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Roger Ailes explains the Karl Rove episode

Fox News chief Roger Ailes knows what makes good television, so it should come as little surprise that he was behind the network's decision to let Fox News co-hosts hash it out with Karl Rove on election night.

In a rare interview with TV Newser's Chris Arien, Ailes said that he left the network as soon as he anticipated an Obama victory and arrived home to turn on the TV and see Rove telling the co-hosts they had called Ohio too early.

“I quickly called [EVP of News] Michael Clemente and I said, ‘Michael whatever you do, don’t go to commercial. Don’t leave the screen,'" Ailes told Ariens. "He then told Clemente to have Megyn Kelly, “go confront the decision team. If you have to, make the decision team confront Rove.”

“‘We can’t do anything off camera,'" Ailes said. "I didn’t want the public or our competitors to say we somehow panicked and didn’t confront the truth on camera.”

In the same interview, Ailes told Ariens that Fox News "has no agenda," a claim that is being met with no small amount of disbelief on Twitter today, given the network's conservative bent. Ailes also tells Airens that "the press is supposed to watch the powerful."

If Ailes believes that, Gawker's John Cook wants to know what all that correspondence with Attorney General John Ashcroft was about.