Bill O’Reilly is angry that his career has been tarnished by the sexual assault allegations brought against him, and now the ex-host is blaming God.
“You know, am I mad at God? Yeah I’m mad at him,” he said on his web series No Spin News. “I wish I had more protection. I wish this stuff didn’t happen.” The former Fox News host lost his job earlier this year after multiple women reported him for sexual harassment. He denied the accusations then, and denied them again after a New York Times article revealed he had paid a $32 million sexual harassment settlement.
News of that settlement came six months after another Times article revealed that the pundit settled with five other women for a total of $13 million. O’Reilly was ousted from Fox soon after. “This is a jaw-dropping figure,” said O’Reilly accuser and former Fox host Megyn Kelly. “What on Earth would justify that amount? What awfulness went on?”
O’Reilly claims the newspaper “maliciously smeared” his name, and said he settled with accusers to protect his children. “If I die tomorrow and I get an opportunity, I’ll say, ‘Why’d you guys work me over like that? Didn’t [you] know my children were going to be punished? And they’re innocent,'” he said in his defense on Monday.
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In a separate interview with The Times, O’Reilly blamed Eric Bolling Jr.‘s death on the fact that sexual harassment claims had been brought against his father, Fox News anchor Eric Bolling. Bolling later slammed the comment as “inappropriate,” and O’Reilly apologized. “The message I tried to send was that allegations harm kids. Nothing more,” he tweeted.
Former network anchor Gretchen Carlson was one of the women to report O’Reilly for sexual harassment, as well as former Fox executive Roger Ailes. “Nobody pays $32 million for false allegations – nobody,” she said. Kelly responded to the suit as well, saying, “This must stop. The abuse of women, the shaming of them, the threatening, the retaliation. Silencing them after the fact.”
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