“Clueless” actor-turned-controversial political pundit Stacey Dash has apologized for her past offensive comments, claiming she’d “lived her life being angry” but “that’s not who Stacey is now.”
Dash, who frequently stirred outrage with her hot takes during her two-year stint as a commentator for Fox News, acknowledged in an interview with Daily Mail TV released online Wednesday that her opinions often were “arrogant and prideful and angry.”
“But that’s not who Stacey is now,” she declared. “Stacey’s someone who has compassion, empathy.”
Dash was an early endorser of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. She sparked outrage for using the Orlando Pulse nightclub massacre to boost the then-presidential hopeful and for suggesting Black History Month should be eliminated. In 2017, she backed Trump’s “very fine people on both sides” response to the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and was tweeting pro-Trump posts with the #MAGA hashtag until 2019.
Fox News suspended Dash in 2015 for claiming then-President Barack Obama “didn’t give a shit” about terrorism. It reportedly decided not to renew her contract the following year.
In her interview with Daily Mail TV, Dash makes the case that she’s overcome the rage that was destroying her.
“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. And I realized in 2016 that anger is unsustainable and it will destroy you. And you know, what people don’t know is that I made a lot of mistakes because of that anger.”
“There are things that I am sorry for,” Dash acknowledged. “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. Stacey’s someone who has compassion, empathy” and “would never work at Fox” or another news network.
Elsewhere in the interview, which was met with some skepticism on Twitter, Dash described the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot as “appalling.”
“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 Jan. 6 was just appalling and stupid,” said Dash.
“Being a supporter of Trump has put me in some kind of box that I do not belong in,” she added to the Daily Mail. “I don’t hate anyone. I don’t, you know, I don’t know where that comes from. And well, he’s not the president, so I’m going to give the president that we have right now a chance.”
Dash floated a congressional run as a Republican in 2018, but backtracked, saying “the overall bitterness surrounding our political process, participating in the rigors of campaigning, and holding elected office would be detrimental to the health and wellbeing of my family.”