Bill O’Reilly’s No Spin News and Analysis - No Spin News - Weekend Edition - September 14, 2024

Episode Date: September 14, 2024

Listen to this week's No Spin News interviews with Bernie Goldberg, Michael Kazin and Laurence Kotlikoff. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the NoSpin News Weekend Edition. 88 corporate leaders gave CNBC a letter endorsing Kamala Harris. Here are just some of the people, James Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch's son, Larry Summers, Mark Cuban, Penny Pritzker, Barry Diller. They're all ardent liberals. They give millions of dollars to liberal causes. So that's no surprise. But the 83 other people, you know, I went down a list. I don't know them, but I'm going, you know, what's going on? I don't know what's going on. Okay, so I do know that the cost of the essentials of life under Biden Harris have risen 20%.

That's documented. It's gas, food, insurance, on and on. That's not good for the overall economy. I mean, now the insurance companies is good for them, so maybe they want to endorse Harris on that basis. I don't know. Okay? Under Joe Biden, the national debt is risen by $7 trillion.

That's not good for anybody, any corporation or anything. They're running a trillion and a half deficit every year in the Biden administration. That's Harris. Okay? So it doesn't look like a good scenario on the economic front. So why would CEOs be endorsing Kamala Harris? So I asked myself, find a very smart guy. I can explain it so even I can understand it.

I'm not a macroeconomic specialist. I did take courses at Harvard. And I got through it, but I can't say it really knew what I was doing. So anyway, joining us now from Providence, Rhode Island is Dr. Lawrence Kutlakov, who teaches at my alma mater Boston University. He is or was a former economist for President Reagan. All right. Okay, Professor, so let's dumb this down so even I know what you're talking about here. On paper, it looks like if you're a CEO of any corporation, you want Trump who's going to cut the taxes, not Harris. Where am I going wrong?

I think that's, you know, obviously you can screw up the corporate tax. I mean, imagine you made the corporate tax rate 100%. You eliminated investment incentives. Every company would relocate abroad. We'd have no jobs for U.S. workers. It would be a disaster. So there's clearly a sweet spot, and going beyond the competition isn't necessarily it because I and other economists think that corporate taxes, if they're about,

the competition are really taxes on workers so that we have to be careful about how we handle those. But sir, let me stop you right there. Surely the CEOs know that people will be laid off in their companies if the tax rate goes from 21 to 28%. So therefore, the personnel of the private corporations are look around to cut what they can cut. Also, the increased tax.

increased taxation paid by the corporations, some of the costs of that will pass along to the consumers who buy the products of these corporations. Everybody knows that. Why are these 88 people endorsing Harris then? Well, I mean, first of all, you know, the details matter. If you raise the corporate tax rate to 28, but you increase investment incentives on new capital, on new investment, not on existing capital, that could keep the effective rate low or even lower. or it could lower it while they're saying they'd be write-offs that these companies would invest and write some of that off is that what you're saying new investments could be subsidized so that there's more so at the margin companies still have incentive even maybe better incentives to invest in the

us but that's a big maybe because they could write pernicious uh things into the tax code that would stop all that um they want it they can also raise tariffs by 10 percentage points i mean across the board. That's not something economists would endorse either. So what I'm trying to get at is that these CEOs are thinking about the big picture here. And, you know, do we have a, I'm not for everything. I think we need to have a major overhaul, the fiscal system, the benefit system. We're locking lots of millions of poor people into poverty because we give them benefits and then say you earn too much, you lose Bing, Bing, Big. Bing, Bing, Bing. And they're in very high marginal tax brackets. Adding additional programs like that, to me, is not exactly the wrong way to go. All right. But now you're getting into a lot of complicated situation. Okay. I happen to believe that the 88 CEOs that endorsed Kamala Harris are doing so primarily out of ideology, not that they might be able to get more investment money or they might be able to use the tax.

which will certainly change. Look, and you know this better than anybody. Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont, is a socialist. Kamala Harris sponsored the universal health care, co-sponsored it with him. Kamala Harris's whole career is big, big government. Now, you as an economics professor teaching at BU, do you believe the federal government should run the U.S. Because if you do, then you would vote for Kamala Harris. Well, I think there's lots of reasons I'm going to vote for Kamala Harris, but let me be clear. Because I don't think Trump is mentally stable enough to be president. All right, but that's not the issue here.

That's a different issue. But I mean, if you want to talk about health insurance, health care, I'm for Medicare. Listen, just hear me out. I'm for Medicare part. I'm for Medicare for all, but the Republican version. the advantage plan for everybody in the country. That's pretty much what Japan has, Israel, the European country is competitive health care.

