After speaking out about former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly’s behavior on her show earlier this week, Megyn Kelly on Wednesday night questioned why Fox News did not know the size of one of O’Reilly’s settlements.
The ousted Fox News host in January paid a $32 million settlement to a former Fox News analyst who accused him of sexual harassment and misconduct, and O’Reilly’s contract at Fox News was renewed not long after, the New York Times reported over the weekend. James Murdoch, the chief executive at 21st Century Fox, said that he had not previously been aware of the size of O’Reilly’s settlement.
“That’s not nuisance value,” Kelly told NBC’s “Late Night” host Seth Meyers of O’Reilly’s settlement. “Litigations happen all the time, a lot of them are nonsense and you pay some small amount to make them go away — $32 million is a different story.”
“And he was renewed at the company after he did that. And I know that Fox says it didn’t know,” she continued. “The question remains, why didn’t they? Why wouldn’t you know? Why wouldn’t you ask before you bring this man back into the workplace and unleash him on the workforce?”
Kelly told Meyers that she was moved to speak out about O’Reilly’s behavior and her decision to report it to the Fox News top brass earlier this week due to the size of O’Reilly’s settlement and his claim that he did not receive complaints about his behavior while he was at Fox. She said that she does not enjoy criticizing her former employer, but that she felt she needed to speak up about O’Reilly.
“They’ve got some great people,” she said. “He is not one of them.”
She also addressed the thank you notes that O’Reilly posted this week from Kelly and Gretchen Carlson, another former Fox News host who says she was sexually harassed at the network. O’Reilly argued that the notes prove he had a positive relationship with female employees at the network.
“Ask yourselves, who keeps thank you notes from nine years earlier and puts them in a file just in case they need them,” Kelly told Meyers before noting it’s possible for someone to have a good relationship with a coworker before obtaining new information that changes her mind.
Watch the clip via NBC:
God: Because I made sure that it was a well-guarded secret.
BillO: Thanks for nothing.
Frankly, this is an even better story this a.m. :
My schadenfreuden runneth over…
I hate that guy. So good riddance…
Kelly is trying to remake herself. Good luck with that.
Now that Megyn has found her true voice (aggreived but not extremely so) and true calling (calling our BillO and Faux), I suppose we are going to have to read some sort of BS about her every day? I hope not .
I question why she cares when she spent the formative years of her carreer at Fox where she sold the country down the river for a ruble, only to support the political party that systematically undermines women and the rights of people outside of the normal circles of power. Now she cares. I question why.