USA TODAY International Edition
O’Reilly keeps pundit position on podcast
Fired Fox host says he’s wary about news media coverage
Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly returned to work Monday with his fervent delivery intact, despite a much lower profile.
On his latest No Spin News podcast, released Monday night, O’Reilly remained confident that “the truth will come out” about the allegations of sexual harassment that led Fox News’ parent company 21st Century Fox to dismiss him Wednesday.
“I am sad that I am not on television anymore,” he said in the podcast on billoreilly. com. “I was very surprised how it all turned out. I can’t say a lot because there’s much stuff going on right now, but I can tell you that I am very confident the truth will come out, and when it does, I don’t know if you are going to be surprised, but I think you are going to be shaken as I am.”
O’Reilly, 67, had recently signed a multiyear contract worth more than $ 20 million a year. He went on vacation two weeks ago and had been set to return to Fox News on Monday.
A New York Times investigation reported this month that Fox and O’Reilly paid $ 13 million over the years to settle sexual harassment accusations from several women. After that report, dozens of advertisers dropped O’Reilly’s show, The O’Reilly Factor, which he had hosted for 21 years.
Rupert Murdoch and sons, James and Lachlan, who run 21st Century Fox, said in a note to employees that the decision to part with O’Reilly followed “an extensive review done in collaboration with outside counsel.”
O’Reilly, in a statement later that day, called the situation “tremendously disheartening that we part ways due to completely unfounded claims.”
In the podcast, O’Reilly went on to say he did not want to talk any more about the situation “because I just don’t want to influence the flow of the information. I don’t want the media to take what I say and misconstrue it.”
O’Reilly has posted his podcasts on his website for many years. Typically, subscribers pay $ 4.95 monthly to listen, but O’Reilly said he plans to make this week’s podcasts available for free. Only subscribers will get access to next week’s shows.
Monday’s podcast ran 19 minutes. He said that “as we develop the website, we will have guests … and this will become longer and longer and longer into a genuine news program. That is the vision right now.”
Among the stories O’Reilly discussed during Monday’s episode were President Trump’s approval rating. A Washington Post poll, out Sunday, had the president’s approval rating at 42% — the lowest approval rating at this point of a presidency since Dwight Eisenhower was in the White House.
O’Reilly said, “No president has ever entered office with as much negative publicity and hatred directed toward him as Donald Trump. In the history of our republic, no president has come under that kind of withering criticism, particularly by the press that wanted Hillary Clinton to win.”
Considering that the mainstream media wants “to destroy Trump’s presidency,” O’Reilly said, “for him to poll in the low 40s favorable isn’t that bad. ... The base for him is still there and not discouraged.”
O’Reilly said the president “has calmed down a little bit as far as his tweeting and all that business, and that’s a good thing.” The key to Trump’s “whole presidency is this tax cut,” he said. “What’s it going to look like?”
“I am sad that I am not on television anymore. ... I am very confident the truth will come out, and when it does, I don’t know if you are going to be surprised, but I think you are going to be shaken as I am.”