Months ago, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly predicted the Supreme Court would strike down President Obama’s health care reform law in a 5-4 decision. So confident was he, O’Reilly promised to “apologize for being an idiot” if the court ruled in favor of the law. Fast-forward to Monday, when Bill O’Reilly kept his word — more or less.
“Okay, I’m not really sorry,” he said. “But I am a man of my word, so I apologize for not factoring in the John Roberts situation. Truthfully, I never in a million years thought the Chief Justice would go beyond the scope of the Commerce Clause debate and into taxation. I may be an idiot for not considering that.”
O’Reilly blamed the “kooks” at MSNBC and the “smear site” Media Matters for making a big deal of his March Supreme Court prediction and demanding an apology. Frequent “O’Reilly Factor” guest Bernie Goldberg then joined the program for a little media criticism: “You may be many things, Bill, but naive isn’t one of them,” he said. “You should have seen this coming. You’re a big name in the culture, on a big network, and you made a big, loud prediction. So of course they were going to go after you. But not for journalistic reasons. This is trivial as far as journalism is concerned. You made a prediction and you got it wrong, that’s no big deal. … They’re going after you for entertainment reasons. It is great entertainment to go after Bill O’reilly, who’s got a target on his back.”
Watch the clip:
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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