Fox News' Geraldo Rivera offers a very cringe-worthy defense of Matt Lauer: 'News is a flirty business'

Geraldo Rivera.
(Image credit: Angela Weiss/Getty Images)

Fox News correspondent Geraldo Rivera issued a flaming hot take on Wednesday about Matt Lauer, the recently fired Today show host accused of sexual harassment:

In 2016, Rivera made a similarly noxious tweet defending former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes against allegations of sexual harassment. He later apologized and urged people to report sexual harassment "even if the alleged offender is an old friend."

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In 1991, singer and actress Bette Midler told Barbara Walters in an interview that when she met Rivera in the '70s, he and his producer "pushed me into my bathroom, they broke two poppers and pushed them under my nose, and they proceeded to grope me." Kelly O'Meara Morales

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Kelly O'Meara Morales is a staff writer at The Week. He graduated from Sarah Lawrence College and studied Middle Eastern history and nonfiction writing amongst other esoteric subjects. When not compulsively checking Twitter, he writes and records music, subsists on tacos, and watches basketball.