Geraldo Rivera quoted the wise words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in order to express his feelings following the journalist's exit from Fox News after more than 20 years at the network.
"I feel free, free at last," the 80-year-old admitted during a sit down interview with CNN Tonight's Alisyn Camerota on Tuesday, July 18, noting he truly feels "liberated" after leaving the company upon his firing from The Five last month.
"You know, you are muzzled, corporate discipline muzzles people," Rivera explained, noting at times it even became "self-muzzlement" due to the strict standards he was forced to uphold.
"First of all, they denied me permission to go on many shows over the course of my long career there. They have a very rigid, very controlling, kind of discipline," the New York native exposed of Fox News.
As they interview continued, Camerota questioned what Fox News was so "afraid" of Rivera doing or saying in an effort to fully understand the networks' allegedly strict work environment.
"Oh, my flamboyance and saying things like I said about the president — former President [Donald] Trump," Rivera noted, as Fox News has been known to sway in favor of the Republican Party.
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Rivera provided an example, reiterating a statement he once said about Trump taking a "knife" to "the Constitution and the back."
"When you have that as your attitude [and] that’s your position in a conservative milieu, it’s pretty noxious to folks who believe in certain way," he explained.
"I mean, it’s not my belief. I am nominally a Republican person, but I’m pro-choice, pro-immigration reform, pro-gun control. I hope to devote a lot of my post career life to working with the developmentally disabled. You know, I have lots of charity work that we do. We’re dating back, half a century to my expos days," Rivera noted of his own personal political viewpoint.
"There’s a lot of things going on. But it was a very — it’s a very — rigid, very controlled atmosphere, where everyone answers to management, and management doesn’t allow beat freewheeling. They have a message, they send a talent out to do an interview, if it’s a big story in The New York Times, or this or that, they pick their spot. And they’re very strategic in that regard, very disciplined. Conservatives are much more disciplined than liberals. Liberals are all over the place. You know, like you, you say anything you want," Rivera concluded.
