(CNN) – After a Mother Jones report on Thursday asserted that Bill O’Reilly had made false claims about his coverage of the Falklands War in 1982, the Fox News host responded furiously.
In interviews, O’Reilly said the story was a “giant piece of defamation,” “a lie,” and a smear. He called one of the writers, David Corn, a “disgusting piece of garbage,” a “guttersnipe liar,” and a “far-left assassin.”
Corn, the Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones, told CNNMoney that O’Reilly was resorting to ad-hominem attacks to distract from the substance of his report, which he co-authored with Daniel Schulman.
“There’s an undeniable contradiction” in what O’Reilly has said about his Falklands coverage, Corn said, urging reporters to focus on that part of the story.