Bill O’Reilly’s No Spin News and Analysis - We’ll Do It Live! — Steve Kroft

Episode Date: April 2, 2026

For thirty years, Steve Kroft was a correspondent for 60 Minutes.  For over 40 years, he worked for CBS News.  Now retired, Kroft joins Bill O’Reilly on the latest episode of We’ll Do It Live! to discuss the current state of the media, President Trump, his famous interviews with Barack Obama, the Clintons, and more.   0:00 — Intro 0:49 — What happened to news? 3:44 — CBS News and 60 Minutes 5:15 — News turns left, Dan Rather 7:16 — 60 Minutes today 9:00 — Vietnam and Iran 13:32 — Covering Donald Trump 14:55 — Barack Obama and interviewing presidents 20:02 — What about Fox News? 22:13 — Bill & Hillary Clinton 32:08 — Chernobyl and Iran 33:02 — The cutthroat world of TV news 37:45 — Bernie Goldberg Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey Bill O'Reilly here. Welcome to another We'll Do It Live. Extended interview, and I am very pleased to have a contemporary of mine with us. His name is Steve Croft. You know him. 30 years at 60 minutes. 30 years the man survived at CBS. I survived about eight months at CBS. He's 30 years. Anyway. Let's begin with older folks, Americans. Okay. And they watch CBS now. And it's not anywhere near what it was. What the deuce happened? Algorithms. That's my short answer.

I mean technology. The fact that everything has gotten much more complicated. The fact that it started, you know, it started with cable TV and it started eroding the audience of the three major networks. And it just got down to a point where I think the people that own the networks decided to write it off that it was not that important to them anymore, even though it still produces a huge amount of money, but that the future was someplace else.

But, you know, the budgets dwindled. and people had to do with what they got. But it's also about performance. So Mike Wallace, before he died, I became fairly good friends with him. He liked the factory, like Mike, whatever you want to describe me as. He was honorary like me and kind of identified with it. But you had Hewitt and you had Safer and you had Wallace and you had all of these pros. yourself, really knew what they were doing.

Yeah. And now, I'm sorry, Tony Docapill, is that his name? Yep. He looks like a nice guy, but he wasn't at Chernobyl like you. And so it's not, it's like a sports team that once had all these superstars, and now they're in eighth place. Yeah. Yeah, it's the one thing that all the people that you mentioned, Ed Bradley and Leslie,

we all had either, we had successful careers at CBS News before we got to 60 minutes, and we had all been either overseas or in Washington covering the White House or one of those places. and there was a level of experience that doesn't really still exist. I mean, those positions are occupied, but everything has changed. And I can remember when I told Jeff Fager that I was going to leave or that I was going to retire. And he says, well, you know, what are we going to do? And I says, well, you know, go out and find somebody. knows how to write and is a good reporter and he said they aren't out there it's

sure there's no minor leagues yeah I mean we stations used to be great both of us came up the hard way yeah what fascinated me about because I know the personnel at 60 minutes they're tough boys over there oh hewitt and those guys I'd say it was savages, many savages. Savages, I have to tell you a story that when I first looked like I might go to 60 minutes, this is when I actually went to West 57th, and Dan Rather called me, because I had been working for Dan Show for like a long time, and he said, I think you're going to end up at 60 minutes, and he says, let me tell you,

there's some big cats over there. Take one swat with a polio. But he was one of the biggest cats. It's my theory. And you're going to be limping for six months. And it's true. I mean, there was no civility at 60 minutes. It was like, you're an idiot.

If there was civility, you better check your wallet. Right, right. It was hand-to-hand combat to get your stuff on air without it being edited. I think that rather turned CBS to the left, not in a way that was immediately, noticeable because Cronkite played it down the middle. Pretty much. Would you agree with that? Yeah. Okay. But rather tilted it to the left. I can back it up, but this is about you more than me. And then since that time, because CBS was the leader,

all the news leader on television, they've all gone fairly left. Would I be wrong? I don't think you're probably wrong in terms of perception, in terms of reality, I don't know. Some of it has to do, I've always thought, with geography, and the fact that so many people in the media were from and the people running the news organizations were mostly East Coast people.

