Bill O’Reilly responded to Chris Hayes’ criticism of his Super Bowl interview with President Obama last night by arguing against Hayes’ claim no one is self-made in America.
Hayes had called O’Reilly out for calling the president a “nanny state guy” during their Super Bowl interview while depicting himself as “self-made” because O’Reilly grew up in a Long Island town built heavily on federal housing assistance.
“Federal housing policy was providing GI’s who came back from World War II with low cost mortgages,” O’Reilly said, claiming these weren’t “freebies” and people like his naval officer father deserved the mortgages because they fought for years where they “weren’t making any money.”
“My father had to pay a mortgage, he paid on the house, it wasn’t a giveaway…he didn’t get a check from the government,” O’Reilly added. He concluded that some “zealots” on the left are just grasping for anything.
We’ve reached out to MSNBC to see if viewers can expect a response from Hayes tonight but haven’t heard back yet.