Megyn Kelly opened up her hour of Today on Monday morning by addressing the New York Times weekend report that revealed Bill O’Reilly had paid out an exorbitant $32 million dollars to sexual harassment accuser Lis Wiehl — the sixth one to settle — and that Fox News had renewed his contract one month later. Although Gretchen Calrson was quick to point out that nobody pays that kind of money for false accusations, O’Reilly slammed the story as “crap” and “financially motivated bullsh*t.”
O’Reilly continues to maintain that in 32 years, he’s never had a single human resources complaint filed against him, however Kelly revealed that to be untrue. “I know, because I complained,” she said. It was the day her memoir was released, which contained a chapter on Ailes and the sexual harassment scandal at Fox News. When asked about the book on CBS News that morning, O’Reilly lashed out that he was “not interested” in making his network look bad. “That doesn’t interest me one bit,” he snapped in the clip.
That appearance led to Kelly sending an email to the co-presidents of Fox News complaining about O’Reilly, and although she was told he was being “dealt with,” the host later went on air to brazenly attack the harassment victims once again. Kelly then dropped the following bombshell:
“This is not unique to Fox News. Women everywhere are used to being dismissed, ignored, or attacked when raising complaints about men is authority positions. They stay silent so often out of fear — fear of ending their careers, fear of lawyers, yes, and often fear of public shaming, including through the media. At Fox News, the media relations chief Irena Briganti is known for her vindictiveness. To this day she pushes negative articles on certain Ailes accusers, like the one you are looking at right now. It gives me no such please to report such news about my former employer which has absolutely made some reforms since all of this went down. But this must stop. The abuse of women, the shaming of them, the threatening, the retaliation, the silencing of them after the fact, it has to stop.”
You can listen to her full remarks in the above clip. And a Fox News spokesperson sent over the following statement: “Irena (Briganti) is a valued colleague and she has our full support.”