Interviewing the president of the United States is not an easy assignment and odds are, unless you are MSNBC, you will have only one shot if ever at getting the opportunity. Mr. O’Reilly has had 3 chances at it, for some reason, and claims his interviews are the best and be remembered as the hardest hitting interviews of a president and should be used as a model by other journalists. Yeah, right. The only people who think he did a good job at any of the O’Reilly interviews are Bill O’Reilly and people kissing bill O’Reillys ass, period. Well, maybe those who think he had a “gotcha” moment on Benghazi or the IRS issues think he did well but they are mistaken.
For starters, stop calling the people “folks”. You are being insulted when you, or all of us in this case, are referred to as folks. It implies we are all folksy or moron’s even though some of the electorate are most are not.
Look, I am outraged the Benghazi happened to begin with and the fact we are going on 2 years without any retribution is absurd. The president should be ridiculed for doing nothing after the fact, as well as not making sure all American facilities had proper security given it was/is a war zone and there were other attacks leading up to the ambassadors murder. However, it is ridiculous to think we could have scrambled a reasonable response from anywhere but an in country army base to save him, it just wasn’t possible, sorry. The real scandal is that the president feigned remorse and concern when the attack happened and, as he stated to O’Reilly, he was concerned about the ambassadors safety, that cannot be true.
If he was so concerned why do we not know what he was doing that night? Better yet, if he was so concerned how could he in good conscious fly to Las Vegas for a damned fundraiser? That is the real question and scandal, but, no, we want Obama’s head because he couldn’t get the Big Red 1 army division to Benghazi at a moments notice? Seriously, that is unreasonable and I strongly dislike the president. Bottom line is the truth is so much worse than the rights speculation yet we focus on the speculation.
Let’s not forget Obama now swears he called Benghazi a terrorist attack from day one, not to mention intelligence reports now confirm they knew it was a terrorist attack, with his rose garden statement the next day. Well, if he knew and admitted it was a terrorist attack during the rose garden speech, he did not really admit it by the way go listen to his whole speech, why didn’t he stay in DC to make sure there wasn’t a wider or broad series of attacks unfolding that night? Instead the Commander-in-Chief goes to Vegas for a fundraiser, really? BillO couldn’t think of that as a follow up question?
O’Reilly hit upon the IRS, but utterly failed to present current facts to force an answer from the president. We know there are links from DC to Cincinnati now, but BillO didn’t present those facts. Fail.
Obamacare, there are so many questions to ask on this issue the whole interview could have revolved around that topic alone. However BillO just harped on, basically, the failure of the web site, seriously!? How about how the CBO scored it one way but the reality is so much different as in the costs are much higher than projected. He didn’t even hit the “if you like it you can keep it” argument strongly. Or how about we were told there are 30-48 million uninsured in America but we have only 3 million people paying for it (only 11% of those people are or were uninsured before Obamacare) and he was including all those who are new medicaid sign ups are solely because of Obamacare which is disingenuous at best.
Look, we should have 10-15 million newly minted insured citizens but we are at a third or half that figure, depending which you consider true. Where are the uninsured?? A simple question to ask and reasonable, but if the need was that great they should be signed up yet they can only brag about 3 million newly insured, most of whom, including us, were previously insured but lost our coverage because of Obamacare. Add in the fact that the website that cost the people hundreds of millions to create and after 3+ years of construction with Medicare.gov to use as a template it still doesn’t work and you can ask how they failed so badly. Not to leave out that no one was fired or publicly admonished and the company that received the contract was a large donor to Obama and you could have come up with some hard hitting questions.
Come on Bill, it isn’t like you are going to get another interview after this one. Bill also offered to use a viewer question, I did submit a question, but the question he chose, well, sucked. It was boring, generic and felt as though, with the other questions, he planned on piling on the far rights main talking points. Now the far right is right to be asking questions, but they just focus on the speculation, conspiracy theory, stuff instead of what we knew happened and the truth is, again, worse than the speculation.
O’Reilly simply doesn’t have the capacity to ask the right questions or proper follow-up questions. Unfortunately, this is the problem with the entire media in the US who are all, collectively, afraid to ask the hard questions. The general fear is that anyone willing to ask a hard question is afraid they will never get another politician interview again, but if all the media asked hard, but fair, questions these cowardly politicians would have no place to go. Think about it, you know I am right and the proof is evident everywhere. With the exception of agenda driven interviews, like a Larry O’Donnell or Rachel Maddow who will ask [Republicans] the hard questions in order to embarrass them or to solidify their own point of view. This is wrong, period.
The fact of the matter is that we, as Americans, have the greatest freedoms in the world, which are being eroded, by the way, but we waste them for fluff. The greatest powers were allotted to the media in order to make sure Americans knew what their elected officials were up to because they did not believe it was right that politics, the deal making, bills, etc., should take place in the dark. The founders wanted us to not have to dedicate our lives to investigate what is happening in DC, the media was supposed to do it for us, yet here I am spending all of my time trying to figure out what is happening in DC while the media covers Justin Bieber or wastes our precious time with BS interviews of the president that centers around fringe speculation and theories when the truth is simply bad enough.
Bill O’Reilly did us a disservice with his Obama interview. He seems to believe he will win the Pulitzer or Peabody for it when the reality is most viewed it as a waste of time. BillO thinks he will go down in history as the guy who asked the hard questions, he won’t. The only people who think O’reilly did a good job are Bill O’Reilly, the people kissing Bill O’Reilly’s ass or those who believe speculation is a coverup. We deserve better and the media needs to get a grip. Either be partisan hacks or start believing what journalist professors taught you in school, be balanced, never show your opinion, be tough, but fair and have strong journalistic ethics. Unfortunately, this only exists in theoretical terms in 2014 and we are stuck with Bill O’Reilly doing rare interviews with the president which wastes our time. Time is something we don’t ever get back and we will never get those 15 minutes of our life back.
Bill O'Reilly Interview with President Obama, Failed
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