Fox hosts Bill O’Reilly and Jeanine Pirro could not have been bigger hypocrites as they joined other Fox attacks on liberals for criticizing Donald Trump’s use of the widow of Navy SEAL “Ryan” Owens in his address to Congress this week. Not only did O'Reilly and Pirro distort the actual reasons for the backlash, they conveniently ignored Fox’s own history of doing just what they complained about in the left.
As NewsHounds previously noted, Trump honored widow Carryn Owens in an emotional moment during his address. But it also served as a convenient distraction from questions as to whether Trump’s own reckless behavior caused needless death, injury and destruction in a botched raid. Those questions have been raised by Ryan Owens’ father who refused to meet with Trump.
Rather than discuss the real reasons for the criticism, O’Reilly and Pirro falsely accused liberals of objecting to Mrs. Owens presence.
O’REILLY: Outrage of the week segment: As we reported last night, some far-left loons demonized President Trump for bringing the widow of slain Navy SEAL Ryan Owens to the speech Tuesday night.
O’Reilly played a clip of Michael Moore on MSNBC:
MOORE: This poor woman, this widow who has lost her husband. She is in desperate grief right now and in love with her husband and to use that to put another notch on his belt and what’s he thinking about? My ratings. Record applause. I’m gonna get a Emmy for this. Most applause for a dead soldier on my watch. This is the sickness of this man.
O’Reilly conveniently left out Moore’s criticisms of the raid before that as well as his conclusion: “That's why she's there - as sort of an f-you for the people who are criticizing [the mission Navy SEAL Ryan Owens was killed in]."
O’Reilly also failed to mention that Moore was responding to Trump's tasteless comment about the applause for Owens: “Ryan is looking down right now. You know that. And he’s very happy, because I think he just broke a record.”
But O’Reilly had plenty of time to make ad hominem attacks on Moore:
O’REILLY: We all know and don’t really have to discuss that man. We know who he is. We know what he does. And the fact the he can sit there on national television and say this vile stuff. Look, if you patronize the people who give him a forum that’s up to you.
He’s not alone. This prop using the woman… it’s despicable.
PIRRO: It’s not only despicable but it is blatantly political. It’s transparent. It is disgusting and it’s small. But more than that it’s part of their agenda. It’s divisive.
Those are ironic comments given the right-wing hate mongers Fox regularly hosts as guests (not including the hate mongering O’Reilly and Pirro were engaging in right then).
O’Reilly went on to play a video of The View's Sunny Hostin saying, “I thought that was so exploitive. I thought he exploited that widow. My God how do you exploit a woman who is grieving over the loss of her husband, the father of her children, when you sent him there without the appropriate ground support?”
O’Reilly never mentioned that Hostin has a cousin (raised with her as a brother) who was severely injured serving overseas. Instead, he and Pirro attacked her for something she didn't say:
O'REILLY: That woman has no idea what the mission was. So she’s speaking about something she doesn’t know and to imply that this widow is incapable of making her own decision about where to go and how to basically grieve about her husband is so insulting to her and other women is it not?
PIRRO: For a woman to make that claim she’s being exploited, as if she can stand in the shoes of Carryn Owens, the wife of the Navy SEAL, is quite presumptive of her.
Yet somehow O’Reilly and Pirro “forgot” how Fox News repeatedly accused President Barack Obama of using Afghanistan veteran Sgt. First-Class Cory Remsburg as a prop at the 2014 State of the Union address:
Gen. Bob Scales: “Thepresident conveniently likes to use a wounded sergeant as a prop while his policies gut the military, puts troops in peril. (On The Record, 1/29/14)
Greg Gutfeld: “This heroic man was somewhat disconnected from the limp litany of grad school garbage that came before, and it felt like it was placed at the end of the speech to armor against scrutiny … Everyone walks away thinking about this amazing hero and not how lame the president’s speech was … It was really moving at the end, but I felt like I was being used.” (The Five, 1/29/14 via Mediaite)
Andrea Tantaros: “It sounds like you feel like Cory was being used as a human shield from criticism.” (The Five, 1/29/14 via Mediaite)
Watch the hypocrisy below, from the March 2, 2017 The O’Reilly Factor.
That was refusing to take responsibility for the effed-up Yemen raid, dumping the blame on his generals. The military hierarchy was lost to him forever in that craven instant, so now he has the intelligence community AND the armed forces out for his blood.
As good a Mussolini impression as this boy has ever seen.
The reality of Trump’s usage of the SEAL’s widow is that he was doing exactly what Moore described – he put her there as a giant middle finger to anyone who has the temerity to disagree with him. Just as he paraded the parents of people whose kids had been killed by undocumented immigrants.
Frankly, I’m surprised to hear anyone referring to Trump’s recital on Tuesday as a “presidential” moment for him. I’m not sure what the others are referring to there – what I saw was a man reciting rote talking points from a teleprompter and singling out various examples he insists are motivations for his hateful policies and rhetoric.