Months ago, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly predicted the Supreme Court would strike down President Obama’s health care reform law in a 5-4 decision. So confident was he, O’Reilly promised to “apologize for being an idiot” if the court ruled in favor of the law. Fast-forward to Monday, when Bill O’Reilly kept his word — more or less.
“Okay, I’m not really sorry,” he said. “But I am a man of my word, so I apologize for not factoring in the John Roberts situation. Truthfully, I never in a million years thought the Chief Justice would go beyond the scope of the Commerce Clause debate and into taxation. I may be an idiot for not considering that.”
O’Reilly blamed the “kooks” at MSNBC and the “smear site” Media Matters for making a big deal of his March Supreme Court prediction and demanding an apology. Frequent “O’Reilly Factor” guest Bernie Goldberg then joined the program for a little media criticism: “You may be many things, Bill, but naive isn’t one of them,” he said. “You should have seen this coming. You’re a big name in the culture, on a big network, and you made a big, loud prediction. So of course they were going to go after you. But not for journalistic reasons. This is trivial as far as journalism is concerned. You made a prediction and you got it wrong, that’s no big deal. … They’re going after you for entertainment reasons. It is great entertainment to go after Bill O’reilly, who’s got a target on his back.”
Watch the clip: