Bill O'Reilly Throws Former Colleague Megyn Kelly Under the Bus - 'Kelly Should Have Known'
Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly had scathing remarks for his former colleague and fellow ex-Fox News host, Megyn Kelly, in an interview on Friday.
Kelly was fired this week from NBC, where she had worked since exiting her position Fox News.
The reason for Kelly’s removal was due to her made controversial comments about using blackface for Halloween.
“What is racist?” Kelly said Tuesday. “You do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface on Halloween, or a black person who puts on whiteface for Halloween. Back when I was a kid, that was O.K., as long as you were dressing up as a character.”
O’Reilly spoke to News radio WRVA’s Jeff Katz where he was asked if Kelly’s removal from NBC was really due to her blackface comments, or if it was due to conservative issues that she covered on her show.
While O’Reilly alluded to tension between himself and Kelly in the past, he also said that both the hatred that the network had for Kelly, and her own ignorance played a part in her untimely cut from her morning show.
“I knew she was going into a corporate culture where many of the people were going to try and kill her,” O’Reilly said. “That’s what happens when you go into the network news.”
“You’re not accepted particularly if you are making more money than the people who are there, which she was,” he added.
The author and conservative pundit said that Kelly’s attitude toward the show probably didn’t help the situation.
“Now Kelly went in and basically said ‘screw you,’ almost like Donald Trump said to the press chieftains, ‘I’m going to do whatever I want because I’m Megyn Kelly.’ That exacerbated the hatred toward her,” he said.
“And since her ratings were not good and ratings are everything in TV news, they were looking for a way to get out of her contract.”
The former host of “The O’Reilly Factor” however didn’t discount the effects of Kelly’s comments.
“Once she said the stuff about blackface — which she should have known better,” O’Reilly said. “You have to know in history, American history, blackface has been used to denigrate and humiliate African American and it was horrible in the 1920s and ’30s when this was in vogue.”
“Kelly should have known that and the fact that she didn’t know speaks a little bit about her. Anyway, if she had been getting high ratings and been accepted, the network people they would have saved her, but since she didn’t know it and she wasn’t getting good ratings and they loathed her, she was out,” he said.
While O’Reilly was clear he believes political correct culture has gone too far, he also said there are some lines of civility we should follow.
“The host should understand that white entertainers in blackface historically mocked African-Americans so there is a clear legitimacy to avoiding that insult on Halloween and every other day,” he said. “There is a huge difference between wearing a Mexican sombrero to a costume party and bringing back historical wrongs. The thought police cannot understand the difference but a national broadcaster should.”
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