Bill O’Reilly, racism monitor for the rest of us, lectured a Hispanic congressman last night that “this racism thing” about Donald Trump attacking the Hispanic judge sitting on the Trump University case is false. Why? Because Trump is not David Duke.

You may recall that on Tuesday night, O’Reilly announced, “This ‘racism’ business is totally out of control and journalists have a responsibility to reign it in, providing perspective rather than silently allowing the cheap talk.”

So, apparently, it’s just part of his job of being a responsible journalist (and has nothing, absolutely nothing, I’m sure, to do with the fact that Trump is O'Reilly's buddy) to acquit Trump of any and all charges of racism.

Unfortunately for O'Reilly, it’s hard to imagine that he’s going to persuade people with this definition of racism, as relayed in his interview with Rep. Bill Flores (R-TX):

O’REILLY This racism thing has been thrown around. Do you believe that Donald Trump gets up in the morning and says, you know what? I don’t like Mexicans, I’m going to go out and try to make them look bad. Do you believe that? 

It says way more about O’Reilly than Trump if O’Reilly thinks that you're not a racist if you don't spend your day looking for ways to make minorities look bad. And not, say, announcing on television how pleasantly surprised you were that the African Americans filling a restaurant in Harlem were so well behaved.

Flores, predictably, didn’t call out O’Reilly’s bogus definition. Flores replied that he doesn’t believe Trump is a racist but “has made statements that can be interpreted as racist.” He added, “We don’t need that today. We want him to talk about a vision.”

So O’Reilly for the Defense (of Trump’s bigoted attacks) continued:

O’REILLY: All right, so you don’t believe that he wakes up and he wants to denigrate Mexicans?

As if that has anything to do with the matter.

O’Reilly continued, “Don’t you think that that was more about Trump being angry with the judge’s decision in a civil litigation rather than the judge’s ethnicity?” Yes, that may have been the genesis but Trump repeatedly made his attacks on the judge about his heritage. As Fox’s own Charles Krauthammer brilliantly explained to O’Reilly on Tuesday, “Who introduces that factor in talking about unfairness?”

Flores said it didn’t matter what Trump meant because “The American people heard racism,” instead of “a positive vision for the country.” And, of course, how to “get away from the Obama/Hillary regime.”

O’REILLY: OK, I get your point, but I think you understand mine as well. That you don’t use the “r word” unless you’re David Duke, unless you have got a history of trying to denigrate minorities or other people. I mean, you need to have a perspective. That’s all I’m saying. I don’t think it was wise that Mr. Trump said that about the judge. It wasn’t wise. 

Besides the ridiculousness of O’Reilly suggesting that you have to be in the KKK to be a racist, the fact is that Trump has a long record of denigrating minorities.

And just to make the irony a little richer, probably the big reason people thought Trump a racist before his attack on Judge Gonzalo Curiel was Trump’s refusal to disavow the support of Duke when asked about it. Not surprisingly, O'Reilly called that a "non-story" pushed by the liberal media.

Something tells me O’Reilly’s Racial Rehab efforts are going to be in vain. As they should be.

Watch them below, from the June 8 The O’Reilly Factor, via Media Matters.