Someone should tell Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., that Americans still have a right to a free trial, regardless of whether she thinks President Trump has turned everything upside down.
The California congresswoman said Wednesday that Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly should be behind bars, despite that the cable news host has not even been charged, let alone stood trial.
“Bill O’Reilly needs to go to jail,” the congresswoman said on MSNBC.
O’Reilly is alleged to have sexually harassed several of his colleagues over the years, according to a growing number of lawsuits that have been brought against him.
The number of accusers has been great enough to scare off more than two dozen advertisers, signaling that O’Reilly indeed has a serious problem on his hands. It’s unlikely he’ll skate through this one by doing what he has normally done in the past, which has been either to denounce his accusers as liars and frauds or to settle with massive payouts.
It’s important to stress, however, that O’Reilly has only been accused of a great deal of wrongdoing. He has not been convicted of anything, and he has not even been charged.
As of now, it’s a he said/she said. Well, more accurately, it’s a he said/ she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, etc.
The point is: In America, you’re still innocent until proven guilty – unless Waters disagrees. She seems to have forgotten a major part of the document she swore to defend and uphold.
A charitable interpretation of her remarks Wednesday evening is that she meant the cable news host should go to jail, as opposed to prison, where he would await trial. That’s an overly generous reading, though, and it ignores that O’Reilly has not been charged with anything.
“It’s all catching up with Bill O’Reilly and that sexual harassment enterprise that they created over there at [Fox News] and it’s catching up with them … they have treated women very badly,” she told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes.
“And so I understand the Justice Department has opened a case, they’re taking a look at them because this really is a sexual harassment enterprise. It shouldn’t be in America that you can sexually harass women and then buy your way out of it because you’re rich. If they continue to do this, in the way that they have done, they need to go to jail,” she added.
The congresswoman’s remarks are reminiscent of when then-candidate Trump led his supporters’ during the election in chanting “Lock her up!” whenever the topic of Hillary Clinton’s private emails came up on the campaign trail.
On that note: One of the most common defenses of Rep. Waters’ Wednesday remarks has been to point out that Trump said basically the same thing about Clinton during the 2016 presidential election.
This is a fair comparison, but does Waters no favors. It merely points out that the congresswoman now has something in common with the president. This is presumably the last thing she wanted from that interview.
At any rate, on the topic of the people defending Waters, it has been illuminating to watch Trump protestors shrug when a member of their own team engages in similar behavior.
