On Tuesday, Fox News anchor Bill O'Reilly inexplicably used a story about a middle school coach who took his football team to a victory meal at Hooters to take a swipe at those who support transgender youth using the bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond with their gender identity.
Lambasting Fox's token liberal Alan Colmes for what O'Reilly perceived as ideological inconsistency, the O'Reilly Factor host claimed that minors at Hooters and transgender people in locker rooms were two sides of the same coin.
"The transsexual in the locker room, in the bathroom, and all of that, you're fine with that," O'Reilly shouted over Colmes's rejections of the false comparison. "But you won't take the kid to Hooters."
Media Matters notes that Colmes tried to push back on O'Reilly's clearly misguided comparison, explaining that the two issues are entirely distinct.
"One is taking a 12-year-old to see 'T and A,' and the other is someone who happens to be of indeterminate gender because that's the way they're built," said Colmes. "It's a different thing."
O'Reilly again rejected Colmes's reasoning, claiming that allowing trans students to use the appropriate locker room amounts to a "guy go[ing] into the girls' locker room."
Colmes managed to fire off one zinger before O'Reilly again engaged in his standard practice of shouting over and down his detractors.
"So a girls' locker room is like Hooters to you?" Colmes asked the host, who was momentarily silent, seemingly taken aback.
Media Matters notes that these comments are only the latest in a long line of transphobic and anti-LGBT rhetoric from O'Reilly and several commentators on the Fox News team. In August, O'Reilly claimed that allowing trans students to use facilities that matched their gender identity was "the biggest con in the world" and alleged that a new California law granting equal access to gender-segregated facilities for trans students was pure "anarchy and madness."
Watch Tuesday's exchange below.
