Juan Williams Talks Back on "O'Reilly Factor"

Juan Williams spoke back to NPR about his termination his first day on the job at Fox News, where he was Fox News Chief Executive Roger Ailes offered Williams a 3-year, $2 million contract yesterday.

Acting as host on "The O'Reilly Factor," Williams addressed the NPR for firing him after he confessed to Bill O'Reilly that seeing people in Muslim dress at an airport make him feel "nervous" and "worried".

Williams mentioned several remarks made by other NPR commentators he thought were questionable.

Williams stated several cases in which NPR practiced a double standard, saying it didn't fire commentator Nina Totenberg 15 years ago for saying that Senator Jesse Helms or his grandchildren should get AIDS, nor did it object when the Tea Party was insulted.

The analyst also addressed the Council on American Islamic Relations' desire to punish him for expressing his honest opinion.

"What was striking to me was listening to him [CAIR director Ibrahim Hooper say] that somehow anybody who has different views should not be allowed on NPR because NPR should represent only one slice of the spectrum," said Williams, referring to Hooper's discussion with Fox News' Megyn Kelly.

Numerous times Williams criticized NPR and CAIR for wanting to end the discussion of fear of Muslims.

"They are all about diverting it talking about Islamaphobia," Zuhdi Jasser, MD of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy told Williams. "Talking about bigotry when, in fact, they are wanting to divert it from, you know, the issue of fear that you so appropriately brought up is just the first layer of the discussion because deeper within that is the root cause of terrorism, which is an ideology that feeds that and groups like CAIR don't want to talk about reform."

Williams appeared to have no regret for making the comments that got him fired.

"Some American-Muslims want us to be sincere about our feelings so we can have an honest discussion," said Williams.

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