“We spend all our time correcting fake news at CNN and it drives me insane when we get things wrong here on WMAL, Larry O’Connor said on his radio show Wednesday after hearing a news segment’s report about Pres. Donald Trump.
“I’m tired of it. I’m just tired of it,” the “O’Connor and Company” host said – declaring that it’s okay if WMAL fires him for correcting the record:
“And, if I get yelled at, if I get fired, okay that’s fine. Then, lesson learned – and (co-host) Julie will have a lot more time to talk tomorrow.”
At issue is the characterization of Pres. Trump’s comments on the employment of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, O’Connor explained:
“I just heard our ‘hundred days’ update. Every day at 8:30 a.m., we do a first hundred days. And I heard John. At WMAL, he’s an institution. I love the guy, we’re friends, he’s been here forever, he’s great at what he does, he got it wrong. I’m sorry; I’m sick of it.”
….
“So he just said that Trump reversed course and said he has no intention of firing Jerome Powell, who is the Fed Chair, even though he had previously said that he did want to fire him.
“That’s not true. That’s just not true. I will tell you what he said. He didn’t reverse course.”
“What he said was, here’s what he said: ‘If I want him out, he’ll be out real fast.’ That’s what Trump said about Powell,” O’Connor said. “He also said, ‘His dismissal can’t come fast enough.’ Powell’s termination can’t come fast enough – which certainly implies, it implies that he might want to fire him.”
But, implication isn’t the same as intention, O’Connor explained:
“There’s a lot of people whose termination can’t come fast enough – but, that doesn’t mean I plan on firing them.”
O’Connor then apologized for WMAL’s misstatement, saying he respects his listeners too much to remain silent on the matter:
“I respect our listeners too much to just let it hang there when I hear it, because I know our listeners are smart. I know they know the difference and I know they’re yelling back at their radio. They’re yelling back at this radio station, their favorite radio station, where they expect to not hear crap like that. And it is, it’s crap.”
“I get notices all the time on social media and emails from our listeners about what they hear in our news reports and I have to reply,” O’Connor said.
After the show, O’Connor reposted social media comments on X.com praising and thanking him for correcting WMAL’s news report.
O’Connor closed by summing up his objection to the claim that Trump had previously said he wanted to fire Powell:
“Donald Trump did not reverse course when he said he has no intention of firing Fed Chair Jerome Powell. He expressed frustration with the Fed chairman. He said that his termination cannot come fast enough. He said that, if he wanted to fire him, that he would be out.
“But, he did not ever express that he wanted to fire him, okay.”
