Stacey Dash has quit politics and apologized for her “mistakes” made as a conservative political pundit. The former Fox News reporter spoke with Daily Mail on Wednesday (March 10) and addressed her controversial past.
“I’ve lived my life being angry, which is what I was on Fox News,” she said. “I was the angry, conservative, Black woman. And at that time in my life, it was who I was.”
Dash joined Fox as an analyst and political commentator in 2014, but the network fired her nearly three years later due to a string of inflammatory comments. In 2015, she said then-President Barack Obama didn’t “give a shit” about terrorism. In 2017, she drew intense backlash for supporting Trump after he called protesters at the Charlottesville Neo-Nazi rally “very fine people.”
The Clueless actress also caused upset by calling for an end to Black History Month, BET and the NAACP Image Awards, and made transphobic comments during an interview with ET Online.
“I realized in 2016 that anger is unsustainable and it will destroy you,” she told Daily Mail. “I made a lot of mistakes because of that anger.”
“There are things that I am sorry for. Things that I did say that I should not have said them the way I said them. They were very arrogant and prideful and angry. And that’s who Stacey was, but that’s not who Stacey is now,” she continued. “Stacey’s someone who has compassion, empathy. God has forgiven me; how dare I not forgive someone else? I don’t want to be judged, so how dare I judge anyone else? So, if anyone has ever felt that way about me, like I’ve judged, that I apologize for because that’s not who I am.”
Dash had a short-lived congressional run in California following her split from Fox. The 54-year-old actress says she’s now been “blacklisted” from Hollywood because of her support for Trump.
“Being a supporter of Trump has put me in some kind of box that I don’t belong in. But he’s not the president,” she said, adding that the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection marked a turning point in her support for the former president.
“I think the Capitol riots were appalling. When that happened I was like ‘Ok, I’m done. I’m truly done,’” she said. “Because senseless violence of any kind I denounce. What happened on Jan. 6 was just appalling and stupid.”
“Being a Black conservative is not easy… This idea that people think I’m coming from a place of judgment with the things I believe… No. It’s experience,” the Bronx native continued. “I’m from the hood. The codes of the street are very conservative. If you’re not a hustler… if you don’t know how to hustle, how to make your money; you’re a lamb for the slaughter.”
Watch a clip from Dash’s interview below.