On Friday’s “Sean Hannity” radio program, now-former MSNBC contributor Pat Buchanan elaborated on his departure from the network he had been with for a decade. According to Buchanan, it wasn’t that he was looking to leave MSNBC, but had his hand forced.
“It’s a prisoner exchange,” Buchanan said. “I’ve been off MSNBC for four months and I will say this — I enjoyed the time there. I got a lot of friends there. It was not my idea to go, but it’s gone. It’s over, Sean. And you move on to something else.”
Buchanan named the embattled left-wing group Media Matters for starting the push to have his appearances restricted on MSNBC and said it was timed around when his book, “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?” was released last year.
“I think your point was very well taken,” he continued. “I think Media Matters was the first ones after my book, ‘Suicide of a Superpower’ came out that began a national clamor to have me removed from the air after 10 years and to have me denied any access to MSNBC. And a number of other what I would call ‘blacklisting’ organizations moved along the same lines, which is basically to sneer, stigmatize, silence, censor and ultimately blacklist individuals and make sure they have no access to microphones because I believe these folks are deeply afraid of the messages that a lot conservatives have to offer. They’re afraid people are going to believe them because they can’t be frightened of me personally. They got to be frightened of my ideas.”
Buchanan stopped short of calling his departure from MSNBC “a firing,” but said it wasn’t at his behest.
“I don’t know if ‘firing’ is the right word,” he said. “I did agree to separate and it wasn’t my idea.”
Buchanan maintained that his views have been consistent throughout his career since he came out of journalism school in 1962 and that MSNBC knew that when they hired him in 2002. He surmised that it wasn’t his views that forced him out at the network, but the network bowing to external pressure.
Hannity hinted that at the possibility Buchanan would be seen more on the Fox News Channel in the future. Buchanan, however, all but eliminated the possibility he would land at Al Gore’s Current TV with his former colleague Keith Olbermann.