Bill O'Reilly to interview Trump during Super Bowl pregame coverage

Bill O'Reilly will conduct the traditional Super Bowl pregame interview with the president next month, Fox News announced on Tuesday.

A sit-down interview between the Fox News host and Donald Trump, who is to be sworn in as president on Friday, is scheduled to air on February 5, marking O'Reilly's first with Trump since the 2016 campaign.

The interview will be the third time in recent years in which O'Reilly has interviewed a president on Super Bowl Sunday. The Fox host sat down with President Barack Obama first in 2011 and again in 2014 for interviews that aired just before the game.

The president in recent years has traditionally given an interview to the network that broadcasts the Super Bowl.

While O'Reilly was one of the more vocal television critics of Obama's presidency, he was occasionally criticized during the 2016 presidential campaign for not taking equally tough stands against the Republican presidential candidate.

The Washington Post's Erik Wemple dubbed O'Reilly the "Enabler-in-Chief," saying the Fox News host let Trump off the hook for racially insensitive comments and refused to press Trump over misstatements and controversies. Even former Fox News host Megyn Kelly lamented that O'Reilly did not defend her enough in O'Reilly's January interview with Trump when the Republican presidential candidate described Kelly as "highly overrated."

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