Fox News host Bill O’Reilly told Donald Trump Tuesday night that he shouldn’t have started a war of words with the parents of a Muslim-American Army captain who was killed in Iraq.
O’Reilly began his show Tuesday with a lengthy segment about the recent confrontation between Trump and Khizr Khan, who delivered an emotional speech about the loss of his son and fears he has about Trump at the Democratic National Committee last week.
“Mr. Khan, who does not know me, viciously attacked me from the stage of the DNC and is now all over T.V. doing the same – Nice!” Trump tweeted. The Republican presidential nominee also noted that Khan’s wife stood silently by him during his speech, which many saw as a criticism of her Muslim faith.
“You can fight me. You can come at me,” O’Reilly told Trump. “But if there is some little Muslim woman who loses a son, you can’t. You just can’t. No matter what she does. She can set you on fire. You can say, ‘Thank you, I hated those trousers.’ Just got to let it go.”
Trump defended himself by repeating his claim that he was “viciously attacked” by Khan, who had gone on to accuse the billionaire of having a “black soul” during a series of interviews last Sunday.
“It wasn’t wise to bring the mother in,” O’Reilly maintained, noting that attacks against Trump will “never stop” and he should learn to respond appropriately or not respond at all.
Khan, O’Reilly suggested, was “obviously hired by the Clinton campaign” to speak out against Trump at the DNC. “But the mother is just sitting there. And for you to bring her in, that gives him the opportunity. Opens the door for them to come in and hammer you as this mean kind of guy,” he told Trump.
