- A conversation with Bill O'Reilly I've been wanting to have for years, this week on "Firing Line."

- The media, of course, despises Donald Trump, and will paint him as a loser if they can.

- [Margaret] Opinionated and confrontational- - Don't denigrate his service, or I'll boot you right off the set!

- [Margaret] Bill O'Reilly joined Fox News in 1996, and "The O'Reilly Factor" became the most watched cable news program in the country for 16 years.

- Hi, I'm Bill O'Reilly.

Thanks for watching us tonight.

- [Margaret] It was an essential stop for Republican politicians seeking to energize their base.

- Joining us now from his New York City headquarters is Donald Trump.

- But in 2017, following multiple allegations of sexual harassment and settlements totaling tens of millions of dollars, O'Reilly was ousted from Fox News.

I wanna go back to 2017.

I don't expect that you can comment on this.

- Well, I knew it was coming.

I knew you were inviting me here for a discussion, and that would be part of it.

- [Margaret] I spent four years as a political commentator on Fox News, often clashing with O'Reilly.

- So Hoover, what say you?

- You're gonna hate this, Bill.

What does Bill O'Reilly say to me now?

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] "Firing Line with Margaret Hoover" is made possible in part by Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, The Fairweather Foundation, and by the following.

Corporate funding is provided by Stephens Inc. (upbeat music) - Bill O'Reilly.

- That's me.

- I was your guest on your program, "The O'Reilly Factor," for four years from 2007 through 2011, and you now have a book out, and asked if you could come on my program, "Firing Line with Margaret Hoover."

This is quite a turn of the wheel.

- That's right, kind of step up for you.

There's no doubt about it.

- We have a lot of ground to cover, but first "Confronting the Presidents," this book is really a series of vignettes about every single president, except the last two, whose legacies have not yet been finalized.

Do you conclude that character makes the president?

- No.

- Why not?

- You can be a good president and be a SOB, as some of them were.

So what we try to do here, Margaret, and thanks for having me on the program, we try to lay out 45 men, all right, what they did well, what they did not do well, and let the reader decide overall whether they were good, or bad for the country.

I don't rank 'em, okay?

You rank 'em.

The reader ranks 'em.

I mean, I say certain people, like James Buchanan, is the worst, okay?

- Who's your next worst?

- Biden.

He's number two worst president.

And there are reasons for both, and we go into the reasons.

Now, my co-author doesn't agree with my assessment of Biden.

So both of us wrote essays on both Trump and Biden at the end, the fair way to do it, 'cause history isn't all in yet on these two people, and we wanna be fair.

I think it's a very fair book.

- Well, I gotta pick a bone with you, because, of course, I know a little bit about presidential history.

I went straight to the Herbert Hoover chapter.

- Right.

- Of course, I would go to the Hoover chapter, 'cause I knew a little bit about Herbert Hoover.

As you know, he's my great-grandfather.

I didn't know him.

- Right.

- But I've spent a lot of time reading, studying- - Sure.

- I have letters, all the things.

I have to be honest, the characterization of Hoover is, Bill, one of the laziest reduxes of just the normal hit on Hoover that I've really ever read.

I mean, it basically is the redux of the FDR line, like the American president who didn't care, and did nothing during the Depression, and then it leaves out all the context.

Like it leaves out- - Well- - [Margaret] What he did during the presidency, even though it says he didn't do anything- - Let me defend.

- Okay.

- All right, so Herbert Hoover was a brilliant man, but we don't have time, in a book like this, it runs more than 400 pages, and it's 45 people, to get into the minutiae of Herbert Hoover, or any of the others, okay?

So we're giving you broad strokes.

Now, the reason he became president is because he performed brilliantly in Europe, as you know, during World War I, bringing relief to not only Americans over there in the theater of war, but also Europeans.

And then he came back, and he performs okay as Secretary of Commerce, and particularly in the Mississippi River flooding.

So we gave your great-grandfather two big props.

- There were basic facts that were wrong, like his major in college, his age- - That's Dugard, then.

- I mean, like I wondered if there was a fact checker.

- There should've been.

I mean- - Okay, okay- - After the interview, I will be happy to take down what facts are wrong.

