Late night talk got a little heated on Wednesday when Bill O’Reilly visited Late Night With Seth Meyers to discuss the Black Lives Matter movement. The Fox News host — who has surprised a few people lately by shutting down Donald Trump’s unsavory stances and calling for stricter gun laws — has hopped back into some unfortunate territory. A few evenings ago, O’Reilly discussed the recent anti-brutality protests and claimed Martin Luther King would never join up with Black Lives Matter. Now he’s doubling down on that viewpoint.
O’Reilly first took an obligatory moment to address Gretchen Carlson’s sexual harassment lawsuit against Roger Ailes. Noticeably, O’Reilly took a more somber tone than Geraldo Rivera but still sided with the head honcho. O’Reilly described this “very sad situation” in terms of tarnishing the reputation of Ailes, who is the “best boss I’ve ever had, always honest.” Then the conversation switched to BLM, which O’Reilly called “destructive” and lacking any progress on the movement’s claims of structural racism:
“If you look at the Black Lives Matter leadership, it’s a movement based upon that America is inherently an evil country based on white superiority, alright, that’s what they believe. They don’t want to solve the problem, they want to break the system down.”
He then repeated his claim that King would never associate with the movement, which is just too “volatile.” O’Reilly believes that King would rather debate the issue and work towards solutions than hold disruptive nationwide protests. Well, it looks like O’Reilly and Trump are on the same page again, as the presumptive GOP nominee recently called BLM a “divisive” movement.
On a related note, O’Reilly only has one year left on his Fox News contract. His talking head is insanely popular (as the top-rated cable show), and he recently told AdWeek that he may not continue: “I don’t want to work this hard much longer. I know that.” As a Fox News fixture, the network won’t want to see him go.