The Untold Truth Of Trish Regan
Trish Regan has been a fixture on television cable news since the early 2000s, when she launched her broadcasting career at CBS News after graduating from Columbia University. A former beauty pageant contestant from New Hampshire, Regan quickly ascended through the ranks. According to what was her her official Fox Business bio (we'll get to that momentarily), Regan left CBS for a job at CNBC before heading to Bloomberg Television, where she anchored the daily Street Smart with Trish Regan show.
In 2015, Regan exited Bloomberg for Fox Business, where she anchored her own midday show, The Intelligence Report with Trish Regan. Based on its success — the show typically landed among the 10 most-watched business news broadcasts — she was shifted to evenings to host Trish Regan Primetime. Along the way, she became a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and authored the 2011 book Joint Ventures: Inside America's Almost Legal Marijuana Industry.
Regan has also been no stranger to controversy, and several of her on-air comments have been met by outrage and backlash. Beyond the headlines, there's much about the veteran broadcaster that even her most devoted viewers may not know. Keep reading to discover the untold truth of Trish Regan.
Trish Regan is a former Miss New Hampshire
Prior to entering broadcasting, Trish Regan competed in beauty pageants, and proved she had what it took to win when she was crowned Miss New Hampshire in 1993. Competing in pageants is about more than just looking pretty, she told New Hampshire Magazine, adding, "You have to be able to relate to lots of different people — you have to be able to think on your feet and those are skills you learn in a pageant," she said. Recalling her pageant days, she joked, "Walking in high heels and a swimsuit is a skill unto itself. And one I don't miss."
While Miss New Hampshire, Regan vied to become Miss America. Although she didn't win, she did receive a special award for an operatic performance. Singing, in fact, is another of her talents, honed by studying voice at the New England Conservatory of Music. In 2018, Regan showcased her vocal abilities by airing a video of herself singing the U.S. national anthem during an episode of Trish Regan Primetime.
Regan discussed her opera ambitions with CBS News in 2008. "It's not like I wanted to be Britney Spears," she quipped. "Maria Callas was another story."
A dispute with management led to Trish Regan's CNBC exit
Jumping from CBS News to CNBC was a natural progression for Trish Regan, with reports at the time that her exit from CNBC was not without behind-the-scenes strife. According to a March 2011 report from TVNewser, Regan had been one of three co-hosts on CNBC's The Call, but was told that network brass wanted to pull her off the show so she could revert to being a reporter. She disagreed with that strategy and tendered her resignation. "Her desk is cleared out," a source told the outlet. A "separation agreement" between anchor and network had yet to be worked out, with a CNBC spokesperson explaining, "Trish is under contract."
Later that same year, she joined Bloomberg Television, which announced she would be starting her new job in January 2012. In a statement from network head Andrew Morse, he lauded her experience "covering some of the most important global economic stories of our time," and trumpeted the "key role" she'd be playing at Bloomberg.
"I'm thrilled to join Bloomberg Television," said Regan in a statement, pointing to the company's "worldwide resources to provide viewers with outstanding insight and true global coverage."
Another former employer felt Trish Regan's wrath, too
Joining Bloomberg Television in 2012, Trish Regan anchored Street Smart with Trish Regan, a financial news show that aired each weekday after the close of the stock market. Regan was part of Bloomberg's on-air team until 2015, when she jumped ship to take a job at Fox Business.
In 2020, she slammed her former employer for its coverage of the network's owner, Mike Bloomberg, while he was in the midst of a failed bid to become Democratic nominee in that year's November presidential election. She told the Washington Examiner, that Bloomberg News reporters were instructed not to investigate Bloomberg during his election campaigns while running for mayor of New York City, and the network was continuing that policy during his presidential bid. As she explained, issuing that kind of a decree to journalists was probably "incredibly demoralizing," admitting she couldn't even fathom "how angry, upset, and honestly disgusted" she would be had she been told to avoid investigating the boss during her tenure. We should note that Bloomberg News was transparent about this policy from the beginning, so this wasn't a case of Regan blowing the lid off of a cover-up or anything like that.
Still, Regan said that if she were still at Bloomberg and was advised to steer clear of Bloomberg the candidate, she would have resigned. "This is about more than a paycheck," she said.
