Longtime talk show host Bill O’Reilly, who resigned from Fox News after the network settled five lawsuits involving women who accused him of misconduct, was caught on video berating an airline employee after his flight to the Caribbean was delayed, The Daily Mail reported with exclusive video.
“The conservative commentator can be heard in the video asking a JetBlue employee to find out why his flight from New York to Turks and Caicos is ‘three hours late now,'” The Washington Examiner reported. “Seconds later, after a barely audible back-and-forth, O’Reilly calls the employee a ‘f***ing scumbag’ and tells him, ‘You’re going to lose your job.’ The JetBlue agent is heard in the video accusing O’Reilly of threatening him with violence.”
“You’re going to get that information,” O’Reilly said before storming off.
The video was filmed at 9:24 am on Sunday, April 3, the Daily Mail reported. That was two and a half hours after the flight to the Turks and Caicos Islands was scheduled to take off.
O’Reilly defended himself in an email to the Mail, saying “it was the airport worker who was arrogant, not him.”
“The guy was arrogant and falsely accused me of threatening him and I said: ‘You’re lucky I didn’t do that,'” he said in the email.
O’Reilly also took to Twitter to defend himself. “The character assassins on social media completely lying about my interaction with a JetBlue guy who misled passengers during a five-hour delay,” O’Reilly tweeted after the video surfaced on Tuesday.
“The 72-year-old former host of The O’Reilly Factor told a news outlet on Tuesday that he handled the situation ‘poorly’ but did not apologize to the worker, reiterating that the JetBlue flight was delayed for hours without explanation, leading to frustration. He also accused JetBlue of fraudulent behavior, claiming the airline is selling tickets to flights that the company knows cannot arrive on schedule,” the Examiner reported.
O’Reilly also gave a statement to Mediaite. “The real story beyond the exchange caught by Daily Mail, O’Reilly said, is staffing shortages airlines like JetBlue are not being honest about, leading to numerous cancellations and delays for their flights,” the website wrote.
“‘The story is JetBlue can’t get their flights off the ground. It was crazy in the terminal,’ O’Reilly added, joking frustration among passengers was so fierce he may have prevented a riot by saying something,” Mediaite reported.
“JetBlue, O’Reilly argued to Mediaite, is committing ‘fraud in the inducement,’ meaning they are selling tickets to flights they know they cannot complete, but are not being honest about it.”
Joseph Curl has covered politics for 35 years, including 12 years as White House correspondent, and ran the Drudge Report from 2010 to 2015. Send tips to [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @josephcurl.