Bill O’Reilly Names 8 States in ‘Open Rebellion’ Against the Federal Government: ‘What You Had Before the Civil War’ | Video

Bill O’Reilly says there are at least eight American states that are in “open rebellion” against the U.S. federal government, and may be two more – the same situation that was brewing in the runup to the Civil War.

“What does that mean?” the “No Spin News” host and bestselling historical author said. “It means they refuse to obey the law. That is a rebellion. This is the sanctuary-city movement, but it’s more than that.”

O’Reilly first noted Minnesota, which has been in turmoil over the ICE shooting of Renee Good, and recently hosted a large demonstration against the federal agency’s enforcement of immigration law.

“There is nothing wrong with people protesting,” he said. “That’s what we do in America when we think something is wrong. But this protest was sponsored by a far-left group called the Minnesota Immigration Rights and Action Committee. This was an ideological protest, not an organic protest.”

O’Reilly noted that 29 people were arrested for throwing things at local police and other assaults, despite that “federal agents had no presence there.” He called the really part of a broader open-border movement in direct defiance of U.S. law – “but they’re never honest about it.”

“Now, the eight states in open rebellion are California, Oregon, Washington state, Colorado, Minnesota, Illinois, Massachusetts and New Jersey,” O’Reilly said. “New York and Vermont are right on the edge. I didn’t include them because at least there is some dialogue going on with Washington, but you could put them on the list.”

But what it boils down to is 10 states “essentially telling the federal government, ‘We’re not going to obey your law,’ – you have what existed before the Civil War. It’s exactly the same thing. From 1830 to 1860, Southern states said, ‘We’re not going to obey whatever you say.’ That wasn’t just about slavery. It was about tariffs and almost everything else.”

At the time, President Andrew Jackson quelled the unrest, but then “we had a series of weak presidents like Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan who allowed the South to rise in ferocity. Then we had the Civil War. That was a rebellion against the federal government,” O’Reilly said.

A similar thing happened during the Vietnam War era, O’Reilly said, but “that was a populist uprising. It started out ideological, but then the war spun out of control because of Lyndon Johnson’s incompetence and deceit. The American people, across almost every barrier, said ‘enough.’ Demonstrations happened. Violence happened. Kent State. The National Guard. A lot of places.”

The current administration has an obligation to enforce the law, O’Reilly noted – but it also has an obligation do de-escalate violent confrontations.

“If ICE agents see someone impeding an investigation with a vehicle, you de-escalate,” he said. “You arrest that person later. They could have done that easily. You don’t escalate because if there’s more violence, the Trump administration is going to lose the country.”

Watch the entire clip in the video above.

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