Interview Only: Presidential election recap with former Fox News Host Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly explains why Democrats lost!

Published Nov 30, 2024, 9:00 PM

Stephen A. Smith is a New York Times Bestselling Author, Executive Producer, host of ESPN's First Take, and co-host of NBA Countdown.

Former Fox News Conservative political commentator, journalist, and television host of “No Spin News,” Bill O’Reilly, joins the show to discuss the problems with the Democratic campaign and what a second Donald Trump term could look like. Stephen A. also answers viewer questions.

My next guest is a conservative political commentator. Actually, mister Independent, that's what I call him. He's a phenomenal media personality and a best selling author.

He also happens to be a friend of the program.

The man, the one I called the father of cable television himself, the one and only Bill O'Reilly, is on the show right now.

What's going on? Big Time? How are you, sir? How's everything? It's good to see you.

Yeah, i'd be the grandfather of cable. I think I'm getting old and doggy? Or is here? All right?

That's your words, not mine.

Now. I sent you Confronting the Presidents, my number one New York Times bestseller. I know you did one or two things. You either read it or you sold it on eBay, because which one was neither.

I haven't read it yet, but I have it by my bedside, and I'm getting.

Ready to read it. Bill O'Reilly. I keep telling you that I'm just a very busy man.

I understand that. Hey, listen, let's get right to your chapter on Grover Cleveland, because that's who Donald Trump is. He's Grover.

Now, well, listen, I'm going to do that. Let me just get right to it because I know you're a busy man. I really appreciate you making time out of your busy schedule.

Okay, the results are what they are. I am shocked that it was a romp.

I expected Trump to win, even though I voted for Kamala Harrison.

Want to record saying that, But it was a romp.

He won decisively the popular vote as well as the electoral college.

Why did that happen? Bill?

Because people are suffering economically, the working people, the non ideologues see the problem is that in America, we in the media think that everybody believes the way we do, and they don't. Most people aren't engaged in politics. They lean in once in a while, take a look, but they're not living at twenty four hours a day. They'll do sports and you know that. I mean, they'll have golf for their hobbies or whatever. Maybe, And I believe, and I think it'll bear out on exit polling that most Americans who voted against Kamala Harris really voted against President Biden because under Biden, who's the second worst president in our country's history, purchasing power for workers declined dramatically almost nine percent in three and a half years. So people are looking around going, I don't have any money. I got humongous insurance, fuel and food bills, and four years ago I wasn't in the circumstances. I'm going to go back to Trump, no matter what they say about them. And that's what I think happened.

I get where you're coming from with that.

But we just saw articles, at least as recently as a week ago, where they were saying the economy is in good shape, inflation is down. What you've been hearing is not necessarily the truth. I mean, was that all smoking mirrors? Is that a smoke?

No, But it doesn't matter. The damage is still in play. When inflation comes down, it doesn't mean prices come down. It means that inflation doesn't grow as much. So the American worker, the average guy in gal is paying twenty percent more for the essentials alive and that has not moved. And Trump promised to move it down by taking out the regulations of Bide administration put on the fossil fuel industry, thereby driving costs for transportation, gas and oil down, and that resonated among workers. Trump had a plant. What was Kamala Harris's economic plant? Zero because she didn't have a plan for anything, and she was not a good candidate.

And when you say she wasn't a good candidate, what I look at, Bill, is this. The economy obviously was one issue. Immigration had to be another. Crime in the streets of America definitely had to be another. I think woke and cancel culture played.

A role as well.

But possibly the other thing that may come to mind building is that she didn't have to you know, she didn't go through a primary. Obviously, Joe Biden escaped the primary. He ultimately bowed out after his poorest performance. On June twenty seventh, she was elevated to be in the Democratic nominee without competition.

Those are the kind of things that I was hearing.

Leading up to the election. What say you to all of that? What role did that play in her demidse.

Butterers didn't care about that one bit. They didn't care about it. So Kamala Harris made one enormous mistake. She didn't answer any questions. So she goes on Fox News and Brettbaar asked her ten questions and she doesn't answer one of them, just goes wandering into the middle class home and all those other business. Now, you're a sport and you interview people every day of your life, and so do I. If I ask a direct question in the no spin zone and somebody doesn't answer, the interview, halts, I stop the interview and go did you not understand the question? Should I pose it again? And if you don't want to answer, can you tell me why Barrett didn't do that, but he should have. But anybody watching Kama Harris on the trail, No, she wasn't going to answer any questions because she was a rehearsed candidate, she was a machine candidate. She didn't have enough confidence in her own abilities to articulate problem solving, fell back on memorization. Now, the woman is excellent in front of the camera. I predict she's going to wind up on the view, which you'll be showbiz in some capacity while waits for the next political opening. But she absolutely insulted I think people watching those interviews by failing to answer the questions enormous mistake.

