{"id":15392,"date":"2008-05-01T08:30:46","date_gmt":"2008-05-01T12:30:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/15392.html"},"modified":"2008-05-01T08:30:46","modified_gmt":"2008-05-01T12:30:46","slug":"clinton-ventures-into-the-papa-bear-den","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/clinton-ventures-into-the-papa-bear-den\/","title":{"rendered":"Clinton ventures into the Papa Bear den"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday afternoon, during his radio show, Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly seemed quite pleased with himself while promoting the first part of two-part interview with Hillary Clinton. “This is, without a doubt, the toughest interview she’s ever done,” O’Reilly boasted<\/a>.<\/p>\n

O’Reilly’s bravado notwithstanding, it looks like the Fox News personality ended up being “tougher<\/a>” on his favorite hobby horse than the New York senator.<\/p>\n

“Can you believe this Rev. Wright guy? Can you believe this guy?” O’Reilly asks, according to the transcript. <\/p>\n

“Well, I’m going to leave it up to the voters,” Clinton says.<\/p>\n

“Well, what do you think as an American?”<\/p>\n

“Well, what I said when I was asked directly is that I would not have stayed in the church,” she says, reiterating an earlier response. <\/p>\n

O’Reilly presses on: “You’re an American citizen. I’m an American citizen. He’s an American citizen, Rev. Wright. What do you think when you hear a fellow American citizen say that kind of stuff about America.”<\/p>\n

“Well, I take offense. I think it’s offensive and outrageous. I’m going to express my opinion, others can express theirs. It is part of just, you know, an atmosphere we’re in today,” Clinton says.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

O’Reilly added, “I feel sorry for Barack Obama. Honestly. I feel sorry for him. His whole campaign has been derailed by some loony guy. Isn’t that amazing?”<\/p>\n

One gets the distinct impression that O’Reilly doesn’t much care who the guest is; he’s going to go on and on about Wright regardless. Clinton, to her credit, didn’t seem especially interested in talking about this, though she ultimately gave O’Reilly what he was looking for.<\/p>\n

Of course, Wright wasn’t the basis for the entire<\/i> interview. The two actually had a pretty interesting exchange over taxes.
\n
\nThe Huffington Post, which has several video clips from last night, noted<\/a>:<\/p>\n

O’Reilly demanded to know how much Clinton was going to “take out of my wallet,” and when she listed a series of proposals to aid middle class families, O’Reilly interjected. “I’m not middle class, I’m a rich guy.” Clinton responded (in an awkward moment), “Rich people, God bless us. We deserve all the opportunities to make sure our country and our blessings continue until the next generation.”<\/p>\n

Soon after, O’Reilly claimed Clinton’s agenda had a “socialist component” because she would “take from the wealthy and…give to the less affluent. That’s socialism.” Clinton offered, “Teddy Roosevelt, was Teddy Roosevelt a socialist?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In response to Clinton’s question, O’Reilly responded, “Somewhat.”<\/p>\n

O’Reilly went on to press Clinton to say something bad about NBC News and MSNBC. Why? Presumably because O’Reilly doesn’t like NBC News and MSNBC, and he’s not especially professional.<\/p>\n

It’s possible that the second part of the interview, which airs tonight, will be better, but I’m not counting on it. <\/p>\n

After Barack Obama appeared on Fox News Sunday the other day, I wondered what the point of the appearance was. I’m left with the same question now. Clinton did just fine, of course, as she always does. She’s too smart to get tripped up with O’Reilly’s questions, and she’s too tough to be intimidated by O’Reilly’s bluster.<\/p>\n

But what did she get out of the interview? On Tuesday, Clinton’s spokesperson said O’Reilly “has a large audience of politically engaged people.” That’s no doubt true. But as Greg Sargent noted<\/a>, “Some 2004 polling suggested that Fox viewers supported Bush over Kerry by 88%-7% and gave Bush more votes than conservatives, white evangelicals, gun owners, and supporters of the Iraq War.” And those are just FNC viewers in general; I suspect O’Reilly’s audience in specific is even less open to supporting a Democrat, especially Clinton, whom Republican activists have hated professionally for decades.<\/p>\n

I’d much prefer that high-profile Democrats steer clear of the network altogether, denying it the credibility that comes with their appearances. But even putting that aside, I still don’t know what Clinton got out of this, other than a few more headlines about her hitting Obama on the Wright story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday afternoon, during his radio show, Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly seemed quite pleased with himself while promoting the first part of two-part interview with Hillary Clinton. “This is, without a doubt, the toughest interview she’s ever done,” O’Reilly boasted. O’Reilly’s bravado notwithstanding, it looks like the Fox News personality ended up being “tougher” on his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15392\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}