Posted on 12/15/2021 5:18:51 PM PST by RandFan
Former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly said downplaying or diminishing the seriousness of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol is something that "could never have happened" during his time at the network.
"Fox News is a different place than it was when I was there," O'Reilly said Tuesday evening while appearing on Dan Abrams' primetime show on NewsNation. “I don’t follow it that that closely anymore, but when I was there, there was a discipline from management that diminishing the Capitol riot could never have happened. And I'll state that firmly on the record.”
O'Reilly had joined Abrams' program to discuss revelations this week that top hosts at Fox, including his former colleagues Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Brian Kilmeade, had been texting with then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows during the riot, urging Meadows to convince former President Trump to do something to stop the attack.
“I wouldn’t have done it myself,” O’Reilly said of the text messages the hosts sent Meadows. “I would have asked the question, ‘Say, are you guys going to make a statement? What are you going to do? Looks like things are out of control?’ I don’t think I would have advocated; that’s not what journalists do. But it was in a very intense, quick-breaking situation. So I’m not going to condemn anybody here.”
Hannity and Ingraham both defended their texts to Meadows during their nightly programs on Tuesday and played for their audiences portions of their statements the night of the attack.
"I said to Mark Meadows the exact same thing I was saying live on the radio at that time and on TV that night on Jan. 6 and well beyond Jan. 6," Hannity said Tuesday.
"Both publicly and privately I said what I believe: that the Jan. 6 breach at the Capitol was a terrible thing. Crimes were committed," Ingraham said during the next hour. "Some people were unfairly hounded and persecuted, but it was not an insurrection. To say anything different is beyond dishonest and it ignores the facts of that day."
After O'Reilly defended Hannity's comments on Jan. 6, Abrams asked him about Tucker Carlson, who hosts the top-rated show in the country, and his production of a controversial miniseries for the network's streaming service focusing on the Jan. 6 attack.
Carlson's "Patriot Purge" miniseries purports to tell an alternative view of the Jan. 6 attack and features one subject who suggested the incident could have been a so-called "false flag" operation.
"I'm not going to comment on that," O’Reilly said. "I haven't watched [Patriot Purge.]"
O’Reilly was forced out of his prime time show on Fox News in 2017 amid allegations of sexual harassment and was eventually replaced in the network's 8 p.m. hour with Carlson.
O’Reilly, a close personal friend of Trump for years, has since launched a speaking tour with the former president but has appeared rarely in interviews with mainstream media outlets since his ouster from Fox.
I never liked O'Reilly. Tucker is a huge upgrade on him in my opinion.
Sign in if you agree!
But would he do it live?
I don’t like anybody.(in the urban media)
Where do I fit in?
I had blacklisted BOR years ago but was beginning to soften a little.
Back on the blacklist he goes.
I liked O’Reilly but he wasn’t always consistent. He got old. So it was time for him to leave. He was all that 20 years ago. But now he has gotten too comfortable. I think the same thing will happen to Tucker. Unless he’s like Clarence Thomas who is shunned by the establishment but that won’t be the case with Tucker, I predict.
Signed in!
Go on a date with your loofa.
I agree oreally is hyperbolic... a protest that was coerced. The government over reacted
Always felt he was an obnoxious so and so. His interviews were awful
He is probably much better at writing books
I hope Trump haters take O’Reilly’s advice and run on Jan 6th, should be a good message for the midterms.
“Please throw me in the briar patch...pretty please.”
O’Reilly had his fifteen minutes of fame.
Isn’t he on tour with Trump?
Whatta spinnin’ pinhead....
Bill, how can we miss you if you won’t go away?
He's still bloviating from the sidelines. When Fox News became available on cable here, I watched it regularly. It was the only cable news channel I watched. They pissed me off when they called Florida for Gore in 2000, before the polls in The Panhandle had closed. I stopped watching them, but went back after 9/11, and watched until 9/11 was no longer important to them. Then I watched them intermittently, but turned them off for good when Obama was elected in 2008. Haven't watched them since. Free Republic is the only source I need for my news. God gave me a brain so I can read, and formulate my own opinions, and don't need my news filtered through some twit who is paid to tell me what they think I need to know.
I liked his talking points commentary, I felt that was his strength. I think near the end, he was burned out. In retrospect, his program would had benefited if he had somebody like Jesse Watters to do some of the interviews.
O’Reilly, Cheney, cut from the same cheap bolt of cloth.
Bill O’Reilly: a self-absorbed buffoon. I never could stand him.
Once again, the headline misrepresents the article.
Hindsight is always 20-20.
Besides, what was POTUS supposed to do, call out the National Guard? Oh, wait. Queen Nancy put the kibosh to that offer.
No matter what he would have said or done, it wouldn’t have been enough for the naysayers.
One-six was an intelligence operation, designed to provide the Left with a visible target. And it worked.
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