Fox News host Bill O'Reilly on Monday fired back at critics who accused him of racism after he told Donald Trump during an interview last week that bringing jobs back from overseas wouldn't be enough raise the unemployment numbers of young black people.
"But how are you going to get jobs for them?" O'Reilly asked Trump. "Many of them are ill-educated and have tattoos on their foreheads."
That brought about
a firestorm of criticism, but O'Reilly on Monday stuck to his guns that many black youth aren't qualified for high-skilled jobs and need a better educational system.
"Now, the race hustlers who have apparently not walked the streets of poor neighborhoods lately immediately accused me of racism," O'Reilly said. "And that is why the acute problem of cultural deprivation among underclassed children of all colors is never addressed. The smear merchants hammer anyone who does so."
Trump is "noble" in is efforts to create jobs and train Americans to do them, O'Reily said, but added, "that will require more than trade deals and rhetoric. It will require a cultural change in many working class and poor precincts.
"If you reject the conventional road to success, education and hard work, you'll fail in our capitalistic system," he said.
Individual motivation is being destroyed by "phony politicians" seeking power," O'Reilly said, "by promising an endless series of entitlements to a population that's moving away from achievement and into the 'gimme zone.'"
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