Disgraced former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly blamed his recent meltdown at an airport on Joe Biden, offering a confuding defence of his insulting actions toward a JetBlue worker.
Vanity Fair reports that on Sunday, Mr O'Reilly threatened a JetBlue employee at JFK International Airpot after his flight to Turks & Caicos was delayed for five hours.
Despite Mr O'Reilly's claims that "character assassins on social media [are] completely lying" about his interactions with the employee, the incident was caught on video and depicts exactly what occurred.
In the video, Mr O'Reilly tells the worker, "we need to know what you're gonna do, it's three hours late now." The worker offers a response, prompting Mr O'Reilly to point a finger in his face and say "no, no, no, you're going to find out”.
The former Fox News host then leans in to look at the worker's name tag and tells him he is "lucky I don't put my first through it”.
The employee responds to the threat, likely negatively, launching Mr O'Reilly into further outrage.
“You f****** scumbag, don’t talk to me like that,” he tells the worker.
The worker tells Mr O'Reilly that he was clearly "threatening him”, which Mr O'Reilly denies.
"I dare you? I dare you? Is that what you said to me?" Mr O'Reilly asks, before telling the worker that he's going to "lose your job" before storming off.
Mr O'Reilly is well known as a provacateur, often times insulting his guests on his former television show and cutting their mics when he did not like the points they were trying to make. He was eventually fired in 2017 while facing sexual harassment allegations. He settled with five accusers, with one settlement costing him $32m. Despite the settlements, Mr O’Reilly denied any wrongdoing.
The former Fox News host defended himself on Twitter on Tuesday, admitting that he handled the situation "poorly”, but claiming the focus on him threatening an airline employee was just a distraction from JetBlue and, he said, the Biden administration.
“The story is JetBlue can’t get their flights off the ground. It was crazy in the terminal,” he told Mediaite. “For some reason, the Biden administration is not big on solving problems. This is a huge problem.”
