Journalist tears apart 'buffoon' Bill O’Reilly’s 'lazy' and incoherent defense of ‘pro-Putin’ Tucker Carlson

During the Ukraine crisis, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson has been a frequent apologist for Russian President Vladimir Putin — and his comments have been so pro-Putin that, according to Mother Jones’ David Corn, a Kremlin memo urged state-owned Russian media to feature Carlson more prominently.

Former Fox News carnival barker Bill O’Reilly responded by rushing to Carlson’s defense and attacking Corn, who lays out the flaws of O’Reilly’s attack in an article published on March 16.

“Earlier this week,” Corn explains, “Bill O’Reilly, the disgraced former Fox loudmouth, took to the internet, where he is still permitted to pontificate, to defend current Fox loudmouth Tucker Carlson. This came after Mother Jones revealed a leaked Kremlin memo that advised pro-Putin Russian media that it was ‘essential’ to feature once — and maybe still? — pro-Putin Carlson ‘as much as possible.’ On his website, O’Reilly ranted that this story was an example of ‘media corruption.’ But what O’Reilly actually did was reveal that he doesn’t know how to read.”

Corn broke the story about the Kremlin’s memo on March 13. O’Reilly, in response, slammed Mother Jones as a “far-left rag” and Corn as a “vile human being” and wrote, “Mother Jones would have you believe that someone inside the Russian government leaked them a memo ordering the Russian media to use Tucker Carlson…. Why wouldn’t they leak that to the Washington Post or the New York Times or a big publication? That’s question Number One. Number Two, who leaked this so-called memo? Mother Jones won’t say. It’s anonymous sources. So I guess Mother Jones is protecting someone inside the Kremlin!”

Corn, laying out the flaws in O’Reilly’s response to his reporting, explains, “It seems as if O’Reilly has lost a step or three. The article did not say that the memo was leaked by the Kremlin. It stated that the document ‘was provided to Mother Jones by a contributor to a national Russian media outlet who asked not to be identified.’ That’s a big difference. Maybe O’Reilly didn’t reach this line. It was in the third paragraph of the article.”

The Mother Jones reporter continues, “So all his high-and-mighty deduction was for naught. His ‘just logical questions’ were based on ignorance, laziness, or extremely poor reading comprehension skills. Perhaps all three. And O’Reilly challenged the credibility of the memo because Putin’s regime did not verify it. Ponder that for a moment. Does he expect a government perpetuating a major disinformation campaign — there is no illegal invasion, there are no attacks on civilians, there are no vicious war crimes — to confirm and publicize the details of its disinformation campaign? Has O’Reilly, the savvy, veteran journalist, gone soft?”

Corn notes that recently, conservative Bernard Goldberg was vehemently critical of Carlson’s pro-Putin comments when O’Reilly interviewed him — and O’Reilly’s “half-hearted” defense of Carlson that time was “Carlson’s entitled to say what he wants to say.” He didn’t scream insults at Goldberg, which was quite a contrast to O’Reilly having a major hissyfit in response to Corn’s reporting on the Kremlin memo.

“O’Reilly’s response to the Mother Jones article on Carlson reveals an unsurprising fact: O’Reilly is a bitter guy,” Corn observes. “His unhinged charge that this story is evidence of media ‘corruption’ is, naturally, inaccurate. It only shows that O’Reilly would rather feud than stick to facts.”