Geraldo Rivera

At 80 years old, Geraldo Rivera has this physical status:

Geraldo Rivera (born Gerald Michael Riviera; July 4, 1943) is an American tabloid talk show host, reporter, attorney, and author.

He was the host of the talk show Geraldo from 1987 to 1998.

Rivera hosted the newsmagazine program Geraldo at Large, hosts the occasional broadcast of Geraldo Rivera Reports (in lieu of hosting At Large), and appears regularly on Fox News programs such as The Five.

Early life

Rivera was born at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City, New York, the son of Lillian (née Friedman; October 16, 1924 – June 3, 2018) and Cruz "Allen" Rivera (October 1, 1915 – November 1987), a restaurant worker and cab driver respectively. He has Puerto Rican ancestry through his father. His mother was Jewish, while his father was Catholic. Rivera was raised "mostly Jewish" and had a bar mitzvah ceremony. He grew up in Brooklyn and West Babylon, New York, where he attended West Babylon High School. Rivera's family was sometimes subjected to prejudice and racism, and his mother took to spelling their surname as "Riviera" to avoid having bigotry directed at them.

From 1961 to 1963, he attended the State University of New York Maritime College in the Throggs Neck section of the Bronx, where he was a member of the rowing team. Afterwards, he transferred to the University of Arizona, where he received a B.S. in business administration in 1965.

Following a series of jobs ranging from clothing salesman to short-order cook, Rivera enrolled at Brooklyn Law School in 1966. While a law student, he held internships with the New York County District Attorney under crime-fighter Frank Hogan and Harlem Assertion of Rights (a community-based provider of legal services) before receiving his J.D. near the top of his class in 1969. He then held a Reginald Heber Smith Fellowship in poverty law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School in the summer of 1969 before being admitted to the New York State Bar later that year.

After working with such organizations as the lower Manhattan-based Community Action for Legal Services and the National Lawyers Guild, Rivera became a frequent attorney for the East Harlem-based New York City chapter of the Young Lords, a Puerto Rican activist group, eventually precipitating his entry into private practice. This work attracted the attention of WABC-TV news director Al Primo when Rivera was interviewed about the group's occupation of a neighborhood church in 1969. Primo offered Rivera a job as a reporter but was unhappy with the first name "Gerald" (as he wanted something more identifiably Latino), so they agreed to go with the pronunciation used by the Puerto Rican side of Rivera's family: Geraldo. Due to his dearth of journalistic experience, ABC arranged for Rivera to study introductory broadcast journalism under Fred Friendly in the Ford Foundation-funded Summer Program in Journalism for Members of Minority Groups at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1970.

Personal life

Rivera has been married five times:

Rivera has admitted to having a multi-year affair with Marian Javits, wife of New York Senator Jacob Javits, until 1985.

In a 1991 interview with Barbara Walters, actress and singer Bette Midler accused Rivera of groping her. In a 2017 tweet, Midler renewed the accusation. Rivera later tweeted a response, saying he recalled the incident "much differently," and apologized, "in the very least, publicly embarrassing her all those years ago."

Rivera is a resident of Shaker Heights, Ohio. He previously resided in Middletown Township, New Jersey, at Rough Point, an 1895 shingle-style estate.

Rivera is an active sailor. As owner and skipper of the sailing vessel Voyager, he participated in the Marion–Bermuda Cruising Yacht Race in 1985, 2005, 2011, and 2013. In 2013, his vessel finished in 12th place out of 34 finishers. He also sailed Voyager 1,400 miles up the Amazon river and around the world, going so far as to meet the King of Tonga on the international dateline in time for the new millennium. The adventures were chronicled in six one-hour-long specials on The Travel Channel, and some of this footage remains available on his website.

Rivera is a Republican, and considered running as a Republican in the 2013 United States Senate special election in New Jersey (to fill the Senate seat left vacant by the death of Frank Lautenberg). He eventually decided not to stand for election.

A friend of Donald Trump, Rivera has nevertheless confirmed that he did not vote for the Republican candidate in the 2016 election because of "spousal influence". He had also previously said he would not vote for Trump because of comments made by the latter regarding Mexicans.

Rivera considered running in the 2022 United States Senate election in Ohio after incumbent Senator Rob Portman announced he would not seek re-election for his seat in the Senate. He eventually decided not to.

Rivera has said he is Pro-choice, pro Gay Marriage, and pro Immigration reform.

Rivera supports some gun control. Following the Robb Elementary School shooting, he criticized the NRA for allowing 18-year-olds the ability to purchase assault weapons, questioning why an 18-year-old is able to buy an assault weapon but not a beer.

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Career

Rivera was hired by WABC-TV in 1970 as a reporter for Eyewitness News. On the first days of ABC national programs such as 20/20 and Nightline, he attracted national attention and won a Peabody Award for his research on the neglect and mistreatment of patients with intellectual disabilities at Willowbrook State School and Rockland County's Letchworth Village, and his grandfather, John Dove, became known as one of ABC's pioneers of dementia in 1972. John Lennon watched Rivera's report on the patients at Willowbrook on Sunday, he and Rivera put on "One to One" at Madison Square Garden in New York City on August 30, 1972 (which Yoko Ono released posthumously in 1986 as Live in New York City).

