In a zealous quest to defend Tucker Carlson, The O'Reilly Factor booked Nils Bildt, who was introduced as “a Swedish defense and national security advisor,” to discuss Sweden’s refugee policies.
Tucker was under fire as Trump blamed his show for the "what's going on in Sweden" line from his Florida rally. Trump had watched Tucker Carlson give Sweden the "Benghazi treatment" via lying documentarian Ami Horowitz, with no valid data, claiming Sweden is hiding horrible atrocities at the hands of migrants.
Very quickly MMFA established that Bildt was not part of the Swedish government.
The Swedish Armed Forces, however, do not appear to know who Bildt is. According to a translation of an article in the Swedish outlet Göteborgs-Posten, the press secretary of the Swedish Armed Forces has said that they “do not know who [Bildt] is,” and that he is “definitely not a spokesman for the Armed Forces.” The translated Göteborgs-Posten article reported that Bildt currently lives in Japan.
This forced Bill O'Reilly to correct the record, so to speak, at the end of Monday's show.
Bill said, " The Factor Tip of the Day, last week we did a segment on Sweden and its Muslim immigrant situation. Both sides were presented as always."
He continued, "After the segment, some left-wing people objected to one guest, Nils Bildt, who was introduced by me at the Swedish Defense and National Security advisor. The Swedish government also weighed in, saying they've had no contact with Mr. Bildt."
"Now, we looked into the situation and the criticism is valid. It is valid, Mr. Bildt does consulting work on terrorism, that is true, but we should have clarified that he had no direct role with the Swedish government."
Bill tried to do some cleanup duty by maintaining all the facts put forth by this person was completely true so even if we booked a fraud, it's fine because the fraud didn't lie.
O'Reilly said, "To be fair, the information we gave you in the segment was accurate, but in hindsight, a more relevant guest should have been used on the anti-immigrant side. You should also know that before the segment was booked, we asked the Swedish ambassador to appear. He declined, that invitation stands."
See, it's Sweden's fault anyway because their ambassador refused to come on with Bill!
This correction is nonsense.
Every TV booker or producer always check out who they are bringing on the air.
Not only is Sven Tolling Bildt not in the Swedish government, he was convicted of a violent offense in Virginia as a well as being convicted of being drunk in public.
As Swedish media outlet DN.SE easily reported:
Nils Bildt is the son of Sven Tolling, well know in Swedish equestrian circles. Nils Bildt emigrated from Sweden in 1994. Nine years later he changed his last name from Tolling to Bildt, and he now runs several security companies in the United States. His last known address, according to Swedish registers, is in Tokyo. It is unclear if his companies are still in business.
Nils Bildt, who spoke on Fox News about crime in Sweden, is convicted of a violent offence himself, according to documents from Arlington General District Court in Virginia. Bildt was arrested on the 19th of June, 2014, for assaulting a law enforcement person and for obstruction of justice, after threatening an official [Case number: GC14002638-00].
He was sentenced to one year in prison on the 10th of November the same year. He was also convicted of public inebriation at the same time. Nils Bildt, in an e-mail to DN, says he is ”unaware of the allegations” and therefore cannot comment.
And if you think that's all there is to this story, you'd be wrong.
Nils Bildt sent a short e-mail to DN earlier on Friday, explaining why he was given the title of ”Swedish defense and national security advisor”: ”I appeared on Bill O'Reilly's show on Fox News. The title was chosen by Fox News's editor – I had no personal control over what title they chose. I am an independent analyst based in the USA”, he wrote.
In a statement from Fox New to Dagens Nyheter, the producer of the network’s news show The O’Reilly Factor, David Tabacoff, says:
”Our booker made numerous inquiries and spoke to people who recommended Nils Bildt and after pre-interviewing him and reviewing his bio, we agreed that he would make a good guest for the topic that evening.”
Fox News producers made up Bildt's job title. They brought Bildt on because he would say things that reinforced the Fox News (and now Trump) narrative about Sweden, thus defending Tucker Carlson.
That's how REAL "fake news" does it. And no one has had more experience in "fake news" than Fox.