Yeah, Manhattan people, D.C. people. Yeah, Ivy League people. Right. And that there was a built-in bias. as opposed to like a political bias. You know, people always used to talk to me about 60 minutes and say, oh, it's so liberal. You know, I never really thought of it as being liberal

in part because Don and Mike Wallace were both Republicans. Right, they didn't play that game. They didn't play that game. But rather did. But I think Dan did. Also, you know, he's from Texas. He pulled himself up by his bootstraps. And I think was more, I mean, he gave Nixon really a hard time.

I thought the dance career. That was a list. That question at the luncheon was. He did not like Nixon, and vice versa. Yeah. And I think some of that stuck. But I used to tell people, look, there's no. operation in broadcasting that has done more stories that should have pleased the

the conservatives than 60 minutes because we reported on fraud and the waste in Washington and all of that stuff when it not everybody was doing that and that's a conservative issue not a liberal issue when you watch 60 minutes today surely you know it wasn't it isn't what it used to be. You have to know that. Yeah, I don't know what is. Well, that's true to a certain extent, but let's take Scott Pelly, for example. Excellent reporter, I would say. Excellent. Hates Trump. Dripping. Blood dripping. Okay. It's Trump once said. Okay. Blood dripping. Hates him. Leslie Stahl. Appalled by him.

Isn't it our obligation to pull that back? I think some of the bill is perception. Oh, come on. I do. I do. I think some of it is perception. I think that Leslie can be tough on anybody. And I think that Scott the same way.

Here's my theory about conservatives. What I just mentioned with all the stuff about fraud and, like, scandals. and crooks and all of that stuff. I think the conservatives tend to look at it like, well, there's a small occasion of the truth when in fact it is playing it more down the middle, but I don't think the conservatives necessarily like the middle. I think they want people to be on their side.

Both sides do, though. Yeah. I mean, listen, that's why cable news succeeds. Yeah. Because they preach to the choir. I mean, they just tell people what they want to hear. You know that. And everybody knows that.

And that's absolutely hurt the repertorial business. I'll talk a little bit about you. I did not know this, and I should have known it. You're in Vietnam. Yeah. So you're over in Vietnam, and you win a bronze star. You're awarded a bronze star. But not for combat.

One was from service. It doesn't matter what it was. Well, you don't get a bronze star unless you're involved in, you know, combat. Right. The theater. One for service and one for meritorious achievement. Tell me about Vietnam. Took up five years of my life.

I had, you know, I'm counting the two and a half years I was in the service in the two years before when I was worried about what I was going to do. Because that was in 1968. Right. I got drafted. I got drafted. And you went. and I went. It's an interesting story because I didn't think I really had any choice. My parents were, would never tolerated me going to Canada and they would never tolerated me going to jail. So the only thing I had to, my only choice was enlisted or being drafted.

Okay, but I mean, you came from a traditional family and was Vietnam worth it in any way? For me? Just in general. I mean, you were a reporter there. You were writing for stars and stripes or whatever it may be. You were reserving what was happening. Is there anything worthy about that? Only the learning experience. So the actual war itself, the way it was conducted, the draft and all that was a negative for America. It was a negative for America, but I do think that it was instructive because I think that McNamara Defense Secretary. Yeah, certainly realized, and LBJ certainly realized, and that you can't just send American boys off to die without having the country behind you. And I think we're revisiting some of that stuff right now in Iraq. Right.

But it's a little bit different because of the urgency on the nuke front. Whether you believe it or not, I happen to believe it. I have a fairly good pipeline into what's happening. But I know millions of Americans don't want to believe it. They hate Trump. And then you think Trump's evil and he's going to do evil things. Once you get to that point then, rationality disappears. And the reason I asked you about Vietnam was I went over after the war.

