After his 2006 midterm election loss in Pennsylvania, former Republican Sen. Rick Santorum took a job with the Fox News Channel as a contributor, appearing regularly on the network until he departed last year to run for president.
But even having spent over four years working at the Fox, Santorum said he has been unable to get invited to be on its show “The O’Reilly Factor,” hosted by Bill O’Reilly. In an appearance on Mike Gallagher’s radio show on Monday, Santorum sounded off about it.
“I’ve seen the media completely try to shape this race,” Santorum said. “It’s not just the liberal media. It’s even Fox News. Bill O’Reilly has refused to put me on his program. As far as he was concerned, I wasn’t a worthy enough candidate to earn a spot, sit across from him and be on his program.”
Santorum chalked that up to the “elite media,” both conservative and liberal, trying to determine the outcome of elections.
“Here you have folks supposedly in the conservative media who are saying, ‘You know — well, we’re going to choose who we think is going to win,’” Santorum continued. “And then complain that the mainstream media does the same thing. Look, this is not just a few folks. This is a general attitude of the elite media in our country, both conservative and liberal, who think they know best and they’re going to decide — based on [who] they think the candidate should be — who you should think the candidate’s going to be. And Iowa is going to provide a surprise to that tomorrow.”
Watch:
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(h/t Mark Halperin, The Page)