Geraldo Rivera dances to the drumbeat of war: "Watching bombs drop" is "one of my favorite things"

Rivera joins "Fox and Friends" hosts in celebrating America's latest military action

By Matthew Rozsa

Staff Writer

Published April 14, 2017 4:20PM (EDT)

 (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)
(Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)

Considering Geraldo Rivera's penchant for threatening violence during political debates and being woefully irresponsible in his reporting when covering a war, it is perhaps unsurprising that he told the hosts of Fox News's show "Fox & Friends" that he just loves seeing the American military drop bombs on people.

"Well one of my favorite things in the 16 years I've been here at Fox News is watching bombs drop on bad guys," Rivera told his hosts.

And I have some experience in that exact part of Afghanistan going back to December 2001, the first of my 11 assignments in that country, where we dropped what was the forerunner, maybe you call it the father of the 'mother of all bombs,' the Daisy Cutter, Daisy Cutter 15,000 pounds of explosive. This is 22,000 pounds of explosive.

He added, "Like then, now, we've had a successful hit. Almost two dozen — or more actually — three dozen bad guys killed. It's not going to win the war, but it certainly sends a message."

Rivera conveniently left out what is perhaps his most notable wartime reporting story. When he was covering the second Iraq War on the ground in 2003, he told his cameraman to show his feet and then drew a rough map of Iraq in the sand. His map not only gave away the unit's location relative to Baghdad, but also where it would be going next. Rivera was swiftly kicked out and dropped off at the Kuwaiti border.

Presumably this is not also one of Rivera's favorite moments since joining Fox News.


By Matthew Rozsa

Matthew Rozsa is a staff writer at Salon. He received a Master's Degree in History from Rutgers-Newark in 2012 and was awarded a science journalism fellowship from the Metcalf Institute in 2022.

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Donald Trump Geraldo Rivera Syria