Derick Dillard, the husband of Counting On star Jill (Duggar) Dillard, revealed on Twitter that their son, 8-month-old Samuel, spent two weeks in a neonatal intensive care unit. He then complained about TLC refusing to pay their medical bills.
On Tuesday, a Twitter follower told him, “Your job is to protect your kids, not use them as meal tickets.”
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“Does that mean I shouldn’t have gotten the hospital lunch while my son was in the NICU for 2 weeks?” Dillard replied in a now-deleted tweet, reports In Touch Weekly.
Dillard then turned his attention to complaining about TLC, which airs Counting On and also aired the previous Duggar series, 19 Kids and Counting. Even though he no longer appears on the show, Dillard argued that the network should help pay the bills because Samuel’s birth made a “pretty penny” for TLC.
“We even requested that they help with some of the medical expenses from the birth that they made a pretty penny on, but they refused to help cover any of those costs,” Dillard wrote in another now-deleted message. “It was close to a year before we made the last medical payment.”
He continued, “We could pay for it fine; I had a great job. The point is, I thought that at least since they were making money off the birth special episode, they could help soften the burden a little. And no, as far as we could tell, we were volunteers and hadn’t been paid anything [for] the show.”
These messages left some of his Twitter followers confused and shocked to learn Dillard and Jill might not have been paid for appearing on a reality show.
“I’m confused. Why on earth would you want to be on a reality show if you didn’t receive any compensation at all? And why would you choose to leave your job with Walmart without having a reliable stream of income lined up?” one wrote.
I’m confused. Why on earth would you want to be on a reality show if you didn’t receive any compensation at all? And why would you choose to leave your job with Walmart without having a reliable stream of income lined up?
— WhatTheShiplap (@WhatTheShiplap) March 8, 2018
On Friday, one follow told him he was “being cryptic” and “talking in circles,” while refusing to answer questions. Dillard shot back by doing that again.
“Forget it. [I’m] not going to answer all your questions on Twitter. We should just write a book to set the record straight. The point is for [people] not to assume things, like compensation or what we did or didn’t have a choice in, so they don’t make careless judgements,” Dillard replied.
Forget it. Im not going to answer all your questions on Twitter. We should just write a book to set the record straight. The point is for ppl not to assume things, like compensation or what we did or didn’t have a choice in, so they don’t make careless judgements.
— Derick Dillard (@derickmdillard) March 9, 2018
The 28-year-old Dillard and TLC split last year over his transphobic views and his criticism of the network for airing I Am Jazz, a series about transgender girl Jazz Jennings. In December 2017, he denied being fired, and insisted he decided leaving Counting On was “best for my family.”
Photo credit: Instagram/ Derick Dillard
