Former Fox News host Jedediah Bila accused her ex-colleagues at The View of ambushing her with a headline-grabbing confrontation over her being unvaccinated. The talk-show hosts “pre-planned” an effort to portray her views on vaccines as “misinformation,” she claimed on Monday.
Bila, who departed The View several years ago as its resident conservative host, returned to the show last week to promote her new book. After a very friendly few minutes, the segment quickly grew heated when co-host Joy Behar noted that Bila was taping her interview remotely because she hadn’t been vaccinated against COVID-19.
Bila, for her part, defended her decision to not get vaccinated, insisting her doctor had given her a medical exemption and claiming she had “sky-high, multi-tier, multi-faceted natural immunity” from a previous infection. With the ex-Fox & Friends Weekend host claiming she was not “anti-vax” but merely anti-vaccine mandates, co-host Sunny Hostin groused that Bila was peddling “misinformation” on the show.
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During a Newsmax appearance on Monday, Bila’s former Fox News colleague Eric Bolling asked whether she believed The View had intentionally sought to malign her over vaccines.
“You went on, I guess, to promote the book and things are going famously and all of a sudden someone decides to like—it really felt pre-planned to pull the trigger on you, so to speak,” the Newsmax anchor said.
“Yeah, it’s very confusing to me, to be quite frank,” Bila responded. “I did full pre-interview with them where I talked about how I felt about the mandates. I’ve also been incredibly public. I’ve been tweeting about it. I’ve been voicing the fact that I’m not vaccinated, that I had COVID-19 already and I have this sky-high immunity I’ve been watching for the past year.”
Saying she doesn’t support vaccine mandates because “they’re not grounded in science,” Bila added that she went into The View interview “expecting a conversation” but “unfortunately that’s not what went down.”
Bolling then took aim at the View hosts piling on Bila, declaring it “felt like such a cheap shot” because she was off-set and they were all together in a studio. Bila, meanwhile, said that she was “more alarmed” that the hosts didn’t know the limit of vaccinations.
“I said that this is a vaccine that can help you with severity of illness. Of course, that can be debated on a whole other level now,” she said, adding that vaccination should be a “personal choice” and getting a shot doesn’t prevent you from infection and transmission of the disease.
Bila also took issue with Hostin claiming that the U.S. surgeon general had “debunked” her claims, saying she was “kind of horrified that they didn’t know those basic facts” that vaccinated individuals can still transmit the disease.
While it is true that the COVID-19 vaccines can’t fully prevent infection or transmission, the unvaccinated are 11 times more likely to die from the virus. Additionally, the vaccinated are five times less likely to be infected and transmit the disease at a much lower rate than the unvaccinated. The CDC has also found vaccines offer stronger immunity than a previous infection.
It wasn’t just Bolling’s show where Bila complained that she felt like she got ambushed on The View. During an appearance on the podcast of former NFL quarterback Jay Cutler—who has been outspoken against mask mandates and has declared he will not get vaccinated—Bila insisted she did a “full pre-interview” with the show and they “knew exactly what” she would say.
“Anyway, they shut me down as misinformation, without letting me talk,” she told Cuter. “What I would have loved, and I think the audience would have loved, is to have a real conversation.”
