Maddow: Ailes offered to hire me ‘so no one else could put me on’

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow said Friday that deceased Fox News head Roger Ailes once offered to hire her “so no one else could put her on.”

“He would just hire me so no one else could put me on,” Maddow told SiriusXM radio host Howard Stern. “I was like, ‘So, you’d pay me a full contract to not work?’”

“Would you consider that?” Stern asked.

“Who would not consider that?” an amused Maddow replied.

Despite their significant political differences, Ailes and Maddow became friends after meeting at a White House Christmas Party in 2009.

Ailes died last week at the age of 77 due to complications from a head injury sustained in a fall.

Ailes was fired from Fox last year in the face of multiple allegations of sexual harassment.

{mosads}The late media titan wrote a blurb in support of Maddow’s 2012 non-fiction book, “Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power.”

“Drift never makes the case that war might be necessary,” wrote Ailes. “America would be weakened dramatically if we had underreacted to 9/11.”

“However, Rachel Maddow makes valid arguments that our country has been drifting towards questionable wars, draining our resources, without sufficient input and time,” he continued. “People who like Rachel will love the book. People who don’t will get angry, but aggressive debate is good for America. Drift is a book worth reading.”

The top-rated MSNBC host told Stern about a time that she turned to Ailes for advice.

“He was really, really kind about it,” Maddow said. “If somebody came to you about that and said, ‘Howard, you know more about radio than anyone in the world, help me get better.’”

“I’d say, ‘Do you compete with me?’ I’d say, ‘F— you,’” Stern answered.

Maddow admitted her bond with Ailes didn’t play well with her progressive viewers.

“There were a lot of people who were mad at me for saying anything nice about him given the other things we learned about him before he died,” she said.

“I’m not downplaying those things to also be able say, ‘Listen, this is a true thing about the way he interacted with me and he was a friend.’”