Fox News launched on this day in 1996, and to celebrate, The Daily Show cobbled together… a tribute of sorts.
Naturally, the satiric program decided to go balls-to-the-wall in a controversial way, and while bouncing off Bill O’Reilly’s scandalous ousting in 2017 following revelations that he paid out over $30 million for sexual harassment settlements. That was quite a fall for O’Reilly, given that media analyst Howard Kurtz once described him as “the biggest star in the 20 year history at Fox News,” and yet, O’Reilly swiftly fell from grace while, uh, stories spread about him about him grunting like a wild boar at a female colleague that he allegedly referred to as “hot chocolate.”
That’s not an easy reputation to shake, so the Trevor Noah-hosted program rounded up the “greatest hits,” so to speak, of chauvinistic on-air statements by O’Reilly. As luck would have it, too, there were also plenty of unfortunate utterances by Brian Kilmeade (who was remarking upon Ainsley Earhardt’s outfit), Geraldo Rivera, and more. Here’s a few selections that surface during this montage:
“If you’re wearing something, please get naked.”
“But I think what a woman brings to a marriage, more than anything else to a relationship, is her youth.”
“There’s gotta be some downside to having a woman president, right?”
“Many women who are pregnant are blasted out of their minds when they have sex, they’re not gonna use birth control anyway”
“Deltoid exposure.”
Yep, Gretchen Carlson (who sued former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes for sexual harassment) did not look like she was having a good time in these clips. In closing, The Daily Show had this sign-off caption to offer: “Here’s to 25 more years of multimillion dollar settlements!”