Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly slammed a Florida school district’s decision as “preposterous” after it removed two of his books.
Florida Freedom to Read Project obtained a list of more than a thousand books that were currently pulled down by Florida’s Escambia County School District (ECPS). Two of O’Reilly’s books, “Killing Reagan: The Violent Assault That Changed a Presidency” and “Killing Jesus: A History,” were on the list.
The books on the list were “pulled” for “further review” to comply with Florida’s HB 1069 bill that passed in July.
“The 1,000+ books they reference have not been banned or removed from the school district; rather, they have simply been pulled for further review to ensure compliance with the new legislation,” ECPS spokesperson Cody Strother told Pensacola News Journal.
“It’s absurd,” O’Reilly told Newsweek when reacting to the decision. “Preposterous.”
The legislation intends to restrict books in the state’s schools that are “alleged to contain pornography or obscene depictions of sexual conduct.” It was signed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).
Now O’Reilly, who initially supported the legislation, saying “abuse” was going on in the state, says that the law needs to be “tightened up.”
“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,” O’Reilly told Newsweek on Friday.
“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 said.
O’Reilly said he and his team will further investigate the decision and “find out” who took them out of the library.
“I want to emphasize the fact that there are abuses in certain school districts that harm children. There are materials that are inappropriate, and those materials have to be specifically included in the law with language that is very specific,” O’Reilly said Friday. “You can’t be throwing John Grisham under the bus, it’s absurd.”
The list obtained by Florida Freedom to Read Project on Thursday showed that five dictionaries and eight encyclopedias were removed along with “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” and Anne Frank’s “The Diary of a Young Girl.”