"I Beat Larry King" - Bill O'Reilly On Media Bias, Roger Ailes, Trump & Fairness Doctrine Of 1949 | PBD Podcast | Ep. 476
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As dawn broke over the seven seas, the pirates of the Crimson Galleon set sail for adventure. But there was one problem. Paperwork. Mountains of it. Filing, invoices, you name it. This work ain't fit for a pirate. Luckily, their captain had an idea. She used the smart buying tools on Amazon Business so they could work more efficiently and get back to doing what they do best.

I know, right? Amazon Business, your partner for smart business buying. And so I knew we were going to beat them. It was a matter of how long it was going to take. Number one, you hate your country. And number two, you're a loon. For you to get $3 million a night for 16 years dominating cable news, I don't know who's done that. Matter of fact, I don't think anybody did what you did during those years. I wasn't a guy who was going to come in and take orders from idiots. I'm a rebel.

I'm a renegade. I don't go along to get along. I had offers to run for Congress, but my calling is journalism. When's the last time you were on Fox? Have you been on Fox since you left or no? I don't go on Fox. They don't particularly, I don't think, want to be reminded of me. Do you think the attempts are done? It's not a conspiracy. It's far too many of that. I've known Trump 35 years. I think Trump's mad at me now. I've gave Trump the hardest interviews he's ever done.

So I'm rude. So what? And we'll do it live. I don't think she can govern. I don't think she even understands the problems. That's why she doesn't do an interview with you or me.

She doesn't even understand them. I think the media is hurting the country in a profound way. The government owns and pays for the media company. It can tell a media company what to do. Do you think the idea of allowing somebody who wasn't born here run for president is a good idea? Yes. Why is that? We're a nation of immigrants. That's a cliche, but it's absolutely true. You got brilliant people that can help us out. Did you ever think you were me?

I feel I'm supposed to take sweet victory. I know this life meant for me. Yeah, why would you bet on Goliath when we got Beth David? Value payment, giving values contagious. For the entrepreneurs, we get no value to haters. How they run, homie, look what I become. I'm the one.

All right, so we have a special guest here with us. He's a former school teacher in Miami. That's what he's known for until he decided to change his career, and he just broke a record today. Not today, yesterday. This is his 19th, okay, New York Times number one bestseller. Not one, not two, 19. Bill Russell's got 11 championships. This guy's got 19 number one New York Times bestseller titles.

And we're finally doing this with the great, I think we can call great because it's a Mount Rushmore type of a guy we're talking to today. The one and only Bill O'Reilly. How you doing? Patrick, I'm doing fine. Thanks for having me into podcast world, you know? Yes. It's a strange world.

I know you love this, the two, three hour type of stuff. We're actually doing it. And we're imitating you. Yeah. Yeah. Because of your success, tremendous success. So I told my guys, I said, look, check out what David's doing. And we're actually on Spotify and Apple now with the No Spin News podcast.

because it's the future. There's no doubt. And you were one of the pioneers. Well, I appreciate that. I mean, you know, for us, we watched you, right? I mean, this is for you to get 3 million a night for 16 years, dominating cable news.

I don't know who's done that. Matter of fact, I don't think anybody did what you did during those years. And but your stories are very interesting. I've got a bunch of things I want to get into with the little time that we have here together, because I know you don't do a lot of this. You do 30 minute stuff. You do 45 minute stuff. So see, I'm boring. I don't want to. I'm a boring guy. You are because you're around you all the time. But to the rest of us, you're very interesting. So I want to start off with this. Here's what's crazy. I'm sitting there. I'm reading through this whole thing.

I'm like, when did Bill do that Super Bowl halftime with Obama? 2014. I said, wait a minute. 2014 is only a decade. So 10 years ago.

The face of Fox sits down and interviews Barack Obama in 2014, six years after he's already president. That's like today saying Kamala Harris sits down with Sean Hannity and does an interview today, which nobody would even assume that she would ever do something like that.

Bill, how much has changed from 10 years ago to today? Oh, enormous amount. I had a good relationship with President Obama, and he comes off pretty well in confronting the presidents as a hardworking president who is well-intentioned. I don't agree with some of his policies that went south. But I evaluate presidents, number one, on what kind of success they had for the country. That's top priority.

but also kind of people they were. And I worked with President Obama on Brothers Keeper, which is a mentoring program for African-American inner city youth. And I was impressed. I mean, he really wanted to help these kids. And I do that a lot of that myself. But getting to your question. So I interviewed Barack Obama three times. All right. I interviewed him during the campaign against John McCain. Yeah.

And then twice in these Super Bowl extravaganza interviews where it went worldwide. He knew I was fair to him. That's the difference. I may disagree with him, but I wasn't going to ambush him or be unfair or be disrespectful. I would never be disrespectful to a president of the United States because I respect the office. And he knew that.

And so did Bush. And so did Clinton. Clinton interviewed with me. And so did Trump. And on and on and on. That's not my game. I'm not an ideologue. I come at it from a journalist historian point of view. I will say right up top.

look, Mr. President, I think you're going wrong here. And I did that with the jihadists. I said, these are bad, bad guys. And you know that as well as anybody. And he did make that big mistake by withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, which led to the rise of ISIS. And I warned him about it. I warned him. I said, this, these Muslim Brotherhood people, they're not going to respond to anything but violence. That's who they are.

But to his credit, Obama recognized the mistake, put U.S. forces back, and subsequently Trump wiped out ISIS. And I wrote a book called Killing the Killers that documents all that. But now in cable news, they make their money preaching to the choir. Now cable news, they make their money preaching to the choir. But again, what was the—and by the way, I remember one time I'm on a flight with you.

And I'm flying from Burbank to Vegas. I have an event in Vegas. And you were doing your event in Vegas with Miller? Yeah, Dennis Miller. I'm on a flight with you. And we took a picture. And then somehow, someway, we're sitting right next to each other. You know, Southwest is kind of like A, whatever. You get to see it aisle by aisle. And I said, hey, Bill, question for you.

What happened with Romney? You know, after the second debate, he was ahead. Right. And he did well with the Benghazi thing. What happened with the third debate? And then how does, and then you're like, well, let me tell you, we made two phone calls. We called both camps last minute saying Obama's going to lose. And we call Romney saying you're going to lose.

And then you said, when we called Obama, Obama's guy, we spoke to her like, no, it's done. Romney made a mistake. He listened to one of his consultants and about your, you're losing the single female voters and all this stuff. You're being too hard on, on Obama, something like that in that context that the guy, the fellow told you. And then I said, so what did the Romney people say? We call Romney. I said, you're behind. You need to come and do this.

And eventually, I think neither one of them showed up and both were confident Obama's camp ended up being right and Romney's camp ended up being wrong because on the last debate, he went weak. That was the interaction I had with you. And I'm, I don't even know how long this 2012, I'm assuming, right? Right. 2012. Right. That makes sense. 1112. Right. When we had that conversation, but from, from there till today, what I'm trying to find out from you is, um,

You've been in this game for a while. You came with everybody. You've been with a lot of guys. Insiders, CBS, all this stuff.

10 years, how much has changed and what's the tipping point? Because you can give me an analysis that maybe the average guy that's not in the world is not going to see that lens. What caused it to be as divisive as it is today that no one wants to talk to the opposite side? Money and the corporate media. So the genesis of it is that when I started at Fox News, it was brand new.

And in order to compete against CNN, which was MSNBC was never a factor as far as competition was concerned. But CNN was ahead and ahead by a wide margin. So when they hired me at Fox and they never asked me, what are your political viewpoints? Well, they didn't. They knew that I took a show called Inside Edition, a syndicated program. And I turned it around and made money.

tens of millions of dollars for King World. That's what they knew. I could do a show. And I walk on in. I actually had a 10-part outline on the O'Reilly factor that I did at Harvard. I came from Harvard to Fox. I did a master's into Kennedy School there.

And I said, look, I got my outlay. We don't need to see that. We know what you can do. OK, so my plan and the plan that was in play was to appeal to the widest amount of Americans possible, but give traditional conservative Americans a platform which they did not have.

on the networks and CNN. Once in a while you would have somebody on, but it was overwhelmingly liberal. And so Fox said, you know, a lot of traditional conservative people, we're going to give conservative traditional voices a platform.

So they did Hannity and Combs, conservative and a liberal. They hired Catherine Cryer, who was a liberal woman. All right, put her on. They hired me. They didn't know what I was. They knew I was a provocateur. They knew that, that I was good people running up and down, but they didn't know any kind of doctrinaire stuff because I didn't have it at that point.

