Actress and former Fox News staffer Stacey Dash on Wednesday apologized for her past behavior and denounced Donald Trump.
In a Wednesday interview with the Daily Mail, the “Clueless” star said she made “a lot of mistakes” after joining Fox News in 2014 as an on-air commentator. During the 2016 election cycle, Dash, a Black woman, was dismissive of the issues faced by minorities, the LGBTQ community and of the wage gap, among other things.
“I’ve lived my life being angry, which is what I was on Fox News. I was the angry, conservative, Black woman and at that time in my life, it was who I was,” she said. “I realized in 2016 that anger is unsustainable and it will destroy you. I made a lot of mistakes because of that anger.”
The turning point for Dash came, she said, on Jan. 6 when Trump-backing rioters breached the U.S. Capitol building in a siege that left five dead, including one Capitol police officer. “I think the Capitol Riots were appalling,” the actress said. “When that happened I was like ‘OK, I’m done. I’m truly done,’ because senseless violence of any kind I denounce. What happened on January 6 was just appalling and stupid.”
The riot happened as Congress met to certify the election of President Joe Biden, a man Dash says she plans to give “a chance,” since he is president and Trump is not.
Although she still describes herself as anti-abortion and “not a feminist,” Dash said she regrets some of the extreme language she has used. In 2015, Fox News suspended her without pay for two weeks for suggesting President Barack Obama “didn’t give a s—” about terrorism on the network’s “Outnumbered.” (The network declined to renew her contract in 2017.)
“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 told the Daily Mail. “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, who abandoned a 2018 run to unseat U.S. Rep. Nanette Barragán (D-California) after only a month, also said she had no future political plans.
Read the entire interview at the Daily Mail and see some of Dash’s most outrageous statements from her time at Fox News below.