But I never knew whether we were a noble over there or not. We being in the United States. Were we noble trying to save these people from communism? I think we were noble only, and I use as proof because I've been back. And they have much more respect for the Americans than they ever had for the French. Yeah, it's money though now. I think it was a little bit more. I think that the French were, you know, they were the colonial power,

and that had been going on for really a long time. But I think that particularly the Japanese, or the Vietnamese military people, Jap, and those guys, had a tremendous amount of respect for the Americans. Sure, sure. We were the enemies. But it goes down into history as a deficit on America's sheep. There's no doubt about it, tore society apart.

And I think that we are divided now in this country as we were divided in Vietnam. I don't see a lot of difference then. No, I don't either. It's about 50-50. Yeah. And, you know, we're in turbulent times here. Yeah. I would say that, you know, what you said about, I think that Trump's problems are deeper than Iran and the war.

and I think that, you know, a lot of it has to do with the fact that he thinks he can do anything he wants. So if you were covering President Trump, you would be skeptical of him? Well, I would be, I'm trying to be skeptical of everybody. Would you be fair to him? You know, fairness is a strange word. I think my big problem with Trump, it feels to me, and this is 60 minutes in CBS, I kind of feel like we're in federal receivership. And that...

Well, he's a populace. He's a strong man. Yeah, and exactly. And the trustees of this receivership are Trump, Ellison. Barry Weiss. And they have said quite openly that they think that they need to adjust. Yeah, they need to be fairer to him, more

fair. Yeah. And I agree with that. Because as we talked about with Pelley and I know what I'm doing, so to you. I can see when Leslie Stahl's interviewing Champany and she says to him, well, there's no evidence of Russian collusion, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm going, whoa,

that's not how you pose that question. Yeah. It's not. And you, you you know better than anybody because you interviewed Obama 17 times. Yeah. 17 times. Yeah, something like that. Why did he like you? I think he liked me for, I'm not so sure it was personal. I think he liked the fact that 60 Minutes could deliver almost 20 billion people

every time he came. But he also- He chose you. He could have had Mike. I think, because I didn't. the first story on him. I mean, I was the one that covered him during the presidential campaign. Oh, he does think he did trust me, and I think he knew that I was not going to, I was not going to like. Cheap shot him. Cheap shot him. Okay. And you didn't cheap shot him. Now, in order not to cheap shot him,

you had to be a little light on him sometimes. I remember those interviews, and sometimes I could see, I said, oh, Kroft wants to ask this, but he doesn't want to derail the whole thing. My role. I think they're probably wrong in the sense that we did some, there was never an interview that we did with him, that we did not ask him about all of the, all of the criticisms. But you let him answer rather than challenge. Because he, you know, Obama was an interesting person. I'd never really seen a politician like him. In all the years that I interviewed him, he never once said,

stop, I need to talk to my aides to find out the answer. No, he'd go, I interview him three times. He was in command. But with me, I challenged him. Yeah. Okay. Well, I challenged him too. You apparently haven't seen the last couple of interviews I did with him.

And they got tougher as you went along. Yeah. Okay, because he got in more trouble as you went along. Yeah, I mean, the situation was really, really a mess. Right, he had a long honeymoon. Yeah. And then he was, you keep your doctor if you want your doctor, and all of a sudden all hell broke loose.

But for the first four years of that presidency, the issue was the financial situation. Yeah. You know, we had just pretty much. Over the cliff with Bush. Over the cliff with Bush. and the worst of it, some of the worst of it, was when he was running, when he was president-elect. And I think that some of those things, you know, all of the bailout of the banks and everything.

Unlike Trump, Obama was a realist, and he was a consensus seeker. Would I be correct there? Yeah, I don't think nearly as liberal as people pointed out to him. No, I agree with that. I agree with that. But he was stubborn. Yes, right? Very stubborn.

