Former Clinton aide says he will no longer appear on ‘downright dangerous’ Fox News

Former Clinton aide Zac Petkanas said he will no longer appear on Fox News, saying it is “downright dangerous” and linking the network to the shooting in a Pittsburgh synagogue last Saturday.

“This is not a decision I’ve come to lightly,” Petkanas wrote in an op-ed explaining his decision for Mediate, adding that he long thought “it was important for Fox’s audience to hear somebody willing to push back against the insanity regularly pushed on the network.”

“But now I believe the only thing to do is walk away and call out the network for what it is: a cancerous propaganda organ doing lasting damage to our country.”

He contended that Fox News can “be downright dangerous when they actively try to gin up Trump’s base with coded and, many times, explicit racial language.”

{mosads}He later referred to Fox as a “verifiable snake pit of racist anti-immigrant nonsense.”

The former Clinton aide linked that sort of rhetoric to the synagogue shooting on Saturday and attempted bombings against high-profile Democrats and CNN last week.

“Was Fox News responsible for Robert Bowers committing the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in US history?” Petkanas wrote, acknowledging that anti-Semitism has existed for centuries. “I don’t know.”

“However, the mainstreaming of conspiracy theories by a major cable news network to millions of people is unprecedented. And the chickens may now be coming home to roost.”

Petkanas said that was why he “wasn’t surprised” that the man who sent bombs to several high-profile Democrats last week posted Fox News clips on social media.

“Again, I don’t know if the network is directly responsible for his actions,” he said. “But I do know that most of my nearly 18 months on Fox News was spent trying to debunk crazy conspiracy theories and outright lies being pushed about nearly every one of the individuals that survived an assassination attempt last week.”

Petkanas, who has frequently appeared on Fox News segments in the past, said he began to change his mind after he and former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski clashed on air in June.

Lewandowski dismissed a story from a Democratic strategist about a young girl with Down syndrome separated from her family after entering the U.S. illegally, to which Petkanas responded, “How dare you!”

In response to Petkanas’s decision, a Fox News spokesperson told The Hill, “We encourage all voices to come on Fox News to help us inform and exchange ideas with our vast and engaged audience.”

He told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview that other progressives could soon join him in leaving the network.