Brian Williams has one defender who might surprise you—Bill O’Reilly.
O’Reilly, appearing on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” expressed disgust with those celebrating Williams’ fall from grace. “I feel that anybody who’s enjoying the destruction of this man, you’ve got to look at yourself here,” he said. “There’s a lot of people that seem to be real happy that his career is going down the drain. That disturbs me.”
“He made a mistake,” O’Reilly said. “Is it a character flaw? I don’t know.”
O’Reilly has some sympathy for Williams, saying that he too has flown over Iraq in a helicopter, and can imagine the motives for exaggerating the experience. “It’s unbelievably exhilarating,” he recalled. “It’s intense. Nobody shot at us or anything like that, but I could see, that when you come on a show like Kimmel or any of the late night shows, you don’t want to be a dweeb. You want to have something interesting to say. That’s what happens…this story to make it more dramatic and interesting will emerge.”
“I think that’s interesting that you have compassion for him,” Kimmel remarked.
“These people delight in seeing famous people being taken apart, and I just think it’s wrong,” O’Reilly insisted, calling the internet “a sewer.”
“If there’s a doubt with Brian Williams, I’d give it to him,” he said, while noting that Williams’ future will hinge on whether this was an isolated incident or a pattern of behavior.
Watch the clip:
