Former Fox News host Geraldo Rivera has spectacularly withdrawn his support for Donald Trump and renounced his previous MAGA beliefs.
Rivera took to X, formerly Twitter, to share a lengthy statement lambasting his former friend Trump for his unwillingness to accept the results of the 2020 election.
‘Former President Trump is a sore loser who cannot be trusted to honor the Constitution,’ the veteran journalist wrote on Monday.
‘That is why I am voting for Kamala Harris to be our 47th President.’
Geraldo recalled Trump being a ‘loyal friend’ to him during his presidency, which he called ‘underrated.’
But he noted the two have not spoken since a phone call in November, 2020 – just days after Joe Biden won the election.
Rivera said Trump assured him that he would recognize the electoral results, so he was disappointed when the president never did.
‘As I reported on Fox News that same morning, Friday the 13th, he told me he was a reasonable man and would do the right thing if that time came,’ Rivera wrote.
‘It never did. Instead, President Trump embarked on an increasingly menacing campaign to discredit the 2020 election.’
‘If you are a Republican, Donald Trump has made a liar of you.
‘He has coaxed and intimidated tens of millions into pretending he was reelected in 2020, and that the election was stolen’.
Rivera, now 81, worked for Fox from 2001 to 2023. He hosted the tabloid talk show Geraldo from 1987 to 1998.
In his post, he also accused Trump of inciting a violent attack on the nation’s ‘center of democracy’.
‘As his followers trashed that sacred space, he was on the phone urging Vice President Mike Pence essentially to overturn the will of the American people,’ Rivera continued.
‘Pence refused to put Trump ahead of the Constitution. Trump stabbed the Constitution in the back.’
Rivera concluded that those who decide to vote for Trump because of immigration or tax reduction are ‘adopting his big lie’.
‘You justify voting for Trump, adopting his big lie about the stolen election makes you a liar,’ he wrote.
In the past, Rivera was friendly with Trump and even said that he supported the former president, while adding that he did not ‘endorse him’.
‘I support the president, but I don’t endorse the president…he doesn’t always heed my advice,’ Rivera told PEOPLE in 2020, as noted by Newsweek.
‘But I’m honored that the President of the United States, the most powerful person on earth, listens to a [guy] that’s been knocking around television for half a century.’
Rivera’s take on Trump, however, changed after the 2020 election.
In 2023, he told The View he would ‘dedicate whatever energy I have left in the profession to ensure that he is not reelected president ever’.
During the same interview, Rivera said he and Trump had been close for decades.
Rivera has also gone after Trump over his rhetoric about immigrants, particularly after the Republican claimed migrants were ‘poisoning the blood of our country’.
The commentator slammed the comment as ‘disgusting’ in a post on X, adding: ‘Not only does it harken back to the Nazi-era, it is also part of the shameful, vile, centuries old tradition of claiming falsely that immigrants carry diseases’.
In a video post, Rivera continued: ‘That’s a quote — an extraordinary, hateful Hitler-like quote from the former president of the United States. That is shocking. It is outrageous.
‘It harkens back to the mid 19th century, when the Irish immigrants were accused of bringing all sorts of diseases from Europe to the United States.
‘It’s one of the reasons that they were hated by people, and then every successive wave of immigrants: the Italians, the Chinese, the Jewish, the Eastern Europeans.
‘Now, the Latin Americans are always accused of bringing diseases, a fact that is absolutely not true. In fact, when you look at the people, the largely Latino people who are coming undocumented to this country, they are walking fifteen hundred miles.
‘How many Americans could walk fifteen hundred miles, could walk through the jungles and cross rivers and so forth in search of a better life for themselves and their children?
‘To just — and to think that this guy was my friend. That is shocking. I’m so embarrassed. President Trump, former president, could say something like ‘poisoning the blood of our country’. That is absolutely indefensible. It is disgusting.’