Bill O'Reilly to interview Trump during Super Bowl pregame coverage

Bill O'Reilly will conduct the traditional Super Bowl pre-game interview with the president next month, Fox News announced on Tuesday.

On February 5, the Fox News host will sit down with incoming-President Donald Trump, marking O'Reilly's first with Trump since the 2016 campaign.

The interview will be the third time in recent years that O'Reilly has interviewed a president on Super Bowl Sunday. The Fox host sat down with President Barack Obama first in 2011, then in 2014 for interviews that aired just before the game.

In recent years, the president has traditionally sat for an interview with the network that broadcasts the Super Bowl.

While O'Reilly was one of the more vocal television critics of Obama's presidency, he was occasionally criticized during the 2016 presidential campaign for not taking equally tough stands against the Republican presidential candidate.

The Washington Post's Erik Wemple dubbed O'Reilly the "Enabler-in-Chief," saying the Fox News host let Trump off-the-hook for racially insensitive comments, and refusing to press Trump over misstatements and controversies. Even former Fox News host Megyn Kelly lamented that O'Reilly did not defend her enough in O'Reilly's January interview with Trump when the Republican presidential candidate described Kelly as "highly overrated."