Noted crotchety fellow Bill O’Reilly touched base with another crotchety guy, veteran anchor Ted Koppel. The two spoke about the Donald Trump problem, which is inescapable after Super Tuesday. Of course, O’Reilly enjoys a famously conflicted relationship with Trump. The two used to be buds, but O’Reilly often irritates Trump by casually mentioning how people think he’s a “buffoon.” The Fox News host also tried to bring peace to Trump’s feud with Megyn Kelly, and Trump wasn’t having it. O’Reilly’s point was that Trump took the insults too far, but Trump took offense because O’Reilly is the only anchor who’s willing to dig under Trump’s skin. The rest of them serve softball questions for fear of angering the shouty man.
O’Reilly also dared to counsel Trump over ISIS refugees, which was hilarious to many because O’Reilly stood as the voice of reason. Perhaps it simply takes an abrasive guy like O’Reilly to feel comfortable with criticizing Trump to his (televised) face. Here, O’Reilly admits that Trump is “not an easy interview.” That’s an unexpected admission because O’Reilly appears to handle Trump with ease. Well, Koppel has no admirable feelings for O’Reilly’s approach, and he actually feels like O’Reilly is to blame for journalists not being able to handle Trump. Koppel thinks it’s “irrelevant” how he’d handle Trump because O’Reilly made news anchoring look like too much fun:
“You know who made it irrelevant? You did. You have changed the television landscape over the past 20 years – you took it from being objective and dull to subjective and entertaining. And in this current climate, it doesn’t matter what the interviewer asks him; Mr. Trump is gonna say whatever he wants to say, as outrageous as it may be.”
Well, I’m not sure how it’s O’Reilly’s fault that Trump thumbs his nose at the press. Trump does that in every aspect of his life, but Koppel thinks Trump gets a free pass. O’Reilly added his thoughts:
“It’s true that he’s getting a pass because is he’s not a traditional politician and he’s appealing to emotion, which is a brilliant strategy in this age of dissent in America. Bernie Sanders is doing the same thing. Let’s be honest. Bernie Sanders’ programs are just as wild as some of Mr. Trump’s programs.
Koppel sort of conceded that Trump is savvy and “smart” because the press can’t handle someone ignoring media rules. Koppel is still in denial (like many folks) about Trump landing the GOP nomination and thinks the Republicans will shut him down at the convention. Koppel’s position is that Trump is highly controversial, but the bigger problem is his lack of a concrete position on many issues. He believes Trump plays to the Twitter generation (true), who only think in bursts of 140 characters, but somehow it’s still O’Reilly’s fault that he won’t dig deep into policy because “making America great again” is good enough to nab votes.
This attack by Koppel makes little sense because O’Reilly does not hesitate to hold Trump over the flames, and he’s one of the only journalists to do so. But I guess Koppel is really blaming O’Reilly for making TV journalism more entertaining, which — in a roundabout way — feeds an outrageous candidate like Trump.