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Fox News host Jeanine Pirro inadvertently made news on Sept. 3, when she spoke candidly about her employer during a break in an interview she gave to Salem Radio Network’s Sebastian Gorka. “You know what, they suspended me,” Pirro told Gorka. “And I’m not going to get fired. You know I’m worried that that suspension was the basis to tee up for anything I do wrong, they’ll fire me.” (The network never addressed the comments.)
But Pirro has also made newsworthy and revealing comments about her job at Fox News and her friend, President Trump, in the dozens of other interviews she has given recently to promote her new book, Radicals, Resistance, and Revenge.
The Hollywood Reporter listened to 25 promotional interviews Pirro has given to conservative radio stations around the country, plus an explosive appearance on C-SPAN on Sunday during which she was grilled about controversial remarks she’s made and about her status at the network.
During the interview, C-SPAN host Steve Scully asked Pirro to comment on a Sept. 4 THR story about Fox News limiting her outside media appearances. “Yes?” Pirro replied. “So, is your job safe at Fox News? What’s going on?” he asked.
“All right, let me make one thing clear and put that one to rest,” Pirro said. “Look, I’ve been at Fox for about, I think it’s eight and a half years now, and I have a show where I’m allowed to do and say what I want. I’m given perfect freedom to say what I want. I have an opinion show. I love my show. I love working at Fox. And, you know, a lot of people talk about, you know, what can be done and what can’t be done. The truth is that I’m in a position where I can talk to millions of people, and I can give them the straight talk that they’ve become accustomed to from Justice on Saturday nights and I continue to do that. I’m here with you, I’ve been on a book tour since my book came out, and I expect to be at Fox for many more years. I have a long-term contract, so all is well. Thank you, though.” (Later on, a caller named Kevin told Pirro, “Congratulations on your suspension from Fox.”)
Pirro was asked directly about her three-week suspension in a Sept. 4 interview on The Steffan Tubbs Show on 710 KNUS radio in Denver. “I don’t want to take you down a negative road, but a lot of [your] supporters, including myself, could not believe when you were suspended back in March,” Tubbs said. “Are things kosher with the network and all of that? Are you still angry?” Pirro replied, “No, I’m not angry, I never was angry. The truth is that — you know, I’m working at Fox, I’m thrilled to have this job. I’m thrilled to be able to be in a place where I can speak to so many people and I’m free to say whatever it is that I need to say. … But no, I am very happy, happy at work, and happy to be able to say all the things that I can say here at Fox.”
A day later, Jeff Katz, who hosts a radio show for WRVA in Virginia, asked Pirro: “We all love watching you on Fox. What is the situation there? What’s really going on with you?” Pirro responded, “Well, nothing is going on with me. … I’m grateful to have a job. Look, I don’t take anything for granted. I work hard, I’ve always worked hard, and I’m going to work right through to the end, whenever that is. I’m happy. I really am happy. So, everything is fine. Everybody needs to just make sure they chill out and everything is good.”
On Sept. 3, a radio host in Indianapolis asked Pirro about the president’s tweet supporting her on March 17, when he wrote “Bring back @JudgeJeanine Pirro” amid her suspension for comments she made about Rep. Ilhan Omar. “I was tremendously grateful,” she said. “I didn’t know that it benefited him at all or behooved him to even get involved.” (She said that the Council on American-Islamic Relations “wanted me fired.”)
Below are other noteworthy comments she has made on the tour:
During an Aug. 29 interview on former Saturday Night Live castmember Joe Piscopo’s radio show, Pirro said: “I thank all my viewers. When people thank me and say, ‘Oh, we love watching you,’ I turn around and thank them. And I say, ‘If you didn’t watch me, I wouldn’t be on. Trust me on that one. There are enough people trying to get me off the air.”
The same day, in an interview with a talk radio host in Philadelphia, Pirro spoke about the impact “political correctness” has had on her television career. “Have I been the victim of that? Absolutely,” she said. “Have people tried to get me off the air? Absolutely. … They want to finish you, they want to end you, they want conservatives to not have a voice.”
Asked by Piscopo about MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell’s retracted, one-source report about Russia, Pirro said that if she or Sean Hannity had made a similar comment, “They would have tried to take us off the air. They would have boycotted us. They would have suspended us.”
In an Aug. 25 interview with New York grocery store tycoon John Catsimatidis, Pirro said of Trump: “I’ve known him for 30 years and I care a great deal about him.” She called him “a really good human being” in an interview five days later on The Jen and Don Show.
The president’s critics, she told Fox News Radio host Todd Starnes on Aug. 28, “hate him” and want to push him out of office “because the people like you and me who put him into office …”
An anchor for the i24NEWS English television news network told Pirro on Sept. 4 that she got “some very dirty looks” while reading Pirro’s book at a hotel pool over Labor Day Weekend. “In fact, one of the people by the pool had some choice words that she hissed at me as she walked past me reading the book,” the anchor said. “Isn’t that a shame,” Pirro replied.
Pirro has made a host of inflammatory remarks on a variety of topics in the interviews. In a Sept. 3 interview on The Chuck & Julie Show, Pirro said the election of Joe Biden as president would prove the existence of a “deep state” in the country. “Because there would be people behind him who will actually be telling him what to say and what to do, because he’s not able and capable of doing it himself,” she said.
Although Pirro said her network prevented her from appearing on Newsmax or Bill O’Reilly’s daily podcast to promote the release, her lengthy publicity tour seems to have paid dividends: the book ranks third on The New York Times‘ hardcover nonfiction best-sellers list.
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