Bill O’Reilly responds like a spoiled, scolded child to George Will’s

From there, O’Reilly shifted the discussion to what he has described as the “centerpiece” of the book: a memo saying that Ronald Reagan was eventually unable to perform the duties of the presidency and often spent his days watching soap operas.

The heavyweights squared off Friday on the “O’Reilly Factor”, with O’Reilly claiming Will, a Fox News contributor, libeled him and failed to follow through on a promise to Fox News’ hard news chief Michael Clemente to call O’Reilly before running the article. “You have my phone number and if you wanted to call me, you could”. Will added, “I’m saying either you’ve got it wrong, it would not be the first time you got something wrong, or it was a misunderstanding -“.

But “Killing Reagan” has put O’Reilly in the unusual position of defending himself against conservatives with whom he’s usually in agreement.

“You are lying!” O’Reilly countered, insisting his book was historically accurate. He said Reagan loyalists “tried to get the book killed before it was even published”.

O’Reilly maintained such a recanting was done “under heavy pressure”.

“You are somewhat of an expert in actively misleading people”, Will interjected. We didn’t talk to anybody who had skin in the game or spin in the game, we didn’t talk to anybody who is derogatory toward the Reagans or anyone who is laudatory.

“It is not a laudatory book”, Will replied. “It is doing the work of the left which knows, in order to discredit conservatism, it must destroy Reagan’s reputation as a president”. Will also criticized O’Reilly for cancelling his interview with Ed Meese, which O’Reilly said happened Meese “wanted to come on with conditions”.

Will said O’Reilly was guilty of “extreme recklessness”. “You are actively misleading the American people”, O’Reilly told Will.

Will called the book a “tissue of unsubstantiated assertions”, taking issue with O’Reilly’s “intimated hypothesis” that the 1981 assassination attempt on the president “somehow triggered in Reagan a mental decline, perhaps accelerating the Alzheimer’s disease that would not be diagnosed until 13 years later”. “Yet, you did not call me when you said you would, that’s a fact”.