Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly grilled aging radical Bill Ayers when he appeared on Monday's Kelly File, demanding to know how many bombings he was responsible for. She also compared him to "bin Laden" and "Hitler." [See video below. MP3 audio here.] Kelly began by hammering, "So we have to talk about you and your domestic terrorist past...How many bombings are you responsible for?" Ayers dodged and talked about the Weather Underground in general.
When pressed, he added, "Me personally, I've never talked about [my own bombings], never will." The '60s extremist has connections to Barack Obama and that relationship could have seriously damaged the Democrat in 2008. But the broadcast networks did their best to shield Obama. According to an MRC analysis at the time, only two network stories mentioned Obama's connection to the left-wing radical during the 2008 primaries. Then, when GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin raised the issue, forcing the media's hand, the networks decried it as a "bare-knuckle strategy."
Ayers repeatedly attempted to spin the conversation away from his actions and towards the United States government. At one point, he needled, "I think it would be fair and balanced to also look at the violence that was and is going on perpetrated by the government, by the official agencies and organs of the government."
Kelly retorted, "Let me just tell you what I hear when I hear that, I hear you saying, you sound like, with respect, Osama bin Laden."
MEGYN KELLY: Your critics say, when you make that argument, you sound like Adolph Hitler. Now, this is from the same documentary that we've been pulling clips from. This is a man a man who was part of the Weather Underground talking about you, saying you were closer to Hitler than you were to Gandhi. Listen.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: They brought themselves -- they were not brought, they brought themselves to that point.
SECOND UNIDENTIFIED MAN: To what point?
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: To the point at which they were ready to be mass murders. This is mass murder we're talking about. They came to this conclusion, which is the conclusion that was come to by all the great killer killers, whether Hitler or Stalin or Mao, that they have a grand project for the transformation and purification of the world. And in the face of that project, ordinary life is dispensable.
A partial transcript of the June 30 segment is below:
BILL AYERS: The Weather Underground I think took credit for just slightly over 20 in a period when there were 20,000 bombings in the United States against the war.
KELLY: And how about you personally.
AYERS: Me personally, I've never talked about it, never will.
KELLY: OK. You could have hurt some people.
AYERS: Absolutely.
KELLY: You acknowledge that.
AYERS: Absolutely.
KELLY: You claim you never did but you acknowledge the risks.
AYERS: Oh, there was a terrible risk and we actually did hurt three of our own people died in the townhouse in New York City in 1970 and that was an incalculable, horrible, devastating loss and yet what they apparently planning to do would have been more devastating.
...
AYERS: But, you know, one of the things I think that's interesting about these activities of four years ago, I don't think it's bad to kind of steer through them and try to understand them.
KELLY: Have you written about them extensively --
AYERS: Have I've written about them myself? Absolutely. But I think it would be fair and balanced to also look at the violence that was and is going on perpetrated by the government, by the official agencies and organs of the government.
KELLY: Let me just tell you what I hear when I hear that, I hear you saying, you sound like with respect Osama bin Laden?
AYERS: What?
KELLY: In order to evaluate my actions which have hurt a lot of people, right? I know you deny it but there's evidence --
AYERS: I deny it.
...
MEGYN KELLY: Your critics say, when you make that argument, you sound like Adolph Hitler. Now, this is from the same documentary that we've been pulling clips from. This is a man a man who was part of the Weather Underground talking about you, saying you were closer to Hitler than you were to Gandhi. Listen.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: They brought themselves -- they were not brought, they brought themselves to that point.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: To what point?
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: To the point at which they were ready to be mass murders. This is mass murder we're talking about. They came to this conclusion, which is the conclusion that was come to by all the great killer killers, whether Hitler or Stalin or Mao, that they have a grand project for the transformation and purification of the world. And in the face of that project, ordinary life is dispensable.
AYERS: That's Todd Gitlin (ph). He was not in the Weather Underground. He was the leader of the Students of Democratic Society, he's a professor at Columbia. And that quote to me is nuts. So, you want to talk about who is in the grand tradition of destroying thousands of millions of people? It's the American war in Vietnam where John McCain was in fact dropping bombs from the Arab civilians and he did it consistently - -
KELLY: And when the Weather Underground went into a townhouse and put together a bomb with nails in it and allegedly, I mean, allegedly killed a police officer and bombed the home of John Murtaugh, a federal judge with a 9-year-old boy in his bed --
AYERS: No, we didn't kill a police officer --
KELLY: You deny it but there were evidence on the contrary.