And when we started to ascend, and I remember this meeting, I had a meeting with my staff earlier, and I said, look, see this guy? I had a picture of Larry King.

I said, we're going to take him out. And they all went, oh, yeah, yeah, because he was the king. Larry King was the king of CNN and cable. Now, how crazy is it to say something like that? It wasn't. I knew I was taking it. Oh, you knew that. Oh, why did you know that? Because he was reading questions off cards. He wasn't listening to answers. Got it. And I'm bringing in this brash guy from Levittown, New York, who's going to say that's bull. Larry, never do that.

And I was bringing Mike Wallace in. Got it. Who was my guy. Right. All right. And so I knew we were going to beat him. It was a matter of how long it was going to take. And when Clinton got in trouble with Lewinsky, that was the fuel. That was the rocket fuel for Fox News and the O'Reilly factor, because then everybody was engaged.

And while most of the networks were making excuses for Bill Clinton, all right, at the time, Fox was a little bit more harsh, but not me. I kind of felt sorry for Clinton, even though obviously he did what he was accused of doing. But as a historian, I knew that half the presidents did what he did.

In the past, including JFK. Well, you wrote about it on Reagan as well, what he did when his kid was born that night in the book, which I think George Will got upset at you or something like that when you guys had that exchange. You can't buy Killing Reagan in the Reagan Library to this day. They don't want the truth. And that's why my books have been so successful, because we mythologize our presidents. And in confronting the president, I tell you, here's the good, here's the bad. Reagan was a good president.

And it doesn't particularly matter to me what he did in his personal life. But I had to cite it because they were going to make him a saint. I thought the Pope was going to look at him and go, wait, wait. We're all flawed. All of us are flawed. But the media has a tendency to overlook the flaws of the people they like. And in America, the media, ever since JFK, has been liberal.

Ever since then, 1960, the media has been liberal. And to this day, it's overwhelmingly liberal now. Fox and Newsmax are the only two that are not in that, let's promote Kamala Harris, which they do on a daily basis.

But anyway, that's what the original intent was for me on Fox News was to really get a gritty, no-spin look at everybody, but to give them a fair shot. And to this day, that's what I do. And you'll be interested to know that in the Internet world in which you are a pioneer, as I stated, 10 times more people watch me every night than on The Riley Factor. Wow. And I'm trying to convince Trump of that. He doesn't get it.

He doesn't get it. To do what? To be on your show? No, I don't care if he's on my show or not. But we did get Senator Vance on the show. And there was some people going, well, why do we want to do this? I said, because 10 times more people watch me. And, you know, 20 million people are going to see that interview with Vance. So you go on cable news all you want. That's only getting 2 million people. And so are the network shows. The CBS Morning News averages 2 million people.

And Muir averages about six, seven on ABC Evening News. Bill, let me ask you, at that time when Roger Ailes, I read somewhere, and maybe this is not right, that you were contemplating leaving the business? You were kind of like, you know, maybe going to a different career change? Or no, did Roger, not at all. I could have, I had offers to run for Congress once.

and things like that. But my calling is journalism. Okay. No hesitation. Like you were not in anything that you're like, I'm going to go do something else. No. Did Ted Turner ever try to recruit you? Did who? Ted Turner. No.

NBC did. Did you have any interaction with Ted? Never. Never talked to him. You've never met him yet? Wait a minute. No, no, I had him. I had him on the show. See, I'm so old. I can't remember the tens of thousands of people I've interviewed. I had turned on his show. And it was pretty good back and forth. But they never made a play for me. But NBC did. But at the time NBC did, it was GE owning it. Okay? It wasn't like it is now with Comcast.

And I remember I seriously considered it because the money was huge that they were offering me to go over from Fox to NBC. Exactly the route that Megyn Kelly took. Kelly went from Fox to NBC. Well, this was years and years before Fox.

GE contacted me and said, look, we'd like to come over and do a primetime show on CNBC. And I thought about it, but I was loyal to Ailes and Fox. What made Ailes attractive to you? The other day I'm having talking to The Rock and we're having a conversation, you know, everything that we know with Vince McMahon that we read about the controversial stuff.

But Vince was a promoter, marketer, and he was able to get The Rock to see the bigger picture of what could happen. And then boom, WWE turns into what it is. What made Ales special? Well, for me, he told me the truth. So if you work in television, it's pretty rare. I mean, executives aren't known for their truth telling. So if I had a question...

I could call him and I know I get a true answer. Role play. Give me an example. You know, if I look, I, um, was it like, how did you think I did today? Like that? I don't care what he thought about how I did today. I never thought about that. Uh, if you don't like me, that's fine. You know, you like me, then you pay this amount of money because that's what we're worth. I never curry favor with anybody. But if I said to L something like, look, I want to bring in, uh, this guest, uh,

what do you think? Do you think that, you know, it's worth the platform? And he would go yes or no. Got it. Uh, and then he would give me stuff I didn't know. Yeah. Because he knew unbelievable. How would he give it to you? Uh, he just said verbally. But was it kind of like a, was it a direct approach or was it like, Hey Bill, what do you think about having John Doe on? Uh,

Once in a while, he would call me with those questions. I would never intrude on him. Did you guys ever have a big blow-up? Did you guys ever have one? Oh, we had one real big blow-up. What was it? But remember, 20 years I worked there. I know. We had one blow-up, and it was about Romney. You mentioned Romney. So I knew Romney was going down, and Al's a big Romney fan. Liked the governor a lot. I liked him. I went to a Red Sox game, Boston Red Sox game, with Romney and his wife and his son, and we had a great time.

His hair never moved. Romney, no matter how windy it was, Romney, it was like Dick Clark. It just never moved. And I kept going, how does that ever stay like that? Anyway, I liked the governor. I thought he did a very good job in Massachusetts as a Republican governor in a Democratic state. And I admired how he did that. But I knew that Obama was kicking him. And I told Ellis that.

I said, look, we're trying to get him, just as you mentioned in your lead, we're trying to get him to come on in here for a last interview. And he's right. He's dodging us. He's ducking us. He goes, I duck you too because you're just rude to everybody. I said, everybody knows I'm rude. That's no excuse. He's trying to be president. All right. So I'm rude. So what? Just answer the questions and I won't be rude.

He goes, I'm not going to tell him to come in. I said, do you want him to win? He goes, yeah, he's got to win. I said, then he's got to come in. And then that was the argument. Okay. And I remember it so vividly because I was in Nantucket at the time in Romney territory.

And I'm on the old cobblestone street in Nantucket town on one of these new cell phones. And Ailes is going, you're sabotaging. I said, I'm telling the truth. He's losing. What do you want me to do? Tell the audience he's winning. He's not. You know it. You know, and that was it. And that was the big, and I never really had a,

Anything else with him. But I didn't hang with Roger. He was so funny. So you guys were not friends? I would say we were friends. Friendly or friends? If he needed anything or his family or his child, I would provide it like that. But here's what I mean by it. I wasn't hanging with him. That's what I'm saying. Are you going to watch a football game with him? No, I'm not going over his house. Because I don't do that. You don't do that with a superior? No.

Or you just don't do that with anybody. I don't. No, I do with my friends, people that I went to grammar school with. BillOReilly.com. The guy who just retired, but who ran it for many, many years. I was in first grade with him. Till today. Yeah.

Yeah, I was in first grade with him because I trust those people. You know, it's hard to trust people these days. But anyway, it's not right, I don't think, to try to curry favor with your superiors. I never bought into it. They call it butt kissing. I just can't. How about Murdoch? What was your relationship with him? I saw him seven times in 20 years. Seven times in 20 years? Seven times. Is it because he was always Australia? It was all a Christmas thing. Oh, got it. It just...

What was that relationship like? I don't even think he knew who I was. I just don't know. But I'm not a corporate creature. I'm not. I'm so much happier that I'm now running corporations. I'm never comfortable in that corporate culture. Why is that? Because I'm a rebel.

I'm a renegade. I don't go along to get along. You know, I work with CBS News. I work at ABC News. I work with King World Inside Edition, Fox News. And I made money for all of them, lots of money. But I wasn't a guy who was going to come in and take orders from idiots.

I just wasn't going to do that. And by the way, happy belated birthday. You just had a birthday. Thank you. And you're a Virgo. Are you a true Virgo? Are you like a perfectionist? Are you like a, I think you are, right? Because I'm absolutely whatever that star says I am. I am. Okay. Right. So are you like the guy like behind camera? Because obviously we've all seen the legendary. I've seen it a couple hundred times. There's two of my favorites. Okay. And I'm sure you've been asked is God knows how many times you're probably sick of it.

