Fox News Anchor Shepard Smith Calls American Politics ‘Weird and Creepy’

In a Time magazine interview published Thursday, Fox News anchor Shepard Smith said Fox News pundits are there “strictly to be entertaining,” but don’t “really have rules.”

Titled “Shep Smith Has the Hardest Job on Fox News,” Smith’s interview with Time‘s Daniel D’Addario took a candid look at the 54-year-old anchor’s life and career in the era of President Donald Trump and, notably, the difference between his work versus those of his colleagues. Shepard Smith has been with Fox News since it launched in 1996, and if a solid multi-year contract renewal is any indication, he will be there for a long time to come.

“We work for different reporting chains,” Smith explained. “We have different rules. They don’t really have rules on the opinion side. They can say whatever they want. If it’s their opinion,” Smith said. Frankly, Smith just is not all that interested. He explained that he “[doesn’t] really watch a lot of opinion programming. I’m busy.”

Moreover, Smith does not see himself as a particularly political person. While “there are people who come at everything in a political way,” Smith does not see himself as one of them. Despite criticism of his injection of personal politics into his reporting, he said that he has “never really liked politics.” Specifically: “I’ve always said that I thought politics in America was weird and creepy, and lacked a connection to reality.”