Bill O’Reilly Stands by His Statement That the Occupy Wall Street Protesters Are "Terrorists"
Bill O’Reilly spoke to The Five over the phone today to expand on his comments that he made on last night’s The O’Reilly Factor in which he called the Occupy Wall Street protesters “terrorists” and said that President Obama needs to say whether or not he supports them.
“They’re basically now a group that is dominated by agitators, not regular folks. Alright, so in the beginning it was kind of regular folks, they didn’t think they were getting a good shake on the economy so they were out there demonstrating for economic justice and income equality. Now it’s hardcore agitators and anarchists and they are very well organized out of Washington and they go to cause trouble. So to me when you go to cause trouble, you’re trying to create terror,” O’Reilly said.
Juan Williams asked him if he wanted to go back on his statement that the OWS protesters are “terrorists.” O’Reilly responded, “I’m not walking anything back Williams
… These people have no clue, alright they just don’t like anything to do with capitalism, anything to do with the West, and they’re hardcore socialists most of them. So let’s just be upfront about who they are.”
O’Reilly did clarify his comments, saying “I think you've got to be fair in the sense that all groups have extremists within the group, so I’m not going to demonize the Occupy Wall Street movement because some guys want to blow up a bridge. That’s not fair. What I’m saying to the public is that this is not the same group that started a year ago.”
Regarding the president’s stance on the OWS movement, O’Reilly asked of him, “Are you going to continue to support a group that stabs police officers and burns things down? … Tell me how stabbing a police officer is freedom of speech?”
He continued, “If I were Mitt Romney, I would be on the air today saying hey are you supporting this stuff Mr. President? … That’s how you win elections. Romney, I don’t know where he is, maybe he’s driving the dog to Canada.”
