Fox News host Bill O'Reilly thinks the media is way too worried about Donald Trump refusing to disavow the Ku Klux Klan and David Duke, a former leader of the white supremacist organization.
"I have spoken with Trump hundreds of times, and I have never heard him run down anyone because of race," O'Reilly said Monday night during an episode of the "The O'Reilly Factor."
He added that "this David Duke stuff is a complete non-story" and part of a "media assault" on Trump.
During a CNN interview the day before, Trump failed three times to turn down endorsements from both the KKK and Duke.
"I don't know anything about David Duke, OK? You wouldn’t want me to condemn a group that I know nothing about," he told Jake Tapper, adding that he would not speak out against all white supremacist groups before he had a chance to "do research on" them.
Trump later inexplicably blamed a faulty earpiece for his hesitancy to disavow Duke and the KKK. He also tweeted a video showing him renouncing Duke at a press conference a few days before the CNN interview -- confusingly proving that he did, in fact, know who Duke was.
But despite Trump's apparent waffling over an endorsement from a bunch of white supremacists, O'Reilly and some of his Fox News colleagues spent Monday alternately defending the GOP front-runner and ignoring the controversy altogether.
The network also disregarded the basic, glaring fact that white supremacists see real common ground with Trump.
Sean Hannity had a 30-minute interview with Trump on Monday, during which he did not ask the candidate a single question about support from the KKK or its former leader, observed liberal-leaning media watchdog group Media Matters.
On Fox News' "The Five," co-host Kimberly Guilfoyle blasted CNN for "trying to make something out of nothing." The network, she said, was "trying to tag this along in the news cycle so there's more focus on them. It's very transparent. It's very obvious to me what they're doing."
Megyn Kelly appeared to be one of the few voices on Fox News expressing any alarm over Trump's comments. She pressed guest Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who dropped out of the GOP presidential race last month, over whether Trump might actually be racist.
"But Trump heard, Trump heard 'David Duke' in that earpiece," Kelly told Huckabee. "You know that. Because he repeated back 'David Duke' to Jake Tapper."
"Look, here's the one thing I think is important," Huckabee responded. "Is Donald Trump a racist? I don't think he is. Does Donald Trump support the KKK? Heavens no. I don't think anybody seriously is suggesting that he is giving a wink and a nod at the KKK. They're a deplorable, disgusting, abominable entity. Sometimes I'm amazed that they even still exist. I just don't know of anybody who embraces them anymore except a handful of crazy people."
Kelly then chimed in: "The very point you're making, that it's such a no-brainer, is what makes his response to Jake Tapper so confusing to many."
Fox News did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Elsewhere on cable news, CNN political analyst Jeffrey Lord accused the media of "making something out of nothing" when it came to Trump's comments. CNN guest Ben Stein said it's "a ridiculous thing to call [Trump] an anti-black racist."
David Gregory said during an appearance on the network that, at best, Trump was "playing footsie with white supremacists." And Joe Scarborough, a host of MSNBC's "Morning Joe" who has been accused of being too close to Trump, wrote on Monday that Trump's KKK comments were "disqualifying" of him as a candidate.
Trump has won three of the four Republican primaries this year, and is poised to win almost all of the 11 primary contests on Tuesday, putting him on the path toward the nomination.
Editor's note: Donald Trump is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist, birther and bully who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims -- 1.6 billion members of an entire religion -- from entering the U.S.