Bill O'Reilly Got Really Angry With Colbert
Bill O’Reilly arrived at The Late Show on Monday night fresh from that evening’s edition of The O’Reilly Factor, where the subject of the Talking Points Memo was “Far Left Violence Out of Control.” (I guess you can have a little far-left violence, but don’t let it get out of control, kids, okay?)
O’Reilly told Colbert and his audience that there’s no point in following the primary results in Indiana on Tuesday night because, “I called the whole thing three weeks ago for Trump… the whole thing, not just Indiana. The media try to get the horse race thing going so you’ll watch, but it was over three weeks ago in New York. Same thing on the other side with Hillary. You know, Feel the Bern all you want, but the Bern is going to be in the refrigerator and Hillary Clinton’s gonna be the nominee.” Alrighty then: nomination process settled!
Related: Why Is Bill O’Reilly Even Angrier Than Usual Lately?
But O’Reilly was just warming up. He wanted to explain the rise of Trump as a consequence of citizen anger. “They perceive progressive Americans — your crew — as winning the culture war, and they don’t like it.” And indeed, there were whoops of assent from the studio audience: Bill was speaking their language! Yay, Bill!
Pulling out pen and paper, Colbert said, “Let me write this down: ‘I am the problem.’ Sure, we know who the problem is: I am. Okay.”
Then O’Reilly went on to explain that Republican voters were behind Trump “for one reason: They want to blow the whole establishment up.” The reason for that? O’Reilly used the example of Kate’s Law, a piece of legislation too complex to go into here; you can read O’Reilly’s own take on it here.
Warming to his topic, O’Reilly raised his voice as he said that President Obama would have passed Kate’s Law if it had been a stand-alone bill, but that the Republican leadership attached it to “15 other things they knew wouldn’t get passed.”
“You can’t attach it to 15 other things!” yelled Bill. He pounded Colbert’s desk. Colbert asked him to take it easy: “It’s a new piece of furniture,” he explained to his guest. O’Reilly’s voice got even louder. “The Republicans see their own party not doing the right thing and they’re furious. They expect [Democrat] Harry Reid to do nothing — he’s corrupt. But they don’t expect their own leadership to do nothing, that’s why they’re furious!” Bill sounded furious as well.
“But it’s not just illegal immigration,” said Colbert, trying to get a word in. O’Reilly modified his indoor-voice to condescending smoothness for a moment. “I didn’t want to be too complicated — you could understand this. I’m giving you something you could understand.” Whereas before he had drawn cheers for his statements, his oily condescension toward Colbert now elicited boos and jeers from the audience. “No, it’s okay, be nice to him,” Colbert told the audience.
“It has to be little steps with Colbert,” O’Reilly said, now addressing the audience.
Colbert certainly didn’t need convincing that the country is headed for a Republican presidency. Earlier, during his opening monologue, in discussing Larry Wilmore’s use of the n-word during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner over the weekend, Colbert observed that Wilmore’s n-word usage “did lay the groundwork for President Trump to say it next year.”
Related: Larry Wilmore Responds to ‘N-Word’ Controversy
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert airs weeknights at 11:35 p.m. on CBS.
