Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly responded on Thursday to Sen. Ted Cruz’s complaint that the show was giving favorable coverage to his rival, Sen. Marco Rubio, by saying he has tried several times to book Cruz without having any luck.
O’Reilly said on his show that he has tried booking Cruz to appear on the program but that he has been unsuccessful, while Rubio has been more accessible.
“I can’t speak for all of Fox News but I can tell you that Sen. Rubio has been much easier for us to book than Sen. Cruz,” O’Reilly said. He said that Cruz had actually been invited to appear on that evening’s edition of the show.
“Sen. Cruz will not be with us even though we invited him tonight. We also invited Ted Cruz on tomorrow night. And we invited him on earlier this week.I don’t know really know what else to do. I’ll even buy him dinner. We hope to see Mr. Cruz sometime.”
He added, “I want the candidates to complain if they feel aggrieved but I don’t want them to be paranoid.”
On Wednesday, a day after the New Hampshire primary, Cruz said with sarcasm that he was “looking forward to a week of wall-to-wall coverage on Fox News” about his “impressive third-place finish.”
That was, he said, the treatment Rubio received from Fox after the Iowa caucuses last week. In that contest, Rubio came in third place, which the national media widely interpreted to be a “strong” outcome for the Florida senator.