But here's what your great-grandfather, here's the bottom line on him.

So when he became president, the country was roaring, and it was doing really well, and then it falls off the cliff right into the Great Depression.

- Six months into his presidency- - Right.

So people then were looking for leadership.

"How do we get out of this?"

And your great-grandfather said, "Let the market dictate.

"The market will get us out of it."

He was a free marketeer, didn't want a big government intrusion.

- You're so wrong- - And it didn't work.

- The characterization is wrong.

He actually intervened.

He was criticized for being more of an interventionist than any president before him.

He created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation.

He lowered taxes.

He asked businesses to keep wages low.

He interfered with how businesses wanted to pay people.

What I'm getting at is it's a quick caricature that is sort of a redux of what everybody thinks they know about Hoover, but is wrong, and there's so much more about it.

It was like you had an opportunity to like open people's eyes to the truth about Hoover, rather than like the mainstream narrative that's wrong, and frankly, was propagated by FDR, because he needed to keep blaming Hoover for his bad economy.

- And I'm not gonna quibble with that.

You know more about your great-grandfather than I do.

But I will tell you, as a historian, and there's no ideology in this book at all, as a historian, FDR was a great president.

I didn't particularly like him as a guy.

- Mm-hmm.

- But he was a great president, and your great-grandfather didn't rise to the occasion in the opinion of Dugard and me- - The authors.

- Right.

- I wanna move on.

This weekend, we saw the second assassination attempt of Donald Trump in just two months.

You wrote in 2015 about the trauma that Reagan endured after his 19, surviving- - That's in "Killing Reagan."

Sure, right.

- Yeah.

It's hard for me not to imagine, but you know him, that he must be dealing with some kind of serious trauma after that July assassination attempt that grazed his ear- - Sure, absolutely.

- On live television, and how must that be affecting his behavior?

- But he isn't much different if you watch his public appearances before and after.

But I think more effective on Donald Trump were the trials.

I think that attracted him, that affected him more than the shootings, because he firmly believes, and there is evidence to back it up, that this is all political, and they tried to ruin him and his family by using the justice system.

That's what he believes, and the anger that a person holds in when they're confronted with that is enormous.

And so, I think you're seeing some of that anger come out in his campaigning more than two nuts trying to take him out.

Yeah, that affects you.

But the calculated, "I'm gonna use the justice system to destroy you"- - Have you talked to him about the cases?

- He directly blames Biden for it.

- But have you talked to him about how the cases have affected him personally?

- No, he doesn't respond to that- - Why do you speculate that?

- Trump will never show weakness to anybody, ever.

He doesn't do that.

- Yeah.

- So if I said, "Gee, you know, how you feeling?

"Is it affecting you?"

He'd just make fun of me- - Bluster, yeah, yeah.

You mentioned that you were disappointed in Donald Trump's debate performance and his inability to stay on message.

Serious question, if Vice President Kamala Harris is able to goad him in front of the American public with the most asinine taunts, how is he able to stand up to adversaries of this country who are capable of doing the same thing?

- Well, he did it for four years.

- Well, but did he?

We don't know.

I mean, there's a lot of- - We know.

- We don't know that he stood up to Putin.

We know for a fact he often didn't.

- Well- - He responded to flattery from Putin.

He responded to flattery from Kim.

He responded flattery- - Let's go back- - [Margaret] From Duterte.

- Let's go back to history, all right?

And we'll, the psychoanalysis you can do on another PBS show.

History shows that we had a fairly calm overseas situation when he was president, all right?

So he didn't lash out.

He didn't make any huge mistakes.

He wiped out ISIS, which, I think, is his number one accomplishment.

So I'm not buying the fact that if Vice President Harris can goad him into crowd size discussions, which is ridiculous, okay, that Trump can't handle Putin.

I'm not buying that.

- PBS viewers know that you and I go way back.

As I mentioned at the top, from 2007 to 2012, I appeared as a political commentator on Fox News, mostly because I was invited on your program every week.

I have gone to the archives to find a clip from when I had a book and you interviewed me in 2011.

Take a look at this.

- There's Hoover.

She's gonna save it, right?

You're gonna save it, right- - We're gonna save the Republican Party by connecting to the next generation.

