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Five Women Reportedly Received $13M for Bill O’Reilly Harassment Claims From O’Reilly, Fox

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“21st Century Fox Takes Matters of Workplace Behavior Very Seriously”

Five women alleging Bill O’Reilly harassed them, sexually or otherwise, have received about $13 million in payouts in exchange for not pursuing litigation or discussing the allegations against the Fox News host, The New York Times reported today.

The payouts were reportedly received from 2002 to as late as last year, made to women who either worked for Bill O’Reilly or appeared on his show. The funds came from either O’Reilly himself or Fox News’ parent company, 21st Century Fox.

The reporting found that the allegations included verbal abuse and lewd comments, both on-air and off, as well as unsolicited phone calls that were sexual in nature.

“As an influential figure in the newsroom, Mr. O’Reilly would create a bond with some women by offering advice and promising to help them professionally,” The Times’ report reads. “He then would pursue sexual relationships with them, causing some to fear that if they rebuffed him, their careers would stall.”

Fox News, which is still combatting fallout from the resignation of its disgraced founding CEO Roger Ailes after up to 20 women accused him of sexual assault, declined to discuss specific allegations against O’Reilly. In a written statement to The Times, however, they acknowledged that the issued had been addressed.

“21st Century Fox takes matters of workplace behavior very seriously,” the statement read. “Notwithstanding the fact that no current or former Fox News employee ever took advantage of the 21st Century Fox hotline to raise a concern about Bill O’Reilly, even anonymously, we have looked into these matters over the last few months and discussed them with Mr. O’Reilly. While he denies the merits of these claims, Mr. O’Reilly has resolved those he regarded as his personal responsibility. Mr. O’Reilly is fully committed to supporting our efforts to improve the environment for all our employees at Fox News.”

O’Reilly also responded to The Times, although via a statement sent from Mark Fabiani, the crisis communications expert he hired. “Just like other prominent and controversial people, I’m vulnerable to lawsuits from individuals who want me to pay them to avoid negative publicity,” the statement read.

“In my more than 20 years at Fox News Channel, no one has ever filed a complaint about me with the Human Resources Department, even on the anonymous hotline,” it continued, as if to suggest that all reports of harassment are reported. “The worst part of my job is being a target for those who would harm me and my employer, the Fox News Channel. Those of us in the arena are constantly at risk, as are our families and children. My primary efforts will continue to be to put forth an honest TV program and to protect those close to me.”

Frederic S. Newman, O’Reilly’s attorney, issued a statement Friday in response to the report, saying, “we are now seriously considering legal action to defend Mr. O’Reilly’s reputation.” 

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‘Close’: Trump Claims World War III Could Erupt if He Does Not Become President Again

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July 26, 2024

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Meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago on Friday, Donald Trump declared World War III is “close,” and issuing a warning suggesting if he does not win re-election in November it could erupt.

Video of his full remarks was published by Florida’s WPTV. A shorter clip is below.

Trump’s meeting, criticized by some as a violation of the Logan Act, comes at a critical time for the U.S. and Israel. Prime Minister Netanyahu, a Trump-supporter who is considered by some to be refusing to end the Gaza War, addressed Congress on Wednesday at the invitation of House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris met with Netanyahu on Thursday.

In May, The International Criminal Court (ICC) filed to obtain arrest warrants for Netanyahu, alleging war crimes.

READ MORE: JD Vance Suggested America Should ‘Punish’ People for Not Having Children

Trump quickly launched into an attack on Vice President Kamala Harris, who is his likely 2024 presidential opponent, telling reporters she is, “a radical left person, San Francisco, destroyed San Francisco. She’s really a destroyer. She isn’t a builder.”

“I actually don’t know how a person who’s Jewish can vote for her. But that’s up to them,” Trump added.

“Now she’s taken over and she’s worse than him. She’s actually worse than him. So we’ll see how it goes. But if it all works out. If we win, it’ll be very simple. It’s all gonna work out and very quickly.”

“If we don’t we’re going to end up with major wars in the Middle East and maybe a Third World War. You are closer to a Third World War right now than at any time since the Second World War. We’ve never been so close because we have incompetent people running our country,” Trump claimed.

Watch video below or at this link.

READ MORE: Trump Said Some Disabled People – Including His Young Relative – Should Just ‘Die’: Nephew

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JD Vance Suggested America Should ‘Punish’ People for Not Having Children

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16 hours ago

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July 26, 2024

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Trump vice presidential running mate JD Vance, under fire for his 2021 remarks calling Democrats “childless cat ladies” and saying parents should be given more voting rights than those without children, is now being criticized after video resurfaced of him suggesting people who don’t have children should be punished, because not having kids is “bad.”

