After Fox News host Bill O’Reilly insulted a former colleague who accused him of embellishing his war reporting, ex-CBS correspondent Eric Engberg struck back on Monday.
“He’s completely nutty,” Engberg said on HuffPost Live.
Engberg was following up on an appearance on CNN on Sunday, when he said that O’Reilly has been misrepresenting his time in Buenos Aires during the Falklands War in the 1980s. He also took the Fox host to task for accusing his fellow CBS colleagues of staying in the hotel during protests in the Argentinian capital.
Also on Sunday, O’Reilly phoned in to Fox News’ “Media Buzz” and slammed Engberg, repeating that Engberg in particular never left his hotel while covering the conflict.
“His nickname was ‘Room Service Eric,’ he never left the hotel,” O’Reilly said.
Engberg fired right back during the HuffPo appearance on Monday.
“I was one of those who was there, the other three correspondents were there, I frankly don’t know where O’Reilly was,” he said. “But the people who were there covering this for our company will completely assert, ‘yes, Engberg was there.'”
“Does anybody believe that a reporter who was covering a war from 1,200 miles away, hearing there was a riot at the national palace, would sit in his hotel room?” he said. “It’s ludicrous.”
The testy back and forth was only one piece of the fallout after a Mother Jones report last week accused O’Reilly of embellishing his account of his time in Argentina.
“He’s nutty, he’s nutty,” Engberg repeated later on the HuffPost appearance. “Nutty about me. He says that I was hiding in my hotel room, which is another one of those classic O’Reilly responses to any kind of criticism of him.”
Watch the clip below:
Somebody was hiding in a hotel room. What does the cameraman say?
That is what I keep wondering. Where is this cameraman who supposedly had his life saved by Bill O?
Well, DUUUUUUUUH !!
Frankly, O’Reilly had a complete psychotic break with objective reality a long, long, long time ago. But my money’s on Roger Ailes keeping him around, no suspension and no punishment. Unlike the standards real journalists are held to, FOX personnel are required to lie. The ability to lie frequently with a straight face and outrage at being caught are resume requirements.
You would think this guy, whose life BillO saved, would speak up. But maaaaaaybe Bill is the only one who can see and hear him?!
O’Reilly and the cameraman were enjoying a nice felafel (loofah, whatever) in the hotel room when the cameraman slipped getting out of the tub. O’Reilly saved his life by grabbing his head before it hit the floor.