Bill O’Reilly entered “The No Chill Zone” last night where he and Colbert had a fun back-and-forth about the 2016 election and the rise of Donald Trump. But what was not discussed was more noteworthy than what was.
As surely everybody knows, Colbert’s original claim to fame, The Colbert Report, was a send up of The O’Reilly Factor with Colbert as Bill. Yet Colbert said nothing about meeting his comic role model and O’Reilly said nothing about meeting a guy who made a career out of lampooning him. Wouldn’t that discussion have been TV comedy gold?
One of O’Reilly’s saving graces, in my view, is his sense of humor and his ability to take a ribbing. He and Jon Stewart were very funny together and so were he and Colbert. So it seems to me that the comedy universe is just crying out for O’Reilly vs. Colbert/O’Reilly. But oh, well.
What wasn’t so funny was how O’Reilly suggested that Republicans’ failure to pass his own “Kate’s Law” was one of the primary reasons for the grassroots anger that has propelled Trump in the 2016 campaign. Anger over immigration, yes, and the culture war, as O’Reilly also noted. But I have never heard Kate’s Law even mentioned by a Trump supporter outside of O’Reilly’s presence.
But Raw Story caught something even more important that was missing from the Colbert interview: O’Reilly’s own role in the failure of Kate’s Law.
Bill O’Reilly said voters are angry at Republican lawmakers who essentially killed immigration reform over their stubborn insistence on punishing so-called “sanctuary cities” — which was basically his own idea.
[…]
O’Reilly pushed for Kate’s Law immediately following the 32-year-old Steinle’s slaying — but the Fox News host also repeatedly used his nightly prime time program to promote federal sanctions against San Francisco and other “sanctuary cities.”
Just five days after Steinle’s homicide, O’Reilly urged Congress to “crack down” on cities whose local laws don’t match federal immigration laws, and he continued pressing GOP lawmakers to punish local officials and take away their federal funding.
None of that takes away from the fun of these two wisecrackers going head-to-head with good humor.
Unfortunately, I could only find the first part of the interview online but it’s quite enjoyable on its own.
Watch it below, from the May 2 The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.