A recent video of Bill O’Reilly berating and threatening a JetBlue worker over a flight delay proves he hasn’t changed a bit since getting fired from Fox over abusive behavior.
Apparently, Bill O’Reilly became incensed over a flight delay to the vacation spot of Turks and Cacos. Or maybe he just thought he deserved special treatment over a common problem most of us manage to handle without blowing a gasket and abusing a worker who did not cause the delay.
From The Daily Mail:
Dressed in a light jacket, rumpled pants and bright white sneakers, the 6ft. 4in. conservative commentator towers over the airline worker in the video snapped by a fellow passenger.
'What you're gonna do...it's three hours late,' he says. He can then be heard saying: 'No, no, no, You're gonna find out,' jabbing his finger aggressively at the airline employee.
When the employee says something, O'Reilly responds:'You f***ing scumbag. Don't talk to me like that.'
Although it's hard to hear much of the audio, at one point, the employee says, "You're threatening me with violence," to which O'Reilly replies, "No, I'm not." Later you can hear O'Reilly say, "You're gonna lose your job."
You can also see O'Reilly allowed his face mask to fall below his nose and mouth while he was blowing his top, potentially infecting people while he was at it. The incident occurred on Sunday, the day before the mask mandate was lifted.
In a statement, O’Reilly told The Daily Mail his flight was ultimately delayed five hours. Like so many abusers, O'Reilly played the victim over his bad behavior. “The guy was arrogant and falsely accused me of threatening him and I said: ‘You're lucky I didn't do that,'” O’Reilly said.
Nobody familiar with O’Reilly’s history should be surprised by this episode.
You can see leopard O’Reilly's unchanged spots below, via The Daily Mail.
(O’Reilly image via screen shot)
If you listen to the audio at the 33-34 second mark just as he’s trying to read the employee’s name off their badge, you’ll clearly hear O’Reilly telling the JetBlue employee “You’re lucky I don’t put my fist through it!!” The employee responds “I dare you. I dare you to.” O’Reilly then begins lying and denying that he said what he just did, while the employee affirms that O’Reilly just threatened him with violence. Frustrated again, O’Reilly stomps away, muttering “You’re gonna lose your job. We’ll see you.”
Let’s not forget that this is the same Bill O’Reilly who dragged his wife down the stairs of their home by her hair in front of their kids because she caught him in the middle of phone sex. The same Bill O’Reilly who regularly screamed at and berated anyone he thought he could during his years at Fox News. The same Bill O’Reilly who was fired from Fox in disgrace after the public learned he had paid 32 million dollars to Lis Wiehl to settle her harassment suit against him – the one that detailed a “non-consensual sexual relationship”. O’Reilly has repeatedly tried to rewrite this history to say that he actually was the victim somehow and that he was persecuted for his political beliefs. He has never once admitted that it was his own thuggishness and viciousness that got him fired and banished. He has never once shown even an iota of grace to admit his own culpability.
In recent times, O’Reilly has clearly been sitting on even more unquenchable rage. He’s angry that the Pence White House was voted out of office (he repeatedly announced at the time that he felt that Pence’s childish spokesman should never concede). He’s angry that COVID was a real pandemic. He’s angry that Pence’s childish spokesman didn’t get that chance to “take his revenge as he should”. He’s angry that the world doesn’t work the way he wishes it would. And he’s angry that instead of sitting at his perch at Fox and feeling powerful there, he’s reduced to pontificating on his personal website. He continues to inflict truly unfortunate and poorly written attempts at history books with his “Killing” series, but I wouldn’t recommend any of that material to anyone looking for actual scholarship. Historians have had a field day discussing all the blatant errors in those inflictions. I can attest that his account of Hollywood history in “Killing The Mob” is mostly angry Right Wing fantasy.
O’Reilly had long nursed a dream of becoming a respected elder statesman of journalism and politics. Instead, he will conclude his life as the same petty bully he always was. But it is helpful that he continues to provide further examples of his pettiness and rage, just in case anyone forgot.
