Bette Midler took to social media to post an old interview with Barbara Walters where she tells a story about how Geraldo Rivera groped her when they first met.
“Geraldo and his producer came to do an interview with me in the ‘70s, the early ‘70s,” Midler told Walters in 1991. “This was when he was very — sort of hot — and he and his producer left the crew in the other room, they pushed me into my bathroom, they broke two poppers and pushed them under my nose and proceeded to grope me.”
“Grope?” Walters asked with a concerned look on her face.
“Groped me,” Midler answered. “I did not offer myself up on the altar of Geraldo Rivera. He was unseemly. His behavior was unseemly.”
The veteran singer and actress tweeted a clip from the interview and asked the longtime journalist for an apology.
“Tomorrow is my birthday,” Midler wrote on Thursday, November 30. “I feel like this video was a gift from the universe to me. Geraldo may have apologized for his tweets supporting Matt Lauer, but he has yet to apologize for this.”
As previously reported, Rivera tweeted and later apologized for controversial comments defending Matt Lauer after the Today show host was fired by NBC News amid allegations of sexual harassment.
“Reaction to my tweets today on #sexharassment makes clear I didn’t sufficiently explain that this is a horrendous problem,” Rivera, 74, tweeted Wednesday, November 29 after getting backlash for calling news a “flirty” business. “Long hidden-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.”
FOX News also released a statement about Rivera’s tweets.
“Geraldo’s tweets do not reflect the views of FOX News or its management,” a spokesperson for the network told Us Weekly on Wednesday. “We were troubled by his comments and are addressing them with him.”
