Geraldo Rivera has apologized for Bette Midler after an interview in which the iconic actress told Barbara Walters she had been sexually assaulted by the Fox News employee reemerged earlier this week.
‘Although I recall the time @BetteMidler has alluded to much differently than she, that does not change the fact that she has a right to speak out & demand an apology from me, for in the very least, publically embarrassing her all those years ago,’ wrote Rivera.
‘Bette, I apologize.’
Rivera’s post follows a tweet on Thursday by Bette Midler renewing an allegation of being drugged and groped by Rivera and his producer colleague in the 1970s.
In the tweet posted by the actress-singer, she included a video from a 1991 interview with Barbara Walters in which she first made her allegation against Rivera.
In that clip, Midler hesitates in recounting what she alleges happened with Rivera during his visit to interview her in the early 1970s, saying it will get her in trouble.
‘Get in a little trouble,’ Walters encourages her.
Midler then goes on to state that after Rivera and the producer left their TV crew in another room, they ‘pushed me into my bathroom. They broke two poppers and pushed them under my nose and proceeded to grope me.’
‘Poppers’ is slang for the alkyl nitrites class of drugs which cause a head rush and brief feeling of euphoria.
‘I did not offer myself up on the altar of Geraldo Rivera,’ said Midler, calling his behavior ‘unseemly.’
In her tweet on Thursday, Midler called for an apology from Rivera, and added the harassment-solidarity hashtag ‘#MeToo.’