A longtime Fox News contributor said Tuesday he’s leaving the network, and blasted it for becoming a “propaganda machine.”

Ralph Peters, a strategic analyst for Fox News and a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, issued a scathing email to colleagues that was sharply critical of the network’s rhetoric and support for President Donald Trump.

“ “Fox has degenerated from providing a legitimate and much-needed outlet for conservative voices to a mere propaganda machine for a destructive and ethically ruinous administration.” ” — Ralph Peters

“Today, I feel that Fox News is assaulting our constitutional order and the rule of law, while fostering corrosive and unjustified paranoia among viewers,“ he said in the email, which was obtained by Buzzfeed. “Over my decade with Fox, I long was proud of the association. Now I am ashamed.”

“When prime-time hosts — who have never served our country in any capacity — dismiss facts and empirical reality to launch profoundly dishonest assaults on the FBI, the Justice Department, the courts, the intelligence community . . . all the while scaremongering with lurid warnings of “deep-state” machinations — I cannot be part of the same organization. . . . To me, Fox News is now wittingly harming our system of government for profit.”

Peters specializes in Russia analysis, and was harshly critical of former President Barack Obama’s foreign policy. But he said Fox News hosts “now advance Putin’s agenda” and that “we have an American president who is terrified of his counterpart in Moscow.”

Peters made a special effort to single out Fox Business, to which he said the criticisms do not apply, and to the hard-news reporters at Fox, “who continue to do their best as talented professionals in a poisoned environment.”

In a statement Tuesday, Fox News said: “Ralph Peters is entitled to his opinion despite the fact that he’s choosing to use it as a weapon in order to gain attention.”