After six short months, Greta Van Susteren is out at MSNBC.
The network is replacing her 6 p.m. time slot with attorney Ari Melber.
“So sad,” a media insider told The Mirror. “The poor woman is addicted to being on television. Won’t be long before she joins Larry King at RT.”
Van Susteren left Fox News abruptly in September after working at the network for 14 years. She defended Roger Ailes against Gretchen Carlson‘s sexual harassment accusations, saying nothing like that had ever happened between her and Ailes, who is now deceased. She has also previously worked for CNN.
Vanity Fair first broke the news in a story that failed to get to the news until paragraph five that she’s finished. Like Fox News, the network is not letting her say goodbye to viewers. MSNBC host Ali Velshi will fill the spot Thursday night.
“But a few days shy of her six-month mark on air, Van Susteren’s business is finished on MSNBC, according to people familiar with the situation. The anchor, whose show struggled to gain traction even as the rest of her colleagues were buoyed by anti-Trump hysteria, has parted ways with the network. She will not appear on the show on Thursday evening.”
After she left Fox News, Van Susteren said the place hadn’t “felt like home in a few years.”
She then expressed regret for defending Ailes.
“I regret that Roger Ailes was not supervised by those in a public corporation who had the duty to supervise him,” she wrote in a Facebookpost. “This included his seniors, the CFO’s of both Fox News Channel and 21CF (and its predecessor NewsCorp), the Board of Directors and what I assume this public corporation had, outside auditors.”
She added, “It is indeed true, when I read the complaint written by lawyers… I found it inconsistent with what was my experience and information at the Fox News Channel, admittedly working 200 miles from the ‘scene of the crimes.’ It was hidden from all of us.”
Oddly, Van Susteren’s former colleague Sean Hannity tweeted something late Wednesday night that seemed to point right at Van Susteren.
“Next I’ll reveal which MSNBC host… who used to be a Republican… is now one of the loudest liberals on the Trump-bashing network,” he wrote. (Update…Of course, he could have easily been referring to MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough.)
Earlier Wednesday, Van Susteren grew snippy with a follower wrote that she had helped normalize President Trump‘s behavior. This came after MSNBC came out with a statement condemning Trump’s words against MSNBC “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski.
Follower: “Nice words. I wish @msnbc would stop hiring the people who helped normalize this: @greta @hughhewitt @megynkelly.”
Van Susteren replied, “Are you really blaming me in part of this? That is absurd.”
But at 3:49 p.m., her exit was simple. No drama. No fanfare.
I am out at MSNBC –
— Greta Van Susteren (@greta) June 29, 2017
