Considering that O’Reilly would deliver such an endorsement of a proven liar, his handling of the latest Trump controversy will surprise no one. In recent days, Trump has come under fire for asserting that the judge presiding over lawsuits against Trump University — Judge Gonzalo Curiel — has “an absolute conflict” because of his Mexican heritage. “He’s proud of his his heritage. I respect him for that,” Trump told CNN’s Jake Tapper last week. “He’s a Mexican. We’re building a wall between here and Mexico.” Curiel was born in Indiana, making him not “a Mexican.”

Reasonable people on both sides of this country’s political divide have condemned Trump’s argument that a judge cannot do his work because of his heritage — an argument that is bigoted, racist, misanthropic and dumb. O’Reilly is not one of those reasonable people. On his program last night, he attempted a a delicate rhetorical operation in which he called for Curiel’s recusal from the case without repeating Trump’s rationale word for word. Here’s how O’Reilly worded his independence from Trump in his signature “Talking Points” memo: “Summing up, the Trump U. case is certainly political to some extent and it’s a very high profile situation. Because of that, Talking Points believes the judge should recuse himself. Not because he did anything wrong; he didn’t. But to eliminate any doubt as to the motivation in court rulings. There are plenty of federal judges that could immediately step in. It is valid that some may see any recusal as caving to intimidation, but stark justice in a case this important trumps — pardon the pun — any theoretical argument.”

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Let’s lay out this un-theoretical argument: With those words, O’Reilly is explicitly following Trump into a racist abyss, one where an upstanding federal judge stands accused, somehow, of political biases just because of his ancestry. In nearly a year of campaign-trail outrages, this is one of Trump’s most sinister offenses — straight-up prejudice masquerading as highfalutin ethics. Ignorance of court precedent enters the mix as well. As Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick wrote, “Despite multiple sad efforts to conflict out black and female judges in discrimination cases in the late 1970s and ’80s—and more recent efforts to conflict out a gay judge in a marriage equality case—courts have consistently ruled judges are no more inherently biased if they are black, or female, or gay than they would be inherently fair if they were white, or male, or straight.”

O’Reilly could use a training session on just what constitutes a conflict of interest. One legal site defines it as follows:

n. a situation in which a person has a duty to more than one person or organization, but cannot do justice to the actual or potentially adverse interests of both parties. This includes when an individual’s personal interests or concerns are inconsistent with the best for a customer, or when a public official’s personal interests are contrary to his/her loyalty to public business. An attorney, an accountant, a business adviser or realtor cannot represent two parties in a dispute and must avoid even the appearance of conflict. He/she may not join with a client in business without making full disclosure of his/her potential conflicts, he/she must avoid commingling funds with the client, and never, never take a position adverse to the customer.

Please, O’Reilly, enlighten us on how Curiel’s situation aligns with that definition.

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To understand O’Reilly’s sophistication on media ethics, consider that in mid-May, the host claimed that Megan Twohey, who co-wrote a critical New York Times piece on Trump’s treatment of women, was unqualified to work on the story because, well, let O’Reilly explain it: “The problem is Megan Twohey is a feminist, or so it seems,” said O’Reilly (we have no idea whether she’s a feminist). “The reason I even mention feminism in connection with reporting on Donald Trump is that his resume goes against that ideology. For example, Mr. Trump, as we all know, ran beauty contests. He referred to women as ‘Trump girls’ and has been flamboyant in his interactions with the opposite sex.” So only anti-feminist supporters of beauty contests and people who are okay with so-called “Trump girls” can report on Trump’s treatment of women.

If only O’Reilly applied his own standards of ethical purity to his own work: What would he say about a journalist covering frequently and approvingly on a longtime pal? We may never know.