Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly said Wednesday evening that Comcast was tossing MSNBC “overboard” to save the reputation and ratings of NBC News.
Comcast announced it was spinning off multiple cable networks, including the left-wing news channel that featured hosts Rachel Maddow, Joy Reid, Chris Hayes, Nicolle Wallace and Lawrence O’Donnell Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported. O’Reilly asserted that MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski were “ordered” to visit President-elect Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago because executives planned to announce the spinoff.
“They were ordered to go to Mar-a-Lago by Comcast, the parent company out of Philadelphia. They just didn’t show up, okay, and Trump said, ‘Oh, this is great. Here they come, gonna kiss my you-know-what and we’ll get photo ops,’ which they did,” O’Reilly told NewsNation host Chris Cuomo. “What Comcast said, ‘You two, we’re going to have to try to mend some cliche fences, and you two are going to go in there and you’re going to try to tamp it down,’ because Comcast knew the next day they were going to announce that MSNBC is vapor. That is a huge media story.”
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“There’s no spinoff,” O’Reilly told Cuomo during a back and forth.
Scarborough said at the start of “Morning Joe” Monday he and Brzezinski met with Trump Friday for the first time in seven years at the Florida estate owned by the President-elect, saying they needed to “restart communications.”
“I’m saying what’s being reported,” Cuomo told O’Reilly, who responded, “Yeah, I know. But why would you believe what’s being reported? You want the real story? Here it comes.”
Scarborough faced blowback from viewers of his show who posted their disapproval on social media, as did fellow MSNBC host Katie Phang, who warned against efforts to “normalize” Trump.
“So, they are uncoupling — their word, Comcast — MSNBC from NBC News. That means MSNBC has no resources at all. None. They’re not gonna be able to pay these people millions of dollars, Rachel Maddow, whatever she’s making. NBC News is saying, ‘We don’t want you around.’ Why? Because NBC News’ numbers, Lester Holt and ‘The TODAY Show’ are catastrophe because half the country acquaints NBC News with MSNBC and they won’t watch,” O’Reilly told Cuomo. “So NBC is desperately trying to save the mother ship of information and they have to throw MSNBC overboard. They’re not putting anything into MSNBC. They want to sell it. So where’s Georgie Soros now? Georgie is buying radio stations. You can get MSNBC for nothing. They’ll give it to you. They don’t want any more of this.”
“Why? Because it’s hateful. Not because it’s so far left. The whole NBC-Comcast hierarchy is far left. But it’s hateful. They hate Trump. They hate people who vote for Trump. Everybody knows that.”
O’Reilly went on to predict that another network would soon dump a high-profile show.
“And you know what’s next? ‘The View.’ ABC News is gonna have to cut ties with ‘The View.’ And you saw that today or yesterday when Sunny Hostin had to read a legal statement in the middle of a segment. The lawyers got in her — in Whoopi Goldberg’s ear and said, ‘We’re bringing a statement in on a teleprompter,’ she reads it,” O’Reilly said. “So it is over for these far-left networks, done, never coming back, Dracula’s stake in the heart. Who benefits? NewsNation may. But CNN, which is on the ropes too, will probably get some MSNBC viewers. There you go.”
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