Bill O’Reilly made his return to Fox News last night, appearing on Sean Hannity’s show for what was billed as an interview about his book “Killing England.”
“I’m fine,” O’Reilly said right out of the gate, but “I’m teed off.”
His book came second to a handful of political issues discussed, including the NFL’s National Anthem protests, the Left’s Nazi hysteria (stemming from identity politics), and his departure from Fox News, among other topics. O’Reilly highlighted the hypocrisy of the protest, stating, “I want to address this comment to the NFL players today. And I know they’ll get this. When the Jaguar and Ravens were over in London and they kneeled down on foreign soil and then they stood up for the British anthem.”
He continued, “I was angry and sad because I don’t believe those players know what they’re doing. About 3,000 miles east of you, there are American military people in Kandahar, Afghanistan, whose entertainment revolves around the Armed Forces Network that broadcasts football games. Now I was over there in ’07. I watched football games with them. Could you imagine putting your life on the line in Afghanistan and having just the leisure time and wanting to watch a football game and seeing your players disrespect the country and the flag on foreign soil. Can you imagine how painful that was?”
I certainly can’t. You can see O’Reilly sound off on the protesters below:
Hannity also pointed out that there was a certain level of hypocrisy in the NFL, defending a protest of the National Anthem as free speech – but not much else. Pointing out what we reported earlier this week, Hannity said that back in September of 2016, the NFL officially banned Tennessee Titans linebacker Avery Williamson from wearing custom-made cleats on the field that memorialized the victims of the September 11th attacks.
Not long before that, in July 2016, five police officers were murdered in Dallas by Micah Xavier. Xavier was angered over recent police shootings, and wanted to “kill white people, especially white officers.” In memory of the fallen officers, the Dallas Cowboys wanted to wear a special decal on their helmets featuring a star and the words “ARM IN ARM.” The NFL didn’t permit them to do that.
For as much as the Left is trying to frame the “taking the knee” protest as a form of patriotism, dissent is apparently only the highest form of patriotism when a Republican is in office. And besides, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who started the protest, explicitly said after first taking the knee that it was because “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.” The situation is nothing like how CNN’s Don Lemon portrayed it, who said that players should be allowed to continue taking the knee, as, “No American gets to tell another American how to express their love for this country.”
Sorry, Don, but they’re explicitly doing just the opposite.
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