Fox News host Bill O’Reilly on Monday lambasted the argument many Democrats and some on the American Left are making that the Orlando terrorist attack was caused by lax gun laws rather than radical Islamic terrorism, asserting that jihadist groups like the Islamic State do not fit into the narrative of "far Left" liberals to blame America first for much of the trouble in the world.
Speaking on his show The O’Reilly Factor, O’Reilly said he now knows "why some committed left wingers constantly diminish the terror threat from ISIS and other groups.
O’Reilly first played a clip of Rep. Jim Clyburn (D., S.C.) arguing last week on MSNBC that the Orlando mass shooting had nothing to do with terrorism and was all about guns.
"This gentleman, it is now being revealed, had a lot of hate, and it seems that some of it was self-hate. And consequently, this is not about ISIS," Clyburn said. "This is not about any kind of foreign terror. This is about guns in America and whether or not we are going to have some kind of moderation to this Second Amendment just as we have to the First Amendment."
O’Reilly then played a clip of himself on Fox News last week criticizing Clyburn for his comments.
"I just want to slap him [Clyburn], with all due respect," O’Reilly said. "What is it going to take? Do the ISIS people have to come to your backyard? Do they have to put you in a cage because they will."
O’Reilly explained that he used the "slap line as a rhetorical device to show my displeasure," adding that left wing websites and the Congressional Black Caucus demanded him to apologize for what they called a physical threat against Clyburn. He went on to argue Monday night that Clyburn has shown hypocrisy on the issue of guns by not mentioning gun control at all when discussing the frequent shootings taking place in Chicago.
"We researched the congressman and we can find no mention of gun control in connection with the Chicago violence," O’Reilly said.
O’Reilly described how this past weekend, 13 people were shot to death in Chicago and 43 others were wounded, including a 3-year-old boy. He said that brings the total number of people shot so far this year in Chicago up to 1,800 individuals.
"Paging Congressman Clyburn. Come on. If he were truly concerned about guns in America, he would have to say at least something about his fellow African Americans being shot down in Chicago every single day, and it’s been going on for years," O’Reilly said.
The Fox News host then argued his main thesis as to why Clyburn and some liberals downplay the terror threat and push gun control instead.
"The reason Clyburn brought up guns in connection with Orlando is because the Left, in general, doesn’t want the American people to focus on the danger from ISIS overseas. That’s a Muslim hate group. They don’t want to bring Muslims in at all," O’Reilly said. "It doesn’t play into the narrative of the far Left, who generally believe that America is the source of much of the trouble in the world."
"So they constantly push a point of view that demonizes the U.S.A. as a bad place, an unfair place," O’Reilly continued. "Forget about ISIS; it’s all about America. Allowing guns to kill people. Refocusing the overseas terror problem on the U.S.A. is a strategy by the far Left."
"Summing up," O’Reilly concluded, "thousands of African Americans being gunned down by other African Americans in
The Orlando shooter, Omar Mateen, pledged allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and demanded that the United States stop bombing Iraq and Syria while he carried out the massacre, according to the transcript of a call between Mateen and 911 operators on the night of the mass shooting. Mateen also called himself an Islamic soldier and consistently pledged allegiance to ISIS.