Bill O'Reilly and columnist George Will unloaded on each other Friday night in a knock-down, drag-out fight between two heavyweight pundits over O'Reilly's new book, "Killing Reagan."
The book has been heavily criticized by a slew of historians and former Reagan loyalists who have slammed it as a poorly researched tome full of rumor and unverified stories about the Gipper.
Will, the latest to pile on,
blasted the book this week in his syndicated column, calling it both a libel and a slander to the former president's memory. On Thursday, O'Reilly attacked the Will column on his show and
dared Will to come on the Friday night show.
Will took up his challenge.
Their main disagreement centered on O’Reilly’s thesis that a 1981 assassination attempt traumatized Reagan, causing a mental decline that would eventually devolve into Alzheimer’s disease.
O’Reilly says that Reagan administration staff memos validate his theory, but Will said the entire course of speculation was damaging to the former president's memory.
“You are not telling the truth. You are actively misleading the American people,” O’Reilly told Will.
“You’re something of an expert on willfully misleading people,” Will replied.
O’Reilly said he did not interview former Reagan aides because they wanted to deify the former president. He merely wanted to tell the true story of Reagan’s administration.
Will said O’Reilly was guilty of “extreme recklessness.”
The book “is doing the work of the left," he said, "which knows in order to discredit conservatism it must destroy Reagan’s reputation as the president."