Was it her or is it the Democratic Party?

Believing that that was the route she needed to take, And obviously she was following.

Sup because she was in no position. She was in no position to shove uside what they wanted to do. Right.

They believed that she could win doing what Biden did in twenty which basically staying in house, not going out. Warren Hardy in nineteen twenty, as you will learn when you're reconfronting the presidents did the same thing, and he won and Biden won. So the party said, yeah, we don't really have to answer these stinking questions. We can just evade. But when you are a candidate that is new to people, they don't know you, you've got to define yourself. And Kamala Harris certainly did not do that. There was no emotional attachment to the Vice president.

We saw Oprah Winfrey speak, We saw Jennifer Lopez speak, We saw Michelle Obama give us speech, particularly in Klama Zoo, Michigan a little over a week ago, about ten days ago or so, we saw a plethora of well known figures speaking out on behalf of Kamala Harris, and some alluded to her not receiving the level of support that she deserves, including former President Barack Obama. They said it must be some form of misogyny. They didn't come out and say that word, but they certainly alluded to that. What role, if any, do you believe that played in the lack of support she received in this election?

Zero?

Zero?

Yeah, I mean it's the same old stuff. You know, she didn't win because she's a woman, or she was a South Asian or an African American. It's a bunch of bull. If the American public believed that Kamala Harris could improve their economic circumstance, she certainly would have won by a big margin. Because Donald Trump's a very controversial person and if there was another alternative that people felt comfortable with, I think they would have gone there. She was a very hard worker, Kamala Harris, and she gave it a shot. But again, I fall back on the fact that if I'm sitting here stephen A, and she's sitting across from me for an hour interview, you think she survives that interview?

No, not the one that I saw, Not the one that I saw on the campaign trail.

No, based on the interviews that she gave. Not annow. Second, I don't know that.

You have to ask yourself, if she can't stand up to the tough questions, why should be why should she be awarded the position of the most powerful person in the world because Putin's a pretty tough guy. She and the Muthers, they're ruthless, evil people. You gotta have somebody in there, and like Trump or not, he's proven and he can stand up to these people. So it was all about economy, and you were right. Immigration played a big part. Biden and Harris have never ever explained why they open that border. For what reason do you do that? But here's the crusher. There's always a crusher in sports and politics. You want the crusher, here's the crusher. So ABC News is in the tank for Kamala Harris and their primary weekday show is The View two million viewers a day, one hundred percent liberal, no conservative women watch that program. Kamala Harris consents to go into there because it's a friendly venue. She sits there, they yuck it up, they tell her how great she is, smooched, smooth, smooch and then an aside comes out. If you had to do it all over again, do you think there's something that you would have done differently than President Biden?

He said nothing, and Kamala Harris.

Says, not that I can think of. Over it was over when she said it, So the folks at home going, wait a minute, I'm paying twenty percent more than I did three and a half years ago. Afghanistan was an enormous embarrassment of historical proportions. The open border has injected fourteen million foreign nationals into this country, largely unsupervised. And there's nothing you would have done differently over right then, And.

I'll tell you this just as just an aside before I asked my next question. You know, one of the things that I think worked against the argument of misogyny is that Hillary Clinton in twenty sixteen won a popular vote by about two point six eight six million, more so than Donald Trump, even though she lost the electoral College vote. And obviously she is a woman, and she was considered very very.

Tough as well. If anything, she has a bit tough around the resident. Sure, please go ahead.

Well, I'll give you a better argument than Hillary. If Michelle Obama had wanted the nomination, she'd had it, the Democratic Party would have given it to her, and she would have won, and.

She would have been So you're saying Michelle Obama would have beaten Trump.

Yes, why enormously popular, missus Obama enormously popular, and the Democratic Party looks fondly at the eight years of Barack Obama. It was nostalgia. Let's go back to the Promised Land, and I think Michelle would have won.

How long do you go back your relationship with Donald Trump? How long is it?

How long have you known you thirty five years?

What do you think about the Donald Trump that you've seen as a politician compared to the Donald Trump you knew before he was a politician?

