Bill O’Reilly: Trump calling out ‘both sides’ was ‘fair payback’

Former Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly said President Trump appropriately called out “both sides” for the violence in Charlottesville, Va., and sees it as “payback” for attacks from Democrats and the media that he endured during the election.

In an online column published Wednesday, O’Reilly said Trump “knows that Nazi sympathizers are bad people,” but that he took the opportunity to hit his detractors because it would score points with his supporters.

“So the president vents by attacking ‘fake news’ and highlighting the sins of the left every chance he gets,” he wrote. “For him, this is fair payback for what he has endured. He sees his opponents as dishonest, deserving of constant disparagement. That’s what is happening in the Charlottesville situation.”

Trump on Tuesday addressed the violence that broke out last weekend during a white supremacist rally by asserting that liberal counterprotesters bear some blame for the incident.

His comments were widely condemned by Democrats and Republicans who put out their own statements to say there was no moral equivalency between the neo-Nazi sympathizers and the counterprotesters.

O’Reilly sympathized with Trump but said in his column, however, that Trump should not have made the comparison.

“In America there is, indeed, a civil war underway,” he said. “And the president along with his supporters will lose that war unless they fight it smarter. Anytime Nazis are involved you condemn them and walk away. That’s all.”

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