Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly didn’t hold back his opinion of how Fox News should have handled coverage when rioters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6th. O’Reilly, who left the network in 2017, accused hosts of downplaying the severity of the riot to viewers noting it was something that never would have happened while he was on the air.

The Hill reports:

“Fox News is a different place than it was when I was there,” O’Reilly said Tuesday evening while appearing on Dan Abrams’ primetime show on NewsNation. “I don’t follow it that that closely anymore, but when I was there, there was a discipline from management that diminishing the Capitol riot could never have happened. And I’ll state that firmly on the record.”

O’Reilly had joined Abrams’ program to discuss revelations this week that top hosts at Fox, including his former colleagues Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Brian Kilmeade, had been texting with then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows during the riot, urging Meadows to convince former President Trump to do something to stop the attack.

“I wouldn’t have done it myself,” O’Reilly said of the text messages the hosts sent Meadows. “I would have asked the question, ‘Say, are you guys going to make a statement? What are you going to do? Looks like things are out of control?’ I don’t think I would have advocated; that’s not what journalists do. But it was in a very intense, quick-breaking situation. So I’m not going to condemn anybody here.”

Later, both Hannity and Ingraham defended their texts to Meadows.

“Both publicly and privately I said what I believe: that the Jan. 6 breach at the Capitol was a terrible thing. Crimes were committed,” Ingraham said during the next hour.  “Some people were unfairly hounded and persecuted, but it was not an insurrection. To say anything different is beyond dishonest and it ignores the facts of that day.”

O’Reilly was also asked about Tucker Carlson recent docuseries about the Jan. 6 riot but refused to comment as he has not seen the special.