Donald Trump Reportedly Went ‘Off Script’ To Praise Bill O’Reilly During His NY Times Interview

During election season, Donald Trump routinely veered off course while speaking, launching into tangents about one subject or another. According to a New York Times reporter, that’s exactly what happened when the president bizarrely defended embattled Fox News host Bill O’Reilly during an interview in the Oval Office.

Appearing on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Glenn Thrush said that the Oval Office was a chaotic scene while he and his colleague Maggie Haberman interviewed the president:

“I have never been in such a crowded Oval Office in my entire life. It had to be, aggregate, 12, 15, 16 people moving in and out. It was really amazing. At some point, in the middle of the interview, Mike Pence and Reince Priebus just drift in, and they’re sort of standing off to the side watching this like it’s a live TV show.”

Co-host Mika Brzezinski responded simply, “good lord.”

The chaotic scene and rotating cast of characters may explain why Trump decided to go “off script” from remarks or talking points about domestic policy to defending O’Reilly, “a good person,” in Trump’s estimation, who it was recently reported paid out millions (along with Fox News) to settle sexual harassment claims and has since lost dozens of advertisers. Thrush explained how the conversation shifted:

“Let me put it this way, Hope [Hicks] definitely wanted the president to talk about infrastructure in that conversation, and we were totally prepared to do that. I think the O’Reilly comments, as I recall, came up with the context of him talking about how lousy the New York Times was and how bad our coverage was, and how good the Fox [News] coverage was. Then, I don’t recall specifically how it came up, but I think he mentioned O’Reilly first and answered the question, essentially, that he thought O’Reilly should not have settled and that he should have, quote, taken it all the way.”

During the presidential campaign, several accusers stepped forward to make sexual assault allegations against Trump, which resulted in the then-candidate threatening to sue for defamation. Last week, Trump signed an executive order that revoked Obama-era workplace protections, including one that made it easier for companies to hide sexual harassment claims from the public and its own employees.

Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month is off to a smashing start.

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