It’s Fox News and it’s Bill O’Reilly. That means we know that very little news or truth is involved, but we still have a job to do, i.e., point out the obvious. Blogging in the Washington Post, Erik Wemple reports on O’Reilly’s recent rant on his show: white nationalists were a tiny fraction of Trump support but the (liberal) media has blown it out of proportion:
“The liberal press [is] furious that Donald Trump won the election, so now they are putting out absurd story lines designed to denigrate those who voted for Mr. Trump,” said O’Reilly in his broadcast last night. “The top one is that somehow the white power movement is gaining momentum in the USA because of Trump.” [...]
To prove his point that all this white nationalism stuff is nothing to worry about, O’Reilly went to hard data. According to the FBI in 2015, argued the host, “there were about 1,200,000 violent crimes committed here in the USA. The same year, there were less than 6,000 hate crimes reported. I mean, come on. That sound like an epidemic of hate-driven violence to you, does it?” Trump launched his presidential candidacy halfway through 2015, raising a relevance question about O’Reilly’s citation of this data.
In finishing off his argument, O’Reilly grabbed a few soundbites from Trump supporters explaining their politics. One of them said, “I appreciate any candidate that’s going to do more to keep jobs in America.” Riding that sentiment, O’Reilly quipped, “That doesn’t exactly sound like a Nuremberg rally, does it?” It was “economics” that won Donald Trump the 2016 presidential election, argued O’Reilly.
We know that in addition to naming a key member of the white supremacist movement as his key strategist, his transition team also included a legislator of vile proportions. And of course, Trump had been saying just about everything that white supremacists loved to hear all during the campaign.
But, all that and that little “sieg heil” fest in DC a couple of weeks ago aside, O’Reilly says its no big deal so quit harping on it. Because if O’Reilly says it it must be true.