Pat Robertson, the televangelist who ran for president in 1988 and founded the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), is not buying the latest sexual harassment claim against a Fox News host.
In fact, he doesn’t believe any of the network’s previous sexual harassment claims against top Fox News affiliates ever actually happened. It’s all a conspiracy to “destroy the Fox News,” he said.
“If you wanted to destroy the Fox News, you really wanted to destroy them, what would you do? Well you would send some salacious material, ostensibly from one of their popular co-hosts or hosts and you’d send it out and then get it publicized and then you have some woman complain that she had gotten this salacious material from this particular co-host,” he said Monday in a monologue on CBN, referring to the latest sexual harassment scandal involving Eric Bolling, the co-host of “Fox News Specialists” and “Cashin’ In.”
Bolling has been suspended indefinitely while an outside law firm — the same firm that investigated sexual harassment allegations against former Fox chairman Roger Ailes and former host Bill O’Reilly — looks into whether he sent photos of male genitalia to female colleagues, a Fox News spokesperson told TPM.
The news came from a scathing Huffington Post report published Friday, which reported that at least a dozen sources linked to Fox News confirmed that Bolling sent the lewd photos to at least three female colleagues.
But Bolling is just the latest victim of a conspiracy to destroy the network, according to Robertson, who called Bolling a “straight arrow,” a “dedicated Catholic” who “goes to mass every day” and a “very nice man.”
“Fox is so averse to any kind of legal action that they immediately take the person off the air, so before long you would have decimated the prime time line up of all the Fox hosts. Easy to do? Absolutely. Is it being done? Probably,” he said.
Robertson, who admitted he didn’t “have a lot of firsthand information, so I may be off the wall on it,” said the same thing happened to get rid of O’Reilly, “who was the top getter of audience, the most popular host they had,” and Ailes.
“Anybody can make charges, but ladies and gentlemen, if this is going on… I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but it’s so easy to see what’s being done. I think it’s a terrible shame. Fox had better synch up, gird up their loins, people are going after them and know this is a game people are playing,” Robertson said.
Bolling spoke out against the allegations on Twitter Monday, saying he is looking “forward to clearing my name asap.”
Overwhelmed by all the support I have received. Thank you
I look forward to clearing my name asap
— Eric Bolling (@ericbolling) August 7, 2017
Watch the full monologue below, tweeted by Huffington Post reporter Yashar Ali, who broke the Bolling story:
WATCH: Pat Robertson talking about the Bolling story. He makes sure to say "I'm not a conspiracy theorist"/"I don't have first hand info" pic.twitter.com/56ytaTSQ11
— Yashar Ali (@yashar) August 8, 2017
