American politicians and political commentators on the right can truly be harmfully ignorant of Asia. After JD Vance, Bill O’Reilly is another—he believes Malaysians are too “poor” to buy even “a little hat”

President Xi Jinping’s recent visit to Southeast Asia to build and strengthen trade relations with Cambodia, Malaysia, and Vietnam somehow riled Bill O’Reilly, to the extent that he was compelled to make some astonishingly stupid and laughable comments. In an attempt to downplay the significance of Mr Xi’s visit, the American conservative political commentator portrayed the three SEA states as “poor countries”. Last week, he said on his YouTube broadcast, known by the misnomer No Spin News: “Hey, president Xi. Let me just break it for you: Those folks have no money.” But what was worse was his singling out our Malay neighbours, asserting that “the Malays aren’t gonna buy your stuff. They don’t have money at all.”

His comment was very much in the vein of JD Vance’s—two weeks ago, the American VP gleefully dismissed people of China (and of Chinese decent everywhere, no doubt) as “Chinese peasants”. Unsurprisingly, the Malaysians hit back at Mr O’Reilly’s comments: “We have free healthcare, grandpa.” Even the prime minister Anwar Ibrahim reportedly weighed in—he called the former Fox News host’s “statement both arrogant and ignorant”, according to The Edge Malaysia. In a separate broadcast days later, Mr O’Reilly responded and sniggered at our northern neighbour’s understandable response. He opened by saying, “Malaysia is mad at me. This is an unbelievable story.” He recounted what he previously said, and then went on to offer statistics to supposedly back his careless assertion.

His comment was very much in the vein of JD Vance’s when, two weeks ago, the American VP gleefully dismissed people of China as “Chinese peasants”

He compared the income levels of Malaysia and America to emphasize his point. There’s no denying that the U.S. has a higher per capita income than Malaysia, but that does not automatically equate to Malaysians being “poor” in an absolute sense or, worse, unable to afford “a little hat”, or “getting Chinese takeout either in Kuala Lumpur”. In fact, he said that Malaysians are “barely eating”. The income levels per capita of the two countries may offer some insights into their economic output per person, but contrasting one with the other is not a fair or comprehensive way to determine the peoples’ overall wealth or their well-being, or whether they can afford a topi.

As if to tone down his downright belittling of Malaysians, Mr O’Reilly said he has been to Malaysia and thought it to be “a beautiful country—complicated, but beautiful”. But that did not negate the superiority he must have felt. And then he added—for good measure—that former U.S. President Barack Obama “was partially raised” in Malaysia. But Mr Obama spent five years of his childhood in Indonesia! Mr O’Reilly considers himself a political commentator (one, we should note, dismissed by his former employer Fox News in 2017 after a report by The New York Times that he had settled five lawsuits involving sexual misconduct), but he succumbed to a major lapse in basic fact-checking when he stated incorrectly the country where a former American president spent a part of his childhood.

A mistake like this shows a general lack of care for what is indisputably true, which is consistent with the political style of the current U.S. administration. A seasoned journalist making broad generalizations about entire populations is as good as a rookie vice president doing exactly the same. Mr O’Reilly must note that the combination of factual inaccuracy, sweeping generalizations, and using ‘Malay’ and ‘Malaysians’ interchangeably, is, to so many of us in this part of the world, pointed ignorance and bias, and a casual relationship with facts. Worst of all, it points to an illusion of knowledge. With credibility down the longkang, Bill O’Reilly should keep to America First, and tekan brek on commenting on other countries he knows very, very little about.

Illustration: Just So