One is when the lady calls into Beck to Glenn. Okay. I could listen to you and I could listen to Beck and I wouldn't skip those two. And a lady calls into the radio and says, you know, you people don't care. And then he just loses it. Right. And you had your moment where it was the let's do it live. Right. Let's do it. We're human beings. Yeah. No, of course. Trust me. I have it as well. I mean, if you ask my guys, my guys will tell you.

Just a couple months ago, we're doing a live podcast. Where was this at, Rob? 5990 Live. 5990 Live.

And one of my guys doesn't watch the intro that they put up for the debate night special. I have 200 people in front of me and they play a skit. It's such an inappropriate skit. I mean, it's from value, tame and comedy. These guys thought it was a good idea to play a skit for the opening of debate night. Well, I have a couple hundred people there. I walked away for 15 minutes and I had a nice little cup of tea with them. Right. It was very friendly. Rob, there was nothing going on. Do you think that fire bill, uh,

with perfectionists like, and maybe this is a better question. When did you accept yourself that you're different and you're crazy? When were you like, you know what? I'm not like everybody else. I got a fire and I'm okay with this guy. Kindergarten. Oh, that early. Oh yeah. I was the most obnoxious kid in the world. I, it was, I feel so sorry for my parents. Uh,

I was always a rebel, always. I got the DNA. It's Irish. You know, if I had been over there, I would have been an IRA guy. I haven't. And I'm not a malicious or violent person, but I get my dander up a lot. And I want people to do what they're supposed to do. And sometimes, as you know, we work so hard when you get some person who doesn't care about

That kind of lights my fuse a little bit. Is that often, though, with you? Not anymore, because now I run my own corporation. No, but when you were... Oh, got it. So are you more forgiving now? Or are you like, shit, this is a lot harder to... I'm much more mellow now that I'm an old guy than when I was a younger guy. But I have to tell you that at Fox News, I had an ace crew.

because there were a lot of people who didn't want to work for me because they were afraid. So the people who wanted to work for me, I had the best director, Chet Lishwa, in the world. Did you interview everybody? No. I mean, I knew who they were on reputation. No, that's not what I'm asking. But let's just say... No, I had somebody interview for me. Wait a minute. That's kind of weird. I wouldn't have pictured that. So you didn't give a shit who they hired. You had somebody else filter...

You weren't that much of a meticulous detail guide that you have to see if this guy's going to understand. No, I want to give everybody a chance. So I have to do so much creative work. Right. So I write everything that I do. Even to this day, I write every single thing that I do. I don't have never had a writer.

When I was at ABC News, I was the only correspondent in New York that didn't work with a producer. Wow. Because all the producers hated me. Wow. Yeah, they hated me. I don't want to work with O'Reilly. You wrote everything till today. I wrote every blank word. Everything you ever wrote in Fox News, you wrote it. Every word. So I didn't need...

all of that support staff. And if we needed a producer or assistant director or whatever, I'd have my guy, Dave Tabakov, who I took from ABC to work for me. I'd known him for many, many years. He'd interview him. And I said, what do you think? He'd say, okay, give him a shot. I'm a give him a shot type guy. You know, that's what I, I don't know.

want to sit there and grill somebody, I look at their resume, and if my guy says they should get a shot, I give it to him. Did you ever follow Martin Downey Jr.? No, not much. You remember, did you ever watch the documentary Provocateur? And during that 18-month period, he absolutely killed it, and then he destroyed his career with the whole bathroom. Yeah, because you can't sustain that. Right, you can't sustain that model that he has smoking two, three packs a day on a show. Yeah, you can't do it. But here's a question for you on...

Do you look at this business as a sport? Are you kind of like, yeah, I don't really, you know, I'm just doing my thing. I'm at a different phase. Or do you sit there and say, listen, that guy has something. This guy has something. That guy has this. Do you look at talent in a different way? Or are you just like, no, I'm just going to go do my thing? Well, I admire people who are skilled at what they do, number one. So if you're good at what you do, I admire you.

Number two, I take my profession seriously. I want to do good work. And to this day, I mean, I have a younger staff now.

But they're like the Navy SEALs. I'm asking a different question, though. And I really want to see what you say about this. Because when it comes onto a topic like this, you have real inventory for this part. Here's what I'm asking. So you ever seen the movie Moneyball with Brad Pitt? Yes. Okay, so you know Billy Bean is the main guy. Yes. In the history of me bringing speakers to events and paying them, Billy Bean is the only guy I've paid to bring him three times. And he has a caveat. He doesn't want no camera on.

He says, Pat, I'll come. I just don't want cameras on. Doesn't like the camera. Like, you know, the way he is in a movie, doesn't like the camera, doesn't want to be recorded.

So I bring him and I said, so Billy, you know, what are they called? A four-tool player? What is the phrase they use in baseball when you, you know, you can throw, you can run, you can hit, you can... Five-tool player? Five-tool or five, something like that. Yeah, five-tool player, right? Is there such a thing of that in your space where, you know, you're different than Rush, than Beck, than Tucker, than Megan, than this, than that, than this,

Is there a pattern to say, here's what I can tell you. Any of the guys that make it to the top and they become number one, they have these three, four things. Is there anything that you've seen? I think that the key to massive success is authenticity. All right. And you can be authentic, but not everybody is the same. So the authenticity changes based upon the person's personality.

So I'm a lot different, my upbringing, than somebody who was raised in Harlem, some African-American. I don't know that experience. But that person brings that authenticity. Stephen A. Smith is a good example of that. So he brings an authenticity based upon his upbringing. And I do the same. So authenticity spreads out over a wide spectrum, but I can see it.

I have a gift of seeing the phonies that contrive people telling you what you want to hear, a lot of those now, compared to the genuine people.

And I gravitate toward the genuine. Okay. So authenticity is one. What else would you say? Remember to be a bill, potential of a bill. I'm talking face. I'm talking number one. There's gotta be some patterns because I think authenticity is one. What else would you put? Well, you have to understand who your audience is and what the audience expectation is. You don't pander to the audience. That's a mistake. Don't tell them what they want to hear. Okay.

But you have to understand who they are. So the reason I've had 19 number one New York Times bestsellers, and I don't know if the Times is real thrilled about that, is because I know my reader. They don't want an 800-page bio on Calvin Coolidge. They want me to get to the point, tell them stuff they don't know in a flamboyant, fun way.

That is the formula. And we deliver on that. We are not ponderous. We are not condescending. We don't think we're better than anyone else. And that's where my success is rooted. Understanding.

The audience that gravitates to me. So that's two so far. I want a third. Okay. I'm going to extract this from you. Number one, authenticity to who your audience and say is don't pander. Get to the point. Like, let's go. If you're the guy, like, let's go, let's go, let's go. Right. Flamboyant way. Like your sensational way. Right. Not condescending. Give me a third. What else? What else is it? When you look at these guys, I'm going to give you the perhaps the most important one. What's that? Discipline.

Unpack that. You have to be disciplined. I mean, I know my craft from top to bottom. When I interview somebody, I prepare. I know who they are. I know what they've done. When I write a sentence, I go over it four times and see if I can write it any better. Sure.

when I do my commentary and I don't use a teleprompter anymore. I use the teleprompter at Fox because we had to hit the spots and all of that. Now on the no spin news, my TV broadcast, which is available almost everywhere now, YouTube, but we live at bill O'Reilly.com. I don't use a teleprompter. I just know the subject that I'm speaking about. So I can talk as I'm talking to you, Patrick extemporaneously. Okay.

Okay, if you can develop that discipline, then in any field, not to mean any field. I mean, look at this guy, Otani, this Japanese baseball player. 50-50, crazy. Right. He has natural God-given ability. Sure. But this guy, and he's a young guy.

has disciplined himself to do everything, to field, to pitch, to bat, to steal bases. To gamble. I mean, it's a lot of different things. And that, you know, he makes it look easy. It's not easy. Yep.

Yep. And he got 10 RBI. By the way, my son was at the game yesterday. Tom is like, hey, Pat, you mind if we take your oldest son to the game? I'm like, yeah, go for it. He doesn't like baseball. He comes home last night. I'm like, do you realize what game you were at? He said right next to Otani's mom. Do you know where you're sitting? Yeah.