And we can get the share of GDP down from 17% down to 11% and get the Swedish, you know, get our performance up at where Sweden is. They're spending 11%. They have fourth best result. We have like, we're spending 17%. We have about 21st best. But you would do it through negotiation. Correct? Not field.

I would do it through competition, through competitive life care system, the Republican version of Medicare. That's a big thing. What I'm trying to get across is that Harris's small thing, Trump is no think, in my view, in terms of the economy, what he's coming up with is, well, we can discuss. But we can't think small anymore in this country. Our entire fiscal operation is completely bankrupt on the long term. If you look at off the book liabilities, on the book liabilities, together we're bankrupt. Okay, but that's largely due to massive spending by the federal government and borrowing from Social Security and Medicare and getting that money out of there

when he never should have touched it. That's the old Al Gore lockbox thing. All right, last word on this. So you, as an economist, would feel comfortable voting for Vice President Harris because you don't believe that Trump has the answer. to providing a fair economy. Am I summing you up correctly? I'm nervous about what he's going to do on foreign.

There's so many other issues. There's foreign policy. Is he going to basically pull up? But for four years, it was pretty stable for four years. I want you to read my book here on confronting the presidents because we just run down the line. Very good discussion. I'd like him to enunciate this so that I could be confident.

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Ask your smart speaker to play the NY Postcast podcast. Listen and subscribe on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah, but you know that's not going to happen. His speech last week at the New York Economy Club came closest. He's a libertarian. Trump is a libertarian capitalist. That's what he is. and all this tariff stuff is to get better deals.

I know what he's doing. And, you know, real wages went up in his four years. But anyway, I appreciate you coming on. It was very good discussion. Thank you very much. Professor, have a good semester up there. You're listening to the NoSpin News Weekend Edition. So Bernie Goldberg has been around longer than me,

and I don't even know if that's possible, but he has. He writes a column on his very fine website, bernardgoberg.com. And you should check out that as much as you can. And Goldberg is very kind in saying three interviewers who really were effective were Mike Wallace, Tim Russert, NBC, and Bill O'Reilly meet. Okay? Goldberg put in the word even and even Bill O'Reilly. I don't know really what that meant, but I'm honored to be in that company.

So if you're a younger person, you're not familiar with Mike Wally. Let me just roll a clip in. Go. You're going to be in Japan, and I'm told it's a $2 million two weeks. They're getting two of us. They're working us like crazy. But it's going to be a well recompensed two weeks. It is for everybody who goes there, which you probably know. Now you really didn't need that question.

Oh, oh, Nancy, right. Wals loved it. giving it. And he didn't care whether you were Democrat or Republican. He was the best, in my opinion. Now, O'Reilly, how did O'Reilly get in there? Well, this happened February 2nd, 2014 Super Bowl interview. Go. I don't think anybody anticipated the degree of problems that you'd had on health care.gov. The good news is that the right of way we decided how are we going to fix it. It got fixed within a month and a half. it was up and running, and now it's working the way it's supposed to it, and we've signed up 3 million people. I don't know about that, because last week there was an Associated Press poll of people who actually went to the website,

and only 8% of them feel that it's working well, working well. Why didn't you fire Sibelius, the secretary in charge of this? Because, I mean, she had to know after all those years and all that money that it wasn't on work. You know, my main priority right now is making sure that it delivers for the American people. And what we've ended up doing is we've got 3 million people signed up so far. So I said, not going to answer, and he didn't answer. Okay, and that was the key to it. So joining us now from North Carolina is the aforementioned Bernard Goldberg.

Even Bill O'Reilly, huh? You had to sneak that even. I should not have said even. The thing I was trying to get across, and I didn't do it well, was that of the three people, like Wallace, Tim Russard and you, you were the only one. I think you're the only one who's still alive. I know the other two aren't alive.

I think you're alive, right? I mean, you're... Barely. Barely. So I said even, and I shouldn't have said it that way. Okay. But if you want to know, go ahead. I want to know, look, when you and I were coming up in journalism, the art of interviewing

was pretty well-defined. You ask the toughest questions, and you follow up, if the person evades, as Barack Obama did. You know, I cited the AP poll. I had that information at my fingertips because I knew he was going to say, ah, no, no, it wasn't there. I knew it.

