Trump Assassination Attempt Aftermath with Bill O’Reilly
2024-07-18 00:57:38
On Mondays, Jon Stewart hosts The Daily Show, but on Thursdays he hosts The Weekly Show — A podcast featuring in- depth conversations with special guests that explores the biggest threats to our democracy. Also hear from producers and friends of the show who discuss the latest headlines, what’s on their minds, and more!
Everybody, welcome back to The Weekly Show, today's episode, of course, with our fabulous producers Brittany Mamedovic and Lauren Walker. What a shitty week.
Ain't that the truth.
In America. Unbelievable. It's that feeling of fear and disorientation, and you feel it in your soul, in your bones, in your nerves, in your skin, that sense of dread and fear and doom. How did you guys experience the attempt to disassay? Were you watching TV when it happened?
Were you somewhere else? What happened?
I was at a pool party.
Lauren, first of all, let's get into it. You were at a pool party.
Beforehand, yes. I was at a pool party. Fair enough. Something that really struck me was I saw the news, and you know, objectively it's shocking, and it's world-changing, but my inside wasn't reacting that way. All I could think was, is this the desensitization of the January 6th of it all, or the mass shooting every day of it all?
That's so interesting. Did you feel like ... Because you know how it is when you live in New York City, and you see something stark with poverty, right? When you first go there, and you'll see a person clearly struggling in distress and on the street, and your first instinct is like, holy ... Is anybody seeing this?
Then you live there for three weeks, and you're like, and you just walk past. Do you think it's that kind of mechanism?
Yeah. That was my first thought is, wow, we are in a slow boil, because this is not shocking my system right now.
Did that change as you reflected on it, as you talked to people, as you? ...
Oh, yeah. I think, as I started sitting with all of the ramifications of such a big event, such like a leader of our country, it's huge, and yet my system was not reacting, and yeah, that was my takeaway.
It was numbing. Brittany?
I had slightly the opposite reaction.
Panic.
Yeah, and I immediately jumped into logistic mode of like, wait, how does this happen? How could this? ... I just was refreshing to try and ... I feel like I became a detective and obsessed with the maps and how-
That's where I was.
Yeah. Yeah. It just like ... I was actually texting Julian, who works with us, just being like, have you seen this? Have you seen this?
I just kept circle .
. Honestly, I spiraled.
Did the idea of it shock you? I think the part for me that was so shocking is you just figure, well, it's Donald Trump, it's the Secret Service, it's all that. It's the most protected zone that can be.
Yes. He is surrounded by good guys with guns, and that was the other place. my head immediately went. I'm like, if he can't be protected by guns,
how am I supposed to feel safe? Then my head went into the gun regulation conversation, and I just, yeah. I was just thinking about all the people who, especially in recent years, have gone in front of this threatening language, the death threat, and it's-.
Oh, God, the poll. Imagine being a-.
Poll worker. Poll workers. Right. And they're not going to be protected. No.
Yeah.
This could have been. ... It was a ... I felt so bad that ... I don't know if you saw the one gentleman who lost his life, a fire chief named Corey, I think comparator, and his family.
You just feel so awful for them, but then you also feel like, boy, this could have been so much worse.
Yes.
Just so much worse, but damn. You guys feeling a little more grounded now, as time has passed a little bit?
Yeah. I think there's new wonders awaiting us.
Lauren, when's the next pool party?
Not soon enough. All right.
Everybody loves a pool party. All right. Let me go. We'll talk to Mr. O'Reilly, and then we'll come back.
All right, folks, we are joined once again by Mr. Bill O'Reilly. We had a discussion last night on The Daily Show about rhetoric, about the tenor of rhetoric, the temperature of rhetoric, how this country can move past this divisive moment, and we settled on, if I may, Bill, and I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, just how poorly thought out your position had been, and you acknowledged it. You felt terrible, which I understand, and then we moved on, and I thought that was a real—I thought we gave a lesson to the country in how—.
Yeah, the only drawback of the chat was that you were on LSD, which is now manifesting.
itself. Is that the last drug that you heard of from the 60s?
I'm not really in the drug market other than Advil, which I took right before I came on this podcast. But anyway, your encapsulation, when you're taking psychedelics, that happens. But the main point that I think we both agree on is that you can have robust political debate without trying to destroy, and I mean that literally, the person you disagree with. The problem is, in America, a lot of people make a lot of money doing that.
Sure.
And the corporations—.
You and I.
—are behind that.
Yeah. Well, I mean, look, the algorithms are different, the internet is different. I think you found, in that event, the terrible assassination attempt, you saw that people didn't turn anymore, even to the news media, to the 24 Hours. They're really glued to Twitter. They're really glued to social media to find out, and that's the Wild West.
I mean, the information that is coming out of there is unvetted. I don't know if you saw, there was a time, a little bit after the incident had occurred, where I was convinced that the shooter was this—it was a gentleman wearing a gray cap with dark eyes, and all these posts kept coming up that this was the shooter. Well, it turned out. it was spam. It was an Italian football commentator.
And for a half hour, an hour, that's just out there. as, this is the shooter. It was wild.
