Having caused quite a stir domestically when in an interview with Donald Trump airing just before the Superbowl, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly described Putin as "a killer" as he tried to press the U.S. president to explain more fully why he respected his Russian counterpart, on Monday the Kremlin slammed O'Reilly's "factual statement" and said it wanted an apology from Fox News over what it said were "unacceptable" comments.
Kremling spokesman Dmitry Peskov
"We consider such words from the Fox TV company to be unacceptable and insulting, and honestly speaking, we would prefer to get an apology from such a respected TV company," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call.
As reported previously, O’Reilly labeled Putin “a killer” during an interview with US President Donald Trump, in which they discussed the Republican’s numerous statements on his willingness to work with Russia to jointly deal with issues such as terrorism. Trump shrugged off the comment, saying: “There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country is so innocent?”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxFiABJXitA
Trump did not name specific US officials or officials among Washington’s allies as killers, but mentioned the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 as an example of why he did not consider America to be innocent, saying that “a lot of people were killed” there. Needless to say, the Cheney family did not like that very much:
.@POTUS statement suggesting moral equivalence between Putin's Russia and the United States of America is deeply troubling and wrong.
— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) February 5, 2017
In January last year, after a British judge ruled that Putin had "probably" authorized the murder of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in London, Trump said he saw "no evidence" the Russian president was guilty. "First of all, he says he didn't do it. Many people say it wasn't him. So who knows who did it?" Trump said.
The US president’s remarks sparked anger among many figures in the American establishment, who have criticized him for seemingly putting the US on the same moral ground as Russia.