Kaitlan Collins, take note: Bill O’Reilly says he successfully deployed the same hand-signal command to rein in former presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama as he interviewed them – and that it worked every time.
O’Reilly gave away his trick-of-the-trade on Tuesday’s edition of the syndicated “Clay Travis & Buck Sexton” radio show. Co-host Sexton asked O’Reilly, the former “O’Reilly Factor” host on Fox News and podcaster, what he thought of Bret Baier’s interview with Trump, largely viewed as both a legal and PR setback for the GOP front-runner and historic federal criminal defendant.
“There were some pretty contentious moments,” Sexton said. “I don’t think Bret was being contentious, but just the nature of the questions and responses seemed to be a little tense at some points. How do you view it?”
That’s when O’Reilly dished on the interviewer trick he successfully to rein in not one, but two infamously long-winded former commanders-in-chief.
“Well, I watched the interview,” O’Reilly began, “and Donald Trump is an extremely difficult man to chat with. I’ve done more interviews with Donald Trump than any human alive. I did the first interview when he announced for president in 2016, the escalator thing, I did the Super Bowl interview with him, I know him inside and out.
“My secret was, I would tell him before the interview, if my hand goes up, if you see my finger go up, I want to jump in. I don’t want to interrupt you and be rude, but when you see my finger, wrap it. And I said the same thing to Obma when I interviewed him three tiems. They could do five minutes on your socks, OK? They filibuster!”
O’Reilly, who has previously said on “Clay & Buck” that he thinks there’s no way Joe Biden is mounting a reelection bid, on Tuesday noted another interviewers’ tell – this time with Gavin Newsom appearing on Fox News’ “Hannity.”
“In a million years, Gavin Newsom would not have given an interview like that unless he believes he’s got some kind of shot to step into this presidential race,” O’Reilly said. “So these small indicators tell me – and I know this for a fact: the Democratic Party doesn’t want Joe Biden to run again. But you can’t go to Kamala Harris, she’s a disaster. So there kind of just going day-by-day.”
You can hear the entire segment over at “The Clay & Buck Show” website.