You know, I don't live in that world. I very rarely go to the social media sites or anything. I'm a very traditional, old-school—.
Sure. You have your MySpace page and your Friendster account?
I'm a traditional,
old-school, elderly man. That's me. Unlike the president, though, I have complete control over my faculties.
But when I see— Oh, you were talking about Biden?
Yeah. Good slide. Good slide. Nicely done. And I get this mail, too.
So I got a letter this morning, about, now, the Secret Service wanted this to happen. Okay? And it was a—.
Conspiratorial stuff. Right.
False flag. They set Trump up for the shot. The Secret Service did. Wow. Now, I replied to the man.
Wait, someone sent you a direct—someone, you know, sent you an email saying, hey, Bill—. No, no, no.
This was viewer mail. We get thousands of viewer mails.
Okay, okay. I get it.
All over the world. Okay?
Okay, okay.
So I sent this guy back. I said, look, I did four shows with Donald Trump, the history tour, all right? Big arena shows, and they were produced by my production company. It was like the Rumble in the Air Conditioned Auditorium with you and me 12 years ago. And I had a deal with the Secret Service, because I'm the head of the production company.
I'm going to tell you, those people are deadly serious in what they do and would never buy into any kind of conspiracy at all. What happened there, and what is the main point of all this, is that the leadership of the Secret Service is incompetent, and they're all going to be fired. It's just a matter of when, all right? The director, Kimberly Cheadle, and then the people who set up the perimeter that allowed a clear shot into the platform, they're all going to be demoted.
Is there any—do you have any qualms, as you think about this, about the idea that a 20-year-old kid, clearly having mental issues, was able to walk around with an AR-15?
? I mean, until he set up and pulled that trigger, he wasn't doing anything illegal. Do you have—does this at least give you pause about the kind of weapons that American citizens, without any real oversight, are allowed to walk around with that can take out somebody from 150 yards away and can do it with somebody who's apparently a terrible shot?
The answer to your question is yes. Do I have qualms about it? Yes. Would I slap— Look at us.
Look at us. Would I slap— Bill O'Reilly wants gun—Bill O'Reilly wants to take your guns.
It's not about a gun control, it's a matter of public safety, all right? So each state, according to our Constitution, has the right to regulate what laws it wants to make about guns. Now, the left, your folks—.
Well, no, no, the Supreme Court—Washington, D.
C. had a law that you couldn't bring in guns, and it got struck down. Right.
It was unconstitutional.
So you're not allowed to, state by state, make your laws?
No, you are.
But— I mean, you couldn't ban them.
All right, let me give you a civics lesson. Every state and every district can make its own laws, but if the Supreme Court deems those laws unconstitutional—.
Well, well, ain't that the rub? Ain't that the rub? OK.
The left wants the laws about guns to be made from Washington, one central law for the whole country. The right does not want that, claiming there are different circumstances in New York City than there are in Casper, Wyoming, and you don't have that. Now, for me—.
So I think that's a very broad generalization, Bill, that doesn't quite tack. So here's what I would say. Let's use the immigration argument, right? So Republicans are very concerned that we have open borders. Well, in New York City, we're concerned that Florida's open borders are allowing what's called the Iron Pipeline.
They're allowing guns that aren't being traced and are illegal to flow into New York City. I don't think what people who are concerned about guns are saying is, the federal government has to do it, and everything's equal. I think what they're saying is, give us the tools to not allow this chaos in our streets and help us. That's all they're saying.
I have a fairly good solution to the gun crime problem in the United States. Would you like to hear it?
I would like to hear it. All right.
Number one, every state should have very stringent regulations on military-style weaponry, like the ARs. Every state. So, in order to get that, you have to prove—.
So you're voting for Joe Biden and the Democrats this cycle because of how intensely—because they had that in place, and I believe it got repealed.
Now, it wasn't that simple. It wasn't that simple. OK.
It's never that simple.
Every state, state steward, should require that the person seeking the military-style rifle justify it. And then the state makes a decision.
Justify it with like an essay?
Yeah. A very little essay. Dear Maryland. It could be maybe multiple chores.
Are you a little—? Dear Maryland, I am surrounded by angry deer. And if I don't have an AR and an—.
You don't want to hear the solution to this. I'm sorry.
I've been corrected by myself. The assault weapons ban didn't—wasn't repealed. It expired. OK.
I just want everybody watching worldwide—I want the people in Kazakhstan to know that Stewart doesn't want to hear the solution to the gun violence problem.
I do want to hear the solution. Bring it.
Bring it. Unbutton it. Every state has a very stringent process in which to get an AR, number one. Number two, all gun crimes, all crimes committed with a firearm of any kind, immediately become federal crimes. That's because in New York City, you can commit a gun crime and not even be held on bail.
OK? That's insane. So it becomes a federal—.
Is that a—I was under the impression that a gun crime, you—that they could still do danger to the community, no? Or is that—that you're even not allowed to hold them on bail?
No, of course not.
Can't you do danger to the community?
