Donna Brazile, the former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, will join Fox News as a contributor, the cable-news network announced Monday, making a high-profile liberal commentator part of the offering from a network often seen to have close ties with conservative voters.
Brazile, a veteran Democratic strategist, will offer political analysis across both Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network’s daytime and primetime programming. She was expected to make her first appearance on Fox News’ “The Daily Briefing with Dana Perino” at 2 p.m. eastern. Perino is a former White House press secretary who served during the administration of President George W. Bush.
“I know I’m going to get criticized from my friends in the progressive movement for being on Fox News,” Brazile acknowledged in a statement. My response is that, if we’ve learned anything from the 2016 election, it is that we can’t have a country where we don’t talk to those who disagree with our political views. There’s an audience on Fox News that doesn’t hear enough from Democrats. We have to engage that audience and show Americans of every stripe what we stand for rather than retreat into our ‘safe spaces’ where we simply agree with each other. For there is no safety in self-limiting numbers. You can be darn sure that I’m still going to be me on Fox News. I’m going to do what I always do: and dish it out straight, exactly as I see it, with just as much New Orleans hot sauce as folks expect.”
Brazile had been a contributor at both CNN and ABC News, but the relationships were halted in July of 2016 after she was named interim chair of the DNC. CNN cut ties with her more definitively in October of that year after a series of revelations from emailed hacked by Wikileaks showed she had provided questions in advance of CNN’s broadcasts of Democratic primary debates to the Hillary Clinton campaign. “We are completely uncomfortable with what we have learned about her interactions with the Clinton campaign while she was a CNN contributor,” CNN said in a statement at the time. She has continued to appear on ABC News programs sporadically.
Brazile will have no involvement with presidential debates or candidate town halls, according to a person familiar with internal handling of the matter at Fox News.
Brazile has a long history as a Democratic political operative. She managed Al Gore’s presidential campaign in 2000, the first African-American woman to do so. She has worked with Jesse Jackson,. Walter Mondale and Richard Gephardt as well.
She is the author of “Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House” and the memoir “Cooking With Grease: Stirring the Pots in American Politics.”