How was it? I guess I was at a historic. I'm like, no, that's not a historic game, buddy. It's 50-50. I had three home runs, 10 RBIs. If you love baseball, that's the game to be at. They went 20-4. And I kind of like what Marlon's head coach said. Did you hear what the skipper said from the other side yesterday? No, what did he say? I love what he said. He said, so why did you pitch to him? And they close up the camera on his face, and he says, F it. Pitch to him.

There's no way we're going to not pitch to him, right? And just kind of walk. And so why'd you do that? Can you, this is the scene right here when he says that. Is this it, Rob? When he, yeah, he says, yeah. He said, blank that. Blank that. F that. Pitch to him, right? And then they ask him after the game, they say, so why'd you let your pitcher pitch to him? He says, it's bad juju to not do that. This is baseball, okay? You don't just run away from it. You pitch to the guy. All right.

So I get it. Right. But listen, you lost 20 to four. But I mean, I might make a counter argument to it. You don't want to run into the machine gun. If he can go around the machine gun, that might be good. Look, for fans, I'm sure as a fan, I don't mind seeing that because I want to see that happen. Marlins got nothing to lose. No, they got nothing to lose. Yeah. And I just like the answer that he gave. So, okay. So we have authenticity, who your audience has disciplined. My pastor in LA, Dudley Rutherford.

One day he married my wife and I, we changed our wedding day from Saturday to Friday to just have this guy marry us. Absolutely love this guy. One of the best human beings I've met in my life. Funny guy, just a great guy. You know, I go to his office and I said, what is all these yellow four folders? This is what I mean. I said, what is all this stuff? He says, every sermon I've ever given in my life, the last 35 years, I've written every one of them. I said, get out of here, Bill.

He would go like this. He would read the sentence and then boom, next. Every sermon he's ever given, he wrote. You and him. When I hear that kind of stuff, it's not my style. I'm sitting there saying, you want me to give every single thing? So a guy like you is not duplicated, but it's not a lot of guys that, you know, find like a guy like you. However, let's go to the next one here. Okay, let's see what your answer is going to be with this. Patterns. You, Beck, Megan, Tucker,

All at one point, number ones, right? Yep. And all had ended not in an ugly fashion with Fox. Why is that that number ones have a bad exit with Fox? You'd have to generalize about that. I think that everybody's got their own pathway. And corporations aren't really interested in your pathway. Right.

So, you know, and I'm not knocking them because they have thousands of employees. They can't be interested in everybody's life. But you're the face, though. Yeah, but they made a business decision and I was fine with it. They had to pay out the contract. And I never bad mouth Fox. I don't do that. They made a decision.

Okay. It worked great for me. Would you deny that you're a corporation? Would you do that with your number one guy? It depends. If the guy was setting my kids on fire, I might blow up the car. But you guys didn't set the kids on fire, right? No, I didn't. Listen, I didn't even give it a second thought. When my agent said, this is what they want to do, I just said, make sure they fulfill their obligation to us, which they did. Right. All right? Not a problem. Because I already had in my mind...

The next step. All right. I already knew. And this is a talent I have. I'm kind of a visionary like you. I have been doing it for 20 years. And I said, you know, there's going to be new technology here that's going to empower people to do what I do without this giant corporation going.

that you've got to fit into their mosaic. I've never been a fit-in guy. So when I left, I didn't even take a vacation. I took five people with me, very skilled, all right? And then I immediately launched BillOReilly.com, which was already up and running, but I launched it into an independent news agency. And we are now the most successful independent news agency on earth.

And we built it in seven years. And the reason we're the most is because of YouTube. And I don't know anything about your world. And people go Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Spotify, Apple. And I'm going, what? I don't know anything.

So the YouTube was brought to me by my younger employees. They go, you know, we're doing the No Spin News, doing great. All right, we're going to get a lot of viewers, but we can break it down and put it on our YouTube channel.

The Bill O'Reilly YouTube channel is going all over the world. And we don't run the whole 42-minute program. We run the segments. Boom. Shorts. I don't wait to look at numbers in July and August for my show. Right. It's like incredible. So to me, I was never a bitter guy. I've been mistreated.

But everybody watching us tonight all over the world has been mistreated. It's life. You're going to be mistreated. I guess let me ask you this. So when I early on in my career, I was in a sales office. I didn't have the responsibility to come up with the training, to come up with the content, to come up with the preparation. I'd have to do any of that stuff.

And I didn't run the office lease. I didn't have to get at the internet. I didn't have to get the phone line set up. I was just in an office and I rented a cubicle and a desk. So my responsibilities was nothing. Just come in, sell, do your thing and leave, right? You don't have to worry about nothing else. Pay your rent 1500 bucks a month, but the whole office of 30 grand a month, you don't have to worry about that. The internet phone, all this other stuff.

And I would hear everybody like, oh my God, they do this and they do that. People were kind of like annoyed and ungrateful and bitching and complaining. Then I opened up my first office in Granada Hills, California. When I opened up the office and then I realized the first time this ever happened, Bill, changed my views. One of my guys, we were required to turn off AC Friday night at six o'clock. One of my guys leaves the AC on the entire weekend till Monday. Then I get the AC bill. I'm like, guys, what happened here? I forgot to turn it off.

No shit, you forgot to turn it off because I have to pay the bill. I can't come to you for the AC bill. It's on me. Then guy pours coffee on the carpet and I can't stand stains. Drives me insane. Dude, what is this all about? Then you realize what the other people went through with the pain of running that office when you had no responsibility. You were just kind of getting up there and showing up and selling, right? Did you, when you left after the ugly fallen out, whatever you want to call it,

Did you leave and you started your own gig? You're like, oh, shit, now I'm realizing the pain that they went through with this. Oh, I'm realizing the pain went through. Now I realize what was annoying about this. Did you experience that at all afterwards to understand them better or no? No, because I'm mature enough to understand I'm never going to be treated fairly ever. It's not going to happen. So why do I want to waste time brooding about that? I am not going to be treated fairly. Donald Trump is not going to be treated fairly.

Kamala Harris is not going to be treated fairly. When you are in the public eye and larger than life, you're going to get it. It just comes with the territory. If you want to be out of that, then you have to get a calm job and live in a calm place. So, yeah, I had a lot of mass sessions where I would, because I go to mass every

And I would go, why'd you do that to me? You know, I'm doing so much good in this world. I'm giving millions of dollars to charity and our editorial bent is helping people all over the place. You know, this is me and God, you know, and I never any answer.

Because that's what it is. It's a struggle. And most people don't buy into it's a struggle. They think that it's going to be fair or it shouldn't be. Everybody gets it. When you read the presidents, all 45, these are the most powerful men on earth. They all got it. Every single one of them.

I mean, Washington's mother didn't like him. Okay, George Washington's mother didn't like him. She's writing letters to the local newspaper saying, my son George, he's starving me. If you are going to keep your sanity and keep off the psychiatrist's couch and off the booze and off the drugs, you've got to know what life is. Now, that doesn't mean I'm not a human being.

So I got in my garage, I got the boxing gloves and I got the heavy bag and it gets a workout. It gets a workout. And so I put somebody's face in that bag.

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Of the five of you. So you, Beck, Tucker, Megan, and who am I missing? Beck, no, I'm missing one. Did I get everybody? You, Beck, Tucker, Megan. And maybe I'm missing one here.

Which one of them are you friends with today? I have relationships with all of them other than Megan. Megan and I were never particularly close. I don't dislike her. I mean, I understand what a big talent. And I recognized her talent very early on. I put her on The Factor and I branded her segment The Kelly File.

That's how Megyn Kelly became famous. I'm not taking credit for her talent, but I saw it. What did you see? What was unique about it that you said this girl's going places? Well, she's a lawyer, and she's interested in the world. She could talk about... The reason I liked the Kelly file was she could talk about anything. All right? So I have her on once a week, and that was her segment. Very rarely did I do that. I usually put two people on to balance whatever we wanted to do. I put Miller on solo, Dennis Miller.

And I put Megan on solo because I knew that they were unique talents. And they did. They came through. And then everybody saw how talented Megan Kelly was. She got her own show. But, you know, again, I was in a lot of interaction. Now, Beck and I have a stronger relationship based upon, you know, we're just friends.

Dopey guys. And we have a lot of fun kidding each other. And Beck was very kind to me, exceedingly kind to me when I left Fox News. And a lot of people, they weren't that kind to me. It's okay. Beck was. And I'm a kind of guy that remembers that. Carlson and I have a professional relationship. We speak once in a while. We did a year ago a big thing on X, which I think 50 million people watched.

And Koss is a smart guy, boy. You know, he did what he did and carved that out. So to me, I'm a person that I don't have a category for.