But in New York, the no bail law, you can be carrying a firearm and have a felony on your record and they'll let you go. You'll be prosecuted down the road.
They can let you go or they must let you go? They can. But they—but that's not required. They can't hold you in terms of if they deem you a danger. Judges' discretion.
Judges' discretion.
But if you know what it is in Manhattan, OK. So all gun crimes are federal crimes. Oh, I—OK. So you go into a bodega with a gun, that's not a local crime anymore. That's federal court.
OK. Then there are mandatory prison sentences upon conviction. So, first—first conviction, crime of the gun, five. Second conviction, 10.. OK.
That way, the few—.
You're tightening the penalties and you're tightening the restrictions.
Absolutely. That—and you're not going to solve the whole gun crime. Of course. The nut in Pennsylvania will still get the AR, because the black market for those guns is not going to cease, just like the black market for narcotics. But society is doing its best to protect people.
And there you have it, Stuart.
And that solves it. Well, let me—let me poke a few little things in there. It is, in fact, your side that would make it impossible to make those stricter regulations. Those have been tried—I mean, after Sandy Hook, people tried desperately to enact some of those policies, and there was only one side that was fighting it. And that was the Republicans.
They've made it more difficult to track these weapons. They've made it impossible to sue gun dealerships that are known to be selling them to traffickers and bringing them up. You know, we talk about the violence south of the border in Mexico. Most of those guns come from America. So, this gun problem that you've very, I think, helpfully for America, set out some of those things.
They've neutered the agencies federally. There can be no registration. Why is it that that is so resisted by the right? Okay.
Number one, I don't have a side. All right? Stop saying that. I'm not a Republican. I don't have a side.
I'm not an NRA member.
I don't see color.
I'm none of that.
I don't have sides. I'm a free thinker.
I'm an amorphous blob.
And a problem solver. I don't taste food. I don't listen to music.
No. I sit in a room. No music. Solving problems.
Solving problems mutually.
Trying to convince people like you to listen to me. That's my life. As sad as it is.
It's getting sadder.
So, you are absolutely right that conservative gun people don't want any restrictions because they're selfish. They want to have 80 guns in the basement to kill squirrels. I wouldn't kill a squirrel anyway, but I think you don't need a machine gun to do that.
So, that's not my side. What I'm appealing to is the majority of Americans who are good people.
Overwhelming. Overwhelming majority of Americans. Two. Not having gun restrictions may be one of the most anti-democratic things that we have in our government. But it's not.
Not being able to enact.
You're using the word restrictions. Yes.
Or regulations? What would you rather have me say?
Standards. Okay. So, if you want a heavy weapon, you got to show the government.
You have a higher bar that you have to pass.
Absolutely. Okay. But.
I just want to get control of the chaos. I talked to a guy. I don't know. It was maybe two years ago. He's a state senator in Oklahoma.
And he said, more guns, more safety. I said, well, when does that happen? And I said, he was passing laws in Oklahoma that would make it so that you didn't have to take gun safety courses to get a gun. And I said, well, do gun safety courses make us safer? And he said, yes.
And I said, you want to take that out of making people do it? Yes. So, that makes us less safe. No.
But it doesn't even have any logic to it.
If you understand the world as I do. Okay. The societies that don't have gun problems are the societies where the punishment for violating the gun laws is heinous. So, Russia. Russia's like.
Oh, stop. No. Listen to me.
What about Australia?
We'll get to Australia. All right. Australia is confusing because of the kangaroos. They're transporting guns in their pouches.
They're not armed. You didn't know that. Yes.
But in Russia, if you have a gun, all right, you go away to a gulag for about 20 years.
So, I'm going to explain something about Russia, and you may not be aware of this. It is an authoritarian state. It's an autocracy.
That's right.
Bill, we have to take a break. You're driving me insane.
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All right, Bill, we're coming back. Oh, which, can I, let me switch gears for a second, because this is fascinating, but I want to get to something else. Yeah. I am so fascinated, Mr. O'Reilly, by the patriotic fervor of the Republican Party, of the Republican conventions, the iconography of the flags, the we, the people of the Constitution.
We are for freedom. We are for liberty. What is their acceptance of Viktor Orban and Vladimir Putin? What is their, I don't understand how you can say, we stand for freedom, we stand for liberty, we stand for the Constitution, and man, you know who's doing it right? Putin and Orban.
Those are illiberal autocrats. What are we talking about here?
Well, we didn't get to it on The Daily Show because you were babbling so much.
That's what I do. That's my calling card.
But J.
D. Vance is the biggest Putin enabler. I've seen. J.D. Vance, and I actually use this.
What is the rationale? I truly want to understand.
Let me explain. So, J.D. Vance, I use the soundbite on The No Spin News, which is my daily broadcast. Sure. Go to BillOReilly.com, you can get it all.
Good plug.
So I use a soundbite of J.
D. Vance, Senator Vance, saying, hey, Putin, he's not Hitler. All right, he's not a threat. The United States is much stronger than it was in 1938.. And I'm going, wait, I believe Putin has nuclear weapons?
That dwarfs, dwarfs.
No, they've got the largest.