Any good interview asked to anticipate what the answer is going to be to the question. That's gone now. And I don't know why. Do you? It's because of something you said on a show within the last few months that when people are asked to be,

to come on and be interviewed, the person who's doing the asking, the anchor, only wants to talk to people they already agree with. We become so partisan that we don't sit down with people we don't agree with. And when you're sitting down with people you do agree with, you're not going to be tough with them. You're not going to ask. I don't understand that. I never in my life did I do an interview and you can Google a O'Reilly Donald Trump interviews. It's the toughest interviews he's ever gotten. Never in my life did that enter my mind. And I don't know why it's entering the minds of these of these TV people now. I don't know why. Because we become partisan and we don't we only like talking to people. As you said, that we already agree with. Let me tell you the effects

of this during a political campaign for the presidency. The column I wrote, by the way, asked the question, who the heck is Kamala Harris, which is a question you asked in the lead-in. She's been, after the coronation, when she became the nominee, without winning a single primary vote, it's been almost two months now.

She hasn't done a single press conference, not one press conference. As bad as that is, what's worse, is that there's no outrage from journalists. These are the same journalist Bill who document every false move Donald Trump makes and I know a lot of people watching us love Donald Trump and that's fine with me

but when he says something stupid, they report it when he says something or does something dumb, they report it. If he scratches his rare end on the way to a rally, CNN does an hour-long special in prime time. That same media is not outrage that first. almost two months. To be fair, though...

She hasn't done a single news conference. No, that's true. But to be fair, the New York Times and the Washington Post have both chastised her in an editorial that she should do more. But my focus isn't on the corporate pinheads. All right, we all know that Post and the Times and all three networks are liberal.

And they want the Democrat candidate to win. Everybody knows that. But the individuals, like Dana Bash, was interesting. So Bash is the only interview with Kamala Harris. Ask the questions, but doesn't follow up. That's what the weakness of the interview was. So Harris can say anything she wants, and that'll probably be the case tonight in the debate. And then there's no follow-up or, well, you're dodging the question. Like I always say to my interview subject, when they don't answer directly, hey, you didn't answer the question. You want another shot at it?

or why won't you answer? Let me give you some behind-the-scenes stuff that you know very well and you could either say I'm right or I'm wrong, but you know what I'm talking about. When you're sitting next to right in front of somebody that you're going to interview, you've got to be a certain kind of person to say, well, you're full of it in a nice polite way, of course.

It isn't easy to do that. I used to get geared up. I used to tell myself, they're paying you money to do this. Do it. I mean, I actually pumped myself up before sitting down and doing a tough interview. I did an interview. I'm the reporter at HBO's Real Sports who broke the story on concussions in the NFL. The NFL was furious with the interview.

The doctor I interviewed lost his job, or let's say. let's say he left his job after the interview because I nailed him. He said there was no connection between constant hits to the head and long-term mental problems. It isn't easy sitting face-to-face with somebody. Tell me if I'm right or wrong about this and asking tough questions. And only some people, I would say you for sure, and I hope you would agree that I'm one of them, can do it, but it's not easy, Bill.

politics and the people behind the headlines. I'm Miranda Devine, New York Post columnist and the host of the brand new podcast, Podforce One. Every week I'll sit down for candid conversations with Washington's most powerful disruptors, lawmakers, newsmakers and even the president of the United States. These are the leaders shaping the future of America and the world. Listen to Podforce One with me, Miranda Devine, every week on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. You don't want to miss an episode. Hey, it's Sean Spicer from the Sean Spicer Show podcast, reminding you to tune into my show every day to get your daily dose inside the world of politics.

President Trump and his team are shaking up Washington like never before, and we're here to cover it from all sides, especially on the topics of the main. mainstream media won't. So if you're a political junkie on a late lunch or getting ready for the drive home, new episodes of the Sean Spicer Show podcast drop at 2 p.m. East Coast every day. Make sure you tune in. You can find us at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. Well, and I don't think that, Dana Bash, I don't think Dan of Bash is one of those people with all due respect. Obviously, her answer was to the criticism, I can't force anybody to answer question, which is true. That's absolutely true. You can tell the audience that the person isn't. I have some genetic problem that I actually relished tough interview. When I walk into the room,

I'm like a prize fighter, okay? I see my opponent, and if it's a informational interview, I'm going to get the information that I think has to be delivered to the folks. I like doing that. And when I developed a relationship, friendship, maybe you could say, with Mike Wallace, he was of the same mind. He liked going into the Iowa Tola Homania and looking at him and saying, it's not me, but everybody else says you're a murdering pig. You know, he liked that.

I don't want to embarrass anyone. And I've interviewed five presidents, and all of them were asked the toughest questions and the follow. But I like doing it. I guess I'm different. Let me give you one more example. I sat down with Vladimir Putin's good friend, who was the head of the Olympic Committee at Sochi a few years ago. And I stole, I didn't borrow. I stole what Mike Wallace did with the Ayatollomani when he said, it's not me, imam.