Vance, closely tied to the “broligarch” class of right-wing tech billionaires like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, is a venture capitalist whose memoir catapulted him to national attention, which he parlayed into a successful U.S. Senate run with the backing of his uber-wealthy mentors.

Before announcing his 2022 Senate run, Vance made numerous public appearances, including sharing his extremist views with powerful talk show host, far-right wing activist, and Christian nationalist Charlie Kirk.

“So JD,” Kirk, a member of the highly-secretive Council on National Policy asked, according to ABC News, “what are you going to do to change this conversation? Everything we have to do should be about moving ideas from unthinkable, to sensible, to popular, to policy.”

READ MORE: Trump Said Some Disabled People – Including His Young Relative – Should Just ‘Die’: Nephew

“In response,” ABC News reports, “Vance, who at the time had not yet officially launched his 2022 Senate campaign, suggested that the country needed to ‘reward the things that we think are good’ and ‘punish the things that we think are bad’ — before suggesting that individuals without children should be taxed at a higher rate than those with children.”

The full quote, contained in video (below) posted Friday by the liberal super PAC and opposition research firm American Bridge, which comports with ABC News’ reporting, is, “we need to reward the things that we think are good and punish the things that we think are bad. So you talk about tax policy, let’s tax the things that are bad and not tax the things that are good. If you’re making $100,000, $400,000 a year and you’ve got three kids, you should pay a different, lower rate than if you are making the same amount of money and you don’t have any kids. It’s that simple.”

In that same year, 2021, Vance called universal child care, “a massive subsidy to the lifestyle preferences of the affluent over the preferences of the middle and working class.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: Trump’s Sudden Debate Withdrawal Linked to Looming Criminal Sentencing: Legal Experts

 

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‘Extraordinary Weakness’: Trump ‘Pulling Out’ of Debate Shows ‘He’s Afraid’ Buttigieg Says

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19 hours ago

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July 26, 2024

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Pete Buttigieg says Donald Trump’s decision to “pull out” of a previously agreed presidential debate is an “extraordinary show of weakness,” especially for a candidate whose “calling card” is being a tough guy. The Transportation Secretary also observed the Trump campaign has been unable to adapt to President Joe Biden withdrawing from the race and endorsing his Vice President for the top of the ticket.

“Former President Donald Trump’s campaign on Thursday said it will not commit to a debate against Vice President Kamala Harris, at least until the Democratic Party makes a formal decision on its nominee,” Forbes reports.

Trump earlier this week had said he was uncomfortable with the debate being hosted by ABC News, despite having agreed to it back in May. But late Thursday night the Trump campaign served up a different reason when announcing the ex-president’s decision: “it would be inappropriate to schedule things with Harris because Democrats very well could still change their minds.”

MSNBC’s Sam Stein Thursday night described it as “backing out.”

“It’s extraordinary,” Buttigieg said on MSNBC Friday (video below), “tough talk is this guy’s calling card and now there’s this extraordinary show of weakness. He agreed to, you know, he said, ‘anytime, anyplace.’ But more than that, he agreed to this specific debate on this specific network on this specific date. And now he’s pulling out, and of course it shows that he’s afraid, it shows that he knows if the two of them are on a stage together, it’s not going to end well for him.”

RELATED: Buttigieg Top Choice for Harris VP Among Available Candidates: Poll

Buttigieg, one of about a dozen candidates being vetted to be Kamala Harris’s vice presidential running mate, added that Trump’s campaign “really has struggled to be about anything but Donald Trump and Joe Biden, and I think that’s the bigger pattern that you’re seeing here and part of why the Trump campaign is having such a hard time adapting.”

“Think about it: just in a matter of two or three days her campaign adapted to literally the biggest possible change, which is a change in the top of the ticket and yet, you know, within a couple of days that support consolidated and that message was clear.”

By comparison, Buttigieg said, the Trump campaign has “been flailing in a way that shows they’re unable to adapt. And to me, it’s not just that their entire strategic apparatus was built around tearing down Joe Biden. I think there’s something deeper, which is Donald Trump cannot conceive of a campaign that isn’t about the candidates.”

Earlier this week, Buttigieg targeted Trump’s vice-presidential running mate, U.S. Senator JD Vance, for his widely-criticized “childless cat ladies” comments from 2021. Vance, in part, had also claimed that the “entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”

READ MORE: ‘Super Creepy’: Vance and Masters’ Belief Politicians Have to Have Kids Called ‘Repugnant’

Buttigieg had responded, saying, “it’s not about his kids, or my kids, or the vice president’s family. It’s about your family, people’s families, whose well-being will depend on whether we go into a future led by somebody like Kamala Harris, who is focused on expanding the prosperity, the freedom, the well-being of our families.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

RELATED: Trump’s Sudden Debate Withdrawal Linked to Looming Criminal Sentencing: Legal Experts

 

 

 

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