I like a lot of people in a lot of different places, you know, but it's that authenticity that always rises. And all the people that you mentioned are authentic. Yeah. The authentic and can keep my attention for long periods of time. What was special about Jesse? Cause Jesse's now got your, I mean, I trained him. I know I water's world, but what was special about Jesse? Like always good on camera. So I took water. This is a great story.

Waters was so annoying in the meetings that we had twice a week. He was a producer, a booker, and he was just annoying. And I said, you know, Waters, you're so annoying. I don't want to sit here twice a week having you annoy me. So I'm going to give you an assignment. You're going to do Waters World. You're going to go out and you're going to annoy people all over the country. Just don't annoy me.

So I sent him out to ask these questions, okay? And it was, boom, funny. And we put movie clips in. A guy named Rob Monaco was a producer. He's another genius guy. Now I'm taking 100% credit for Waters, okay? And he would come in and I said, look, do this, do that, do this, do that. This is how you do it. But he's so talented in his own right that he got it like that.

So we built him up as this unbelievable personality and sent him all over the country to

And he wasn't at the meetings and everybody thanked me. Was he a worker? Was he a guy? He was a worker. Very hard. When the announcement was made that he got the job, was it like a proud of you, happy for you? You called him congratulations? Yeah. I have a very good relationship. In fact, he just texted me yesterday about congratulations on being number one for confronting the president. So I have a much stronger relationship with Waters because he was a protege, lived in my town on Long Island. Yeah.

played football with us. He was on the Touch football team.

And I'm glad for his success. Everybody comes up and goes, oh, he does what you did. I said, good. What I did worked. Okay? Yeah. It's duplicatable. When's the last time you were on Fox? Have you been on Fox since you left or no? I don't go on Fox. They don't particularly, I don't think, want to be reminded of me. I don't know. So since you've left, you've never been on Fox? No. Oh, I should have meant that. We were on...

About six months later, and then all of the hate groups came out and started threatening Fox. Done, and then it was over. Look, I understand. It's not worth it for them. Why put me on? All right? Why? Yeah. It's not worth it for them. This is the USA Gear limited edition for the rest of the year. If you love America, support this USA Gear. On the side, it says, Future Looks Bright. On the back, it says, Valuetainment. On the side, it's got the American flag. We got the shirts.

We got the flip-flops. These are the only flip-flops I wear when I'm at the house and walking the dogs. It feels amazing with the gel in it. So, if you love America, if you believe the future looks bright, if you love Valuetainment, click on the link above or below. Go wear some of the gear and tag us because we share the pictures on the podcast all the time. So go to vtmerch.com and place your order. When you were booking guests, okay,

And say, you know, if you wanted to book somebody who was a conservative and is going to come in and they know you're going to, you know, you may have them, you're going to push them. But still, yeah, I'll go on to O'Reilly. Of course, I'm going to get my audience to see me. When you wanted to get somebody on your show that wasn't necessarily someone you agreed with and it was someone that could be content, and they know it's going to be an argument. They know it's going to be heated. Did you make the call to book them or did your booker make the call? And if yes, what was the approach?

I book everybody. You book everybody. Not on the phone. I just say, book this person. But do you reach out or they reach out to them? I never reach out. I don't know what that means. Okay. I never make a call. Got it. Because my surrogates, my producers. They would reach out. Yeah. And I'll give you the best example. So Geraldo. Geraldo and I, you Google O'Reilly Geraldo. Made for TV. Yeah. Couldn't be more opposite. Right. But he's a great guy. And the...

You want to call it tension or the back and forth? Worked. Everybody wanted to see how this is going to come out. And I knew Geraldo forever. And I knew how talented he is to this day, 80 years old. I still do segments with him on News Nation. Same thing with Chris Cuomo. All right. I go on every week with Cuomo and I have to make fun of him because, you know, somebody has to do it.

But I like Cuomo. Cuomo is a thinker. And Geraldo is more of a reactor than a thinker. But he's very smart. And they both have tremendous amounts of experience. I never, ever, I wouldn't book haters.

To this day, if you're a hater, so if you're on Daily Beast or any of these things, you're never coming near me. Why is that? How do you process that? I don't want haters on a show. I don't book haters on the right. Would you say George Will was a hater of you? No, George Will is not a hater. But George Will wasn't being honest about Reagan. And I dressed him down. I had him on the show. And, you know, I regret that. That took you guys five seconds to get into the fight. I regret that. Why is that? Because they called him a hack. And that was...

Immature and inaccurate on my part. Will is a smart guy. I don't subscribe to the way he goes about practicing journalism because he's far too cozy with certain people, i.e. Nancy and Ronald Reagan. Too cozy. I don't get cozy with these people.

I've known Trump 35 years. I wrote an article. I think Trump's mad at me now because I'll, if Trump, look, when Trump says people are eating cocker spaniels, I go, that's dumb. Okay. They're not eating cocker spaniels. You have nothing to back it up. Don't say they're eating cocker spaniels.

OK. Did he say Cocker Spaniel? Well, he did. He said dogs and cats. Dogs and cats. But I like to frame it in a way that. Yeah. And that's crazy. Yeah. So he Trump doesn't really like that. All right. But I don't care. I mean, I care because I know Trump for so long and we've had a lot of interactions. I've gave Trump the hardest interviews he's ever done.

All you got to do again is Google O'Reilly Trump. You watch that John McCain interview when he said that McCain, you know, I gave it to him. You're talking about the POW, the prisoner? Yeah. Oh, and he stopped after that. Is this the phone call? He called in, right? That's the one that he called in. No, he didn't call. He was live. Is this the one? Oh, yeah. Got it. Got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But I respect Trump. And because I respect him, people hate me.

By extension, if you see anything good about Donald Trump, they hate you. So when we were doing our marketing plan for confronting the president, and you'll find this interesting, I can't do everything. There's just too many. So I have to narrow it down. But I wanted to do the CBS Morning News because it sells books. You know, it's more of a high-toned show. Now, Jane Paul is the anchor.

And I never met her. I know most everybody in the business. But everybody tells me what a nice woman she is. Okay? So I get a hover email, and I wrote her a really nice email. I'm sorry we've never read, but I got a big book coming out, and maybe, you know, I can talk about it. Never heard back. Which is disrespectful, by the way. Not just for me, but if you email somebody with a nice email, and they don't reply, that's disrespectful. That's like in a conversation, you just get up and leave. Say,

Same thing. Okay. So I had my people do a search on the CBS Sunday morning show. I said, give me one non-liberal author they've had on this year, 2024. Now, how many? Big guess. How many? None. Not one. What do you think that is? I mean, a guy like Mark Levin has a huge book. Yeah. Huge. All right. They all knew this book, Confirming a President, was going to be enormous. It's right germane into the presidential campaign. Yeah.

But because I might say something good about Trump, network blackout, total. That extends to late night. It extends to almost everything. You never see non-liberal journalists, authors, commentators, radio people. Have you seen this level of hate towards a candidate? Like, did Bush have it like this? Oh, no. Trump, second most in history.

Second most vilified president in history. You know who the first is? Abraham Lincoln. Right. Abraham Lincoln, by far and away, was the most hated president ever. But the South, and that's why he got killed. Booth was a racist Confederate, put a bull in the back of his head. Trump is second. There has been no president that's ever taken it like him. And then you add to that all of these bogus legal cases. And if you really look at them hard...

And the way to do that is to see what the prosecutors in the various districts, federal and state and local, have done in the past. Bragg never prosecuted anything like that. Never in his whole life. Neither did the woman Fannie Willis in Georgia. The special counsel exonerates Biden because the jury might think he's too old. Oh, yeah, we're just not going to prosecute him. Trump's four years younger. Come on.

So when you see it and how blatantly unfair it is, and you combine it with the absolute hatred of him in the media, in Hollywood, okay, then it has to have an effect on you. It has to. So I don't play that game. I'm not playing that game. Trump does something wrong, and I wrote the essay in here. You can read the essay. Here's what he did right. Here's what he did wrong. That's the way we do it here. That's the way we roll.

What comparisons do you see with him and Lincoln? If you're saying Lincoln's the most hated and he's the second. Right. What similarities do you see? Well, they both got assassinated and Trump just missed it. Right. But I mean, that is the effect, the cause and effect, right? Right. But what caused the effect of getting assassinated? Well, it was a slavery issue for Lincoln. How different is that from today? What is Trump doing today that is close to the slavery issue? It's more personal with Trump. See,

See, Lincoln was a good guy. Lincoln wasn't bombastic, and he was far and away the best president we've ever had. He's kind and compassionate. Trump's bombastic, all right? Trump's like Andrew Jackson, who, by the way, is Trump's favorite president. He's just out there. He's in your face. And he's not a member of the club. That's the big thing. So there's a club, and you're expected to be a member of the club, both conservatives and liberals, okay?

