Bill O’Reilly either thinks his viewers are too stupid to notice the fast one he pulled on them when he insisted he never tells anyone how to vote or else he thinks they hate Democrats so much that smearing Hillary Clinton in the same editorial would look non-partisan to them.
On Friday, O’Reilly began his Talking Points commentary by feigning neutrality in the 2016 presidential race. By the way, if you watch the screen in the video, you can see that O’Reilly spontaneously added “yet” to the “Hillary Clinton has not been charged with anything” in his prepared remarks. (Transcript below via FoxNews.com):
O’REILLY: To be fair, Donald Trump has nothing to do with the Ku Klux Klan and Hillary Clinton has not been charged with anything - yet. Now, there is a tradition of nasty presidential campaigns in America going all the way with John Adams versus Thomas Jefferson. But in this hyper computer age where internet smears dominate the discourse, critical mass has now been reached. There’s no question both candidates despise each other. And that many Americans are angry about the state of their country. All of that negative emotion can be very destructive.
Talking Points has tried to cover the campaigns in a fair way and I believe we have succeeded. We do not cheap shot the candidates but we do not shy away from telling you the truth about them.
O’Reilly spent most of the rest of the commentary “telling the truth” about Clinton and ignoring the whoppers from Trump.
First, O’Reilly accused Clinton of embracing “far-left policies” that will damage the country:
O’REILLY: For those of you who watch this program, you know what we believe and that is that many far left policies are damaging the country. And that the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, is embracing some of those policies.
Next, O’Reilly suggested that Trump, though risky, is a better bet:
She’s not candid in her assessment of herself. And, she has veered sharply to the left. If Americans allow her to nominate a Supreme Court justice, things could get very intense for this country. On the other side, Donald Trump, who has been accessible to us, is not experienced in dealing with complicated geopolitical matters. If elected, he would have to rely heavily on advisors and we do not know whether Mr. Trump would listen to them or not. So, at this point, whoever is elected president will enter the office as the most unpopular victor in history.
Then O’Reilly all but called Clinton a baby killer:
Last week the Catholic diocese of Rockwell Center where I live on Long Island issued a very heartfelt letter on abortion. While the bishop did not take a political side, he clearly states that anyone, anyone who would support taking the life of a late term baby for anything other than the life of the mother is participating in a grave injustice.
The bishop and every other cleric in this country have a perfect right to state that position without being attacked or scorned. Hillary Clinton’s position is that any late term abortion should be acceptable if the mother’s health is in some kind of jeopardy. But as we all know health could mean anything which is why there are laws against late term abortion. And Mrs. Clinton’s position is extreme but has gone relatively unnoticed.
Having said all that, O’Reilly closed by insisting he was not telling anyone how to vote:
O’REILLY: Finally, we never endorse candidates here. We never tell you for whom to vote. We also understand that this campaign has been awful for the spirit of the nation. There’s no question about it.
What O’Reilly didn’t mention is how often he and his Fox News colleagues have helped to whitewash and/or promote Trump’s campaign of dishonesty, misogyny, malice and smears.
Watch O’Reilly "not endorse" Trump below, from the November 4, 2016 The O’Reilly Factor.
He condemned her as a liar, as a corrupt person, as part of a corrupt team with her husband, as someone who is imperious (that part isn’t completely off), as a baby killer and as someone operating a charity that O’Reilly thinks is corrupt, even though he doesn’t really know anything more about the charity than what far right wingers tell him about it. O’Reilly also condemned her based on right wing smears saying that she hadn’t accomplished anything in office as a Senator and other right wing smears saying that she was a bungler as Secretary of State. Given that hostility, it isn’t hard to understand why she has not been jumping up and down to appear on his show. Why would anyone volunteer to sit for an interview with someone who is bent on attacking you? (This is why Hannity is not believable for his feigned shock at the Obamas’ refusal to talk to him – why would or should they after he’s demonstrated so much visceral hatred for them?)
