In a November 10 Washington Post column, Dana Milbank responded to Bill O'Reilly's recent attacks on him. Milbank noted that O'Reilly “joke[d]” about whether “sharia law say[s] we can behead Dana Milbank,” and wrote, “Hilarious! Decapitation jokes just slay me, and this one had all the more hilarity because the topic of journalist beheadings brings to mind my late friend and colleague Danny Pearl, who replaced me in the Wall Street Journal's London bureau and later was murdered in Pakistan by people who thought sharia justified it.”

Milbank added that O'Reilly's “on-air fantasizing about violent ends for me was precipated by a column I wrote describing Fox News's election-night coverage as a victory party for the Republicans” and that O'Reilly falsely claimed that Milbank wrote that there was only one Democrat who appeared on Fox. In fact, Milbank never said that Doug Schoen was the sole Democrat to appear on Fox. Milbank added:

I suspect O'Reilly's fury - he went after me on three consecutive nights last week - has less to do with one sentence in one column than with a book and a series of columns I've written about O'Reilly's colleague Glenn Beck. I've argued that Beck, with his talk of violence, Nazis and conspiracy theories, is all but inviting fringe characters to take up arms. I've held O'Reilly up as a responsible alternative to Beck - but O'Reilly seems determined to prove this wrong.