So when Trump first ran in 16, he's up against 12 Republicans who are all club members, every one of them. And he goes in and he throws them. Little Marco, Lion Ted, you remember? Rand Paul. Boring Jed. Okay.

Believe me, that does not engender good feelings in the club. Would he have won if he didn't do that? No. Okay, so he had to do it. He had to blow it up. He had to blow it up. But in doing so, he turned everybody against him. Every club establishment, politico in the country, he alienated. That's why today, Dick Cheney,

So she's voting for Kamala Harris. Yeah, which is insane to think about that, right? And, you know, in the movie Vice, you saw, did you see the movie Vice? Yeah. Did you like it? I don't even remember it that well. Yeah, so go back to it. So with Trump, so do you think, you know, first assassination attempt takes place? All right. Half an inch away from getting killed. He doesn't turn to look at that. We've heard this story many times. Second assassination attempt, golf, you know, guy.

Guy sees him secret service four or 500 yards away by four or 500 feet or yards away. And boom, he goes and says, Hey, I see the AK 47. They get the guy weird guy.

Third one, they're not qualifying as assassination attempt. It's the eyes thing, right? I don't know if you saw what happened with the event two days ago in Arizona where the people on the left, their eyes was getting, you know, did you hear about this or no? No. Yeah. So what caused mystery eye problem at Trump and Trump rally ophthalmologist weighs in. This is a couple of days ago that this takes place, but they're not saying this is a assassination attempt.

When you hear him talk about it, you know, he doesn't bring it up. He just kind of like, you know, goes back about his message. Kamala Harris debate. He brought it maybe a few seconds. You write books on presidents. You study them. This is your world, right? Okay. What do you think is, do you think it's the element of untouchable? Do you think God's on my side or do you think it's a part of,

you know, Hey, maybe even a part of, if they're going to take that, I'm going to be a martyr. I'm going to be remembered because the greatest presidents of all time, maybe had that element. Do you think he's that competitive of history to want to be there or no? No, I don't think that has anything to do with it. Trump's all about emotion. It's a hundred percent emotion on Trump. He could have waxed a Harris in that debate. If he only stepped back and not taken the bait about all your crowds leave before it's over all that nonsense. Um,

All Trump had to do was to tell the people real time what was happening in the debate. So when David Muir asked a softball questioner, Lindsay Davis, the two ABC correspondents, Trump should have gone to the audience. That was a softball. Do I get one? Are you going to give me a softball? That was a fact check on me. Are you going to fact check her on anything? She just said that I would sign an abortion ban. That's not true. You got to know it's not true. I've said it a hundred times. I wouldn't do that. Um,

If he had narrated the debate while it was happening and told the folks exactly what was going on, boom, he'd be on his way right now instead of it being neck and neck. Sephora stores are everywhere you are. So just pop in when you need a brown lip to match your 90s playlist, a confidence boost before your interview, or a last-minute gift for mom's birthday. Hey!

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Do you think the attempts are going to stop between now and the next 40-something days? No, he's got to be protected all over the place. I mean, my God. But not just him. I mean, Barack Obama was in serious danger. Kamala Harris, I don't think it's at the level of Trump. But believe me, the conservatives hate her.

They hate her. I don't hate Kamala Harris. I don't know her, but I don't hate her. I think she's dangerous for the country. If she wins, I think everybody's going to be negatively affected. And I mean everybody, because I don't think she can govern. I don't think she even understands the problems. That's why she doesn't do an interview with you or me. She doesn't even understand them.

So she memorizes these answers, spits them out, but she will never be in a dialogue like this in a million years. But go back to it. Elon Musk said no one's trying to assassinate Biden and Kamala, right? That's what Elon Musk tweeted. And then Cuomo came out and said, hey, you know, this is not an angle to take because it's causing even more. And I think Cuban commented on it. A few other guys come in. Maybe Cuban didn't comment on it. But the point I'm trying to make here is with Trump is,

you know, between now and end of election, November 5th, the way it's going, do you think the attempts are done or do you think it's a real effort? Try to take them out? No, it's not a conspiracy. It's far too many of that. There've been nine close assassination attempts in this country. Four were successful.

Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and JFK. Okay? So, and five didn't work. Teddy Roosevelt shot in the chest, and we write about all of this in Confining the President, but he had a speech in his jacket pocket, which deflected the bullet.

OK, Ford, one of the Manson family people tried to kill him with a pistol. Reagan that close to dying that close. All right. And there were Harry Truman. They were after him, but they they got them. And that was an assassination attempt was assassination plot is different. But nine times. And Trump leaves the league with the two.

But the one thing that is in common with all of those nine attempts is one thing. All of the would-be assassins or assassins were mentally ill.

Every one of them. Pre, pre doing it or afterwards they were qualified as mentally ill? While they were doing it. No, no, no, no. But that's a very important question I'm asking, Bill. I'm curious because this is your world. Were they qualified as mentally ill before they killed it or did the government and doctors come out afterwards and say you're mentally ill? It wasn't a doctor's diagnosis, but we traced them down in this book. You see how crazy they were.

Booth is crazy. John Wilkes Booth, totally out of his mind. Okay. And every one of them, Lee Harvey Oswald, off the wall. I mean, these were miscreants, but they couldn't blend into society. The guy in Butler in Pennsylvania and this guy out here in Florida, I mean, you look at their social media rantings, you look at who they are,

They're all mentally ill, everyone. And here's the real danger. There's millions of them running around America. Millions of them. We don't have any containment on the mentally ill in this country. I don't think any country does. Because a lot of these people are schizophrenic. You don't know they're mentally ill. You know they're a little strange. But you don't know how long they're going to take it. You can't incarcerate them on a maybe.

But there's millions of mentally ill people around. And that's why we have a dangerous country. So based on that, the percentage is 9% of presidents get killed. Okay. And roughly 20% of presidents have an assassination attempt on them. Something like that. Yeah. But I say to everybody, this should not be surprising. And Americans always want to blame somebody. We lead the league in the world. We always want to blame.

So if your team loses, I'm blaming the quarterback or the coach. It's a blame society. Here, it's much more complicated than that. We live in a dangerous country in America. And the reason we do is history.

We had to forge our freedom by a war. We pushed west by another war with Native Americans, which I read about in Killing Crazy Horse. We had to have guns to protect ourselves because the federal government couldn't protect us and still today cannot protect us. OK, so we the people and Jefferson and Madison knew that.

We have to have self-protection because the government can't protect 330 million people. The average response to a 911 call in New York City is now 15 minutes. I mean, you're dead eight times. So all of this, we're going to ban the guns and keep them on. You have to protect yourself as best you can. And the Secret Service wasn't doing that with Trump.

And boy, that harrowing testimony with that woman, the head of the secret service went in front of Congress. That was embarrassing. Oh, I mean, that was, that was hard. Well, let me, let me ask this question. So, um, remember that one clip you did three years ago, the fairness doctrine. I want to come back to that. I don't want to go there first. I'm going to come back to it. But the, uh, uh, the, uh, um, or the Smith month act, right. Uh,

that if you want to pull it up, Rob, just to read it for the viewer on what this was when it first came out, the U.S. Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948, right?

popularly known as Smith-Mundt Act, was introduced by Congressman Carl E. Mundt, 1945, seven years ago, subsequently passed by 80 Congress. The act was developed to regulate broadcasting of programs for foreign audiences produced under the guidance of the State Department, and it prohibited domestic dissemination of materials produced by such programs as one of its provisions,

And this led to VOA, right? Voice of America. And I think if you can go to the story where talks about the AP News one, because they said Obama's the one that repealed it in 2012 or 2013. And you should have the links. I think you texted it to me, Rob. If you have it somewhere there, I'll text it to you as well. I want to know what you're going to say with this, because I'm trying to find out where things flipped. Okay. So part of this, my understanding, correct me, this is your world. My understanding is that

You know, right there, Obama, so AP News says he did not sign a law allowing propaganda in the U.S., right? The claim of this was that former President Barack Obama signed a law in 2012 allowing government propaganda in the U.S. and making it perfectly legal for the media to purposely lie to the American people. AP's assessment is false. In 2013, Obama signed legislation that changed the U.S. information and educational exchange of active population

of 1948, also known as the Smith-Montt Act, the amendment made it possible for some materials created by the agency for global media, the nation's foreign broadcasting agency, to be disseminated in the U.S., which that's not necessarily false. It's a not telling the whole story. Was this a...

