(NewsNation) — After years of criticizing him behind the news desk, Bill O’Reilly offered praise for former President Barack Obama as the “hardest-working modern president.”

“Obama was the hardest-working modern president,” he told NewsNation’s Leland Vittert. “I knew what he was doing and why he was doing it, and he wasn’t, in his mind, or in my mind, damaging the country.”

NewsNation’s Chief Washington Anchor and host of “On Balance,” Leland Vittert,” sits down with the one and only Bill O’Reilly in a NewsNation special entitled “Bill O’Reilly’s Confronting the Presidents: America’s Best & Worst.” O’Reilly counts down his five best and five worst presidents in American history. Tune in to find out who made which list. Find out how to watch at joinNN.com.

O’Reilly’s previous assessments of Obama include a particularly contentious pre-Super Bowl interview with the former president in 2014.

During the interview, O’Reilly was critical of Obama over his health care law rollout, the 2012 attacks on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya and revelations that the IRS targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny. 

O’Reilly asked if the broken promise of keeping health plans was “the biggest mistake of your presidency.” 

Obama responded, “Oh, Bill, you’ve got a long list of my mistakes of my presidency.”

O’Reilly also slammed Obama for being “weak” on terrorism a number of times on air during this then-cable news show. 

But looking back, O’Reilly says Obama could be put in a “good category” when it comes to U.S. presidents, in part because he “uplifted a portion of the American population that needed to be uplifted, people of color.”