Advertisement

O’Reilly Says CAP Is “A Very Well-Oiled, Effective Character Assassination Machine”

On last night’s Factor, Bill O’Reilly took a shot at CAP’s rapid response operation (i.e. ThinkProgress and The Progress Report). From last night’s broadcast:

Watch at Crooks and Liars

BILL O’REILLY: All of these people are far left fringe players, but they know their money is going to smear merchants. They know it’s going into character assassins, correct?

JAKOB LASKIN, FRONTPAGE MAGAZINE: It’s actually interesting. That’s exactly what it was meant for. One of the biggest contributors to Media Matters is the Center for American Progress.

Advertisement

O’REILLY: That’s Podesta’s group.

LASKIN: Exactly. They operate out of Washington, DC. Basically it’s a partisan group that — what they do is rapid response to anything that offends them as far as the Republican or conservative agenda is concerned, which is just about everything. And so Media Matters operates in exactly the same way except for where the media is concerned. So it’s perfect.

O’REILLY: It is a very well-oiled, effective character assassination machine. There is nothing that exists on the right that I know of that can compare. Do you know of anything?

LASKIN: No. And one reason is because that right-wing publications have been very effective at getting out their message. They don’t need to smear.

O’REILLY: There was some smearing going on in the Clinton years to be fair.

Maybe Laskin isn’t exactly the right person to be throwing stones. The website he writes for, David Horowitz’s Frontpagemag.com, currently features an article entitled “George Galloway: Fascist Pimp and Prostitute.” Horowitz has also published a guide to the left that featured CAP president John Podesta next to the American Taliban, John Walker Lindh.

Head over to MediaMatters and form your own opinion about Mr. O’Reilly.