Bill O’Reilly has investigated Donald Trump’s claim of seeing “thousands” of people celebrating in the streets of New Jersey in the wake of 9/11 and found no evidence to back up Trump’s claim.
During Tuesday’s episode of “The O’Reilly Factor,” O’Reilly and Fox News correspondent Eric Shawn shared results of their own investigative reporting on the matter.
“There were some Muslims in America happy about the attacks,” O’Reilly said. “That has been established beyond a reasonable doubt.” But there were not “thousands and thousands” as Trump has described, Shawn and O’Reilly concluded.
“There were people in New Jersey, according to the state police, that were investigated — Muslims — who were happy about the 9/11 attack,” O’Reilly said. “But not vast numbers of them.”
O’Reilly also said that he and his team tried to track down video evidence of celebrations occurring in the United States that Trump claims to have seen, but could not locate any such video after reaching out to every local news station in New Jersey.
O’Reilly’s investigation comes on the heels of Fox News anchor Eric Bolling claiming that he too saw video of American Muslims cheering as the World Trade Center fell in 2001, but could not remember where the video was from.
“I remember video, I don’t remember if it was Pakistan or Paterson [New Jersey]. But there was also a lot of talk,” Bolling said at a round table discussion on Monday.
Before Bolling spoke up, “Fox & Friends” host Steve Doocy also backed up Trump’s claim. “I actually remember things like that,” Doocy said Monday. “I remember, because I live one town away from one of the towns where, according to my neighbors, they saw it with their own two eyes, there were people celebrating.”
“I also remember there was video on television,” he continued. “I don’t remember if it was from that town or from New Jersey. Nonetheless, Donald Trump says there are a lot of people out there who have verified the idea of his story.”
Watch the video below.