Superstorm Sandy was widely blamed in 2012 for affecting the outcome of the presidential election but Hurricane Matthew won't likely have the same effect this time around, Fox News' Bill O'Reilly said Friday morning.
"It seems like everybody's pretty well-organized," O'Reilly told Fox News' "Fox & Friends" program, while appearing on the show to speak about the network's 20th anniversary observation.
"I don't see it having any impact."
Further, the show host said, he wouldn't advise either Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton or Republican nominee Donald Trump tour the areas being hit by Hurricane Matthew, joking that he didn't know if "Trump's hair can handle" the hurricane-force winds from the storm.
"If I were the candidates, I wouldn't go down there," said O'Reilly.
Seven months after losing the 2012 election to President Barack Obama, then-GOP nominee Mitt Romney said he wished the hurricane hadn't happened when it did "because it gave the president a chance to be presidential and to be out showing sympathy for folks. That's one of the advantages of incumbency. But you don't look back and worry about each little thing and how could that have been different."
Sandy hit the East Coast less than one week before the 2012 election, killing more than 100 people and bringing the presidential campaigns to a halt. It also harmed the ongoing political aspirations of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who was slammed for being photographed hugging Obama and praising him for the swift response to the storm.
Many have blamed Christie's actions for costing Romney the election, even though Romney did not blame Christie himself.
"I'm not going to worry about how Chris was doing what he thought was best for the people of his state," Romney told The Washington Post in March 2013. "I lost my election because of my campaign, not because of what anyone else did."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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