The same guy. I mean, he's not really a politician. He's a deal maker. That's how he ran the country in his first term. And if COVID had not hit us, he would have been easily reelected just on the economic success alone that he experienced in the first eighteen months. I remember when he left office in Flasher was one point four percent. So he's not an ideologue. Trump he doesn't care about I mean, if I were quizzing Trump on the Republican Party in the history of it, couldn't answer any questions. He doesn't know who what Calvin Coolies did or John Adams, Thomas Jefferson didn't know any of that. He's a deal maker and he's very stud at sizing up what he needs to get done to be successful. You don't have a mass billions of dollars. I wrote a book, The United States of Trump, best book you'll ever read, on a man and the man Donald Trump a masked of fortune by making good deals. And the final part of the equation is he is the hardest working politician in US history. There has never been another president or candidate that works as hard as that man works. And the contrast to Joe Knapping Biden was stunning, absolutely stunning.

But what about somebody, what about somebody that would look at Bill O'Reilly knowing what you know, because you are very big on your facts.

You know what the hell you're talking about it?

And then somebody that's been on TV with you and had the pleasure of sitting next to you and seeing how you operate, I have to acknowledge.

I just sat this scratching my head. I said, this, why this.

Man has been doing this for so long? This man knows what he's doing. But when you say he's a deal maker, okay, he's a businessman. A lot of folks on the left, the first thing that has come to my mind come to their minds a smirk, and they'll dismiss it. And they'll say the man's file for bankruptcy six different times.

This is what they'll point to.

They'll point to those kind of things and say, what on earth is Bill o'reiley talking about?

How do you argue against that?

I don't. He runs his business the way he wants and if he has to file for bankruptcy he does. I don't condone what Donald Trump's deals have been. Now my job, My job is to look for the overall welfare of the American people, all of them. And when you have a four year record in office, that's what I'm looking at. I'm not looking at Trump University or Trump golf course in Uruguay. I don't care. All right, the man is fabulously wealthy. If you get down tomorrow, igo and you look around, you go and this was like Louis the four Teeth down here. Okay. So all it has superflorous and so are his statements that sometimes are crazy, because he he always does that. My hypothesis is he's a rich guy, and rich guys say what they want. Elon Musk says what he wants, Okay, Mark Zuckerberg says what he wants, rich guy.

Mark Cuban, let's not forget him. He says, what do you want?

Mark Cuban. Now, guys like you and me, working guys, I mean, we have worked our way up and I say what I want. But I wasn't always that way. I was damn cautious because I didn't have Daddy's money to fall back on or any of this other stuff. All right, I had. I had to carve it out. But rich people are different, and Trump is in that zone. If I want to say it, I'm going to say it, and I don't care who likes it, and that's what he does.

I've always known billionaires to be that way. I know you got to get on out of here.

Two quick questions.

Latinos increase their vote for Trump by thirteen percent according to what I read, African Americans by five percent.

Why do you think that happened for Donald Trump?

It's economics, pure and simple, pure and simple. Look, when you have a president that under his administration, real wages that's take home pay, rise more than seven percent, and then you have another president right after and real wages fall, okay into the negative territory. If come back a little to about one point eight percent, it doesn't matter what color you are, what ethnicity you are, You're working hard for a living. You want to support your family, okay, you want to move on up like the Jeffersons, and when you can't, you're teed off. It's not about color, it's not about any of that. Now, there are some idy a lot who play that game. I don't play the game. But that's why he got more. Ask you one sports question, Ask me why the New York Jets can never get out of their way.

I will not ask you that question because we all know their football purgatory. My last question to you is going to be this, how is this Trump going to be better than the Trump that was in office from twenty.

Six I have no idea what's going to be better, whether it's going to be worse, I have no idea at all. What I want for the country is for Donald Trump to succeed, not for Donald Trump, not for Bill O'Reilly, the analyst on Bill O'Reilly dot com. It's going to help my business that he got reelected. But we have lots of liberals and independence watching us, and they do so because I'm not imprisoned in an ideological cage. But I want what's best for the country, and I sent out a message today on Bill O'Reilly dot com. I write a daily message and everybody should go. It's free. Can you hear it? Donald Trump better be cautious. Second terms are harder than first terms. Grover Cleveland, the only other guy who did this non consecutive terms, had a horrendous second term. And Trump the Hubrists all of that. You need to tamp that down, laser lock into cleaning up the border, raising the economy as quickly as possible, getting social disorder under control, and being very straight with the American public. That's what I hope he does.

Bill Riley, I really appreciate you taking time out of your business schedule to join me today. I can't wait to have you back with I just sit here and talk to you about you and all you have accomplished in your career, particularly with all these dag on best.

Sellers you keep writing. So I'm looking forward to talking to you.

And in the near future we're going to be on Cuomo Nation, Cuomo Tonight on News Nation.

I'm looking forward to that as well. Always appreciate you, my man, Thank you so much for joining me. Really appreciate it.

Thank you. Stevin I really enjoyed the conversation.

Thank you, see you soon. M.