Vance misreads history. He doesn't understand the danger of Putin.
Well, he only went to Yale.
Well, it was Yale Law School, which is really not going to school. It's kind of like all you do is demonstrate and make little signs.
Oh, is that? I didn't realize that. It's just a commune.
And I can say that because I went to Harvard. All right. So I understand what's going on at Yale.
You went to Harvard? Was that a DEI initiative? No, no. For Irish guys?
That was. We have to admit him because he's so brilliant, but we don't want to. We don't want to.
All right. Fair enough.
Okay. So your question is, why are some of the fringe right so enamored with.
No, no, no.
It's not. Republicans.
The vice presidential candidate of the United States, the presidential candidate of the United States on the Republican Party. That's not.
No, no. Trump does not subscribe to that. We don't know what Trump. He won't say what his Ukraine policy is, which tees me off because I don't know where he's coming in.
He has very clearly shown an affinity for the types of strongmen and authoritarian leaders like Vladimir Putin, like Victor Orban. Victor Orban was down at Mar-a-Lago having a shrimp cocktail talking about, here's what you got to do with the press. Here's what you got to do with the thing. I mean, how can you say.
This is why you don't understand Trump. So I wrote a book, The United States of Trump, which you did not read, but you desperately need to read it.
I'm waiting for the movie to come out. Okay. I'm sure it's going to be fascinating. Right.
I'm sure Rob Reiner will direct it.
Yes, absolutely.
Trump doesn't care about ideology. He doesn't care about Victor Orban. He doesn't even know where Hungary is. Okay. He hasn't been to Budapest.
What Trump wants are deals. And his theory is, if I can be friendly to Putin, to the nut in North Korea, she not so much. They're not close. But if I can be friendly and convince these people not to cause trouble, that's better for the country. Now, during four years.
Can I ask a question then? Then why is he so harsh to our allies? Why is he so solicitous to Putin?
Because he wants NATO to pay the money for defense purposes. That's why. He's not harsh to them.
His rhetoric towards France versus his rhetoric towards Russia is stark. There is a stark difference in the way that he talks about the European.
It's a different agenda. It's a different agenda. He wants France.
So you're saying you use a stick on your friends and a carrot on your enemy. Is that the theory?
He's just a dealmaker. Okay. That's all. And that's why people misrepresent him. They think he's this Onus Barry Goldwater guy.
All right, Trump. He doesn't care about it. He doesn't know basically what he has.
No values.
He has no values or this. I am the best dealmaker on earth. This is what Donald Trump believes. And my deals have helped America. And he can trot out deals that he has made because Putin didn't misbehave for four years.
He didn't.
All right, that's, that's just not. I mean, not invade. He didn't leave Crimea. We didn't get anything from him. No, that was.
I mean, I don't understand this idea.
That's not. that's not a deal that happened under Obama. Okay. He took Crimea under Obama. He didn't say, you're saying that literally had a territory under Trump.
Isn't this a bit of narcissism on America to think that the only things that happen are controlled by whatever personality is in the White House at that time? I mean, that I think that is a little far fetched and a little bit solipsistic to think that in America, Putin said, hey, man, Trump's in. I don't want any smoke from that guy. So I'm not going to do anything wrong in the world. It's just not the case.
He was still enabling Iran. He was still allowing proxy armies all throughout the Middle East. He was still undermining U.S. interests in the Levant. Like the idea that Putin behaved when Trump was in office is a fiction.
That is your opinion. But if you look at the scale measure of what Putin did when Trump was in office and what he's done under Biden, it's not even the same hemisphere. But OK, you can have. look, that's the beauty of America. We all have different opinions.
But Trump manages his political empire by deal making, not ideology.
But do you understand, Bill, his record at managing even his financial empire is unbelievably spotty. The one thing that he does really well is tell stories that he's the best that, you know, he's the the most impressive, this that ever. that like. that's what he does. well.
His business record is oftentimes abysmal. There's a lot of bankruptcies in there. There's corruption in there. There's charities that have been shut down. Like.
this is a fantasy that he's created, this deal making empire that never goes south.
All I'm doing is four years of his administration. When you read Confronting the Presidents, I'm going to hire somebody to read it to you, to follow you around. And I hope after it comes out, September 10th, we can discuss it. Every single president, all 45 men, all right, had chaos in their lives. Everyone.
George Washington's mother, hated him. He didn't go to her funeral.
What does that have to do with you running on your dealmaking? Because what you are doing is going bankrupt in a casino.
What you are doing is you're saying Trump has run his business poorly. All right. That's an opinion. The guy has an enormous amount of money. I'm not.
He has an enormous amount of money.
Started out good and went well. I'm not saying he ran his businesses poorly. What I'm saying is he cottons no criticism, no idea that anything had ever been. His rhetoric is always.
I'm the greatest. He's like Muhammad Ali.
And this is the worst.
I'm the greatest. Of course.
And what I'm saying is it's a fiction. And it's clearly a fiction.
But they all are fictional characters. Biden's going out there, going.
Not to that extent.