- Forgive me if I am skeptical, because I don't think based upon my reporting for the last two years that Tea Party people are gonna give at all in any of this debate, and if they don't, President Obama will win reelection.

- Well, what my book is about is about connecting to the next generation.

The next generation- - There's a lot of young Tea Party people.

- No, they're not, actually.

They're 55 and older.

That's the majority demographic.

The next generation is 30 and under.

They voted two-to-one for Barack Obama, they are 80 million strong, and their partisan identification solidifies after three presidential election cycles.

They voted for John Kerry, they voted for Barack Obama.

If we don't make inroads in the next 16 months- - These are general voters- - We're gonna lose the next generation.

- These are, you're talking.

Very good.

- How do you look back on that time?

- You know, it's all a blur to me.

- To reflect?

- I did more than 20 years over at Fox, and I've been doing national analysis now for 27 years.

What I always try to do is be consistent.

You know, I always challenge.

You know me, I'm annoying, and you, the reason I liked you as a guest was you stood up to it, and you came right back, and said, "Okay, no, no, the Tea Party this, "Tea Party that."

But I was right about my prediction of Obama winning, and I knew that, because I interviewed him three times, and he is one smart guy, and he comes off in "Confronting the Presidents" as a good president.

- Before you left Fox News, you were, because you mentioned Obama, one of the leading conservative media figures to push back against the birtherism conspiracy theory.

- That's right, it was bull.

- You were really clear and outspoken to the fringe voices on the right that President Obama was born in the United States.

You stood up to Donald Trump about it.

Why was that important to you?

- Because I'm in the truth business.

That's what I'm in.

I'm not an ideologue.

I don't, I'm, you know, people go, "Oh, conservative O'Reilly."

I'm a registered independent.

- You always have been.

- You know?

I vote both parties.

I want problem solvers, and I don't do that.

That's boring to me.

I mean, if you're gonna live in an ideological world, it's so boring, because you have to fit everything into this preconceived notion.

- I wanna ask you about the media landscape, because, you know, William F. Buckley, Jr., who initially hosted this program, also took great pride as a leader in the modern American conservative movement, which is different from how you see yourself, but in pushing back on the extremists on the right.

I mean, he was very proud to keep the Birchers from joining the mainstream part of the modern American conservative movement.

Of course, the Birchers are the John Birch Society, these extremists, who said, among other things, that President Eisenhower was a secret communist.

My observation of you when you were at Fox News, and also Roger Ailes, was that you two played a very similar role that Buckley played in keeping the conspiracy theorists, and the extremists, and the fringe out of the mainstream, and it seems to me that since you left, and since Roger left, there is a bit of a power vacuum in the conservative movement that has led to conspiracy theories that are nuts from Tucker Carlson to Alex Jones to Laura Loomer, and I wonder how you reflect on that.

- I don't, I don't- - You don't even think about it?

- No, it's a changing world, and what happens now is these corporations exist for one reason, to make money.

All of 'em, okay?

All of 'em.

This is what happened, all right?

The formula got to be it's easier for us to preach to the choir.

It's easier to do that, and then when Trump came on the scene in 2015, when he started to rattle around, then they had a hero, or a villain, an easy play.

And they said, and not just Fox, but NBC in particular, and CNN as well, "We're gonna love him and we're gonna hate him, "and therefore we're gonna galvanize the people "who are on either side, and they'll watch us, "and will make lots of money, "and we don't have to really bring in talented people "who know history and who know the journalism profession.

"We don't have to do that.

"All we have to do is bring in people "who are gonna toe the party line."

The party line is the corporate line.

That's what happened.

- But I want your take on the conspiracy theories on the right.

Who's there to stop 'em?

- Nobody, but it's- - And does that matter?

- I don't know if it matters at all.

Carlson put numbers on the board, okay- - Yes.

- By appealing to a certain audience- - Uh-huh.

- That wanted to hear what he had to say, because what he was saying was different.

It was different.

It wasn't a panel of five people, who you don't even know who they are blabbing about stuff.

It was him looking in the camera going, "I think this," and it was provocative.

There's an audience for that.

I don't think it's wrong.

I don't object to it.

