Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly called Roger Ailes the “best boss I’ve ever had” on NBC’s “Late Night with Seth Meyers” Wednesday, defending the Fox News CEO against numerous claims of sexual harassment.
Fox News host Gretchen Carlson filed a lawsuit against Ailes earlier this month, alleging he sexually harassed her. Since then, more than a dozen women have shared similar stories of harassment by Ailes.
“I stand behind Roger 100 percent,” O’Reilly told Meyers on the show, adding that “in this country, every famous, powerful or wealthy person is a target. You’re a target, I’m a target. Anytime, somebody could come out and sue us, attack us, go to the press or anything like that.”
The Fox News host said this was “a deplorable situation” and called for an option from the English system of civil law, “whereby if you file a frivolous lawsuit and you lose, the judges are right to make you pay all court costs.” Until then, O’Reilly said we will continue to have our current “out-of-control, tabloid society that is tremendously destructive.”
O’Reilly himself has been accused of sexual harassment by a former Fox producer. The network supported O’Reilly throughout the lawsuit, which he settled in 2004.
O’Reilly was also accused of domestic violence during a custody battle in 2015; O’Reilly’s teenage daughter told a court-appointed forensic examiner that she witnessed him “choking her mom” as he “dragged her down some stairs” by the neck.
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