Contrast this with O’Reilly’s reaction to Donald Trump, as shown in Monday’s discussion. For Trump, he just thinks that some people don’t like some of Trump’s “past behavior” as a billionaire. And he thinks Trump’s okay because nobody has criminally prosecuted Trump over the years. He gives Trump a pass on his business record of repeated failures and bankruptcies, on his repeated nastiness towards women and non-Caucasians. O’Reilly even gives Trump a pass on his temperament problems, possibly because they aren’t far off from O’Reilly’s own temperament problems. Both men have a tendency to bully others, and both men respond to criticism by mounting vicious personal attacks on their critics rather than listening to what the other person is saying.
Given that presentation by O’Reilly, his preference is clear for his viewers. He gives Trump a pass and would like to see the man elected. He resents the Clintons and will be prepared to immediately attack a new President Clinton as early as she is named. For someone who is saying he is “above the fray”, this is a position that sounds a lot like he’s down in the muck of it. I’m honestly not sure which approach is nastier – Hannity’s outright open hatred of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton (something borne of Hannity’s attempts to out-nasty Rush Limbaugh) or O’Reilly’s feigned intellectual disapproval of them. For all of O’Reilly’s attempts to present himself as a learned “elder statesman”, his condemnations are built from the same straw house of smears that fire Hannity’s vicious insults.
I suppose O’Reilly sees himself as a kind of Brit Hume, a role I strongly believe he will play up in about a year if he retires as expected from full-time broadcasting at the end of his current contract. It is likely that he will retreat from doing a nightly show to making weekly appearances to opine about politics, again playing the role of the “older scholar with wisdom to share”. For Fox News viewers, this approach may work. For everyone else, it’s a bit harder to stomach.
In reality, O’Reilly has evolved from an open bully and loudmouth (as seen in his earlier incarnations on Inside Edition and other shows) to the angry professor persona he has adopted over the past decade or so. Rather than just shouting people off his show every time, he has fought to be perceived as having some moral high ground – an odd position for someone defending vicious right wing smears and the nastiness of people like Donald Trump. Brit Hume was never that much of the gutter fighter (his infamous 90s smackdown by Bill Clinton notwithstanding) that O’Reilly has relished being. Hume tends to feign moral and intellectual imperiousness, albeit without portfolio. O’Reilly on the other hand is the man you’d see expounding over a few beers at the pub and quickly exploding in anger at anyone who challenged him. One has to wonder what comes next in the Fox News declension of talking heads. First they had the biased pseudo-intellectuals. Then they had the bullies pretending to be pseudo-intellectuals. Is the next step to just have older bullies without the intellectual pretension?
“If Fox is so biased, why do they employ a straight-down-the-middle guy like Bill? Huh? Huh? You can’t answer that one, can ya!”
It’s amazing that he really expects us to believe that his biased talking points weren’t written with the intent to send an anti-Hillary message to those who watch his show. He has such unbelievable disrespect for his viewers and the truth.
And there you have it, folks, BOR, the epitome of the dishonest media that he supposedly despises.
At the core of your hypocrisy, you and Trump are milkshake sharing buds. You should recuse yourself from such bloviating.
Tossing in some mild criticism of Trump that he’s inexperienced and might go rogue – traits his fans love about him – in an editorial heavily weighted with criticism of Hillary isn’t fair nor is it balanced. Proving “no spin” is a lie.
I guess there’s no coincidence the example you pick as an example is the highly charged abortion issue. Bound to enrage your conservative base.
You’re okay with a bishop approving late term abortions if the life of the mother is risked. Yet, have kittens over Hillary’s similar policy position if the health of the mother is risked. You pretend health can mean anything yet in either instance the decision is based upon the advice of a board certified doctor.
So, what I’m hearing from Bill is if a mother, say, will end up paralyzed from the waist down giving birth that’s okay. Just as long as there’s no risk of death.