I'm the best president since FDR. And I don't know about you, but Dwight Eisenhower appeared to me in a vision and said, did he really say that? And Ronald Reagan went, oh, there you go again.
Let's be fair. Come on. Joe Biden did pass a tremendous amount of legislation. Not as much as Trump.
Trump passed more legislation than Biden. And Biden's out there going, I passed more legislation than anybody else. We did a fact check and Trump passed more.
Trump had two things. Trump had two things. He had two chance. Lock her up. Build a wall.
Didn't do either. Now, as far as passing more legislation, that was consequential, he couldn't get it. He couldn't get an infrastructure bill done. He couldn't. He tried very hard.
He didn't use union labor. That was a problem.
He told us. Terrible. He told us that we were going to have a health care bill. that would be second to none. You'll see.
I'm going to replace Obamacare and we're going to have a health care bill. He didn't do any of it. Here's what he did. A one point seven million trillion dollar tax cut. Right.
He got the corporate tax rate to 20 percent and he was able to deregulate.
Yes. All that. OK.
Right. And even out of that, even as a businessman, you have to admit that's probably worth what? Five trillion in stimulus. And he got a great out of that.
Macroeconomics is swell. All right. I'm a simple man. You know that. I'm looking out for the folks under Trump.
In which? in which version are you under Trump? I just want a definition of simple, because my definition of you as a simple man. Right. Probably.
Here's why I'm simple. I don't understand anything. you just said. Yes.
You're simple because you don't understand.
Under Trump, real wages went up close to eight percent. for the folks. Under Biden, real wages are down two and a half percent. That means.
Look, I don't. Wait, wait, wait.
That means the average working person.
According to who?
Is down 10 percent in take home pay under Biden. So come on.
I'm going to challenge that. You can go macroeconomic all day long.
People got to go to Piggly Wiggly to get their groceries.
Stop it. Donald. Donald. OK, well, let's, let's go. Simple folk.
Donald Trump was the first president in Herbert Hoover. Yes. To walk out of office with net job loss.
Because they told me they shut everything down.
I see. So Donald Trump is allowed to say I was eight trillion dollars. I accumulated eight trillion dollars to the national right. Right. COVID related.
And and I left office with a net job loss. And that's COVID. But Biden, in getting the economy to recover in the way that it did, probably faster than any other industrialized country in the world, even better than any other industrialized country in the world, with an inflation rate that was lower than the other industrialized countries. But that that's nothing. He sucks.
But Trump was great. And COVID ruined it. And Biden. COVID didn't matter. And he's number one.
It doesn't make sense. Number one, the American economy is good under Biden. Inflation is not. So there's. By.
Look, there are two lines. What was that word?
Yes.
Two lines. All right. Stock market doing well. The economy. Consumers are spending.
People are OK. Employment wise. But, Stuart. Since Biden's been in office, gas prices are up 38 percent. I know you don't want to hear it.
I know this is painful.
But so here's all I'm asking.
Food prices up 21 percent.
When I say Donald Trump was a net job loss and added eight trillion dollars to our national debt, you say, well, that was COVID. Even though it wasn't COVID, it was a one point seven trillion dollar tax cut. That never paid for itself. It was a 20 percent corporate tax rate.
If these things look, it's trickle down economics for the government, shutdown on COVID. If you look at tax receipts and I am not sticking up for Trump, he's way too big a spender for me. Way too big. OK. And Biden is the same.
They're both the same parallel. I'm going to buy votes by spending money. That's what they do.
Right.
All right.
Well, then why hasn't? why hasn't Biden added as much to the debt as close?
The stats are.
It's not close. It's I think it's eight trillion to four trillion. Eight to eight to four or five. It's not close.
It's like a trillion comes in the deal for the vaccines and all of the things that Trump had to do to keep the country not falling over. Do you know how much that cost the federal government to have those three pharmaceutical companies develop that vaccine in less than a year? That was two and a half trillion. Just that.
Come on. I'm going to have to check your. I'm going to have to check your figures, Bill, because you're saying the government spent two and a half trillion dollars.
They'll tell you.
You're saying the federal government spent.
Yeah, they made without a pay. go. I'm trying to have trillion dollar pharmaceutical companies based upon developing a vaccine in a certain amount of time.
And you don't think any of the spending Biden did was because of covid.
Some of it was. look, Biden puts it off like the build back America. better. All right. As a covid play infrastructure.
And I don't have a beef with that in the sense that.
Okay.
Yeah. We needed an infrastructure update, upgrade in this country. But macroeconomics.
Why didn't. Why didn't Trump do that? If he's such a dealmaker, why didn't he do it? Why didn't he do it? Remember infrastructure week?
They had like 50 infrastructure weeks. Why didn't he do it?
I don't know why he did it, why he didn't do it. All I know is the last two years of the Trump administration, they were desperately trying to handle this covid, which Biden inherited.
Not the last two years. It was. it was the last, like eight months. No, it was longer than when covid hit in March.
Covid. They shut the government in March. But it was before that, that it started to come in. The pandemic started to come in. All right.
So, yeah, the timeline is probably tighter. You're right there. Timeline is probably tighter.
But it's like eight months.
A catastrophe of shutting the entire country down and ramifications for every part of it. But when Biden came in, remember, when Trump left office, inflation was one and a half percent and it rocked.
The economy was shut down.
No, no, they were. They were coming back then. They were coming back then. The economy wasn't totally shut down.
No, they weren't.
Oh, yeah, it was. When we voted in 20, OK, people were back to work. A lot of them were remote, remotely. A lot of them.
I just, I just love how you look at covid. You look at covid as this terrible challenge that Trump had to face and that he had it all figured out by the time Biden walked in.
I didn't say I had it all figured out. I'm just trying to tell you what the government's responsibility was at the time. I'm a historian. That's right. You want to paint me as some kind of Trump booster.
So let's talk about history.
OK, that's what you want to paint me as. And I'm not that. I think, Biden.
You're a sycophant, not booster.
I think Biden is the second worst president in our history, next to James Buchanan. And you'll learn all about Jimmy when you read Confronting the Presidents, because
Biden is a wild statement.
Biden caused a wild open border. That's Biden. It's not Congress. That's not anybody. That's an executive order on Biden's part.
Open that border for anybody who wants to apply for asylum. That has been a catastrophe across the board. Biden created.
I am. I am not going to say that our immigration policy makes any sense. It's on him.
A hundred percent.
No, I disagree. Well, who else? Who else, Stuart? Well, what I would suggest is that, through a lot of factors, there's a lot more people that are migrating all over the world. The whole world is having trouble dealing with immigration and migrants caused by chaos and unrest in the world.
That's just a fact. There's more people coming through. Allowing asylum for people is also international law. So that's something that we don't really have a choice in.
Asylum seekers are protected in international law. Each country has its own asylum laws. You're not forced. Who's going to force you to have an asylum law? Do you think communist China has an asylum law?
Come on.
There's no international law on asylum.
In the countries that follow the rule of law. And again, going to autocracies and dictatorships. Of course, they play by different rules. But our point is, in America, we have asylum seeking laws.
Which were broken by the Biden open border policy.
They were broken. And they had a legislative fix for that, that the Republicans wouldn't do. Because the bill wouldn't have done anything.
I read the bill.
That's not true.
I want the border to be secure. That wouldn't have secured the border.
It was put up there by a conservative legislator.
I have the solution to the border.
The immigration law. The border patrol were for the bill. Everybody was for the bill. Except Trump. Because he thought it would take away an election.
Everybody wasn't for the bill. I wasn't for the bill. And I didn't care what Trump said about it.
Let me hear. Let me hear.
All asylum claims are suspended for a year by the United States. So we can reorganize the asylum courts. Hire more judges. Hire more border patrol. Build more barriers.
One year, no asylum claims. That stops the cartel, human smuggling operations right there. The people that are in here, okay, already, about 15 million foreign nationals. They need to register at their local post office. And each one of them are adjudicated within our law system.
Remember, if you come to the United States, even illegally, all right, you are protected by our Constitution. So now everybody here has to get due process. And they should. But the government has to know who's here, where they are, and what they are doing. And that way, they can get a fair hearing.
And so, if you stop the asylum for a year, give Congress time to pass a decent immigration law and stop the chaos, that's how you do it. And that's a brilliant solution. And you know it. So let's admit it in front of the world right now.
First of all, if you believe this podcast is in front of the world, you are so grossly overstating. You are so grossly overstating my reach.
I'm everywhere.
Oh, please. Let's not.
People aren't happy about it, Bill. I'll tell you that much. That's for damn sure.
Freedom of speech.
Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. All right. We'll be right back.
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All right, we're back. Do you understand why people in America, not everyone, fear another Trump presidency? Absolutely. Because of what happened on January 6th. Because he says things like, I will be your retribution.
Okay, but that's just rhetoric, and I don't take rhetoric into account on either side.
What else do we have?
Look, Joe Biden says, if you don't vote for me, you're not black. I mean, come on. That's just rhetoric. So I understand that January 6th was the biggest mistake Donald Trump has ever made in his life. And the mistake was that immediately upon the breaking in of the Capitol, Trump should have gone on television and said, knock it off.
You shouldn't have waited three hours and 15 minutes. That was a huge mistake.
Can I ask a question here?
Yes.
So we're sort of boiling it down to January 6th and the three hours and 15 minutes that he waited. But I want to maybe roll it back further, because I don't think January 6th was an aberration. I think it was the culmination of a slow, moving plot. And I'll tell you, the minute he lost the election, he went through every avenue meticulously to try and get that vote overturned. He first went to all the states, Nevada, Georgia.
I just need 11,000 votes. This was fraud. He went to all the courts. None of it worked. This kept going.
And they kept trying to plan. The next step was, let's go to the vice president. The vice president doesn't have to certify it. They tried to make constitutional arguments. Most of his lawyers say, Donald, you lost.
This is crazy. This is not constitutional. So what does he do? He lawyer shops until he can find people that are unscrupulous, and then he takes their advice. Now, it comes down to that certification.
This has been a process building up since November, right?
