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Conservative commentator, best-selling author, journalist and former host of the #1 rated “O’Reilly Factor” on Fox News, Bill O’Reilly joined the Hammer and Nigel show Monday to offer comments on the passing of former President George Bush.
O’Reilly:
“I met him a couple times; was not a close friend of his, but tonight on billoreilly.com – he sent me two letters – one on Iran Contra, the other dealing with press coverage of his son. And I had a deal with him that I would not make the letters public until he had passed. So I’m going to read those letters tonight. I also have a letter from him about Dan Rather that I’m going to read. So I had a good correspondence with President Bush. I thought his term was significant – I think that’s the best word.
He made some mistakes – all Presidents do. But as a man, he really had the three things that I measure a man on: he had love of family, great father, loved his country and was a tremendous patriot his whole life, and he was honest.
…On a Presidential level, I was in Berlin when the wall came down, I saw the chaos and anarchy there and I thought he handled that pretty well. In the first Gulf war, he did the right thing right up until the end when he let Saddam’s forces escape when he did not have to.
…and then there was the ‘no new taxes’ thing, which was primarily an attempt by President Bush to get [an agreement] between the two parties – the Democrats cut spending and then he raised taxes a little bit – but in a bad economic time, that was enough to have Clinton win.”
Mr. O’Reilly also commented on the liberal media’s sudden change of heart and glowing praise for President Bush in the wake of his passing. Click the link below to hear the full interview with Hammer and Nigel:
