Speaking at an April 27 event at New York University, Glenn Beck portrayed what is now a somewhat disputed version of his departure from Fox News, suggesting that it was on his own terms — even saying that Fox CEO Roger Ailes demanded that he stay.

“At the end, when we were leaving, it was a long process. Roger said to me, ‘You’re not going to leave.’ And I said, ‘I am.’ And he said, ‘Nobody does,’ and I said, ‘I’m fortunate because I haven’t been in it that long.’ I knew what this big, huge Fox empire brought to the table, and I had to leave before I became too enamored of that.”

Soon after Beck’s comments became public, a Fox spokesperson forcefully rebuked his version of events, citing the fact that advertisers were fleeing Beck’s program.

“Glenn Beck wasn’t trying to save his soul, he was trying to save his ass,” the unidentified spokesperson wrote. “Advertisers fled his show and even Glenn knows what that means in our industry. Yet, we still tried to give him a soft landing. Guess no good deed goes unpunished.”

Fox’s rebuke seems to align with the facts. According to a Media Matters study, around the time Beck accused President Obama of being a “racist,” advertisers began fleeing his Fox News show. The study revealed that the number of paid advertisements during Glenn Beck’s show plummeted and never recovered as a result.

According to Angelo Carusone of Media Matters, “the losses were in fact costing Fox News money and were severely limiting the viability of Beck’s program, and now Fox News has all but confirmed it.”