Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly predicted in his interview with Tucker Carlson Wednesday night that former President Donald Trump would not go to “prison even if he’s convicted” and argued he could not be removed from the ballot constitutionally.
The two former Fox News prime-time hosts spoke for more than 45 minutes on Carlson’s eponymously-named show, Tucker on X, in Wednesday’s interview, which aired in direct competition with the second Republican primary debate on their old network.
Ep. 26 The Bill O'Reilly Interview pic.twitter.com/yHabD7W9NO
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) September 28, 2023
Around the 28:30 mark, Carlson pointed out both that Trump has been indicted four times this year, as well as the efforts to use the 14th Amendment to remove him from the ballot in different states.
“So, I mean, if you’re willing to do that and just end democracy, then, I mean, what aren’t you willing to do?” Carlson asked O’Reilly, who made two points:
Well, thank God you can’t do it. So number one, he’s not going to be taken off the ballot. There’s no constitutional order that would allow that to happen. Number two, he’s not going to prison because even if he’s convicted, none of the things that he’s charged with would warrant prison, and the Supreme Court would rule, if it ever gets up there, that he’d be in a home of confinement, where he could run the government if he wanted to. If he wins, he’d be confined to the White House or whatever, but none of that’s going to happen.
O’Reilly pointed to the classified documents case, one of the two federal indictments brought against Trump by Special Counsel Jack Smith. President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice alleges Trump took classified material with him to Mar-a-Lago at the end of his presidency, but as O’Reilly pointed out, Biden faces an extremely similar case.
“So the American people understand what this is,” O’Reilly said. “They understand that the documents in the Mar-a-Lago basement parallel the documents in Joe Biden’s garage. It’s the same thing, but one guy gets raided and charged.”
He then noted that Special Counsel Robert Hur, who is overseeing the Biden documents probe, is not well known, joking he is in “Tierra del Fuego someplace.”
O’Reilly added:
Does it really take nine months to figure out why Joe Biden, illegally, because he was vice president, had no right to take anything, had documents in his garage? Does it take nine months to do that? No. Has Joe Biden been interviewed? No. Has Jill Biden been interviewed? No.
He called on Hur to interview Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.
“I think they should interview Hunter Biden because Hunter Biden probably tried to sell the documents to someone. That’s a joke. That’s a jest for you Media Matters people watching now,” he said.
During the interview, O’Reilly also recounted his viral “We’ll do it live!” hot mic moment from decades ago, as Breitbart News noted.
