Geraldo Rivera defended ousted “Today” anchor Matt Lauer with a series of tweets that deemed journalism a “flirty business.”
“Sad about @MLauer, great guy, highly skilled & empathetic w guests & a real gentleman to my family & me,” Rivera wrote.
“News is a flirty business & it seems like current epidemic of #SexHarassmentAllegations may be criminalizing courtship & conflating it w predation. What about #GarrisonKeillor?”
Hours later, Rivera apologized for his comments.
Reaction to my tweets today on #sexharassment makes clear I didn’t sufficiently explain that this is a horrendous problem long hidden,” he tweeted.
“Harassers are deviants who deserve what is coming to them. Often victims are too frightened to come forward in a timely fashion. I humbly apologize.”
Fox News issued a statement about Rivera late Wednesday, before his apology.
“Geraldo’s tweets do not reflect the views of FOX News or its management,” the network said in a statement to the Daily News.
“We were troubled by his comments and are addressing them with him.”
Lauer was fired by NBC Wednesday after 20 years as co-anchor in the wake of an allegation of “inappropriate sexual behavior.”
By days’ end, more women came forward to accuse Lauer of similar behavior in a Variety report.
One former colleague said Lauer once gifted her a sex toy with an explicit note about how he wanted to use it on her, while another alleged he showed her his penis and became angry when she did not engage in a sexual act.
Radio host Keillor, meanwhile, was also fired Wednesday morning from Minnesota Public Radio for “inappropriate behavior.”
Rivera continued his Twitter rant by defining sexual harassment on his own terms, and dismissing the idea of a news morning show hosted only by women.
“Heard well-regarded women in media today suggesting morning shows go to an all-female format. That should be as unacceptably retro as the other way around,” he wrote.
The 74-year-old television personality also explained that he believed all sexual harassment claims should go through a more detailed vetting process before being accepted because “some victims are motived by more than justice.”
Speaking on relationships in the workplace is nothing new for Rivera, who explained in 2014 that he’d been able to bed 1,000 women thanks to lax “workplace protections” in the ’70s and ’80s.
“Now if you look at an intern with cross-eyes you go to jail, I mean get fired. Office affairs are monitored…(then) it was the ‘SNL’ after party every day,” he told The Blaze. “It was almost like sex was free! You have no HR — no human resources, no workplace rules against it, lots of money, relative youthfulness, a young staff, surrounded by sycophants and enablers, people smoking joints openly in their office…”
Rivera’s defense of Lauer also brought to light an old interview Bette Midler did with Barbara Walters that quickly began making the rounds on social media.
In the clip, Midler tells Walters that Rivera and a producer once shoved her into a bathroom, broke two poppers and pushed them under her nose and groped her.
