On "The O'Reilly Factor" Tuesday night, host Bill O'Reilly attempted to make good on his vow to put the #BlackLivesMatter movement out of business, bringing on a former police officer to talk about the movement's allegedly violent rhetoric and the manner in which it's creating an environment in which more officers are being shot.
There was just one problem, as the former officer -- Peter Moskos, who now teaches at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice -- noted: "there were fewer cops shot this year than last year. Are you willing to give #BlackLivesMatter credit for that?"
O'Reilly insisted that "every time there is a controversy about an officer shooting a black person, they're out there stirring the pot. You don't feel that disturbed individuals watch this and act out?"
"Cop shootings are down," Moskos replied.
"They're down slightly," O'Reilly said.
"They'd down 17 percent," Moskos specified.
"In August, they were up!" O'Reilly countered.
"But the month before, there were none," Moskos explained. "Overall, they're down, so I don't see an epidemic there."
O'Reilly turned to Alfred Blumstein, a professor urban studies and operations research at Carnegie Mellon, ostensibly for some support to the claim that the #BlackLivesMatter movement is inciting individuals to violence with its rhetoric. Blumstein, however, said that he didn't see a necessary connection between the rhetoric and the officer shootings. "There's a very serious copycapt problem, as there was with school shootings," he said, "but I don't see that necessarily coming out of the #BlackLivesMatter environment."
The problem, O'Reilly shifted gears and began arguing, "with the propagandists of #BlackLivesMatter is that there are justifiable police shootings."
"I wouldn't call that propaganda," Blumstein said.
"But in Ferguson, the guy [Michael Brown] attacked Darren Wilson, and they're still going 'hands up, don't shoot'? That's not propaganda?" O'Reilly asked.
Blumstein tried to respond by pointing out something about rhetoric, but O'Reilly cut him off, saying "that's propaganda, doc."
Watch the entire segment below via Media Matters.
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