Bill O’Reilly said his former Fox News colleague Megyn Kelly would have kept her show at NBC if her ratings had been better, despite her controversial comments about race and Halloween costumes.
O’Reilly said in an interview Monday with the Washington Examiner that he believed the firing of Kelly late last month was “preordained” by NBC executives because her floundering daytime show was not attracting enough viewers.
“NBC wanted out and they found a way,” he said, though he also said he was taken aback by Kelly’s comments.
“I was surprised that Ms. Kelly did not understand … the horrible history of blackface in this country,” he said. “That this technique, if you will, was used to marginalize denigrate and mock blacks. That was its primary use. So you can’t justify it by saying you were a kid and it wasn’t a big deal. It was a big deal.”
Kelly’s show, billed as the fourth hour of the “Today” program, was pulled after she said on air that when she was a young child, dressing up as someone of a different race “was OK, as long as you were dressing up as a character.”
The remarks were widely viewed as a defense of blackface and Kelly apologized on her show the next day.
Kelly has been critical of O’Reilly in the past.
Last year, she said that when she worked at Fox, she had complained to executives about comments O’Reilly made in a TV interview, wherein he declined to comment about allegations by Kelly that she was sexually harassed by Roger Ailes, the late CEO of Fox.
“Perhaps it’s his own history of harassment with women, which has, as you both know, resulted in payouts to more than one woman, including recently, that blinded him to the folly of saying anything other than, ‘I’m just so sorry for the women of this company who never should’ve had to go through that,'” Kelly said she told the executives.
O’Reilly has denied allegations from multiple women who have accused him of inappropriate conduct.
