fox News on Sunday night, announcing their resignations as paid Fox News contributors and citing Tucker Carlson's online special Patriot Purge as the final straw. Hayes and Goldberg, top editors at The Weekly Standard and National Review, founded The Dispatch in 2019, largely in response to what they saw as the conservative media's sycophantic capitulation to former President Donald Trump and his "alternative facts."
When they joined Fox News in 2009, and for most of the next decade, "we were proud to be associated with the network" and believed it was necessary, Hayes and Goldberg explained at The Dispatch. But the decision to air and promote Carlson's dangerous "collection of incoherent conspiracy-mongering" showed them that, despite assurances otherwise, Fox News is not clawing back any of its pre-Trump independence.
Patriot Purge was "a sign that people have made peace with this direction of things, and there is no plan, at least, that anyone made me aware of for a course correction" or "righting the ship," Goldberg told The New York Times' Ben Smith. "The Patriot Purge thing meant: Okay, we hit the iceberg now, and I can't do the rationalizations anymore."
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
"Ten years ago it would have been utterly unfathomable" to see Goldberg and Hayes "leave Fox News in protest of the network's coverage," Politico's Sam Stein observed. "But here we are." Their resignations are "simply part of the new right's mopping up operation in the corners of conservative institutions that still house pockets of resistance" to Trump, Smith writes. While Hayes and Goldberg have "both appeared occasionally on the evening show Special Report and on Fox News Sunday," it's "been years since they were welcome on Fox's prime time."
Special Report anchor Bret Baier and Fox News Sunday's Chris Wallace also "shared their objections" to Patriot Purge "with Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott and its president of news, Jay Wallace," NPR's David Folkenflik reports. "Those objections rose to Lachlan Murdoch," CEO of Fox's parent company. Fox News chairman Rupert Murdoch recently lamented to shareholders that Trump's fixation with the past is stunting Fox's future.
Goldberg told NPR it was hard quitting his prestigious and "well-compensated" Fox News gig. "We don't regret the decision," he said. "But we found it regrettable that we had to make the decision." Carlson told Smith the departure of Hayes and Goldberg is "great news" and "our viewers will be grateful."
-
The runners and riders for the Labour deputy leadershipThe Explainer Race to replace Angela Rayner likely to come down to Starmer loyalist vs. soft-left MP supported by backbenchers and unions
-
Tom Phillips: the manhunt for forest fugitive and his abducted childrenIn the Spotlight Three children recovered safely after four-year manhunt ends in police shootout
-
Crossword: September 9, 2025The Week's daily crossword
-
South Korea to fetch workers detained in Georgia raidSpeed Read More than 300 South Korean workers detained in an immigration raid at a Hyundai plant will be released
-
DC sues Trump to end Guard 'occupation'Speed Read D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb argues that the unsolicited military presence violates the law
-
RFK Jr. faces bipartisan heat in Senate hearingSpeed Read The health secretary defended his leadership amid CDC turmoil and deflected questions about the restricted availability of vaccines
-
White House defends boat strike as legal doubts mountSpeed Read Experts say there was no legal justification for killing 11 alleged drug-traffickers
-
Epstein accusers urge full file release, hint at own listspeed read A rally was organized by Reps. Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie, who are hoping to force a vote on their Epstein Files Transparency Act
-
Court hands Harvard a win in Trump funding battleSpeed Read The Trump administration was ordered to restore Harvard's $2 billion in research grants
-
Florida aims to end all state vaccine requirementsSpeed Read Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. continues to cut vaccine access and install anti-vaccine activists at the FDA and CDC
-
US kills 11 on 'drug-carrying boat' off VenezuelaSpeed Read Trump claimed those killed in the strike were 'positively identified Tren de Aragua Narcoterrorists' shipping drugs to the US