He wasn't putting himself up as a journalist, and Hannity rightly says, "I'm not a journalist."

- I have to ask you about Rush Limbaugh, because- - Rush Limbaugh?

- Here's why.

Well, here's why.

In this program, this program was hosted by William F. Buckley, Jr. William F. Buckley, Jr.- - Yes.

- Had Rush Limbaugh on his program.

- Okay.

- Rush Limbaugh you called once the most successful radio broadcaster in history, and in 1992, he appeared on this program, and this is what he said.

Take a look.

- My success is not determined by who wins elections, and my success is not determined by what issues dominate.

My success is determined by how many people listen to my radio show, how many people watch the television show.

There's an entertainment characteristic here, and I am, I view myself as courageous.

I'll go against the tide.

I'll be willing to subject myself to dislike and hatred amongst 80% of the female population in the country if it takes that in order for me to be truthful and honest with people.

- How do you define success at this point in your career?

- What does that have to do with Rush Limbaugh?

- Rush Limbaugh many people look to on the conservative, in the conservative movement, the modern American conservative movement as being somebody who was laying out a principled vision for this next wave of conservatism, and he said right there to Buckley, the person who preceded him- - Yeah.

- As the galvanizing figure of the conservative movement, what he said to Buckley was, "It's not principles, it's eyeballs, it's ears."

- Well, I don't think, I didn't take it like that.

Look- - Well, I just wanna know how do you define your success- - I didn't know Limbaugh very well.

I met him once.

On his radio show, he called me Ted Baxter, okay?

Limbaugh was referring to me, your humble correspondent, as Ted Baxter.

- That's even a- - [Bill] Remember "The Mary Tyler Moore Show"- - That's a cultural reference that I am just not even available for.

- You don't know Ted?

- Who is Ted Baxter?

- Mary Tyler Moore?

- Okay, right, right- - The airheaded anchor?

- Okay, got it- - Come on, Hoover!

Come on, get in the game!

- Okay, so anyway, so Limbaugh didn't like you?

- No, no- - He didn't respect you?

- And I didn't really care whether he liked me, or not.

- Okay.

- But he was successful, and he believed, and I know this to be true, that his message was his success, that the message he put out was appealing to millions of Americans, and they listened to him, and that's how he became successful.

But he did it in an entertaining way.

You've got to be entertaining.

You've got to engage the people to get them interested, and that's what Limbaugh did.

- I wanna go back to 2017.

You're top-rated talent at Fox News.

You've just signed a four-year deal to renew your contract, and "The Times" publishes a report on settlements that you had reached with several women over harassment, misconduct claims totaling $13 million.

You're forced out of the network.

"The Times" later reveals an additional settlement worth $32 million.

I don't expect that you can comment on this.

- Well, I knew it was coming.

I knew you were inviting me here for a discussion, and that would be part of it.

But I'd be a fool to dredge that up, and- - I want you to know I wrote about that at the time.

- Yeah, I know what you wrote.

- Okay, good.

So just so the audience knows, I said, "Bill O'Reilly's firing is a welcome step by Fox News.

"But it is just a step.

"What is needed now is a rallying rejection "of sexist behavior towards women "from conservative media personalities and outlets.

"One of the core pillars "of the modern American conservative movement is "its emphasis on personal responsibility.

"Instead, Mr. O'Reilly blamed others, "embracing the victimization he so ridiculed "of the American left.

"He claimed his departure was no fault of his own, "but the cost of doing business "as a high-profile media personality.

"This is an outlandish claim.

"Likewise, Mr. Ailes, also unrelenting, "has never taken responsibility for the rotten culture "he created and sustained."

How do you respond?

- I don't.

- Okay.

- You don't know anything about it, so you can write whatever you want.

- Right.

- It's kind of like the people- - I do know about the culture.

I do know about the culture that I experienced there, and that's what I could write about, and that's what I did have the ability to write about- - Okay, but you were on my program for four years.

You had no problem, and that's what you know about me.

You don't know anything else about me.

So you write whatever you want.

- I'm not- - You know zero about this.

- Well, I just wanted you to be able to respond to what I wrote.

Here's what my, actually, what my next question is.

Are you familiar with the Ending Forced Arbitration, Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act of 2021?

