Bill O’Reilly suggested Brian Williams lied about being in an Iraqi helicopter shot down by RPG fire in 2003 for appearances’ sake.
“I know Williams for a long time, I’m not friends with him, I don’t particularly like his style, it’s not my style, but … he’s never done anything that I’ve seen underhanded — personally,” O’Reilly began Thursday.
“But you go on Letterman, I’ve been on there many times, and you want to please, you want to be interesting, you want to be fascinating, you want to be cool — he operates in that world, he operates in the Internet world.”
Howard Kurtz pushed back saying that Williams shared the false story beyond a Letterman appearance, including as recently as Jan. 30 at a New York Rangers’ hockey game.
As TheWrap previously reported, Williams admitted on Wednesday that he was never on a helicopter that was forced down by RPG [rocket-propelled grenade] fire during the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003, even after telling the story for years, both in books and written pieces for high-profile publications. Williams’ change of story came after crew members of the helicopter that actually was forced down told Stars and Stripes that he was nowhere near their helicopter and was in a separate one about an hour behind them that was not affected by RPG fire.
After apologizing Wednesday on NBC’s “Nightly News,” and being the subject of a media firestorm Thursday, Williams did not address the issue later that day on the evening news broadcast.
“He knows what he did was wrong, a lot of people exaggerate their life experience, and he did and he got caught,” O’Reilly concluded, suggesting Williams won’t be reprimanded because Americans are “so used to being lied to.”
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