Pence finally makes it clear, no. I'm going to certify these votes because that's my constitutional duty. And their last minute, last ditch effort is, OK, fine. Then I am going to create enough chaos to get this thing thrown into the House of Representatives. What I'm saying is it wasn't a three and a half minute brain fart that Donald Trump went through on January 6th.
This was the very intentional, strategic end to a months long plan by Donald Trump to disregard the democratically elected new president of the United States and overturn it.
I understand why people, some people, agree with you, but I've investigated this thing really thoroughly.
Oh,
you had your own January 6th?
I have my own abilities and the best staff in the business. All right.
Hey, what? Don't you?
You do a different thing than I do.
So let's hope so.
What happened was that Donald Trump refused to accept the fact that he lost. That's where you start your investigation. About two weeks, maybe 10 days after the vote, I told my audience that there was no massive fraud that could be proven in the election. I lost about a thousand premium members on Bill O'Reilly dot com when I said that.
What are you running, and only fans over there?
No nudity, but close.
OK, so let's I do. There wasn't massive fraud that this Dominion thing was. All this was B.S. because there wasn't one thing presented by anybody. And Alito, the Supreme Court justice, actually wrote, tell me what you have and we will consider it, because he was in charge of Pennsylvania.
Alito. Nothing came forward. So I knew it was B.S. But when the run up to the January 6th thing happened, I also have established beyond any reasonable doubt that Trump was worried things might go south on this. He did not want it, so that they made inquiries.
The White House, the Pentagon, to Muriel Bowser, the mayor of D.
C.
, and to Pelosi to get the guard in ahead of time, the National Guard. It was rejected. And now we learn from Nancy Pelosi's daughter that she is feeling remorse about rejecting that, Nancy Pelosi.
I said, I'm going to. I'm going to take issue with your characterization.
This is our investigation.
Yes, that is.
You don't have to believe my investigation. This is what we have found out.
Mom, so I'm going to believe the actual investigation.
What do you want? Because that's what people do. They believe what they want to believe.
No, I'm not. So I want to believe it's what was in the report.
Look, there are thousands of reports.
There is no official.
All right. Well, the January 6th.
And you're telling me that that committee is what you're going on. All right. So anyway, I believe and I could be wrong, but very rarely am, is that Trump didn't want this violence. What he wanted was a display. All right.
That would convince Americans to back his opinion that the vote was fraud. So that's what he wanted.
So here's, here's what. here's what I'm going to say. I disagree with you that that's what he wanted that day. I think. I think.
I think what he wanted that day was Mike Pence. Not, that's true. By the election.
And Pence is a hero, by the way.
And when.
And hasn't gotten the credit. And when Mike Pence said no. Pence will go down in history. Well, no, I think. As a hero.
Yeah. I would agree with that in that one instance. But boy, did he enable four years of nonsense leading up to that. But beyond that.
Beyond that.
On that day when he knew. Right. So he knew that if he could get the election into the House of Representatives, he had a shot.
Maybe.
That's what he knew.
That's what he wanted. So that's what he wanted.
That's what he wanted. And he knew the only way he could do that was for those proceedings not to go forward. And for those proceedings.
I think that's accurate. No, but interrupted. He didn't need it. And Pence had cooperated. He did.
Which.
Right. No, that's what I'm saying. He didn't need the pitchfork people. Once he understood. But.
But once. So that's my point. He thought he wasn't going to need it, but he had him there.
Once he realized. Come on, Stuart.
Not at all. Once he realized.
You can never prove that in a court. When you've got Pentagon people raising their right hand and swearing at Donald Trump, told them to alert the Pentagon to bring the guard in early. That whole thing just blows up. Now, if you don't want to believe, you don't want to believe it. But that's on the record.
Come on. Yeah. Here's what I'm saying. He said, go down to the Capitol and fight. That's what he said.
He said peacefully. He knew at that point. Come on. You're not even giving the whole picture to the podcast viewers. He said peacefully.
Come on.
If I may say so, Bill. That's just rhetoric. And it was very clear to me.
He didn't mean it. He wanted to give them all ARs. He wanted to arm all those people. He got a machine gun. everybody was opposed to him.
Not machine gun. But he wanted the pressure of the people to stop them from certifying that election.
I'm not going to disagree with that.
So that it could go to the House. Well, that's my whole point, Bill.
No, it's not. You're saying that he had nefarious, that he wanted to promote violence. None of that is true.
No, no, no, no, no. I'm saying his intention was to disrupt.
That's true.
His intention was to disrupt. And it became violent because he was reckless.
That's an opinion that I wouldn't. I don't think that Donald Trump handled that well at all.
I think that is the mildest understatement I have heard.
Because you want to hate him and I want to treat him fairly. That's the difference.
Oh, my Lord. Bill O'Reilly. Do I desperately not want to hate him? I don't hate him.
Would you sit next to Trump at a Knicks game?
I take my son to those. No, probably not.
What if he bought the ticket next to you for $8,000?
Not given the damage that I think he's done to the discourse.
I would sit next to Biden. And I would ask him all his questions.
