GLENN: All right. So I want to talk to you about something. I'm going to go into greater detail than I think I've ever gone into on a story on our leaving Fox News. And I'm going to do it for a reason today.
And let me just tell you what the media will say or what Media Matters will pump out to all of their friends, is that Glenn's empire is crumbling. He's just trying to get attention. He's jockeying for a position at Fox. Whatever. Okay.
I'm going to tell you the truth because I believe you have about 24 hours here before the conservative media dramatically changes. And you are going to lose a very important ally in the fight, even though you might not agree with the Fox News Channel.
As you know, no love lost between me and Fox News. And some of the players on Fox News. However, you better stand up now and figure out what's really happening with this O'Reilly thing, or you're going to lose Fox News. And I'll explain exactly how it's going to happen.
In the old days, when I was there, the -- the lineup was a really important piece. And I mean the lineup, not on the air. Off the air. The second floor. It was a well-crafted machine. And what that machine did was honestly not necessarily protect the Constitution and constitutional values. That machine was built to protect the -- the ship. It was an empty cargo ship that Roger Ailes created. Whatever he wanted to put into that ship, he put in that ship.
But that ship was well protected. And you needed to have a well-protected ship because every other ship on the sea was against it because it was a G.O.P. machine. And I contend that it's not a conservative news channel; it is a G.O.P. machine. But it is the closest thing we have in mainstream media. It makes a ton of money, and it makes a huge impact.
Without Fox News, we probably would not be here today, as a nation. I truly believe that. Without Fox News, I don't know if we would have weathered the storm of the economic crash, if we would have weathered the storm of -- of 9/11. After that, when it started all going crazy and everybody was talking about how, you know -- how bad George Bush was in, and Michael Moore was alleging that George Bush was part of the conspiracy. Without a balance to that, I don't know if we would have been -- be here today. And certainly, we wouldn't be here on talk radio because talk radio would have been the only target. It would have been the last -- the last beachhead. And we would have been gone. They would have put us out, but they were busy trying to put out Fox News.
So Roger Ailes, like him, hate him, let's know him for who we think he is -- no matter what, he built a ship that was not going to be sunk.
Rupert Murdoch was part of that. But Rupert Murdoch has children and wives -- lots of them -- that hate the Fox News Channel. They are embarrassed by the Fox News Channel. They're not conservatives by any stretch of the imagination.
And the big thing when I was there was, as soon as Rupert is gone, the kids are going to take over Fox News and they're just going to clean house and stop this nonsense.
So it went Rupert Murdoch, his kids were not in the picture, Roger Ailes, who was a giant bear in the doorway and didn't let anything disrupt it. Then there was Bill Shine, who was, you know, the programming guy at Fox News who worked to execute Roger's vision. And then there was a guy called Brian Lewis and Irena Briganti.
This is the PR department. And I want to be really careful what I say here. But these were not good people, to say the least, in my opinion.
I will tell you that the only meeting that I ever had with Irena Briganti, I will keep to myself for right now. But I left that meeting, and it was on my first day. And I said to my then business partner, I said, "I feel like I've just had a meeting with the mob." And he said, "I think we have."
It was a -- it was a department that let everyone in the building know, "You screw with us, we destroy you." It was made very clear to me on the first day.
I was the only person at Fox News to have my own PR person. The only other person that ever tried to do that and did it successfully was Megyn Kelly, after I left.
And that -- Fox News did not like that. They didn't like that I owned my own company. They didn't like that I was independent. They didn't, quite honestly, like that I -- they couldn't find anything on me. And that too is another story that will remain for another time because it's not important here.
What I want you to know is two things: This was a bulletproof shield for whatever cargo Roger Ailes wanted to carry 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And most of that, we appreciate.
Roger is now gone. Rupert's children are now playing a big role in the future of Fox. That's not going to bode well. Those two things mean the end of the conservative Fox, as we know it, or have known it, is numbered. The end is coming. The days are numbered.
Bill Shine is the next target from Media Matters. And I'm going to get into that in a second. Brian Lewis is already gone. Don't know what happened with Brian Lewis, but there's a book out about Rupert Murdoch. And at the last chapter on this book says: The only two men that Rupert Murdoch are afraid of is Roger Ailes and Brian Lewis. And Brian Lewis because he knows where all the bodies are buried. Brian is a guy who settled for $7 million, a 7 million-dollar settlement. At least that's what I've heard, that he settled for a lot of money after Roger Ailes fired him. $7 million because he knows where all the bodies are buried.