This is a law that was passed and signed by the president that empowers individuals who experience sexual harassment, or assault in the workplace to opt for litigation instead of being bound to settle through private arbitration.

- I don't care about any of that.

What I care about is due process, and you apparently don't.

- Well, hold, no, no, no, hold on.

No, no, no, you came here on this program, and I'm asking you questions, and you're answering them.

This is due process.

- No, no, you read a diatribe that you wrote.

You wrote it knowing- - Well, I wanted to be fair to you- - Nothing about it.

You know nothing about it, nothing, and yet, you wrote this, and you present it to me.

I knew you were gonna do this, all right?

And I'm not afraid to (mumbles) it, but I will tell you this.

Due process is very important in this country.

- I totally agree with that- - Okay- - And here's what I wanna- - So next time, don't write some inflammatory essay trying to be a virtue signaler, unless you know what the hell you're talking about.

- I know about the culture that I experienced- - You don't know anything about me, other than the four years you were on my program, which went swimmingly for you.

- Gretchen Carlson helped spearhead that bill.

- All right, that's enough.

I'm not gonna get into this anymore.

Got anything else on the book, or anything else on history?

That's it.

- I wanna ask you about culture, and what you think as a culture warrior, 'cause Gretchen and I were culture warriors on your program, and I wanna ask you what you think, this is a sincere question, what you think it takes to change culture?

Because it's easy to change laws in this country, but it's actually not easy to change culture.

This is from an article posted on August 22nd about you and your success.

It was called "Talkers."

- Yes.

- "Since leaving his lofty media perch on Fox News Channel "in 2017, news/talk media commentator Bill O'Reilly "has been flourishing as an author, an entrepreneur, "and independent talk media personality.

"He continues to chart topping bestseller books," and it goes on, and it talks about how your platform houses a variety of promising programs, properties, and projects.

The question is why will our culture give you the ability to remake yourself, but the women who have settled with you will never be employed in television news- - I have no idea about that at all.

You got anything else?

Apparently you don't.

So you have plenty in the can, you run what you wanna run- - Why are you unwilling to talk about it?

- You know, when you're gonna do an ambush interview- - This isn't an ambush interview.

- Oh, come on, stop- - This isn't- - I knew you were gonna do this.

- Well, then it's not an ambush at all.

- No- - And also we talked about- - It's an ambush because you're putting up things that I can't possibly comment, and you know it.

- You can't- - And you know it.

- Of course you can comment about- - No, I can't- - What you think about this new law.

You absolutely have nothing to say back- - I have nothing - About the women, about our culture- - Oh, stop- - And how women don't have the same opportunity that you have for a second chance?

- Look, I don't know anything about what opportunities anybody has.

All I know is that I deliver an honest program, and I write books that people want to read, and that is the genesis of my success.

I wish everybody else has success too.

That's all.

- I just want you to know I learned from you to ask hard questions.

I know you would expect nothing less.

- The one thing you haven't- - These are honest and fair questions- - Learned, and you need to, is when you ask a question, have it fact-based, okay?

And if it isn't fact-based, tell the audience that upfront.

- The facts are that the settlements were real.

And so, I'm asking you- - I didn't make any settlements, all right?

- There are no settlements?

- What?

- Fox made settlements- - I don't know what Fox did- - And you made a settlement- - I don't know- - For $32 million.

- No idea what Fox News did.

- Okay, but you believe in the truth and honesty, and I know that that can't possibly be true.

- Well, you're wrong, and that's it.

- [Margaret] Okay.

- I had nothing to do with what Fox, how it ran its company, or anything else.

We parted, they fulfilled their obligation to me, and then I've gone on, and become a very big success in other venues.

That's it.

- It is my hope that we someday have a culture where our media companies will employ women who are settled with, and that the stench of that settlement doesn't follow them around and prevent them from being twice victimized, once through whatever caused the settlement, and twice for the ability to make money themselves in the marketplace and in the profession that they have chosen- - That's very nice, and I hope that happens.

- And I, once again, we agree.

I once again just wanna point out that I learned from you to ask the hard questions and not to be afraid, and I appreciate that you're willing to sit here, and have as much of the conversation as you can have.

Thank you.

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