Bill O'Reilly says he should have followed the playbook of his former colleague Sean Hannity in dealing with leftist forces he believes got him fired from Fox News Channel.
"In hindsight, Sean did it the right way," O'Reilly told Newsmax TV's John Bachman on Thursday. "I should've done it that way, but I didn't.
"This was no accident our sponsors were attacked. This is very well organized. They tried to with Hannity. Hannity actually fought back. I didn't. I should have. For reasons that I cannot explain now, I did not."
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O'Reilly was axed by Fox News in April after 20 years on his primetime ratings blockbuster, "The O'Reilly Factor," after The New York Times reported five women had received $13 million in payouts for not pursuing lawsuits or baring allegations of sexual harassment or inappropriate behavior.
O'Reilly has vigorously denied the charges.
The New York Times article prompted protests in front of the Fox News building in Manhattan and advertisers pulled their commercials from O'Reilly's show.
More recently, protesters tried to get ads yanked from Hannity's Fox program after he reported on a theory involving the unsolved death of a Democratic National Committee staff member.
"Hannity knows they're looking to get him," O'Reilly said. "He said it. But I admire Sean, and I admire how he handled situation, because he brought it directly to the folks and the sponsors stopped. He lost a few, but they stopped. So, he was successful in fighting off the attack. But there will be more."
Asked to explain specifics of his firing, O'Reilly said he would stay mum for now, but promised some bombshells in the coming weeks.
"We have a lot of information, but my lawyers are begging me not to say anything," he told Newsmax. "We're going to drop it in the next few weeks, and it's really, really stunning how organized that was and what these people did.
"I want to let the legal people handle this. I do believe there will be litigation, so I'm going to let them take the lead and then after it's out, then I'll comment further on it."
O'Reilly added the larger goal of the left is to kill off Fox News.
"The goal is to destroy the Fox News Channel, because that's the only television medium that gives Donald Trump a fair shake," O'Reilly said. "That was the goal, and that was instituted very quickly once the president was elected. So, 'we got to get the Fox News Channel and how we're going to get them? Got to take their talent out. Get the talent that matters.'
"And so they were very powerful people, very well-funded people who got together and advised various ways."
O'Reilly, 67, currently hosts a podcast called "No Spin News."
His latest historical book is called "Bill O'Reilly's Legends and Lies: The Civil War," published by Henry Holt.
The book is the newest installment in The New York Times #1 bestselling companion series to the Fox historical docudrama, "Bill O'Reilly's Legends and Lies," the deadliest war in American history. The book chronicles the birth of the Republican Party, the Confederacy's first convention, the Underground Railroad, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Battle of Gettysburg, and assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
"It's is the third in a series of 'Legends and Lies,' and we're in the middle of a civil war right now in America," O'Reilly told Newsmax TV.
"The real Civil War, which was the low point in American history, there's a lot of myths surrounding it, as you know. So, we take this book, and we walk through, and it's a beautiful book. It's got a lot of illustrations, Americans nine to 90 will enjoy it, and that's my goal: to make history fun.
"To make it come alive, and to have people absorb knowledge at the same time, become literate on why their country was so divided back in the 1860s. It's relevant today. We're a divided nation today."
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