Well, because Biden hasn't done. I understand that.
But that's apples and oranges. I'll sit next to Biden.
Biden hasn't violated the one core tenet of our constitutional republic. And that is the peaceful transfer of power.
And that's what I would say.
To me, that's disqualifying.
I said this on the Daily Show. That's true. And that's why Trump is in 25% ahead of Biden. now. That January 6th is what pulled Trump back.
Final comment. Tomorrow night, Thursday night, this podcast will probably go on forever. Because everybody in the world will watch it. And the totalitarian regime will force people to watch it. In China and Russia.
And if you don't, you're going to be in trouble.
If Trump would go on Thursday night and say, you know what?
Some of my rhetoric has been extreme and too personal. And based upon what happened to me, I almost lost my life. I'm going to tamp that down. And I'm going to campaign on what I believe I can do for the country. I can improve your life.
I'm going to stop the personal stuff. And I hope everybody else follows. If Trump would do that Thursday night, he will win. Probably in a landslide in November.
Right. So you're saying if he could come out and go like, I am, a completely different person.
Maybe not completely, because no one's going to buy that. But he has modified a little bit. And he doesn't have to apologize. He doesn't have to look weak. He just has to say, I see a bigger picture now.
He just has to make a strategic pivot without actually having change in his heart.
No matter what he does. All right, O'Reilly. You're out. You're gone. Thank you very much for joining us.
I always appreciate the debate with Jon Stewart. And I think that we built up a legacy here in this country that every other political pundit should follow. And it's fun. It's informative.
It is fun.
And, best of all, I'm so much better looking than Stewart. It's really a good contrast.
I don't disagree with that. Thank you very much for being here, Bill.
God. That's a lot.
I'm tired. I'm. It was something.
He talks too much.
He did.
I just love the whole. like Stewart, January 6th. It was a bad day. You know, it's the divide. Like Trump, was jet lagged.
He was, he had a cold three and a half hours. He should have done like that. It wasn't like the culmination of this gigantic plot to overthrow the electoral Jesus.
No. On his show, he talks about how calling Trump anti-democracy is hate. And it's like.
Hmm. And it's just, it's a literal fact.
Yeah.
And it's hate. And that's he sort of blames that on the radicalization. Right. Wasn't he saying, like MSNBC, something? He didn't say it to me.
Well, I've had the joy of watching his show for the last subscriber. Yeah.
By the way, for those viewers at home. I mean, I understand. Lauren is our master of understatement. I don't know if you guys might realize she. she's our dry performer.
Yeah.
Yeah. So I've been on that Web site for a million and one now.
And are you a premium member? Have you jumped on? Have you jumped?
Yeah, I want it all.
All right.
As you should.
Lauren is my right. So he was just going on about how MSNBC is the worst of the worst. And we were talking amongst the staff like. How is how is like Abraham Lincoln killed if MSNBC didn't exist? Like, how is MSNBC implicated in this, when assassination is not uncommon or, like attempts on the lives of our leaders?
It's not uncommon.
Well, Lauren, I think you're also forgetting the view. And I think that the views commentary about McKinley can be directly related to his joy.
Behar was there.
Joy. Joy. Joy. Joy. Joy.
Joy. Joy. Joy. Joy. Joy.
and Garfield is what led directly to, uh, it's, it's just wild man to listen to. But, uh, but I gotta say, like, always, fun to, it's, it's almost like a Thanksgiving in July. You know, it's like that, that sitting around, cause, it really is like, cause. I have family members who, you know, Bill O'Reilly is their patron saint and probably is too soft and liberal for them, you know, O'Reilly. He's still, he's a little too conciliatory.
Uh, and it really does remind you of those conversations, like after the football game, where, like, finally somebody will turn and be like, so you really want to indoctrinate the children? Is that what you want to do? And you're like, no, that's not what's happening here.
Didn't say that. Yeah. I think, um, this is the first and potentially last episode that my family will listen to.
Well, I'm sorry. They're so disappointed. Work for a communist, but we'll, we'll, we'll move it along. Uh, but, but great stuff, guys. Uh, next week is next week.
As always. lead producer, Lauren Walker, producer, Brittany Mametovic, video editor and engineer, Rob Vitolo, audio editor and engineer, Nicole Boyce, researcher and associate producer, Gillian Spear, and executive producers, Chris McShane, Katie Gray. Uh, this is the weekly show. Uh, we will see you next week. I mean, that's just makes logical sense.
Huh? Should we hit him with socials?
Oh, socials. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Brittany. Sorry.
Uh, Twitter. We are weekly show pod, Instagram and threads. We are weekly show podcast, tick tock, weekly show podcast. and. Uh, YouTube.
We are weekly show with Jon Stewart.
And that, uh, tick, tock, especially because the kids love two old men. Oh, yeah. Kids love nothing more than two old men talking over each other.
That's hashtag, viral hashtag.
Hashtag. what's wrong with these people. Uh, all right. Very good guys. See you next time.
Next week.
The weekly show with Jon Stewart is a comedy central podcast is produced by Paramount audio and busboy productions.
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