Big change in media to confuse us where the government can kind of now go out there and tell us, hey, here's what's really going on. But we don't know the whole news. Government's given us the news. Well, it's a breakdown. You know, the government has a right to, if it's funding a media organization like Voice of America, you can say, you know, we're going to do propaganda here.

We're going to pipe ourselves into Radio Marti and tell the Cubans they're getting hosed. They have a right to do that. PBS and NPR, farcely pundit by the government. They have the right to do that? Yeah, because it's a federal government. But why do we put it in 48 to not let them do that? I don't know why they passed that dopey bill. It's probably because they had no idea the impact of television at that point. They didn't know because it was just coming in.

but I'm just telling you what constitutionally

the government has a right to do. The government owns and pays for the media company. It could tell a media company what to do. How much of a negative impact has VOA have on American people? I don't know. I have to answer that. Are you a fan or you think it's a good thing? Look, the more messaging you can get out to people in the world who are oppressed and tell them what's really going on because you don't get information in China and Russia and Cuba, the better.

But it's the government doing it. It's not like... It's the government. Who else? I lived in Iran. We have two news stations. The government was telling us how, you know, death upon America. America is the evil empire. It's the worst place in the history of mankind. And they still do that to this day. Well, we're doing that, though. The difference is for us, like...

So let me go to the next one, which you celebrated. And you talked about how big of an impact it was. Rob, if you can go to the Fairness Doctrine. Okay, the Fairness Doctrine. This is 1949, right? I think it's FCC.

Fairness doctrine enforced by the Federal Communication Council was rooted in the media world. 49 lawmakers became concerned that the monopoly audience control of the three main networks, NBC, ABC, CBS, could misuse their broadcast licenses to set a biased public agenda. So they came up with this that you had to show both sides, right? And then later on, I think it's in 87 that you talk about, I think it is in 87 that this takes place.

And this is where you said, we didn't know that Walter Cronkite was a liberal. He kept it to himself, but he was able to be balanced about it. And then when Dan Rather replaced him, right? Was this a bad idea for us to get rid of this in 87? It was inevitable. Why is that? Because you can't police all the media. It's impossible. Who could do that? So once the media started to make a lot of money,

Now, remember, when CBS and ABC and NBC started, they weren't in business to make money. They weren't making much money. But once talk radio started and the media companies started making big money, then the media companies basically said, we're going to do what we want.

And you're not going to impede. And the federal courts basically upheld the freedom of expression, freedom of press. So it was impossible to contain it. It just got out of control. And you couldn't today because social media today is far more powerful than corporate media.

See, people don't know that. That's what I'm trying to get across to Trump. You're going into the obsolete areas with your message. It's not where you should be. Trump goes to all podcasts. Trump is a guy that does social media better than anybody else. He feels much more comfortable.

I don't know about that bill. I don't know how much of it you follow. I know him. No, no. I get what you're saying. I can tell you what he's done. He's done. He did Logan Paul. They crushed it. He did Lex Friedman, crushed it. He did Aiden Ross, which is a game. I know that. I'm talking about his overall communicative strategy is still based on legacy media. And it's a mistake.

You think that the only way he's getting away with it is that Harris doesn't have an overall media strategy. It's like she just doesn't want to talk about it. And and so now it's impossible because social media has basically driven it to an extent where it's hurting the American people. Who do you think this helped and hurt the most?

Who did this help? Who did this hurt? The politicians back then, Eisenhower had no problem because Eisenhower was a war hero. He came in 50s, was very, very calm. Eisenhower did a decent job as a bureaucrat. OK, then JFK was Camelot and the press was in the bag for him. I opened the JFK chapter in confronting the presidents with him on a sailboat with Ben Bradley.

The editor of the Washington Post. Little canopies, you know, just the stuff that I never do. All right. And the Kennedys had every press in his pocket, which infuriated Nixon. LBJ kind of continued that legacy. LBJ was one of the top five most corrupt presidents we've ever had. Top five? Horrible. You're being friendly. Horrible. But the press wouldn't go near it.

It all blew up during the Vietnam War. Then everything changed because the establishment didn't know how to handle the dissenters. Yeah. And that's where Walter Cronkite then came in as nobody knew about Walter until Vietnam. Then Walter said, hey, this is not going well. And that changed everything. Now, I worked for Peter Jennings and I was close to Peter Jennings.

And I was on World News Tonight more than 100 times in the two years that I worked at that organization. Jennings is a liberal Canadian, but he would not allow bias in his presentations. He would not allow. I saw it. No shit. Because the APs of his show would throw in his stuff in all the time. All this crazy stuff. And Jennings goes...

Boom, take it out. I talked to him about it. I said, you know, I people think that he goes, I have my social opinions, but we're going to do straight. And I work for Dan Rather. He was not that way. Rather would shade it left. And all of us knew it.

And we're going, I don't know, because we had to submit our scripts as correspondents to an editing process. And we'd come back, take stuff out. And I go, wait, that's, you know, Jennings never did that. And one time a guy tried it and I called him. I said, hey, Peter, I want you to look at my script. They're trying to take this out. It's absolutely 100% true. He goes, not coming out. He and Mike Wallace tried.

They forged my repertorial outlook. So is there anything that can be done to go back to Wallace and a Jennings or is it, is the rabbits already? It's over. Are you, and it's more because of social side, not even the new side. Cause social and main corporations, they don't want those people anymore because Wallace and Jennings, what they had in common because it's boring. No, they wouldn't do what they were told.

Rune Arledge couldn't control Peter Jennings, who was running CBS when 60 Minutes rose. But nobody can control Wallace. So corporations don't want those kind of guys. They want—this is what you say—

And here's the check. And believe me, they'll say it for the money. Is there anybody today that's doing it that's not taking a check and that's not doing it for the money? Who would you put at the Jennings and Wallace level today? You know, you might find this interesting. Sean Hannity doesn't take any crap. He's wealthy enough and successful enough that if you go into Hannity and you say, you say this, Hannity will go blank you.

And see, people think that that's the opposite with Hattie. But when Fox got in trouble for the voting machine thing, you didn't see Hattie attached to that. Why not? Because he wouldn't do it. Many of them were taking orders. Oh, this is going to alienate our base. You can't say this. Hattie never did that.

Interesting. Did you ever have, did you ever meet Cronkite? Yeah. Oh yeah. I met him. Was there a relationship? Yeah. He hated my guts. Oh, did he really? Oh God, I was a cocky,

Guy, it was totally opposite from him. Are you kidding? Like, did you have a private interaction where he called you out or no? Was it just kind of like, hey, he was always respectful. None of those old guys, Andy Rooney or Cronkite or Severide or any of those guys. I didn't work with them. I came in with Rather, but I run into them.

They thought I was like, who is this Damon the Omian Five? Because I was really cocky, you know, and I guess I still am, but not to the extent that I was. How about Rush? Anything with Rush or no? No, I never knew him. He called me Ted Baxter on his radio program because he didn't, I guess, have much respect for my intellect. Yeah.

But I kind of took it as a compliment that Mary Tyler Moore is one of my favorite shows, classic. And if I can be a part of that in any way, I'm fine with it. So Limbaugh would go on and go, Ted Baxter on Fox News. And that was me. And the reason he did that is because I didn't uphold the conservative line all the time. I didn't. And he didn't like that. He wanted...

I wasn't. So I became Ted Baxter. I think Ted Knight had to leave the country after that happened. Didn't Jon Stewart once call you the voice of reason at Fox News or something like that, right? You and Jon had a good relationship. You know, I kind of tune out Stewart now. He calls me so many names that I can't even keep track of them. Good or bad? Uh, I have a very good relationship with Stewart. Um,

You guys would do the debates. That was fantastic. Thank you. And then he would stand up taller and taller and taller. That was not bad. You guys were great. And I did his podcast three or four weeks ago, and like 20 million people watched it. Because here we have a dynamic that's very rare in America. Stuart is a true believer, a true believer on the left. He's a true liberal man. Yeah. Okay? And he's going to go to the grave that way. But he doesn't hate the opposition. Right.