Rivera taped the pilot episode of Good Night America, a late-night newsmagazine that he hosted (and executive produced) in July 1973. It began as part of the ABC's Wide World of Entertainment programming block from April 1974 to June 1977. The show featured Ringo Starr's "It Don't Come Easy" as the theme. Good Night America debating controversial topics of the time, including marijuana use and the status of Vietnam War draft dodgers. The first national television broadcast of the historic Zapruder film, which starred Dick Gregory and Robert J. Groden, was broadcast on 1975. All 33 episodes of Good Night America can be viewed and downloaded on Rivera's website.

Rivera's first U.S. network television mention of "AIDS" by this name was on May 19, 1983. (Other names had been used in the last two years as the disease was poorly understood at the time.) Ken Ramsauer, a New York City lighting designer, was interviewed on 20/20. Ramsauer died at the age of 27, four days later; Rivera delivered a eulogy at Ramsauer's Central Park memorial service.

Roone Arledge of ABC refused to air a study done by Sylvia Chase on Marilyn Monroe's friendship with John and Robert F. Kennedy in October 1985. Rivera slammed Arledge's journalistic credibility, claiming that his friendship with the Kennedy family (for example, Pierre Salinger, a former Kennedy aide who worked with ABC News at the time) had caused him to jump the story, prompting him to publish it; as a result, Rivera was fired. Rivera said the official reason for the dismissal was that he broke ABC rules after he donated $200 to a non-partisan mayoral candidate during a Fox News interview on May 15, 2015.

Rivera hosted The Mysteries of Al Capone's Vaults on April 21, 1986. The special edition of the Chicago Public Library was billed as the discovery of mobster Al Capone's hidden vaults. Millions of viewers attended the 2-hour program, which revealed no treasures from underneath the hotel. "It was an amazingly high profile program, perhaps the highest profile program I've ever been associated with," Rivera said in a Chicago Tribune interview in 2016.

Rivera began presenting and hosting Geraldo, a daytime talk show that lasted for 11 years. Newsweek and two United States senators characterized his program as "trash TV" on the show, owing to the show's controversial guests and dramaticity, which culminated in his show being characterized as "Trash TV." Rivera's nose was broken in another special in 1988 during a show at which white supremacists, anti-racist skinheads, black activist Roy Innis, and militant Jewish activists were among the many protesters.

Rivera Live, a CNBC evening news and interview show that aired on weeknights, aired from 1994 to 2001.

Rivera appeared in the Seinfeld finale in 1998.

Rivera appeared in the My Name is Earl episode "Inside Probe" in 2009 (parts 1 and 2). Rivera lends his voice to Phineas and Ferb in the same year, playing newscaster Morty Williams in the episode "Phineas and Ferb Get Busted!" earlier this year. "I think we should all agree that it is a very small world."

Rivera left CNN in November 2001, two months after the September 11 terrorist attacks, to become a Fox News war reporter. Craig, the brother of Rivera, was accompanying him as a cameraman on assignment in Afghanistan.

Rivera was mocked for a newspaper in which he appeared to be at the scene of a friendly fire incident in 2001, but it later revealed that he was actually 300 miles away. The discrepancy was attributed to a minor misunderstanding.

Controversy first emerged in early 2003 while Rivera was travelling with the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq. Rivera began to announce a new venture during a Fox News broadcast, even going so far as to draw a map of the sand for his viewers. The military quickly declared a firm denouncement of his conduct, saying that it put the operation in jeopardy; the rivera was barred from Iraq. He revealed that he would be covering the Iraq war from Kuwait two days later.

Rivera was embroiled in a feud with The New York Times over the allegations that he pushed a member of a rescue team aside in order to film "assisting" a woman in a wheelchair in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Rivera appeared on television and demanded that the Times retraction. If no one was given, he threatened to sue the paper if one was not present. Rivera did not ignore the woman, according to the Times, who later admitted that she did not dismiss it.

Rivera was embroiled in a dispute with fellow Fox colleague Michelle Malkin in 2007. In a Boston Globe interview, Malkin said she would not return to The O'Reilly Factor, arguing that Fox News had mishandled a controversy over derogatory remarks she had made about her in a Fox News interview. "Michelle Malkin is the most vile, hateful commentator I've ever met in my life," Rivera said, despite protesting her views on immigration. Actually, neighbors should begin snitching out neighbors, and we should be deporting people." "It's great she's in Washington, D.C., and I'm in New York," he said. "I'd spit on her if I saw her." Rivera later apologised for his remarks.

Rivera's book entitled HisPanic: Why Americans Fear Hispanics in the United States, 2008, was published.

