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Montel Williams Walks Off ‘O’Reilly Factor,’ Slams Host: ‘You Wanna Talk About Coward, Homeboy?’

Don’t mess with Montel! Montel Williams took to Twitter on Wednesday, July 20, to respond directly to Bill O’Reilly’s accusations and name-calling that same day after Williams opted to walk off O’Reilly’s show.

Montel Williams and Bill O'Reilly
Montel Williams and Bill O’Reilly

“He will never be on this program again,” O’Reilly, 66, said on-air after announcing that Williams, 60, had canceled his appearance on The O’Reilly Factor at the last minute. “He’s not a man of his word, he’s unprofessional. That is about as low as it gets.”

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The Fox News host also called Williams a “coward” and claimed that the former talk show host “walked out in a huff … and the producer tells me he was mad about some gay thing.”

In a 2-minute video clip that Williams later shared via social media, the former talk show host took O’Reilly to task for his use of the word.

“The word ‘coward’ is usually used on people who have done most of the things that you’ve done, like embellishing lies about your credentials as a journalist, like the fact that your own daughter in a testimony in a court case … said that you dragged your ex-wife down a flight of stairs,” he said in the video. “You wanna talk about coward, homeboy? … That’s what a coward truly is, somebody who’s going to call somebody a name on air and not even to their face. I’m calling you one now, so the whole world can see it. We know who the coward is.”

Williams, who gave a rousing speech about LGBT rights at a brunch earlier that day, also pointed out that he only pulled the plug on his appearance after O’Reilly’s team changed the focus of the interview without informing him.

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According to Williams, the focus of the interview was supposed to be on the LGBT speech, with some questions about a recent poll claiming that President Obama is a racist, but that’s not how things were playing out in the lead-up to the on-camera interaction.

“Suddenly [Fox News host] Eric Bolling is involved and it’s all about Obama being racist,” Williams told CNNMoney. “I walked before air, they chased me halfway around the building. My detail had to stop them. I’m solely focused on my [LGBT] speech. When that was eliminated, why stay?”

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Williams later added a few more final thoughts on the entire debacle with more tweets.

“Nothing Bill O’Reilly said about me tonight was accurate,” he wrote. “Calling me a coward when he hasn’t served is ridiculous and unprofessional … Bill calling me a coward is laughable. The guy who didn’t serve but lied about his war reporting?” 

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