Geraldo Rivera, a voice of reason?
Showman of '80s TV says election is done
Geraldo Rivera thought he “would never work again” after hosting one of the highest-watched busts of all time in 1986, when he cracked open a vault belonging to gangster Al Capone on live TV — and it was empty.
He hosted a tabloid talk show in the late 1980s and 1990s, where he got decked in the face by a chair during a scuffle involving white supremacists. He joined Fox News in 2001 as a war correspondent but was essentially booted out of Iraq for divulging troop positions. He tried Dancing With The Stars in 2016 — and was the first to be eliminated.
But now in 2020, at 77, Rivera might be playing the most important — and unexpected — role of his life, as a contrarian truth-teller who has been pleading with President Donald Trump, whom he considers a friend, to accept the election results.
“It is over,” Rivera firmly told millennial conservative activist Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA. “I want the president … to understand it is over. The Electoral College has voted. The longer we drag this out, the more we damage the fabric of our democracy.”
When Kirk hyped some of the “pending legal challenges” still in play, Rivera repeated, “That is so dishonest.
“We have litigated this for six weeks. Twice the Supreme Court of the United States have rejected it, 9-0.”
On The Five on Nov. 19, Rivera criticized Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani for baseless claims of election fraud. When host Jesse Watters described Giuliani's comments as “a big shot of adrenaline,” Rivera shot back, “Come on, Jesse. … We're giving false hope to people.”
Rivera's on-air clout derives in part from his background as a muckraking investigative journalist.
But by Dec. 8 he felt he may have alienated Trump. The president “may not be speaking to me right now,” Rivera said on Fox. “He didn't take my calls the last two times I tried.”
Rivera thinks Trump should be taking credit for “the most successful single term in the modern history of our country.”
But this week, Rivera accused Trump of “instilling … the false sense” in his supporters that they have been defrauded by the electoral system. He reserved his harshest words, though, for Trump's die-hard fans.
“You have knuckleheads now talking about secession,” he said in a video on Twitter. “I mean, come on, that's crazy stuff. We have to move on. We're one country.”