It's not me. but Anwar Sadat says you're a lunatic. I mean, it was one of the great lines of all time. Right, right. And I said, I stole this from Mike Wallace. Again, I didn't borrow it. I stole it. I should have been arrested on the spot.

I said, I forget the guy's name. He was a very nice guy. I said, forgive me. And I touched my chest. I said, this is not me talking. But your friend, Vladimir Putin, the president, he has critics who say he's like a mafia chieftain. Your response?

And he got very angry. He was a very nice guy. He said, I'm not going to answer that under any circumstances. I'm not going to answer that. But actually, that was a good answer. He was indignant about, you know, being confronted with the truth. But I don't have any problem with it. Because he was a nice guy.

Here's what I think it is. I have to gear up to ask that question. Right. where were you during the interview? Because you could be in Siberia right now if you're on Russia. Absolutely. Absolutely. And don't think that didn't cross my mind.

I'm going to put forth something now and you can, you know, you gave me the yes or no. I'll give you the yes or no. Here's what I think it is. Many television news people are not trained the way they should be trained. Number one.

Many are in it for the month. money and the glamour, not for journalism. They don't even know. So if you ask them a question about history of journalism, what happened in the past, Edward R. Murrow, how the wars were recovered, Vietnam, they don't know anything. They are hired for their looks, their demeanor, their voice, but most of all, corporate media and television hires people who will do as they are told, that is the reason that our journalism on television has fallen apart. Right or wrong. Let me, yeah, I think there's a lot of truth to that.

And let me, let me name two people who wouldn't do what we were told, you and me. Yeah, true. And we paid a price. And we both paid a price for that. But look where we are today. Exactly. Exactly. So we overcame.

I couldn't have said it bad. I'm not going to say another word about that. That is exactly right. And I've thought about that more than once. I would rather have the respect of the people than any paycheck. And I think you feel the same way. Yeah. And when you run the risk of not having any paycheck and you still do it, that says something about you.

Yeah, but there's one more for you, though. If you don't have a paycheck, you can always melt down all those enemies right behind. see the Emmys behind Goldberg, you can melt them down, because gold is at a record high. So you'll have some residual income coming at last word. Or if you come to my website, that would help a lot. Bernardgoburg.com. I'm always telling people to go there, and there's nothing in it for me. I mean, a lot of times you and this Nut Daily who you got, you're mocking me and telling me I'm crazy,

which is good. I like that. And you read my stuff and send me notes saying a good column, and I appreciate that. No, that's what journalists do. And if you write a bad column, I'm going to send you a note saying bad column. All right, Bernie Goldberg, everybody, bernardgoldberg.com. Check it out. This is the No Spin News Weekend Edition.

So let's get an opposing point of view. You heard me blow V8 for 18 minutes and 27 seconds. I hope it wasn't boring. We are a fact-based crew. As you know, that separates us for 90% of the press in the United States. us now from Washington is a professor of history at Georgetown University, very fine school. Michael Kaysen, Dr. Ph.D. He's got a book out called What It Took to Win, a history of the Democratic Party. He is a Harris supporter. All right, doctor, my first question, and I'm a student in

your class, so I don't expect any bloviating or evasions from my pedagogue, which would be you. Why do you think Kamala Harris dodges so many easy questions? I think, Bill, that both Harris and Trump did what most people do in these debates, which aren't really debates, as you know, they're talking points back and forth. She said what she wanted to say in response to a subject that was raised. It's certainly true that she could have been more direct in answering some of the questions, but former President Trump was not very direct to answer the questions either. And you mentioned some of those in your commentary.

So I think they're both guilty of not answering the questions directly, but then we expect that in debates. But I don't expect that. I'm insulted. I guess I'm a little bit different. Now, I know what Donald Trump did in his four years in office, and so do you. I don't know Deuce about Kamala Harris. I don't know how she sees the world.

I don't know how her problem-solving abilities would come to the fore. I don't know anything. And she does not have, it seems, any kind of obligation to inform me. Why do you think she doesn't do interviews? She's got a website, a lot of policies on the website. No, no, no, no. A website is something that you just put propaganda on, all right? Why do you think Kamala Harris doesn't do one-on-one interviews?

