On Monday night, O’Reilly Factor host Bill O’Reilly and Fox News host Megyn Kelly sat down to discuss what really happened at UC Davis on Friday and whether campus police acted appropriately in showering a group of sitting students with pepper spray. Their conclusion? No big deal.
“Pepper spray, that just burns your eyes, right?” O’Reilly asked Kelly.
“Right,” Kelly said. “I mean, its like a derivative of actual pepper. It’s a food product, essentially.”
Exactly! Like jalapeno poppers, or queso dip. Delicious. In fact, pepper spray is about 1,000 times hotter than a jalapeno, Mother Jones reports. But Kelly, to her credit, said the pepper spraying looked like an “abrasive” and “intrusive” act.
But wait a minute, O’Reilly said. “We don’t have the right to Monday morning quarterback the police,” he said. “Especially at a place like UC Davis, which is a fairly liberal campus.”
The police were acting on the chancellor’s orders, the hosts agreed, to try and clear the “Occupy” protesters’ encampment. Kelly asserted that the cops probably didn’t act outside the law. But the university has launched an investigation into the pepper-spraying.
UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi is under increasing pressure to resign. Two police officers involved in the incident, as well as the campus’ police chief, have been put on administrative leave during the inquiry.
Watch the Fox clip below, via Mediaite:
David Taintor
David Taintor is TPM’s News Editor. He contributes to TPM’s Livewire coverage, among other areas. David is from Chanhassen, Minnesota, where, yes, it gets very cold. Reach him at taintor [at] talkingpointsmemo.com
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