It’s Official: O’Reilly Is Not ‘Tying Up’ Major Garrett And Taking His White House Seat

Last night, an excited Bill O’Reilly did some daydreaming aloud on The Factor about “tying up” Fox News’ White House correspondent Major Garrett up and rotating use of his front-row White House Press Corps seat with Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck. With some in the media squirming in their seats about the possibility of a Beck/Hannity shouting match in the briefing room, O’Reilly’s executive producer felt the need to speak out today to clarify.

As mentioned before, O’Reilly joked around yesterday that he was excited to hijack the Fox News briefing room seat and wreak havoc for Robert Gibbs with his commentator pals. And then, as Jon Bershad put it so eloquently:

But then PoliticsDaily.com’s Lynn Sweet had to go and be Little Miss Buzzkill from the land of No Funnsylvania and point out to the giddy host that he already could do that at any time and he always could have. He’d just had to do it from the second row. And then James Rosen piled on by remarking that the very tall O’Reilly really can’t “sneak” anywhere.

This, however, appeared not to be enough to calm the nerves of many who thought O’Reilly may be serious. Over at Politico, Patrick Gavin checked with a WHCA member to make sure that it wasn’t possible. Not happening, said the source: “Fox officials made explicit promises that the seat would be used by their news reporters, not their commentators, and the board expects them to keep their word.”

Finally, O’Reilly Factor executive producer Amy Sohnen made an official statement today, telling the Washington Examiner‘s “Yeas & Neas” that “Bill’s comments were obviously made in jest,” for all those who thought otherwise. So, yes, for anyone worrying about about the wellbeing of Major Garrett: O’Reilly never actually planned to tie him up and replace him with Glenn Beck. He was just being a blooter.

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