Bill O’Reilly had some words for “haters” of President Barack Obama on his program Wednesday night, saying that Obama gets “too much.”
Potential Republican presidential candidates, the Fox News host said, would imperil their chances at the White House with personal attacks about the president or Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. O’Reilly told viewers that there’s “no question” that the president’s policies are “controversial,” but that there’s a line.
O’Reilly ticked through a litany of Republican complaints about Obama.
“He’s a big tax-and-spend guy, has increased the power of the federal government, has ordered a quasi-amnesty for illegal aliens, withdrawn completely from Iraq, leading to chaos, has imposed a health care system many people despise,” he said.
“On the personal front, though, Mr. Obama gets it too much,” O’Reilly said, before reading emails from viewers that either directly or indirectly called Obama a Muslim.
Republicans can put Clinton on the defensive in 2016 if she doesn’t repudiate the current administration’s policies, he said.
“But any Republican candidate who says personal things about either the president or Mrs. Clinton will be making a tremendous mistake,” he added.
Most Americans don’t like that line of attack, he said.
“Once in a while, a takedown is necessary, but to make a living out of guttersniping” would be a “ticket to defeat,” he commented. “Smearing anyone should be unacceptable.”
O’Reilly last week sharply criticized a Mother Jones report that called into question his own accounts about covering the Falklands War. He blasted editor David Corn as “an irresponsible guttersnipe” on his program the next day.
Since then, others have come forward to question statements by O’Reilly, such as his claim to have witnessed the suicide of an associate of Lee Harvey Oswald, President John F. Kennedy’s assassin.
Read more:
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/bill-oreilly-obama-insults-2016-elections-115526.html#ixzz3SrrWxEI7
