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Disgraced journalist and NewsNation guest host Geraldo Rivera is in the headlines once again, this time for a live TV interview with guests while discussing the recent death of O.J. Simpson.
Playing a clip of his 1992 interview with a dismissed jurist from Simpson’s infamous murder trial, Rivera kicked off the discussion by asking his guests whether any amount of evidence would have been enough to convince the Black woman that Simpson was guilty of killing his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.
“Tavis, do you think that any evidence would have been sufficient for that lady – the woman who was on the jury. (That) there was not beyond the reasonable, it was beyond almost all doubt – beyond reasonable doubt in my view. Would any amount of evidence have sufficed to make up that lady’s mind in the other direction?” Rivera asked journalist Tavis Smiley.
His guest shot back that Rivera was coming “awfully close” to suggesting that “Black people don’t have the capacity” to parse evidence as part of a jury.
“I think three things. You gotta be very careful Geraldo, you’re on a slippery slope. Because I know you as a humanist — I know and I hope you don’t intend to suggest this, but you’re getting awfully close to suggesting that black people don’t have the capacity to sit on juries, to listen to evidence, and make informed decisions,” Smiley stated according to the Daily Caller.
That left Rivera flustered and searching for an excuse.
“That’s not true. Tavis, I don’t mean that. I don’t mean that at all. But, unlike most people, I’m not afraid to confront the issue. This was a real issue…,” Rivera responded, adding he “agreed” with Smiley had a point about supposed racism in the justice system.
“My point is simply this: that black people sit on juries every day in this country listening to the evidence, they make informed decisions, and they convict – number one. Number two, racism is still the most intractable issue in this country. Number three black people did not invent tribalism. Number four, while America has grown older, and we’ve grown wiser, we haven’t grown up. We are still so immature when it comes to having real, transparent conversations about race in this country. So you can’t expect that race automatically disappears in a criminal justice system that’s rotten from the bottom all the way up,” Smiley stated.
“I agree with everything you just said,” Rivera stated.
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The number of times Rivera has put his foot in his mouth over the years is too many to mention, but similar situations have arisen where the former Fox News reporter has upset Black audiences.
Following the fatal 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin, Rivera on multiple occasions claimed the Black teenager wouldn’t have died if he hadn’t been wearing a hoodie, prompting a massive outcry and even his own son to declare he was ashamed by Rivera’s remarks. During a 2021 discussion on-air about the Black mayor of St. Louis, Rivera asked a guest when the last time was that he visited a ghetto, prompting a heated shouting match.
Conservatives have ripped the reporter as well during his increasing skew to the left over the years. X users piled on after he posted that “many of the folks most concerned with illegal immigrant aliens have never actually seen one.” He was also lit up last year after alleging that Republicans’ case against Hunter Biden is nothing more than an “empty embarrassment.”
