September 16, 2016 | No Comments
Bill O’Reilly brushed aside Donald Trump’s refusal to say earlier Friday whether he was going to disavow his questioning of President Barack Obama’s citizenship, saying, “you can’t second-guess the strategy that has him tied with Hillary Clinton, who should be ahead by 15 points.”
“I wouldn’t have done it this way, but I would have put it to bed a long time ago,” O’Reilly said in a telephone interview on Fox News in the minutes preceding Trump’s speech in Washington.
Trump, speaking to Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo earlier in the day, declined to state whether he would be reversing himself on whether he believed Obama was born in the U.S., even after his own campaign put out a statement to that effect Thursday night. “You watch my statement. I have to, we have to keep the suspense going, OK?” the Republican presidential candidate said, after his son Donald Trump Jr. told ABC that the campaign’s statement amounted to his father’s words.
O’Reilly’s comments themselves came in the hour following Clinton’s “fairly robust attack on him,” O’Reilly noted, adding that the Democratic nominee’s “real slash-and-burn” speech would lead his show Friday night.
“I mean he’s got to come out and say hey look, I had suspicions and now I don’t,” O’Reilly said. “So that’s it.”