Why wouldn't she speak to me? Well, she obviously doesn't want to speak to someone she thinks going to be hostile to her. But, you know, she did an interview with CNN, which had some particulars in it. And also last night, she talked about a housing subsidy. She talked about money for people for child allowance. She talked about giveaways, and that's what's what's on our website. She's going to give away more than a trillion dollars in her first year if she gets Congress to go along with it. But come on, doctor, you're a professor of history.

Surely you know that if you cast a ballot for somebody, you don't know what she's going to do or how she's going to do it, there's an obligation to try to find that out. And that's my job. And I can't find it. You say she did an interview with CNN. It was a puff interview. You know what everybody knows. It cash admitted it.

The interviewer said, oh, I can't force you to ask the question. No, but you can point it out. And Barack Obama, by the way, did three interviews with me. One when he was running the first time around. Harris is dodging the press. Why do you think she's doing that? Well, she was on for an hour and a half last night. She mentioned things she liked to do.

But as you know very well, in order to accomplish big things, you need Congress on your side. Trump could only do so much. The biggest thing he did was to pass his cash cut, which helped the rich more than anybody else. And if she does have a big majority in both House of Congress, which probably she will not have

the election is going to be very close, she'll be able to do things around the edges. So it's okay with you, a professor of history, that she doesn't do any press. It's okay with you? She's going to be doing more press. She's done press before.

You know, what's important? Has that done any meaning? full press at all. Let me get a minute to explain. What's important to me, she lays out what she wants to do. She did that last night. She did that on CNN. I have to disagree with you.

She did not lay out anything. She gave a long speech at the Democratic Convention in Chicago where she laid out a lot of She didn't lay out anything. She said, look, I'm going to give you $25,000 for this, $6,000 for this. I'm going to do that. How am I going to solve the Gaza thing? Doesn't know. Ukraine doesn't know.

How am I going to bring down inflation? Doesn't say. Let me respond. No, no, no. Her response to the border is, oh, Trump voted against this bill. That was crazy if you read it. All right, but she didn't have it. And for three and a half years, they did Bupkis.

They didn't do anything. Can I respond to that? Let's move ahead. Here's the danger. How can I respond to that? I'd like to respond to that. One of the things you just said, the border bill, which was backed by, in fact, was put together by a Republican senator,

would have been a very good border bill. It would have put more people on the border. It would have blocked more people coming in. It would have made it harder for people to claim asylum. And Trump opposed it because he knew that if the Democrats and President Biden got credit for doing something important about the border, it would hurt him because his largest, most important issue is the border. That's the talking points.

That's the Democratic talking points that Trump sabotaged a good bill. Bill was no good. It led 5,000 people a day, foreign nationals a day, in unsupervised, okay? It cost billions of dollars, hundreds of billions, would not have stopped asylum claims. You just had to go to a different place, and it was no punitive attached to it at all. So you could come across eight times. How can say the Republicans were in favor of it? That's their problem, not my problem. I'm not a party apparatchnik.

I thought it was a bad bill. But anyway, look, that's her point of view. Trump sabotaged it. But for three and a half years, she denied there was even a problem at the border. Now, let's go into history, which is your Ballywick. So I got a new book out. Just came out yesterday confronting the presidents, right? In said book, in 1920, Warren Harding, the immortal Warren Harding, you know him, right?

Warren Harding. exactly what Kamala Harris is doing, Harding's people did. No press conferences didn't even campaign Harding. At least Kamala is going out there and giving speeches. He didn't even do that, okay? Sat on his porch in Marion, Ohio, going by, how are you? One in the landslide because people were so fed up with Woodrow Wilson at that point, after eight years in the Democrats.

They would have voted for a chimpanzee. And they did. Harding gets in and is one of the worst president, ever in this republic because people voted for a man who they didn't know he had no solutions he played cards and got drunk all day long and chased his mistress around the white house now i'm not saying kamala harris is that she's not okay but to vote for somebody who has no solutions fentanyl open border how is the new bill going to stop fentanyl it wasn't all right it isn't. So I'm upset and I am distressed that Kamala Harris continues to evade specificity.

Less work. All right, we had a technical problem. I think the professor fell asleep during that last diatribe. But, you know, we're at satellites and all. I don't want to bore you with it. But anyway, it was a good question. Obviously, Professor Kaysen, we really appreciate him coming on, taking a fire. He's going to support Kamala Harris, no matter what. And he's not alone. She could win. She could be Warren Harding. Okay? The people believe what they want to believe. They think she's a genius. They hate Trump. And Trump has got to recognize the danger. Thank you for listening to the NoSpin News Weekend Edition. To watch the full episodes of the No Spin News, visit Bill

and sign up to become a premium or concierge member. That's Bill O'Reilly.com. Sign up and start watching today.