OK, so he can invite me on or vice versa. And we have some laughs about what we're talking about. But the audience still gets where he's coming from and where I'm coming from. That is the perfect storm.

in the media. And that's why Stuart and I work together, because he doesn't have any malice at all. I can mock him. He can mock me. And I'm fine with it. Other people get defensive and they get this, they get that. And he's not a cheap shot artist. He will with his 16 writers. I have no writers. I said, one time I said to him on his own show, I said, number one,

All the studio audience you bust in from Havana. I just want everybody to know that they're all communists. And let me tell you, you got 16 writers. I don't have any. And I'm kicking your butt tonight. You know, that kind of stuff is his goal. And he rolls with it. Yeah. See, that's the magic there. A question on you saying fighting corruption, right? You know, one of the things like, you know, you're fighting corruption. I try. Okay. What, what,

You said establishment earlier. There are certain people that don't think there's such a thing as an anti-establishment, an establishment. What were you concerned with with the biggest corruption we have in America today? I think the media is hurting the country in a profound way by presenting the, quote, news in an ideological way. And I think the debate was the best example of that.

where you had two ABC correspondents locked and loaded on Trump, which they should have been, by the way, and they give Kamala Harris a complete pass. I mean, that's dangerous. And then everybody, oh, Kamala Harris won the debate. Nobody won the debate, by the way, because none of them put forth a cogent argument

vision to help the folks in the future. Trump was far too defensive. And I feel his pain because when people attack me unfairly, I have a tendency to do that too.

And when you do that, it's emotion takes over and your rational mind gets clouded. So no, I know what's happening. But that was so obvious. And I was surprised by Muir. I was surprised by him. I don't know him. I've never met him. But he doesn't come across to me as an ideologue, Muir. The other one, Lindsay Davis, does. You can see she's an ardent liberal. And there's nothing wrong with that. But if you're going to have an ardent liberal, then you should counter it with a traditional person. I don't think ABC has one.

And their whole staff, I don't think they have a traditional analyst. If they do, I don't know who that person is. But Muir surprised me a little bit. I thought Muir would be a little bit more measured and a little bit fairer in the way he presented his stuff. Again, fact-checking Trump is fine, but not fact-checking the opponent really is biased.

Trump, should he do a third debate? I'd do a second debate. I don't count the first debate as... Biden. Yeah. I would do it. I said on my broadcast. And again, I want everybody to go to BillOReilly.com, watch the notes, spin news. And we're on, our podcast is on Apple Plus, Spotify, all of that. Okay. So I suggested that Donald Trump do a second debate, but I don't think either candidate wants that now.

And the reason I gave was historically based, as almost all of my analysis is. In 1984, Reagan debated Mondale. He got murdered the first debate. And I ran a clip where he looked befuddled and he looked old and everybody went wild. Reagan's past, he's too old, he can't do it. So he debates a second time and he wipes Mondale out. He had whole new people around him, including Roger Ailes, all new people.

Reagan came in, couple of funny lines. I'm not going to hold my opponent's age and inexperience against him. You know, boom, boom, boom. And then a week later, because that's how late the debate was, Reagan wins in a landslide. So I said, based on history, because I believe that Trump has a much stronger policy advantage over Trump.

Harris Biden. There's a four-year track record. That's all he has to say, yeah. And plus, the vision of open borders, of massive federal spending, of woke across the board, that's not going to win you an election. This is going to be another plebiscite against whether you want, like or not, Donald Trump. And that's not what it should be. It's who's got the best policies. Two more questions before we wrap up. Okay.

Musk, okay. Elon Musk. Elon Musk. Do you think if laws were different, where a person's not born here, but you put a qualification for you've lived here 35 years and XYZ where you can run for office here, do you think Elon Musk would make a good president? I don't know him. I met him once at a Hollywood party for about 10 seconds. I can't really answer that objectively. I mean, look, the guy's a genius.

And sometimes that can translate into very good policy. But other times it doesn't. So I'd have to sit down with Mr. Musk and do an interview with him, which I would like to do, and see what he's got.

Do you think the idea of allowing somebody who wasn't born here run for president is a good idea? Yes. Why is that? We're a nation of immigrants. That's a cliche, but it's absolutely true. You got brilliant people that can help us out. There should be a way for them to. How would you do it?

You'd have to, Congress would have to pass a law. No, no, but how would you do it? Meaning for it not to allow somebody new that just comes into states and boom, they run in, you know, say China sent somebody or Iran sent somebody or Russia sent somebody. No, you'd have to go through the process. You'd have to be a legalized citizen. You'd have to be vetted.

You'd have to convince a party to nominate you, which is, and you have to have a lot of money. All those things are very complicated. But I don't think there should be a ban on foreigners running for higher office. You think that'll happen next 30 years? You know, I mean, we're getting up there now where,

the foreign born population of USA is going to have a lot of say in the future. Absolutely. So there's a high likelihood that one day if Musk wanted to run, he could. It's, it's, I would say it's likely. Got it. Question. You said LBJ is a top five, most corrupt president of all time. Yeah. Who's ahead of him? Who's ahead of him? Um, Warren Harding.

Why? Ridiculous. You have to read the chapter on Warren. Warren had no interest in governing this country whatsoever. He had all his friends in there. All they're doing is playing cards, getting drunk, and he's giving out patronage jobs. Martin Van Buren. Oh, my God. Some of the earlier presidents, they just made deal after deal after deal. A guy named Benjamin Harrison, who was between Grover Cleveland's two. Cleveland was a populist. He was interested in the folks. Harrison sold out.

It's just sold out to the big corporations. And it wasn't until Theodore Roosevelt became president that anybody took on these robber barons who were just the worst. They were just literally killing American workers.

So all of those people, and then there were a lot, you know, Jackson was corrupt in the way he dealt with Native Americans. John Tyler was just a virulent slaver, a traitor to this country. Oh, he wasn't elected. He took over for William Henry Harrison, Tippy Canoe and Tyler too. Well, Tyler was just as corrupt as he could get.

Andrew Johnson, the guy who took over for Lincoln after Lincoln was killed. What he did, Lincoln just set the table for equality. It wasn't going to happen for decades, but Johnson tried to dissemble the whole thing.

And so, you know, we've had our share of not goods. Under George Washington with mom, was there anything deeper there? Or was it like what led to that? It's one of the greatest history stories you have never heard of. So I'll just give you a primer because I want everybody to read Confining Present. We open with this. Opening line in this book is George Washington is mad at his mom. So Washington is a teenager. His father dies.

Instead of leaving the estate in Virginia to his wife, Washington's mother, he leaves it to George. George is 16.

George is in charge now of the estate and doling out the money that the estate makes. George has no interest in this at all. George is a soldier, an adventurer, goes off to the French and Indian War, gets shot at five times, bullet holes in his stuff, becomes a militia commander in Virginia. He doesn't care about the plantation. So other people run it. The mom got paid by the plantation. She didn't think she was getting enough money.

So she writes letters to the local Virginia papers saying, my son Georgie is starving me to death. And Washington's fighting a revolutionary war now. He drives him nuts. Crazy. And so the enmity was so high, Washington did not go to her funeral and wouldn't even pay for the headstone. Did not go to her funeral? Yep.

And I wrote that story in there to show everybody that in the Teddy Roosevelt, Alice Roosevelt, his oldest daughter, that's hysterical to show everybody that these are human beings. Every family has problems. So did they. But, but George, why does Mary ball, Washington historical record shows that she shared a complex and oftentimes strained relationship with

With her son. Yeah, I guess if your son doesn't show up to your funeral. I'd say that's pretty accurate. Well, Bill, appreciate you for coming out. Guys, we're going to put the link below to Bill's book, Go Order It, Confronting the President.

I know we've been wanting to do this. I'm glad we finally made it work. And it was this was more for me. I learned a lot today about the history of this, especially with somebody that's been in the space and made it to the top number one spot for nearly 20 years. And now we learned about a new record, 19th number one New York Times bestseller, Bill Hickok.

I'll give you the final words you want to give to the audience before we wrap up. Well, I agreed to do Patrick's podcast and I don't do a lot of traveling now because I just can't. I mean, I'm just, you know, running three corporations myself again, but I wanted to reach an audience that I may not reach because I think that there are a lot of people now in social media and it's far too much garbage on social media, defamation, hatred, far too much.

But when we researched you, and believe me, Patrick, we researched you.

It came back like you're just a regular guy who wants to get information and interesting things out to your millions of followers. I said, this is great. That's what I want. So we're simpatico. Here I am down in Fort Lauderdale. I got to go back at five in the morning to New York tomorrow. But it was worth it. I had a good time. Thank you for inviting me. I appreciate you for coming out. Take care, everybody. Bye-bye, bye-bye.

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