Bill O’Reilly’s No Spin News and Analysis - Bill O'Reilly's Strange Presidential Inauguration Stories

Episode Date: January 18, 2025

Bill runs through some of the strange facts from past presidential inaugurations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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MailChimp your marketing with the number one AI powered email marketing and automation platform. Intuit MailChimp. Number one, based on publicly available data on competitors, customers. Plans vary. SMS available as add-ons. Visit MailChimp.com. History lesson, but a fun one. You know, I taught high school history.

Some of you know that. In 1971, 72, down in Miami, Florida, in a very tough neighborhood, Opa Laca. If you go to Dade County, you don't want to go to Opa Laca. Back then, it was a crack capital of Florida. It's bad now. I took a ride through there, you know, maybe about a year ago. and the school, big fence around it, you know, working class kids, some poor. And I had to get their attention.

I'm teaching history, and that was the last thing on earth they wanted to learn about was history. And I'm generalizing. There were some kids who did, but most of them, you know. So I was like the original Mr. Cotter. I got him engaged because I made it all personal. So I said, okay, Abraham Lincoln, what was he like as a person, George Washington? on and on, no, no, no. So that's what we're going to do tonight. So the inauguration, Donald Trump, 47th president, there have been 45 men because Grover Cleveland was elected non-consecutively,

and now Donald Trump is the second to have that experience. So it's going to be a historic day because they all are. But Americans, you know, they're used to it now. Not going to be too many people glued to their sets. They'll watch in. They'll look in, but, you know. And on Monday, I will have great analysis of the inaugural speech on bill o'Reilly.com. And I'll probably put it on a YouTube channel, too, because that's what we do here. So let me tell you about some past inauguration. I remember Barack Obama. And when he was inaugurated on January 20th, 2009, he was so nervous that he didn't say the oath of office correctly. Couldn't get it out.

So he had a few days later to take another oath inside the White House. Isn't that interesting? Now, Chief Justice John Roberts, who will be administrating Donald Trump tomorrow, he was the guy who gave the oath, and Robert's pretty articulate. but Obama was just like I can't believe I'm president and I felt his pain I didn't deride him or mock him or I said you know come on he's a human being now let's go way back well Thomas Jefferson he beats John Adams all right for the third person to be president was Washington Adams Jefferson so March 4th 1801

Jefferson, his home, and you can visit it, Monticello, Virginia. It's an estate. You can go walk there and you want to take a ride down there and take a look. In Washington, he lived in a boarding house. And those were Spartan. Okay, this was one room in the boarding house. So on March 4th, he gets up and he walks over to be sworn in by Supreme Court Justice. John Marshall.

He walks over. No cops, no Secret Service, like this. And then, no balls, no fireworks. After he's sworn in, he walks back to the boarding house and has supper with all people living in a boarding house. And then he gets his stuff and he goes over to the White House. Now, Jefferson was that kind of guy. John Adams is much more imperious, much more taken with the thing.

The White House was only finished the last year of Adams' term. And Adams desperately wanted to win a second term. Jefferson beat him. And Adams went, I got to get out of town. He didn't go to the Jefferson inauguration. He got in a horse and buggy and went back up to Massachusetts. Okay. Fast forward to March 4th, 1840.

what he won. So William Henry Harrison was a Indian fighter and he was Tippy Canoe and Tyler 2. Harrison defeated the Kumseh and the Indian Wars. And he was elected president. Because back then, if you were a military guy like Andrew Jackson and all these guys, you were here. So Harrison delivers the longest address, an overall address in history, about an hour and a half. And it's raining and it's cold. And he's not wearing a coat. And he's out there bloviering on and on and on and on. In fact, his speech was 8,000 words. This is William Henry Harrison.

By contrast, George Washington's first inauguration was 135 words. He goes, hey, I'm here, I'm president, thanks a lot, see you later. Eight thousand words. So he's out there and people, you know, and so Harrison goes to the White House. he dies a short time later from pneumonia. But what do you think was going to happen? And then the awful John Tyler, who's VP, who Harrison didn't even know takes over, and Tyler was a traitor. He always in my book Confirting the Presidents, by the way. So William Henry, you know, he didn't get anything done because of that. Then, um, a third.

few years before Andrew Jackson's inauguration, this was the low point. So Jackson, he wasn't a formal guy, rough guy, old Hickory. When he was 12 years old in the Revolutionary War, British captured him because he was a courier in the South. He's in South Carolina. And they cut his face and they brutalized the young boy. And from that time on, Jackson, big chip on his shoulder, violent man. Okay. So they elected president, and folks love him.

He was as close to Donald Trump in a personality way, bombastic and all that, than any other president. And Trump told me that Jackson was his favorite president, and I gave Trump a Christmas present one year of a document signed by Andrew Jackson. Anyway, Jackson takes the oath and is a big party at the White House. But instead of like invitations, Jackson goes, anybody can come.

Open house. Not good. So all these people who are drunk anyway before this, they all go to the White House and they're coming in the windows, the doors, and they're spilling stuff and they're stealing stuff. and they're wrecking the furniture, and it's a zoo. And Jackson, they're mobbing him. He had to be taken out by his aides because they're afraid he's going to get hurt.

Now, it got so bad that the White House people put a giant tub out on the front lawn full of booze, okay? I think, I'm not sure what booze it was. and then they put a little dye in it, like a red dye, like a mix. And they said, hey, you want to drink, everybody, come out. And they all ran out, all these drunken louts who had destroyed a whiteout to get the free booze. And then they locked everything up. That was Andrew Jackson's inauguration.

All right, one more, okay? So Andrew Johnson, another awful, awful president. God, there were so many bad ones. He gives, Lincoln has a second inaugural address, but it's very short. And he turns it over to Johnson, because Lincoln was a generous guy. Nobody knew Andrew Johnson. He was a governor of Tennessee. Lincoln put him on a ticket to try to mollify the South because of Civil War's coming to an end.

And Johnson gets out, he's bombed. He's drunk and visibly drunk. He's all in a place like this. And everybody going, oh, that's not good. In fact, Andrew Johnson falls down during his speech. And Johnson subsequently became one of the worst presidents ever. He was impeached and only survived by one vote in the Senate because he was such a clown. Anyway, that is the colorful history of our inaugurations.

Obviously, that's nothing like that's going to happen now. I don't even think Donald Trump is going to make the parade march because of the security concerns. I hope he doesn't. I don't want him to. I want this to be, and I asked him when I was talking to him a few days ago, I said, how long is the speech going to be? Because they've ever written already. And he goes 45 minutes.

And I said, you know, in a 45 minute speech how much you're going to riff. And then it's going to be clapping and all that. You've got to keep it tight because it's going to be freezing on Monday. And he just looked at me like, I'm going to do what I want, who care what you say, which is a, you know, a trait that Donald Trump had. I'm not offended by it. I've known a man 35 years. Anyway, I hope that was entertaining and informative. We like being on the YouTube channel, and we appreciate you watching. We'll see you soon.