Fox News personality Geraldo Rivera has been denounced online after he criticized the victims of the Orlando nightclub shooting for failing to ‘fight back’.

The 72-year-old television host caused outrage when he appeared live on Fox & Friends Monday morning just feet away from Pulse, the gay bar where 49 people were brutally killed and more than 50 were wounded in Sunday morning’s massacre and offered his controversial comments.

Critics said Rivera shamed the victims when he suggested they could have taken out the gunman when he took a break from shooting people and reloaded his AR-15-style rifle.

Rivera said this while crowds of mourners gathered outside the establishment and survivors of the shooting stood by to speak with the press.

Actress Holly Robinson Peete was one of the many to take issue with what he said, writing on Twitter: 'After listening to Mr. Colon & others bravery in recounting their horror I find @GeraldoRivera's comments incredibly insensitive #Orlando.'

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Fox News personality Geraldo Rivera caused outrage after he shamed the victims for failing to 'fight back'

‘When you’re in that situation and you have no weapons you have two choices. If you can’t hide and you can’t run there’s only two choices – you stay and die or you fight,’ Rivera said in yesterday’s segment on the morning show.

‘For God’s sake, fight back. Fight back. There’s a hundred people that he murdered with one weapon that he reloaded.

‘When he reloaded they must, people must, America must understand we are at war with Islamic terror, with these terrorists,’ Rivera added.

‘We’ve got to stop them in Raqqa [in Syria], we’ve got to stop them in Mosul [in Iraq] and we’ve got to stop them in the Pulse [club].’

People soon began to respond to his comments on Twitter, with Xeni Jardin writing: 'Delete your account, G. You are a human trash fire.'

Actor, painter and musician John Lurie posted a series of tweets about Rivera's comments.

'Someone slap Geraldo Rivera in the face,' wrote Lurie.

He then added: 'I believe the only solution to save this world is love towards one another, except toward Geraldo Rivera. No love for Geraldo.

'If all of the hate groups focused their hate on one man - the world would be a safer, better place - let that man be Geraldo Rivera.'

The issue of a large-scale attack does hit close to home for Rivera as his daughter was in the French national football stadium during the November 13 Paris terror attacks.

Moments before Rivera offered his advice, Fox & Friends aired a portion of his interview with an emotional Chris Ortiz, who survived the terror attack.

Ortiz described chaotic scenes in the nightclub and said it was impossible to stop the gunman, Omar Mateen, as he killed his victims.

‘Everything that was moving he was shooting at, it doesn’t matter what it was or who it was or what it was , everything that was moved he was shooting on it,’ Ortiz told Rivera during the interview that first aired Sunday night. ‘I tried to do my best to take him out but I can’t, it was too many bullets. The bullets were flying so fast.’

Rivera’s comments went unchallenged until the end of the segment, when host Brian Kilmeade said: ‘They don’t want to fight our guys that are trained to fight them, they want to fight the people who are just living their lives, so these are gutless terrorists.’

The clip from Fox & Friends was making the rounds after it was posted on the website for Media Matters for America, a left-leaning media watchdog.