Trish Regan speaks four languages
In 2018, Trish Regan tweeted a link to a New Yorker article about unusual similarities in people who can speak dozens of languages. In her tweet, she revealed that she is multilingual herself, and can speak four languages. Responding to a question from one of her social media followers, Regan wrote that those four languages are English, Italian, Spanish " ...and German (sort of — I was quite decent at it once but haven't spoken it in years.)"
Of the four languages, English is clearly her favorite — or at least that appeared to be the case in an on-air declaration she made on her Fox Business show attacking then-Democratic presidential hopefuls Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, claiming that the politicians "don't want English to be the official language of the United States because — wait for it — it will make immigrants feel bad."
Her feelings on her preference for the English language above all others were clear as glass when she told aspiring immigrants, "If you want to be an American, rise up and learn [English]... Bottom line: this is the United States. And we speak English here."
How does Trish Regan balance the demands of family and career?
In addition to her role as a TV news anchor, Trish Regan is also a wife and mother of three, and she's admitted it can be "tough" to strike the right work-life balance. In an interview with Serendipity, Regan shared some small steps she takes "to try to make it all work." One of those, she revealed, was to bring one of her children to work with her each Friday, in addition to trying to have one of them accompany her when she has to travel for business.
"I'm not going to sugarcoat it; it is a constant challenge," she admitted. She also said she tries to FaceTime with her kids before she goes on the air, and joked that "they've really gotten to know their way around a newsroom." Meanwhile, Regan revealed that one of her daughters assisted her when she covered a State of the Union address "and was so excited — she helped out by printing my research, reading every bit of it herself, and then drilling me on it! It was a win-win."
Trish Regan is a New Englander through and through
Born and raised in New Hampshire, New England holds a special place in Trish Regan's heart. She demonstrated that when she shared her top five New England travel destinations for Luxury Travel Magazine. Among those destinations is Kennebunkport, Maine, where she spent summers waiting and bussing tables as a teenager. She also singled out the Ocean House resort in Watch Hill, R.I., gushing about "a quaint little town complete with a beautifully preserved historic carousel for the kids."
Not surprisingly, two of her favorite New England vacation spots are in her home state. One of these is the Omni Mount Washington Resort in Bretton Woods, in the heart of New Hampshire's White Mountains — which Regan described as the "Switzerland of America." Also mentioned was Wentworth by the Sea in New Castle, which she recalled from her childhood as a dilapidated, boarded-up property reminiscent of Bates Motel from Alfred Hitchcock's horror classic Psycho. After some investors swooped in and restored the once-grand hotel to its former glory, she said, it's now "a beautiful spot on the water complete with boating, swimming and tennis."
Was Trish Regan being groomed as Megyn Kelly's replacement?
While Trish Regan made a mark at a number of different cable news outlets, her career truly took off at Fox Business. In January 2017, Business Insider reported that she was being "personally prepared" by Fox News' then-head honcho Roger Ailes to replace Megyn Kelly, who had just left the network to take an ultimately disastrous job hosting the third hour of NBC's Today show.
According to Business Insider, Regan was seen as a "top contender" to fill Kelly's primetime 9 p.m. time slot. However, Ailes was no longer running the network, having resigned in mid-2016 after being hit with numerous sexual misconduct allegations (Ailes subsequently died in May 2017). Sources told the outlet that if Ailes was still running Fox News at the time of Kelly's departure, Regan would "undoubtedly" be the frontrunner to replace Kelly.
While the conventional wisdom at the time held that the network would almost certainly put a female anchor in Kelly's time slot, Fox News ultimately took a different path and instead plugged Tucker Carlson Tonight into Kelly's vacant time slot.
Denmark was not fond of Trish Regan's segment on the country
A 2018 episode of Trish Regan's Fox Business show led to some serious criticism when controversial comments she made raised the ire of an entire country. In the segment, B-roll footage of chaos in the streets of Venezuela played while Regan told viewers that what they were seeing was the end result of socialism. She then segued into attacking socialism in Denmark — despite the fact that Denmark actually isn't socialist, at least, according to a report by the "free-market think tank" the Center for Political Studies (via Action Institute). Pointing to a top tax rate of 56 percent, Regan declared that "everyone in Denmark is working for the government," claiming the country has "stripped people of their opportunities."
