Bill O’Reilly may have gotten knocked down — but it didn’t take very long for him to get back up. Fox News dumped the number-one television host last week in the wake of a story in The New York Times revealing that at least five women had been paid settlements in exchange for not pursuing sexual harassment charges against him.
Yet the former host of the very successful “The O’Reilly Factor” announced soon after the news broke of his departure from Fox that he would be back with a new episode of his podcast on Monday, April 24, titled “No Spin News.” It debuted the same night Fox News replaced his show at 8 p.m. ET with “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”
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On the podcast, O’Reilly focused mostly on trending news — rather than the headlines about his own case. He did, however, give fans a brief look into his professional future and remained adamant he was not guilty of what he has been accused of by others.
“Hey, I missed you guys,” O’Reilly said when opening the 19-minute episode to fans, which is available for free through his official website, while future episodes will be available through a “premium membership.” “So what we’re going to do here is about 15 minutes, 12 minutes of the headlines. This is an extended ‘Talking Points Memo’ that will cover the world each day. And then as we develop the website, we’ll have guests and things like that, and this will become longer and longer and longer, into a genuine news program. That’s the vision right now.”
“I am sad that I’m not on television anymore.”
In regard to the sexual harassment allegations and his departure from Fox, the 67-year-old O’Reilly said, “I am sad that I’m not on television anymore. I was very surprised how it all turned out. I can’t say a lot, because there’s much stuff going on right now.”
He continued, “But I can tell you that I’m very confident the truth will come out, and when it does, I don’t know if you’re going to be surprised — but I think you’re going to be shaken, as I am. There’s a lot of stuff involved here. Now, I can’t say anymore because I just don’t want to influence the flow of the information. I don’t want the media to take what I say and misconstrue it. However, you, as a loyal O’Reilly listener, have a right to know, I think, down the lane what exactly happened. And we are working in that direction, OK?”
The new podcast episode seems to partly address the mystery of what O’Reilly will do next in the world of news commentary. He is focusing on the independent route as of now, although it is still too early to tell whether he is considering other options, like television, movie, radio, or other deals.
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The rest of the “No Spin News” episode on Monday night brought fans the blunt persona they had tuned into on television for so long. O’Reilly tackled everything from Trump’s approval ratings to the French presidential elections.
About Trump’s recent poll numbers, O’Reilly said, in part, “There are a couple of polls about President Trump today. One is [from] The Washington Post, and they basically have Trump’s approval rating around 40 percent, 42 percent. His disapproval rating [is] in the low 50s. All of the polls say the same thing. Well, this is unprecedented. No president in his first 100 days polled this low. But then they deceive, as the mainstream media does, on a daily basis.”
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He continued, “No president has ever entered office with as much negative publicity and hatred directed toward him as Donald Trump. In the history of our republic, no president has come under that kind of withering criticism, particularly by the press that wanted Hillary Clinton to win.”
O’Reilly ended his program by answering thoughts from fans posted to the message board of his website.
“It was definitely ‘Old School’ to wish Fox News the best,” wrote one fan named John, referring to O’Reilly’s latest best-selling book.
“We’ll get better, and we’ll get pithier, and we’ll have a lot of fun going forward.”
O’Reilly responded with, “Look, I was there for 20 years and six months. We made history, put cable news on the map, and were successful all that time. No ebb and flow, just straight-up graph. You know, that vehicle was fabulous for me and I said in the beginning that I’m sad, but why wouldn’t I wish them the best? They were there, we performed well for them, and that’s the fact.”
O’Reilly also responded to a fan who called for term limits in government, which O’Reilly said he was in agreement with.
For those who may have thought (or hoped) that the recent controversies for O’Reilly would have stopped him in his tracks, the television host disappointed. He’s put his voice right back into the mix — and “No Spin News” will continue with daily episodes that will launch at 7 p.m. eastern.
Said O’Reilly in closing his show Monday night, “This is all new, and we’ll get better, and we’ll get pithier, and we’ll have a lot of fun going forward.”
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