Donna Brazile, the former acting chair of the Democratic National Committee, has joined the Fox News Channel as a contributor, the network announced Monday.
Brazile, a longtime Democrat operative, will provide political commentary on the Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network and makes her debut appearance on The Daily Briefing with Dana Perino this week.
“I’m delighted to be joining Fox News. 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,” Brazile said in a statement. “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.”
In October 2016, Brazile was forced to resign from her role as a CNN contributor amid reports she leaked questions to then-Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign ahead of a CNN debate and CNN town hall.
CNN said in a statement that it was “completely uncomfortable with what we have learned about her interactions with the Clinton campaign while she was a CNN contributor.”
Despite the Democrat official’s role at CNN, the network claimed it “never gave Brazile access to any questions, prep material, attendee list, background information or meetings in advance of a town hall or debate.”
Brazile officially resigned from CNN on October 14, three days following a WikiLeaks email drop in which she appeared to have obtained some questions in advance of a town hall event and passed them along to the Clinton campaign. “From time to time I get the questions in advance,” wrote Brazile.
Brazile vigorously denied leaking questions, contending that, “as a longtime political activist,” she conveyed her views “with each and every campaign, and any suggestions that indicate otherwise are simply untrue.”
In another WikiLeaks release, emails indicated that Brazile had given a question to the Clinton camp, writing, “I’ll send a few more.”
Brazile ultimately admitted to leaking the questions in a March 2017 essay for Time magazine. “My job was to make all our Democratic candidates look good, and I worked closely with both campaigns to make that happen,” she wrote. “But sending those emails was a mistake I will forever regret.”