Sometimes you can fight an attack on yourself with an attack on yourself!
In some situations is impossible to discredit your attackers. If you're a guy like Bill O'Reilly, George W. Bush, or Donald Trump, what do you do?
The answer is simple. You come up with a new attack against you which is easily debunked. You then proceeded to make this new attack the centerpiece of the case against you. You then quickly shred this new attack as being specious, which of course it was, but by design. Then, you lump in this specious attack with the others and then draw the conclusion that all the attacks against you are meritless.
Make no mistake about it, Fox News has paid 13 million dollars to silence five women about sexual harassment allegations made against Bill O'Reilly. It is difficult to refute this kind of incriminating evidence. So, miraculously, a new accuser - not even an employee of Fox News - steps forward with a very shaky case of sexual harassment against Bill O'Reilly. Wendy Walsh, some sort of self-proclaimed relationship guru (who looks like Will Shuster's wife on Glee) is claiming that he retaliated against her when she refused to sleep with him. Unfortunately, her case is somewhat weak as she appeared on O'Reilly's show thirteen times after the alleged incident.
Kind of hard to claim "harassment" when someone puts you in the national spotlight again and again and hawks your book on national television. Let's face it, she's a friend of O'Reilly's and this seems very suspiciously like it was a staged "attack".
How convenient for Bill O'Reilly. A sexual harassment allegation story that is easily debunked and shouted down and now becomes the center of discussion in the controversy. Swept under the rug are the allegations of the other women involved, which are substantial.
A very clever strategy and one that we have seen in the past: Don't address the damning allegations against you, because you can't. Instead, address a specious allegation against you and then whitewash all the others as being equally meritless.
And if you don't have a specious allegation, find a friendly party to create one for you. I'm not sure that's the case in this situation, but if you connect the dots it seems like the lady making the sexual harassment claim is not really all that angry at Bill O'Reilly. And by the way, not creating a job for you is not grounds to argue sexual harassment.
We've seen this strategy before. During the Bush v. Kerry election, there were allegations that Bush had ducked out on his National Guard service. There was likely a nugget of truth in some of these allegations, as he was a bit of a spoiled Yale party-boy at the time. What was amazing was that they were able to turn the tables on Kerry, a decorated war hero who actually went to Vietnam over Bush, who ducked out of 'Nam by joining the Guard and apparently only occasionally showing up.
But the issue was blown out of the water by a fellow with a sketchy background presenting some documents that were clearly forged which appeared to incriminate Bush. It didn't take a document "expert" to see this - anyone who has owned a typewriter could see that the proportional fonts used were simply not possible on the typewriters of the 1960's and 1970's. In fact, minutes after their release on 60 Minutes, the forgery was pointed out.
(In the typical news-speak of today, the media reported that it "was not likely" the documents were real, when in fact they were clearly prepared on a computer using Microsoft Word. This muddled kind of talk by the media is what allows fake news to thrive. Fearing litigation, the media cannot call a lie a lie or say something is clearly fake or not true. The media is complicit in fake news as a result, and only recently are some outlets finally resorting to demonstrative language in their reports).
This blew the entire scandal out of the water. The issue was no longer whether Bush ducked out on his obligations to the Guard - or whether he joined the Guard to avoid service in Vietnam, but who and how these forged documents were produced in order to smear his good name!
Meanwhile, baseless "Swiftboat" allegations quickly sank Kerry's war record, as well as stupid comments in the media of "when did he throw his medals away and how many did he throw?" (Again, the media, complicit in these kinds of stories by "presenting both sides and letting the viewer decide" - as if a lie and the truth were of equal weight). The narrative was quickly twisted around and the entire "war record" issue erased for Bush. Kerry was now the coward and deserter.
I strongly suggest the same thing is happening here. A "friendly" accuser of O'Reilly makes some pretty dubious sexual harassment claims (but is not one of the litigants and conveniently surfaces only after O'Reilly is suspended from his show). Then, these claims are debunked in the news - in the same article that reports them. O'Reilly, though his mouthpieces and minions, then sets the new narrative - "These allegations are clearly unfounded, as evidenced by this lady's specious claims!" And the underlying message is, thus all the claims against him are unfounded.
I am not sure what you call this strategy? False-Flag Friendly Fire? There must be a name for it, because odious people have been using it for some time now.
Oh, if only Nixon had tried this!