On the July 23 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, responding to Fox News contributor Kirsten Powers' assertion that “there's a lot of stuff that [Daily Kos bloggers] do that isn't horrible," host Bill O'Reilly said: “It's kind of like Al Capone.” O'Reilly continued: “We'll only do bad things on Thursday, and we'll slaughter a bunch of people, but on Friday we'll go to church.” In response to Powers' statement that “there's a lot of good diaries put up there,” O'Reilly said: "[Former Italian fascist dictator Benito] Mussolini made the trains run on time."
In recent days, O'Reilly has repeatedly compared Daily Kos to the Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan, as Media Matters for America has documented (here, here, and here). For example, on the July 19 edition of The O'Reilly Factor, O'Reilly said: "[T]he hate this site traffics in rivals the KKK and Nazi websites." Media Matters has also noted that O'Reilly previously used the phrase “Mussolini made the trains run on time,” to compare the Italian dictator to billionaire philanthropist George Soros.
O'Reilly asserted earlier in the July 23 segment that the Democratic Party is “held hostage” by Daily Kos, because bloggers “say to the candidates, 'If you don't toe our line or be nice to us, we're going to pull funding for you. We're not going to raise money and we're going to attack you.' ” He added: “And you know who the most attacked person is? Hillary Clinton.” Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin responded: “Yeah, that's right. The far left is emboldened. And they see a lot of these Democrat candidates not only cowering in front of them but then crawling on their knees to pander and try and get their votes.”
While O'Reilly cited left-wing bloggers for “attack[ing]” Clinton, Malkin has herself attacked Clinton -- as recently as July 20 when, while guest hosting The O'Reilly Factor , she talked about a letter to Clinton from Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman saying that Clinton's request in May for a briefing on U.S. contingency plans for withdrawal from Iraq "reinforces enemy propaganda." Malkin asked Fox News contributor Juan Williams, “Wasn't this a case of Hillary putting on her little imaginary four stars on her sleeve and playing armchair general? Isn't that perhaps what got the Pentagon so ticked off, Juan?”
From the July 23 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor:
O'REILLY: On the radio today I basically said if the Democratic Party is going be held hostage by these people, and they are. Because not only do these people say terrible things, Michelle, they actually threaten the candidates. And they say to the candidates, “If you don't toe our line or be nice to us, we're going to pull funding for you. We're not going to raise money and we're going to attack you.” And you know who the most attacked person is? Hillary Clinton.
MALKIN: Yeah, that's right. The far left is emboldened. And they see a lot of these Democrat candidates not only cowering in front of them but then crawling on their knees to pander and try and get their votes. Which I think in the end is probably a stupid thing to do because there's this perception that they're a lot more powerful than they are.
O'REILLY: Than they are, absolutely.
POWERS: I think that's right. But what I was going to say --
O"REILLY: Real quick.
POWERS: -- is there's a lot of stuff that they do that isn't horrible. Most, like 90 --
O'REILLY: Oh, I see. It's kind of like Al Capone.
POWERS: No. No. No. But it's really --
O'REILLY: We'll only do bad things on Thursday, and we'll slaughter a bunch of people, but on Friday we'll go to church. Stop.
POWERS: But the majority -- look, the majority of the stuff -- there's a lot of good diaries that are put up there. There's a lot of smart political stuff that's on there.
O'REILLY: Mussolini made the trains run on time.
POWERS: Oh, it's not like Mussolini. That's ridiculous.