Geraldo Rivera says that he was fired by ABC because he donated $200, and he wants to know why George Stephanopoulos is being treated so differently by the same network.
"In 1985, after fifteen great years, I was fired by ABC News,"
Rivera wrote in a post on his Facebook page Friday. "The official reason for my firing was a non-disclosed $200 donation to a family friend running in a non-partisan mayoral campaign in New Bedford, Massachusetts."
However, Rivera, who now works for Fox News, contends that the real reason he was fired was because of an unrelated reason — he "was estranged at the time from my boss Roone Arledge" because he had "complained publicly after Roone spiked a colleague's 20/20 story about the Kennedy brothers' relationship with Marilyn Monroe."
But the reason given for his firing was the "undisclosed $200 donation."
By contrast, "ABC is bending over backward to minimize and forgive George Stephanopoulos' $75,000 donation to the Clinton Foundation because he is central to the network's recent success," Rivera writes.
While the Fox News host spoke very kindly about Stephanopoulos and his family, he added that "still, he is in major trouble" because of the donation.
"By neither informing his employer nor the public of his substantial donations to the Clinton Foundation he undermines his ability to do his job," Rivera argues.
"Everybody has their secret favorites and personal biases. But donations cross the line for a good reason. Money raises the specter of Pay for Play," he writes.
While Stephanopoulos has a history with the Clintons as the former communications head for then-President Bill Clinton and as his White House communications director, Rivera says that "the donations look like he's trying to buy continued access to the family he served so loyally as a political operative in the 1990s."
He added that if it were discovered that Fox News hosts "Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly, Chris Wallace or Bill O'Reilly made a similar donation to say an educational foundation run by Jeb Bush, liberal wolves would be howling in front of Fox News."
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