Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, who prides himself on bluntly speaking his mind on air, was uncharacteristically silent on his Monday night show following new revelations about legal settlements paid to women accusing him of sexual harassment.
O’Reilly has previously used his television pulpit to attack a former Fox News producer who alleged in a lawsuit that “The O’Reilly Factor” star urged her to buy a vibrator and seemed to be masturbating on the phone. O’Reilly, on the air, blasted the 2004 suit filed by Andrea Mackris as “the single most evil thing I have ever experienced.”
But on Monday night, O’Reilly kicked off his show with a report on the Senate fight over Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court. And throughout the program, it was business as usual, with coverage of familiar themes like the media supposedly being biased against President Donald Trump, and liberalism run amok on college campuses. O’Reilly closed the show by highlighting his donation to a child-health charity.
The 8 p.m. broadcast was O’Reilly’s first since The New York Times reported Saturday that five women, including Mackris, received $13 million in settlements from lawsuits accusing O’Reilly of sexual harassment or other inappropriate behavior. The Times revealed three additional cases against O’Reilly that had not been previously reported.
O’Reilly said in a statement Saturday that he’s “vulnerable to lawsuits from individuals who want me to pay them to avoid negative publicity” and that no one has filed a complaint with the Fox News human resources department.
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