Daily Show viewers expected fireworks to fly when Jon Stewart reunited with longtime sparring partner Bill O’Reilly this week. They just might not have predicted how much of them would be coming from Gretchen Carlson.
Stewart welcomed O’Reilly as a guest on The Daily Show on Tuesday—the program’s first day back following Saturday’s attempted assassination of Donald Trump and the subsequent cancellation of their live Milwaukee shows.
Ahead of his appearance, former Fox News personality Carlson blasted Stewart for giving the disgraced O’Reilly a platform. “Unbelievably outrageous @jonstewart would prop up predator Bill O’Reilly on @TheDailyShow like nothing ever happened @ Fox,” she wrote on X/Twitter.
“The fact that O’Reilly is back to having a platform promulgates the idea that bad men get comebacks and courageous women continue to be penalized,” she continued. “Wake up.”
O’Reilly, once one of Fox News’ biggest stars, infamously departed the news network in 2017 after it was revealed that he and the network had spent tens of millions of dollars to settle a number of sexual harassment claims against O’Reilly, including a single $32 million settlement with former Fox News analyst Lis Wiehl.
Carlson left Fox News in 2016. That year, she filed a sexual harassment suit against the network, claiming she was fired for refusing sexual advances from the channel’s then-CEO Roger Ailes. In the wake of Carlson’s claim, more than 20 other women—including Megyn Kelly—came forward to report their own alleged harassment by Ailes.
Ailes denied any wrongdoing. O’Reilly then spoke out in defense of Ailes on the matter while appearing on Late Night with Seth Meyers in 2016. Carlson’s lawsuit was one of the high-profile cases that kicked off the #MeToo movement and in 2019 was turned into the Oscar-winning movie Bombshell, starring Margot Robbie, Charlize Theron, and Nicole Kidman (who played Carlson).
O’Reilly was a frequent guest on The Daily Show during Stewart’s initial run, appearing 11 times since 2001. The pair also faced off in the livestreamed 2012 debate “The Rumble in the Air-Conditioned Auditorium,” and Stewart had appeared on O’Reilly’s Fox News program The O’Reilly Factor.
In 2020, Stewart reflected on O’Reilly’s Daily Show appearances to The New York Times, telling the paper that viewers came to expect a takedown of the former Fox News commentator each time. He called the “evisceration expectation” of such interviews the “worst legacy of The Daily Show.”
The last time O’Reilly appeared on The Daily Show was in 2014, three years before the fallout of his sexual harassment allegations.
O’Reilly is also a guest on this week’s episode of Stewart’s new podcast, The Weekly Show, which just released today. Stewart has not publicly responded to Carlson’s comments.