Denmark's finance minister, Kristian Jensen, was not impressed, taking to Twitter to tell Regan she should visit his country "if you dare be confronted by facts." Speaking with the The New York Times, Jensen explained that "Denmark ranks 12 in economic freedom, Venezuela ranks 179," and blasted Regan's Denmark dissing as "simply egregious."
Regan felt enough backlash that during a subsequent edition of her show she told viewers she wanted "to clarify [her] point," insisting she wasn't comparing Denmark to Venezuela. Citing alleged reports from other news outlets, Regan said, "I was merely pointing out... that socialism is not the way."
Wait, Trish Regan said what about COVID-19?
The backlash Trish Regan experienced with her Denmark observations was nothing compared to the tsunami of criticism she received when she shared her thoughts on the coronavirus in March 2020. With the words "Coronavirus Impeachment Scam" on the screen beside her, Regan stretched the limits of reality to the breaking point by declaring that Democrats were blaming President Donald Trump "for a virus that originated halfway around the world." She went even further by accusing "the liberal media" of "using coronavirus in an attempt to demonize and destroy the president." Media reporting of the escalating coronavirus pandemic, she insisted, "is impeachment all over again."
It wasn't just viewers who were furious over Regan's coronavirus comments. Healthcare professionals and DC lawmakers were also outraged. "This is the height of irresponsibility," Washington Congresswoman Kim Schrier told Salon. "This should not be a political issue."
Fellow conservative Sean Hannity, however, predictably leaped to Regan's defense. During his radio show (via Media Matters), the Fox News host attacked "the mob in the media," and blasted "fake news CNN blaming Trump for the surge in toilet paper buying."
Trish Regan's coronavirus rant ended her run at Fox
The backlash to Trish Regan's coronavirus rant was severe. Days after the segment aired, Fox Business issued a terse statement that Trish Regan Primetime had immediately been placed "on hiatus until further notice," with other programming now airing in its place, reported the The New York Times. The network claimed that the reason for pulling the show off the air was to meet "the demands of the evolving pandemic crisis coverage."
A few days after that announcement, The Washington Post reported that Regan's "hiatus" looked to be permanent. Given that President Trump had declared the pandemic to be a national emergency the same day that Regan was benched, the Post noticed a major shift in tone at Fox News and its sister network, Fox Business. No longer was reporting of COVID-19's spread throughout the U.S. described as an "impeachment hoax," but as a serious health crisis affecting every American, democrat, and republican alike.
The following week, the Daily Beast reported that Regan had been let go by the network. "We thank her for her contributions to the network over the years and wish her continued success in her future endeavors," said Fox Business in a statement confirming her exit. The outlet also ran Regan's response, which stated, in part, that she "now intend[s] to focus on my family during these troubled times," and is "looking forward to this next chapter in [her] career."
Being a controversial TV host pays nicely
It's no secret that television news anchors can be paid handsomely, and this certainly appears to be the case with Trish Regan. Meanwhile, her husband, James Ben (pictured above), likely pulls in a decent paycheck as head of mergers and acquisitions at finance firm Rothschild & Co., according to his LinkedIn profile.
While the salary of neither spouse is public knowledge, in 2018 Variety reported the couple nabbed a cool $5.6 million when they sold their Manhattan co-op, situated on posh Fifth Avenue. The deal was a good one, as they purchased the place four years earlier for a reported $3.95 million, undertaking an extensive "soup-to-nuts renovation" which the outlet noted "both preserved the integrity of the building's grand pre-war bones and invisibly integrates state-of-the-art creature comforts that include a dual-zone climate system, soundproof windows and sound-dampening interior walls." Not exactly DIY stuff. Monthly maintenance fees on the place, Variety pointed out, were more than $6,000 per month.
Regan and Ben subsequently moved their family to a luxurious house in Connecticut, opening up the home for a photo shoot for Serendipity magazine. As she told the outlet, the Manhattanites had rented a weekend getaway in Connecticut's Fairfield County "and fell in love with it." Revealing that she and her husband each "grew up in the country," their new place "really feels like home. It is everything we expected and more."