Washington Post journalist Erik Wemple hammered Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly for defending his comments that slaves who built the White House were “well-fed and had decent lodgings,” lambasting both his “offensive” remarks and the “gap” between “historical fact” and O’Reilly’s assertions.

On July 26, O’Reilly responded to Michelle Obama’s Democratic National Convention Speech, where the first lady paid homage to the slaves who helped build the White House, by inexplicably adding that they were “well-fed and had decent lodgings by the government.” The media widely criticized O’Reilly’s “morally bankrupt” comments.

O’Reilly, who has a long and sordid history of racist attacks, responded to the media criticism by doubling down, saying on July 27 that his “commentary” was “100 percent accurate” and “fact.”

Washington Post’s Erik Wemple excoriated O’Reilly, noting that his remarks fit right in line with the “offensive style of broadcasting” that thrived under recently ousted former Fox President, Roger Ailes. Wemple noted that historians roundly criticized O’Reilly’s false claims, explaining that the real conditions of slaves were unknown because “slaves were not given a choice on what they ate or where they lived.” Wemple added that O’Reilly reached new “extremes” by lashing out at the “far left” and calling for his entire network “to band together … to call out the people who are actively trying to destroy this network” because “they want me dead.” From the July 28 Washington Post article:

Well, it’s been a week since Ailes left, and his offensive style of broadcasting lives on. On Wednesday night, host Bill O’Reilly took to the network’s airwaves to attempt a defense of his comments of last night regarding first lady Michelle Obama’s Monday night speech here at the Democratic National Convention. She said, in part, “I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves, and I watch my daughters — two beautiful, intelligent, black young women — playing with their dogs on the White House lawn.”

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As the Erik Wemple Blog pointed out this morning, Jesse J. Holland, who wrote the book on slaves and the White House, noted that the slaves were housed in a barn and were provided with food. Yet there’s a gap between that historical fact and what O’Reilly alleged, which, again, is that they were “well fed” and resided in “decent lodgings.”

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Information scarcity notwithstanding, O’Reilly stands by his conclusions about well-fed-decent-lodgings. At this point, it’s incumbent on him to substantiate these judgments or concede that he’s making them without supporting documentation — a common malaise on certain Fox News programs. A smaller point pertains to O’Reilly’s sudden and complete faith in the ability of government to provide sustenance and accommodations for its people. Why does this guy, a small government proponent, all of a sudden think that the public sector can perform such programs with such efficiency?

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Further evidence that O’Reilly has reached new extremes emerged in this comment: “I think the time has come now where this whole network is going to have to band together — all of us — and we are going to have to call out the people who are actively trying to destroy this network by using lies and deception and propaganda. We’re going to have to start to call them out by name because that’s how bad it’s become.” What O’Reilly failed to mention is that the sexual harassment scandal of his former boss — Ailes — is doing far more to destroy Fox News than could any outside critic.