Bill O’Reilly Growls at Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon Press Restrictions: ‘Craziness … It’s Not Going to Hold’ | Video

The “No Spin News” host also notes that Donald Trump has “changed” on the issue of requiring permission to publish information

Bill O’Reilly has been generally supportive of the Donald Trump administration and its policies – but he drew the line at Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s treatment of the press, calling it “craziness” that simply won’t stand.

Hegseth’s new policy – that reporters from need to get permission to publish information gathered inside the Pentagon – sparked a weeks-long standoff that came to a head last week when longtime journalists the New York Times, The Washington Post, the Associated Press, Reuters and more cleared out their desks and left rather than abide it.

For O’Reilly, this time, it’s personal.

“Are you kidding me?” he said Friday. “So, let me make it real personal.”

O’Reilly recounted a 1988 story he did for ABC News about “corrupt people inside the Pentagon” who were triple-billing for the then-new Bradley fighting vehicle.

“I got the story,” O’Reilly said. “It was an award-winner — one of the most proud stories I’ve ever done. Didn’t get anybody’s permission to do it. Pentagon hated it. Hated it! Went after me and everything like that. So I know you have to do independent reporting, particularly when you have a trillion dollars of discretionary spending.”

Hegseth’s demand to sign off on stories is simply “not freedom of the press,” O’Reilly said, noting that Trump was at first wary of the policy, but has changed his tune. Restrictions are one thing, O’Reilly noted, suggesting that if the Pentagon wants to ferret out leaks, they have the right to demand polygraph tests of military officials.

“But this craziness — no,” he growled. “And it’s not going to hold. [The] Supreme Court or somebody going to come in and say you can’t do it.”

Watch the entire monologue in the video above.

Comments