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Mediaite points out O'Reilly's segment with left-leaning guest Bob Beckel, in which O'Reilly hit NBC and other stations for not devoting the same attention to a leaked memo of the Obama administration's policy on drone strikes as they did to the so-called "torture memos" and waterboarding practices of the Bush administration.
The problem? NBC's Michael Isikoff is the one who scooped the story.
Beckel told O'Reilly that he thought drone strikes were even worse than waterboarding. O'Reilly used that to point out the disparity between coverage of the Bush administration's waterboarding vs. the Obama administration's drone policy.
"Remember the outcry about waterboarding?" O'Reilly said. "You know, everybody jumping up and down? NBC News — I thought they were going to, like, melt down over there. You heard anything on NBC about the
Beckel's answer should have been, "Yes!" But he shamefully bowed his head and said, "Not yet."
So O'Reilly continued: "So you haven’t heard anything over about this, and neither have I. Neither has my staff. OK? So we haven’t heard anything. But we heard a lot about waterboarding, but nothing about drone strikes. How do you process that?"
Beckel couldn't give an answer, but O'Reilly thought he knew: "They're protecting the President!"
Here's NBC's full scoop on the drone memo. It's also been covered regularly on MSNBC, on shows from "Morning Joe" to Rachel Maddow's show.
Here's the clip of O'Reilly and Beckel: