Before Tucker Carlson, the most consequential news anchor in America was Bill O'Reilly. Under his leadership, Fox News became the most popular television station in America. In 2009, The O'Reilly Factor was the number one cable news show in America for 106 consecutive weeks, sometimes drawing more than three million viewers a night. His views on national politics regularly dominated the front pages, and his style was fought and often mocked by the left, but rarely ignored.

Yet O'Reilly was also fundamentally different than what Tucker Carlson became. He did not and does not consider himself a conservative or even an ideologue. He's maintained friendly relationships with liberal contemporaries like Jon Stewart. In 2020, after Donald Trump's election was lost, he was one of the few news anchors regularly watched by Trump supporters who was telling them that the election was not stolen.

Today, O'Reilly runs an independent nightly broadcast, much like the one he ran on Fox News, called No Spin News. He was ousted from Fox News in 2017 after a New York Times article revealed that he and the network had settled multiple sexual harassment allegations in court, costing millions of dollars. Advertisers fled when the story broke and Fox News eventually let O 'Reilly go.

In previous interviews, he said that he regrets not fighting the accusations. While his ouster from Fox News may have taken him out of the limelight for many liberals and progressives in America, he's still a force in the more conservative minded media ecosystem. No Spin News is still widely watched and even appears on some cable news channels. After O'Reilly interviewed me on his show a couple months ago, hundreds of his viewers signed up for Tangle. In September, when Tucker Carlson interviewed O'Reilly on X, their conversation drew over 22 million views.

After appearing on O'Reilly's show a few times in his repeated references to being a Tangle reader, we decided to turn the tables. I reached out to his team to have him come on the Tangle podcast. I had a lot of questions for him. I wanted to ask about the 2024 race, the state of the media, his relationship with Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson and Jon Stewart, his ouster from Fox News, and I tried to get him to say something nice about President Biden. It took some arm twisting, but he eventually did. He has deemed President Biden the second worst president in US history, and we talked about that too. Shortly before the interview, O'Reilly's people emailed us and said he could only do 20 minutes instead of our scheduled 45 minute interview. So we didn't get to some of the things I wanted to get to, but once the conversation started, he actually did hang around for over 30 minutes, close to 40.

So today we're going to bring you that conversation exclusively right here on the Tangle YouTube channel. Hope you guys enjoy it. And don't forget, let me know what you think. You can reach me at Isaac@readtangle.com.

* FACT CHECK: There were some moments in the interview we felt needed to be clarified. One editor's note was included in this podcast, but there were a few others. You can check out the full transcript of the interview with notes here.

You can also check out our latest YouTube video where we tried to build the most electable president ever here.

Today's Clickables:
Introduction and the 2024 election: 00:00
The Legal Troubles of Donald Trump: 06:29
Accountability for Presidents: 11:25
Fox News Coverage: 14:40
Influence of Network News Stations: 19:19
Thoughts on Tucker interviewing Putin: 22:52
Jon Stewart's Return: 25:26
Trump and Biden's Strengths and Weaknesses: 29:45

Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Jon Lall. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. 

Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.

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