'It's truly disgusting': Fox News is under fire for hiring Kayleigh McEnany — even from other employees

Before Kayleigh McEnany became President Donald Trump's fourth White House press secretary, she was a far-right pundit at Fox News — and now that Joe Biden is president and she is no longer in the White House, Fox News has rehired her. But according to Daily Beast reporters Diana Falzone and Justin Baragona, not everyone at the right wing cable news channel is happy about her return.

In a Beast article published this week, Falzone and Baragona explain, "The addition of a known and frequent liar to the Fox News roster set off some alarms within a newsroom that has been 'purged' in recent months in favor of right-wing opinion programming and content geared towards keeping a diehard MAGA audience satisfied."

One of the reporters Fox News fired earlier this year was Political Editor Chris Stirewalt, whose cardinal sin — in the minds of many Trump sycophants — was calling Arizona for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. Stirewalt called Arizona for Biden even before the Associated Press, and his reporting was vindicated: Biden won Arizona.

A source described by Falzone and Baragona as a "Fox News insider" didn't mention Stirewalt but was highly critical of Fox News' decision to rehire McEnany and expressed great dissatisfaction with the cable outlet's current direction.

The insider told the Beast, "It's truly disgusting they fired hard-working journalists who did care about facts and news reporting only to turn around and hire a mini-Goebbels whose incessant lies from the White House helped incite an insurrection on our democracy that got five people killed, including a police officer. Post-Trump Fox is quickly becoming a very scary place and quite dangerous for our democracy. It's not even conservative news anymore. They've plunged into an alternate reality where extremist propaganda is the only course on the menu."

At Fox News, there has been a separation between far-right opinion hosts like Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson and a conservative-leaning hard news division. An anonymously quoted source described by Falzone and Baragona as a "newsroom staffer" said of McEnany, "It bothers me in that it is basically a slap in the face to the hardworking journalists that value real news and facts. But it also doesn't surprise me because they have shown that they don't give a damn about facts and real news."

Another Fox News staffer told the Beast, "There is no objectivity in this business anymore. It's a self-serving profiteering enterprise" — adding that McEnany was rehired because "the viewers are morons."

Here are some reactions to Falzone and Baragona's article: