Former DNC chair Donna Brazile joins Fox News as a contributor: ‘I know I’m going to get criticized from my friends’

REUTERS/Richard Brian

Former DNC chair Donna Brazile will join Fox News as a contributor beginning March 18.
Brazile left CNN in October 2016 after leaked emails revealed that she had passed on town hall questions to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
Following the election, Brazile criticized Clinton and Democrats in her 2017 book and has appeared as a Democratic voice in sporadic Fox News segments.
In a statement, Brazile said she wants Fox News’ conservative audience to be exposed to a Democrat.

Former Democratic National Committee (DNC) chair and political strategist Donna Brazile will join Fox News as a contributor in March.

The announcement of the pairing may come as a surprise to many considering Brazile’s previous official Democratic allegiances and Fox News commentators’ conservative tilt.

Anticipating potential public surprise around her pairing with the network, Brazile said in the statement Monday, "I know I’m going to get criticized from my friends in the progressive movement for being on FOX News. 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."

She continued:

"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."

What Brazile and Fox News have in common

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Brazile is joining Fox News after resigning from CNN in 2016 amid a presidential election scandal.

In October 2016, WikiLeaks and Politico published and reported on emails showing Brazile giving the Clinton campaign advance notice on audience questions for a March 2016 town hall. The questions pertained to the Flint, Michigan water crisis and the death penalty.

Brazile reportedly promised in the communications, "I’ll send a few more."

Fox News raked Brazile over the coals for the emails. Then-host Megyn Kelly, while still with the network, grilled Brazile live on air in October 2016 for an uncomfortable few minutes.

The New Yorker reported in March that then-Fox News’ CEO Roger Ailes passed debate questions to then-presidential candidate Donald Trump and that an unnamed Fox News staffer gave debate questions to the Trump campaign in advance.

Fox News has gone on to promote negative claims Brazile made about Clinton and the Democratic party in her November 2017 book, with guests suggesting that Brazile’s work wasn’t getting the attention it deserved.

In the book, and media tour surrounding it, Brazile said a fundraising agreement between the DNC and Clinton’s 2016 campaign gave Clinton an advantage in the primaries. Brazile also revealed that she considered former Vice President Joe Biden as a replacement for Clinton after she fainted on the campaign trail — a moment that inspired intense scrutiny and conspiracy theories.

Republican National Committee spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany commented on Fox News that "The radio silence from the media is really puzzling," despite coverage of the book on most major networks.

In the last year, Brazile has made numerous appearances on Fox News as a guest and pundit. In June 2018, she spoke with a panel of Fox News hosts about immigration, where she played a Democratic advocate for child migrants.

In November 2018, she called for everyone to tone down their rhetoric, and said she was "against" Trump’s Twitter activity. In January 2019, Brazile spoke on Dana Perino’s show about the diversity of the 2020 Democratic field, saying, "this is a good time to be a Democrat."

Brazile’s first appearance as a permanent contributor on the network will be on "The Daily Briefing with Dana Perino" on Monday.

NOW WATCH: The top 15 presidents, according to historians