By not solely condemning Nazis in the wake of the tragedy in Charlottesville, President Donald Trump opened the door for haters to brand him a "sympathizer" to the white supremacist movement, Bill O'Reilly told Newsmax TV Friday.
"When you're speaking about Nazis, you can't bring in anybody else. It can't be 'Nazis and,'" O'Reilly said.
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"Whatever you were going to say about them has to stay in a place where there can be no intrusion with anything else. So that was President Trump's first mistake is that he equated behavior by Nazis in Charlottesville with behavior by the Antifas," said O'Reilly, whose latest book, "Killing England: The Brutal Struggle for American Independence," comes out Sept. 19.
O'Reilly wrote earlier in the week that it's Trump's — and the country's — ignorance about Nazi history that led to the gaffe.
"The historical context of the Charlottesville reaction is that mass murder was carried out by ordinary Germans while the vast majority of that population looked away out of self-interest and fear. President Trump did not understand that and it has hurt him," O'Reilly wrote then.
Denounce Nazis first, then go after far-left extremists, said the former prime-time stalwart and host of "The O'Reilly Factor" on Fox News.
"Then the day after, say this Antifa movement, they're becoming very, very dangerous to the country and lay out that case but separately," O'Reilly told Newmax TV. "When he didn't do it separately and he brought them both in together, that gave the Trump haters the license to brand him a sympathizer. Disgusting, despicable, it's a lie, but that's what the Trump haters did."
O'Reilly was then asked about how Trump should handle Gary Cohn, his chief economic adviser, who came out critically of Trump's reticence to denounce the alt-right in an interview Thursday.
"I would say, 'I've spoken to Gary, he's a close friend, he's doing a great job and I respect his point of view. And I've learned some lessons in this case and going forward, we're going to do it differently,'" O'Reilly said.
Whether Trump takes that tack isn't as important as recognizing the what the long view is of Democrats and the media.
"There's only one bottom line on Donald Trump: get him out of office; that's what's happening here," O'Reilly said. "And the media has invested in that, the far left has invested in that, the Democratic Party has invested in that.
"That's a lot of people trying to get him out of office. So you're not going to get any honesty on this level. So President Trump has got to understand that. He knows his base is still with him but he's got to be very careful going forward and be as magnanimous as possible," O'Reilly said.
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