Bill O’Reilly Is Hopping Mad That His Books Wound Up Removed In Florida Schools Under Ron DeSantis’ Law

Far as his draconian legislation goes, Ron DeSantis’ so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill gets most of the attention. But don’t forget about his book-banning law. In 2022 the Florida governor signed into legislation a controversial bill that prohibited school districts from shelving books that contain “pornography or obscene depictions of sexual conduct.” Republicans hailed it at the time for the ways it would allegedly protect children. At least one of them isn’t so happy now that some of his books have wound up targeted.

Per Newsweek, on Friday once mighty former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly was not pleased when he learned two of his books had been at least temporarily removed from Escambia County School District: Killing Jesus: A History, and Killing Reagan: The Violent Assault That Changed a Presidency. (It’s unclear if the schools’ libraries still stock Those Who Trespass, O’Reilly’s 1998 novel in which he openly fantasizes about murdering those who’ve wronged him, and which features a fair amount of sexual content from the then nascent Fox News star.)

O’Reilly fumed about the move on Twitter/X, writing, “We are investigating and are seeking comment from @GovRonDeSantis. This will not stand.” He fumed some more when speaking to Newsweek.

“It’s absurd,” O’Reilly told the publication. “Preposterous.”

O’Reilly then marveled that a law he used to approve of could ever come to bite him in the butt:

“When DeSantis signed the book law, I supported the theme because there was abuse going on in Florida. There were far-left progressive people trying to impose an agenda on children, there’s no doubt about it. And the state has an obligation to protect children. But the wording of the law was far too nebulous in Tallahassee.

“So, that law needs to be tightened up, DeSantis needs to come out publicly and say ‘this is insane, we’re not going to cooperate with this and we’re going to investigate the people who did it.”

O’Reilly vowed to “find out exactly who made the decisions to temporarily take them out of the library in this country, I’m going to put their pictures up on television and on my website … and I’m going to ask them for a detailed explanation of why they did that.”

Is there a lot of — or even any — sexual content in Bill O’Reilly’s Jesus and Reagan books? Is the former hotter than Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ, which finds the Son of God forsaking crucifixion to (temporarily) shack up with Mary Magdalene? Does his Reagan book go into the then-First Lady’s, shall we say, colorful past? We sure wouldn’t know.

(Via Newsweek)