Bill O’Reilly got into an epic argument with Charles Krauthammer Monday night over Donald Trump’s debate threat to jail Hillary Clinton. O’Reilly tried to dismiss it as a political favor or stunt to Trump’s base. But Krauthammer magnificently smacked down that argument and pointed out every facet of the hideousness of Trump’s threat.

In a discussion about Sunday night’s second presidential debate, Krauthammer called Trump’s threat to jail Clinton over her emails “his low point.”

Transcript excerpts via Media Matters (with my emphases):

KRAUTHAMMER: His low point was something that you seemed to brush off as something that would only concern the left. When you look at your opponent, and you threaten to put your opponent in jail, you have gone way over the line of political decency in this country. That’s not Hitler, Stalin. That’s banana republic.

[…] 

We have had 250 years of miraculous transfer of power, with—done peacefully and consensually. The one thing we don’t do is to put people in jail or to execute them. In other countries, your life can be on the line in elections, and we had a long history where you don’t even talk about that.

The breach of that etiquette, of talking about “I’m going to personally order a special prosecutor,”—incidentally, the law wouldn’t even allow that, but nonetheless, and then you would end up in jail, as if he’s pre-judging it, is something that should never be done and is another example of Trump lowering the level of our discourse.

O’REILLY: Alright, I disagree, because, number one, he has to play to a certain voter, alright? Who does believe that Mrs. Clinton got away with a national security violation that no one else would have gotten away with. Millions and millions of those voters out there. So, yeah, you’re right, he can’t put anybody in jail if he’s president. You can’t just sign executive orders and one is incarcerated, but certainly he would have the power to—his Justice Department would, to reopen an investigation that the government deemed to be not credible. He does have the power to do that, and I wasn’t offended by that so much in the sense that I knew it was a quip off the top of his head which, you know—and I think it helped him. I really believe that it helped him.

KRAUTHAMMER: But you always defend Trump, saying, “He said x, oh it perhaps was not the right thing to do, maybe it was constitutional […] But he was appealing, and it works for him.” Works for him is different from saying it’s the right thing to do.

[...]

O’REILLY: We want civility, and we on this program, as you well know, have stayed out of the swamp. But you can’t tell me that you thought that Donald Trump was saying, “If I’m elected, I’m going to incarcerate this woman like I would do in an inquisition.”

He was making a point that there would be a special prosecutor, the email thing would be reopened because, again, many, many millions of Americans feel that this was—the fix was in. That another president, Barack Obama, made sure that it wasn’t—an honest investigation did not take place. So, I hope we have a tradition in this country of honest investigations, and that’s how I took it.

But there was an investigation and whether or not O’Reilly liked it or the outcome, in this country we don’t keep investigating and prosecuting people until you get the result that satisfies the person in power. Hillary Clinton is not a Mafia don or a serial murderer.

Also, O’Reilly’s concern for “honest investigations” is not so honest. Take, for example, Dick Cheney. He was convicted in Malaysia of war crimes in 2012. Esquire reported on the trial:

The court heard how Abbas Abid, a 48-year-old engineer from Fallujah in Iraq had his fingernails removed by pliers; Ali Shalal was attached with bare electrical wires and electrocuted and hung from a wall; Moazzam Begg was beaten, hooded and put in solitary confinement, Jameelah was stripped and humiliated, and was used as a human shield whilst being transported by helicopter. The witnesses also detailed how they have residual injuries till today.

That’s not counting the 500,000 needless deaths caused by a war started on false pretenses.

But when O’Reilly interviewed Cheney in October, 2013, after he had already been convicted, and O’Reilly repeatedly pressed Cheney to explain, “What did we get out of Iraq for all that blood and treasure?” O’Reilly also repeatedly assured Cheney none of the deaths or torture would be held against him because “as Americans, we’re all in it together.”

O’REILLY: I mean, as Americans, we’re all in it together. We’re all in it together. It’s easy to finger point… I don’t want to do that.

[…] I don’t blame you – you, Vice President Cheney or President Bush for doing what you did. I’m not Monday morning quarterbacking.

So, out of love for his country, O’Reilly doesn’t want to “finger point” or “Monday morning quarterback” about 500,000 needless deaths and torture (not to mention the money spent on the war) but O’Reilly wants a redo of an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s handling of emails because he didn’t think the FBI investigation was honest.

Krauthammer is right about Trump having gone “way over the line of political decency.” But it’s not just Trump.

Watch O’Reilly’s indecency below, from the October 10, 2016 The O’Reilly Factor. Underneath, for comparison is his October 28, 2013 interview with convicted war criminal Cheney.