Director of charity for homeless veterans demands apology from Bill O'Reilly

Carol Gardener, executive director of Fitzgerald House, which provides transitional housing and job placement assistance to homeless veterans, recently appeared at News Corporation headquarters to deliver a petition to FOX News mainstay and The O'Reilly Factor host Bill O'Reilly.

The petition, signed by 17,000 people, demands an apology from O'Reilly over a claim he made that there are no homeless veterans.

"The only thing sleeping under a bridge is that guy's brain," O'Reilly quipped during his January 4 broadcast, referring to part of a speech that former senator and presidential candidate John Edwards (D-NC) gave, dropping a figure of 200,000 veterans sleeping "under bridges and on grates." (The Department of Veterans Affairs estimates 195,000.)

O'Reilly repeatedly joked about homeless veterans, insisting that, even if there was such a problem, there "aren't that many."

"I'd love to meet Bill O'Reilly," says Gardener, who arrived flanked by actual homeless veterans, "to sit with him and talk about the homelessness among veterans in this country."

Video, courtesy of Brave New Films, follows below.



