Midler alleges Rivera and his unnamed producer pushed her into her bathroom during an interview at her home in the 1970s and began groping her.
Fox News anchor Geraldo Rivera on Wednesday sparked outrage with a tweet defending fired NBC News host Matt Lauer.
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“News is a flirty business,” Rivera wrote, “& and it seems like current epidemic of #SexHarassmentAllegations may be criminalizing courtship & conflating it w predation.”
In a series of other tweets, Rivera offered his thoughts on the wave of sexual misconduct allegations made against powerful men, suggesting they were being used by some women to “get even [with] bad bosses or hated [ex partners].”
But, facing a firestorm of angry commenters, the Fox News anchor later apologized.
“Reaction to my tweets today on #sexharassment makes clear I didn’t sufficiently explain that this is a horrendous problem long hidden,” he wrote. “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.”
In the video, Midler claimed Rivera and his unnamed producer pushed her into her bathroom during an interview at her home in the 1970s. “They broke two poppers and pushed them under my nose and proceeded to grope me,” she said. “I did not offer myself up on the altar of Geraldo Rivera. He was unseemly. His behavior was unseemly.”
In his 1991 autobiography, reviewed at the time by the Washington Post, Rivera wrote that he had touched Midler’s breasts.
“We were in the bathroom, preparing for the interview, and at some point I put my hands on her breasts,” he wrote in a brief line excerpted for the review.
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A Fox News spokesperson did not return requests for comment about the Midler video.
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