Conservative Fox News host Bill O’Reilly on Wednesday blasted Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) for “obscuring” important issues by falsely claiming that President Barack Obama had someone designated to walk his dog.

On Tuesday, Bachmann had fled CNN cameras after reporter Dana Bash confronted her about the claims she had made at the Conservative Political Action Conference over the weekend.

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As the congresswoman briskly walked away, she claimed that the speech had been about the president’s failures in Benghazi.

During his Wednesday broadcast, O’Reilly said that Bachmann had also refused to talk to him.

“This would be much ado about nothing if not for the fact that trivial attacks on President Obama obscuring serious problems in this country,” the Fox News host explained. “[E]very other president in history has lived in comfort, and it looks like President Bush the younger had a bigger White House budget than Barack Obama does. This is a trivial pursuit and Michele Bachmann made a mistake pursuing it.”

“Mr. Obama is entitled to convenience, protection and comfort as he runs the nation,” O’Reilly added. “Congresswoman Bachmann and all opponents of Mr. Obama should zero in on what’s really important: the president’s failure to deal with out-of-control spending and his core belief that America’s not a fair country. That’s what’s important, not who’s walking the presidential dog. By the way, that’s the gardener who walks the dog. And he’s always walked the dog!”

“It’s long past time for partisans on both on both the right and the left to cut the nonsense and look at things clearly… Michele Bachmann is playing small ball with the president.”

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In a recent non-scientific poll on O’Reilly’s website, 55 percent disagreed that conservatives help Obama by criticizing him for “crazy stuff.”

Watch this video from Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor, broadcast March 20, 2013.

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(h/t: Politico)

[Correction: This post originally identified Bachmann as from Wisconsin.]