Fox News host Bill O’Reilly remembered South African anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela on his Thursday night show by calling him a communist.
O’Reilly spoke with former presidential candidate Rick Santorum on the “O’Reilly Factor” about the fate of the Repulican party.
“Ideology has to really leave the building next year and in 2016 or we’re going to have President Hillary Clinton,” O’Reilly told Santorum. “Nelson Mandela just died, I don’t know whether you’re aware.”
“Yeah, I was,” Santorum responded.
“Ninety-five years old,” O’Reilly continued. “I spent some time in South Africa. He was a communist, this man. He was a communist, all right? But he was a great man. What he did for his people was stunning. The sacrifices that he made, he could have repudiated and got out of that prison, he wouldn’t do it. He was a great man, but he was a communist.”
“But I would never attack Nelson Mandela,” he continued. “I mean, I told Bishop [Desmond] Tutu, ‘I disagree with you and Mr. Mandela’ because Tutu’s that way as well, ‘but I respect you.’ So why can’t you can’t you guys in the Republican Party bring that to the floor?”
Rick Santorum went on to compare Obamacare to South African apartheid during that interview, prompting social activist and documentarian Michael Moore to tweet, “Bill O’Reilly calls Mandela a communist, Rick Santorum calls Obamacare apartheid in special holiday Stupid-Off.”