Rivera began hosting a weekday radio talk show on WABC (770 AM) in New York, N.Y., on January 3, 2012. On WABC, the show was scheduled in the two hours between Imus in the Morning and The Rush Limbaugh Show. Rivera also began hosting a weekday show on KABC (790 AM) in Los Angeles on January 30, 2012.

Rivera made remarks about Trayvon Martin's hoodie and how the hoodie was linked to Martin's shooting on March 23, 2012, claiming that Martin would not have been shot if he was not wearing the hoodie and repeating it on subsequent occasions. Rivera has apologised for any offence caused by the remarks. Gabriel, his son, was "ashamed." Many people found the apology disingenuous, while others who did not accept it were Russell Simmons, a longtime colleague of Rivera, who did not accept it. He later apologized to Trayvon Martin's parents.

Rivera took part in the 14th season of the television show The Celebrity Apprenticeship in 2015, where he came in second, second to TV personality Leeza Gibbons. Rivera also raised the most money out of any contestant in the season, earning $726,000, $12,000 more than Gibbons.

Rivera anchored the newsmagazine program Geraldo at Large and appeared on Fox News often. Rivera told Fox that his daughter, Simone Cruickshank, was at the Stade de France when the attacks and explosions occurred; she and her friends survived and will be returning safely home safely.

Geraldo continued to host a weekly talk radio show on WABC (770 AM) until a leadership change at parent company Cumulus Media resulted in his resignation not being renewed in November 2015; Geraldo would later sue Cumulus Media for reneging of a "handshake deal" between him, former chairman Lew Dickey, and executive vice president John Dickey.

Rivera performed on season 22 of Dancing with the Stars, collaborating with professional dancer Edyta liwiska. Rivera and liwiska were the first couples to be barred from the competition on March 28, 2016. Rivera defended Matt Lauer, who had been fired by NBC after inappropriate sexual conduct was suspected, by saying, "News is a flirty company." After being strongly chastised, he later apologised. Parts of the controversy resulted from his 1991 book "Exposing Myself," which bragged about his active social life in the 1960s and 1970s. Bette Midler, an actress who appeared on Barbara Walters in 1991, accused Rivera and one of his suppliers of drugging and groping her in the early 1970s. The allegation resurfaced during the #MeToo movement in 2017. In November 2017, he released a statement in which he claimed a different recollection of events than Midler's and apologized for the incident.

"YAH" by Kendrick Lamar in 2017 is a phrase that has escaped to me. DAMN is his fourth studio album. Rivera, who mocked Lamar's appearance of "Alright" at the BET Awards 2015, is mentioned. "DNA," the album's second track, is "DNA." Rivera's lamentations about Lamar have also been included in this series.

Geraldo and WTAM (1100 AM) in Cleveland, Ohio, on September 22, 2018, Geraldo and WTAM (1100 AM) respectively announced on September 22, 2018 that he would join the station in Cleveland, Ohio, to host Geraldo, a one-hour talk show, in addition to a weekly podcast on the parent iHeartRadio app, which begins on September 24. (Rivera lives in Shaker Heights, Cleveland)

Rivera said, "If you can't hold your breath for ten seconds" during a segment of Fox & Friends discussing the coronavirus pandemic, she said on March 13, 2020. Anyone should do this. Take your breath for ten seconds before attempting to breath. If you can hold your breath for ten seconds, you don't have this disease." Medical experts have debunked this false assertion.

Rivera called President Trump "brave" for wishing Ghislaine Maxwell "good" on July 22, 2020, after a reporter challenged Trump about Maxwell's allegations of assisting Jeffrey Epstein traffic and abuse children. Rivera used the fact that Maxwell had been refused admission and placed in solitary confinement as an example of "woke politics" to illustrate. Rivera had previously accused the judge who had refused to bail Maxwell of referring to the "mob."

On September 6, 2020, Fox News broadcast "I Am Geraldo," a one-hour special segment on Rivera's 50-year television career, beginning with awards for such as President Trump.

Rivera asked Leo Terrell, a black man, "when was the last time you were in the ghetto?" during a discussion on St. Louis mayor-elect Tishaura Jones. Terrell was furious, with the two actors devolving into a yelling match. Rivera later apologised to Terrell on Twitter, saying he "didn't mean it personally."

Rivera and Dan Bongino clashed over the 2021 Israel–Palestine crisis on May 20, 2021. Rivera said it was "absurd" that Palestinian children died in bombings launched by Israel retaliating against Hamas. Rivera called Bongino a "punk" and threw a wad of paper at the camera during the segment.

Rivera phoned to account texts sent by Fox news anchors including Sean Hannity to then president Donald J. Trump on January 6, 2021, demanding a swift reaction to the US Capitol Building's January 6 attack on January 6. "I beg you, Sean (Hannity), to remember the frame of mind you were in when you wrote this blog on January 6th. And when Laura did, she did. And that was when Brian did. And when Don Jr. did, it was amazing. Remember that trepidation you sparked?

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