Fox News contributor Geraldo Rivera said he felt sorry or Bill O’Reilly and attributed much of latter’s issues with sexual misconduct at the network to his never having a “good date.”
“The problem is the guy never had a good date. That’s his problem. He never had someone who really loved him,” Rivera told SiriusXM host Howard Stern on Wednesday. “O’Reilly is like a big dorky, nerdy, clumsy … I never thought O’Reilly was a secret keeper or a malicious person.”
Rivera, a longtime Fox News contributor, said he remained close with O’Reilly despite the wishes of the channel that he limits his professional association.
“Fox prefers that I don’t do his new podcast,” said Rivera, adding that it was something he says management told him after he appeared on it.
Rivera appeared on the radio show as part of a tour to promote his new book “The Geraldo Show.”
While O’Reilly is one of the more high profile Fox News personality felled by the #MeToo movement, Geraldo had his own close call last year after an old video surfaced of actress Bette Midler in the 1990s describing a graphic encounter with Rivera in the ’70s.
Tomorrow is my birthday. I feel like this video was a gift from the universe to me. Geraldo may have apologized for his tweets supporting Matt Lauer, but he has yet to apologize for this. #MeToo pic.twitter.com/TkcolFWfA2
— bettemidler (@BetteMidler) November 30, 2017
“He and his producer left the crew in the other room, they pushed me into my bathroom, they broke two poppers and pushed them under my nose and proceeded to grope me,” Midler told Barbara Walters in the footage. (Poppers refer to packets of amyl nitrite, a chemical that is often inhaled recreationally to relax muscles.)
Rivera never quite copped to the original charge leveled by Midler but did offer a quasi-apology on Twitter after the video surfaced.
27 years ago I wrote a tawdry book depicting consensual events in 1973-45 years ago-I’ve deeply regretted its distasteful & disrespectful tone & have refrained from speaking about it-I’m embarrassed & profoundly sorry to those mentioned-I have & again apologize to anyone offended
— Geraldo Rivera (@GeraldoRivera) December 1, 2017
Although I recall the time @BetteMidler has alluded to much differently than she, that does not change the fact that she has a right to speak out & demand an apology from me, for in the very least, publically embarrassing her all those years ago. Bette, I apologize.
— Geraldo Rivera (@GeraldoRivera) December 1, 2017
If nothing else, the new book will likely push further into the shadows the memory of Geraldo’s unfortunate 1991 memoir, which also came to light during Midlergate.
“He grabs Bette Midler’s boobs, beds every conceivable underling, and waxes about failing to have sex with Barbara Walters,” wrote Erin Gloria Ryan for the Daily Beast, who added that it was a “horndog’s bible of workplace harassment”
Or in Rivera’s own words at the time — “a stiff d–k has no conscience.”
A spokesperson for Fox News did not immediately respond to request for comment from TheWrap.