Ol' Chumpy seems more concerned about this than he does dead kids in Syria.....
TRUMP
DEFENDS O’REILLY AMID SEXUAL HARASSMENT SCANDAL
Dylan Stableford
Trump is defending
Bill O’Reilly following a report that the Fox News host and his network reached
settlements with five women who had accused him of harassment.
The paper, which Trump
has often described as “failing,” reported over the weekend
that O’Reilly and the cable news network paid about $13 million to five women
who had accused the “O’Reilly Factor” host of sexual harassment and verbal
abuse.
“I think he shouldn’t
have settled; personally, I think he shouldn’t have settled,” Trump said.
And for the president,
it’s familiar territory.
Trump, who declared
April National Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month, was accused by more than a dozen
women of inappropriate touching or harassment in separate incidents
dating to the early 1970s. The accusers came forward after the second
presidential debate, in which Trump said that his bragging about kissing and
touching women without their consent — caught on a hot mic in an explosive 2005
video — was “locker-room talk,” and that he never actually groped anyone.
During the campaign,
Trump said that their allegations were part of a media conspiracy spearheaded
by the Hillary Clinton campaign — at one point suggesting that some of the
women weren’t attractive enough for him — and threatened to sue them after the
election. He never followed through on the threat.
O’Reilly, Trump told
the Times, “should have taken it all the way.”
“I don’t think Bill
did anything wrong,” Trump said.
Trump’s vocal support
for O’Reilly comes as Fox News faces a growing list of advertisers boycotting
his primetime show. According to CNN, more than 30 companies
pulled their advertising from from “The O’Reilly Factor” since the Times report
was published.
“This man has got to
go,” Paola Mendoza, artistic director of the Women’s March, wrote on Twitter.
“Corporations should have a zero tolerance policy for sexual harassment. Women
unite to force Fox to #DropOReilly!”
“Mr. O’Reilly’s case
is part of a larger culture that condones the harassment and objectification of
women at Fox News,” NOW president Terry O’Neill said in a statement Tuesday.
“Men like Mr. O’Reilly and Mr. Ailes will never be stopped as long as their
behavior is allowed to continue, even supported, by their employer.”
“We value our partners
and are working with them to address their current concerns about ‘The O’Reilly
Factor,’” Paul Rittenberg, Fox News’ executive vice president of advertising,
said in a statement to Yahoo News. “At this time, the ad buys of those clients
have been re-expressed into our FNC programs.”
In a statement posted to his website, O’Reilly
said he is vulnerable to lawsuits from individuals who want him “to pay them to
avoid negative publicity.”
“In my more than 20
years at Fox News Channel, no one has ever filed a complaint about me with the
Human Resources Department, even on the anonymous hotline,” O’Reilly said. “The
worst part of my job is being a target for those who would harm me and my
employer, the Fox News Channel. Those of us in the arena are constantly at
risk, as are our families and children. My primary efforts will continue to be
to put forth an honest TV program and to protect those close to me.”
At a press conference
on Monday, Lisa Bloom, an attorney representing one of the accusers featured in
the Times report, scoffed at O’Reilly’s claim that he is a “target.”
“Bill O’Reilly, you
call out whiners as delicate snowflakes,” Bloom said in a statement. “But
you’re the one whining now.”
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