Bill paid his usual Friday morning visit with Glenn Beck on The Blaze Radio. Mincing no words and wasting no time, Beck immediately invited Bill to weigh in on the Harvey Weinstein affair and the fact that Bill's name is often brought up in news reports.
"There has been nothing at all put forth against me," Bill declared. "This is being used as a political hammer and we have proven that. There are powerful people who are trotted out to accuse other people of heinous things with no backup, and I'm actually going to do something about it soon. I'm tired of talking about it, I'm going to have to take some action. It won't end unless the whole thing is exposed. The people who wanted me silenced are not looking for the truth or for perspective."
Beck differentiated between Bill's situation and others that are often put in the same blender: "The accusations against Bill Cosby, Roger Ailes, and Harvey Weinstein are clear, it's bad stuff. That's not the same with you at all! There was an open effort by people on the left to smear and destroy you." Bill summarized the situation: "I am being lumped in with these people and it's a disgrace! I've been in the broadcast business for 42 years, I worked for 12 corporations, and I never had a complaint filed against me anywhere."
Bill turned to the left's handling of the current news about Weinstein, who was a long and loyal Democratic donor: "What did the left try to do with the Weinstein thing? They tried to drag Trump back in and they tried to reignite that." Beck pithily concluded, "Harvey Weinstein is just a despicable human being!"
The duo made a dramatic turn to President Trump's unilateral changes to ObamaCare, which the president claims will increase competition. "This gives health insurance companies the ability to compete everywhere," Bill said, "so it will give Americans more choices, which should drive down premiums. Trump realizes that Congress is corrupt and he is using the executive order system to dismantle ObamaCare. It's a fairly good political strategy, but I don't know if it will be effective or not."
They then focused on the media, which has been President Trump's implacable foe. "The president can't go after broadcasting licenses," Bill said, "but he says that just to bring attention to his cause. He wants people to know that the reportage concerning him is not organized to seek the truth. He is genuinely angry about the treatment he gets from the media and he wants to mobilize people to say that they would like some honest reporting, just once in a while. I don't want a big and intrusive government telling people what they can say, but I would like a change in the libel and slander laws so people can hold the media accountable."
Bill and Beck disagreed slightly on the NFL protests. Beck credited President Trump with turning public opinion against the protesting players, but Bill accused the far left of turning people off. "Once the far left got in it," Bill theorized, "then the NFL was attached to the far left because the league didn't take any action. The NFL came down on the wrong side of this civil war. People were very angry about how the press was sympathizing with the protesters and how the NFL was being cowardly."
They also discussed President Trump's bluster regarding North Korea, which Bill takes far less seriously than Beck. "If he wants to call this idiot 'rocket man,'" Bill said, "that doesn't bother me. I'm not losing sleep because the president is putting down a marker and telling North Korea that if you attack anybody we'll wipe you out."
Bill concluded with a very personal message about the accusations that led to the end of his long tenure at Fox News: "This whole thing I went through was probably the most painful thing I have ever experienced and it is not over. I am not going to take it anymore, it is disgusting, and I appreciate you giving me the air time because a lot of people won't!" |