Who brokered that deal between Roger Ailes and Brian Lewis? The head of the PR, which the PR is the one who did all of the fighting in the press, did all of the underhand stuff. Made all these things disappear. Brian Lewis and Roger Ailes. When there was a fight between them and they had to part ways, the media started to salivate because Brian knows all of Roger's secrets.
So who brokered that deal? Who sat in the conference room between those two and said, "What do you have on him? What do you have on him? Okay. I think it's worth this. Both go away happy."
That guy who brokered that deal was Donald Trump. Is it beginning to become clear at all why Donald Trump was treated the way he was by the Fox News Channel, at least when Roger was there?
Now, Brian is gone. Roger is gone. Rupert is weakened. And they're going after Bill O'Reilly.
Tomorrow, the newspaper is telling us, front page of the New York Times today says that Bill O'Reilly is in his last 24 hours.
Now, I want to make this really clear: I've heard -- I mean, I was not surprised by the -- by the findings or the rumors of Roger Ailes. But until Megyn Kelly came out, I didn't believe it. I thought Gretchen Carlson was pretty credible. But I still didn't know. It was one person. But I thought she was really pretty credible. And I had heard rumors like that while I was there. I had no evidence. I never saw anything. But it -- it didn't surprise me when Gretchen said that. But I don't want to -- you know, that's one person. The other people that started to come out against Roger looked really bad. But I didn't know any of them.
When Megyn came out and said, "Yeah, it happened to me," now I had two people that I went, "Okay. It's Gretchen and Megyn, I believe them." And only because I'm judging it -- I'm not judging it -- because I don't have access to anything else. So as an outside person, I didn't want to believe it until I had two credible people that I knew -- I believe it.
With Bill O'Reilly, I've never heard that. We worked closely with Bill on the road. We would go on the road. And he had access to very beautiful women on our staff. And he worked closely with very beautiful women on our staff. We never saw him utter a word that was even blue humor. He was so buttoned up when he was around us, that I find these charges hard to believe.
And to me, it makes sense that he may have had this one sexual harassment thing that was settled from a producer. He may have -- they may have had, you know, some here and there. Somebody could have set him up very easily. Played into, yeah, kind of flirting back with him. It's just one person. And then she wanted to make a name for herself, make money, whatever. That's what the suit alleged. And he pays out to silence -- Fox pays out to silence.
That's pretty bad, right? They paid money -- they settled.
Let me tell you something: I've just settled a case in Boston that I will go to my grave, I'm right. I'm right.
My insurance company pressured me for over a year. Premier pressured me for over a year. Glenn, settle it. Settle it.
"I'm right."
"Settle it."
When it got to a million and a half money of uninsured money that I had to pay out and it was looking at yet another probably $3 million -- I was willing to take it to the Supreme Court. My partners weren't. "Settle it." So I settled that. But I settled it with the stipulation, nothing is sealed. I want everybody to be able to see all the testimony, everything. Nothing is sealed.
Well, this guy, he was going to Saudi Arabia. He didn't care. Now, has anybody taken the time to read all of that? It's all public record? No. No. They're still smearing me --
PAT: Some day we'll help them with that. We'll tell you the story.
GLENN: We're going to help them. We're going to help them.
But it's still being used to smear me. And how am I being smeared? He settled; he must have been guilty. So settlement in today's world -- and you know this because we've all worked for a corporation where they settle things, and you sit around in the hallway and you say, "Why would we settle this? Don't. It just encourages more." You're right. It does. It does.
But what are you going to do, when you have insurance companies and everybody else saying, "Just pay the freight." Okay.
So far, I haven't seen anything with Bill O'Reilly that -- that I believe. That doesn't mean that there's not something there. But I will tell you, even if there is something there, there is something more important going on at the same time. You want to fire Bill O'Reilly for sexual harassment, then good. Make that case. Make it very public. But there's something else. And you need to know about it. And you need to make the decision. Because in 24 hours, I think they're going to fire Bill O'Reilly. And after they fire Bill O'Reilly, who is the next big dog on the ticket? It's going to be Sean Hannity. Sean hasn't done anything wrong. He'll be the next target.
Okay. Well, we'll lose Sean Hannity too. Well, where does that stop?
This is about right and wrong. And there's two rights and wrongs: sexual harassment. Don't know anything about that, has to be settled. The other is a witch hunt. And it's a conservative witch hunt. And I have the evidence that you might have read about -- if you read anything about Bill O'Reilly, he said he's got paperworks. Okay. So I wrote Bill last night in Italy. "Bill, you have the paperwork? Can I see it?" I'll share it, next.