And when I would interview him, I say to Mr. President, two of them were live. Super Bowl interview is live. And the presidential interview is the hardest interview you're ever going to do, I think. Do you agree? Yeah. Because you have to respect the office, even if you don't like the guy. That was actually my take on doing the job. I remember the Brokaw interviews and the Cronkite interviews of presidents.

They were very respectful. Some place along the line in the last five or six or ten years probably, it began like, you know, it was sort of get the guest. Well, it began with Iraq. That's where it began. Okay, when Iraq went south, then the hounds of hells in the media were unleashed. Right. Okay.

Cheney's this. He's a haliburton blood. That's where it really began modern time. I'll tell you an interesting story about Obama. When I had to do the interview live, I had 17 minutes because the Fox sports people didn't want any of this. They wanted to interview some guy that was thanking the Lord that he scored five touchdowns.

That's all Fox wanted. Right. Okay? They didn't want any discourse that was going to veer away from my teammates are the best, and I love them. Okay, that's what they wanted. They hated me anyway. So I go to Mr. President,

We got 17 minutes. I have a lot of questions for you here. You can do 17 minutes on my socks. Okay, 17 minutes. He can look at my socks and speak for 17 minutes about them. Yes. I said, when I raise my finger, my crooked finger from playing ice hockey like this, that means I want to get in. I have a question, all right?

You have two decisions to make. You can keep going, and then I'm going to interrupt you. Okay, you know me. or you can wrap it. Yeah, okay. And he was totally cooperative. Yeah. He wrapped it.

And then I got in the questions that I wanted. I think I amused him. You, he took seriously. Me, it was like this cat and a little ball that he was whacking around. He had, you know, I can't let this pass. I mean, you've been talking about Dan Rather in a liberal slant of,

of Democratic liberal slant of CBS. What about Fox? Do you think Fox is maybe a little conservative? It's interesting when you ask about Fox, you're asking me who wasn't really a part of that machine. My numbers were so staggering. I made so much money for them. They said, word of me. Unlike you, I had to fight hand in hand with Hewitt and all these other pinheads.

They didn't say one blank and word to me. It was, hey, Bill, how you doing? Like some lunch? Okay? How is it? So I never, ever got involved with any of that. And then when I left, that one constrained, because remember, I was at eight prime time, all right, disappeared. Yeah.

And it all fell into line because the profit margin was in speaking to one segment of the American people. And it remains, to this day, on all of the networks now. I mean, look at the view. Look at ABC News runs the view. Okay? And it makes its money by talking to liberal women. That's where it makes its money. So that's what they do.

But with me, I was a totally unique experience because of the economic power that I brought in. Very fascinating. It's a good question you're asking. You're still on your game, Kroft. You know, you're still on your game, you're still on, you ask me. You know, I think that, you know, I think Ayles was a genius. No doubt. Ailes figured out that you could be dominant with a rating of five.

Well, he knew. And that there was no, no conservative voices at all out there. He was similar to Hewitt. Yeah. Okay. He knew what was good on television. He knew who's good. Now, these people have no blank an idea.

I don't know who the anchor is for CB. Who is now Tiffany, who? What? They don't know. They don't know who's good, who's bad. Now, you did one of the most fascinating interviews I've ever seen. Had to kill him to Clintons after the infidelity stuff. Yeah.

Tell me about that. Okay. It was during sort of the height of that, of the, well, there was something big happened. A network, NBC picked up a story that was in the National Enququququential. or the star or one of them about Jennifer Flowers. And it was the first time that a tabloid story had ever crossed over to the networks. And I think it freaked out the Democrats. And I was not, you know, I was just taking kind of a week off because we didn't have a game, you know.

We didn't have a show because of the Super Bowl. We had the Super Bowl that year. So I went out and had lunch or a drink with Anne Reingold, who was an old friend from CBS, who had been working for Ron Brown at the Democratic Party. And she said, well, why don't you interview Clinton? And I said this Sunday, and I said, well, the first thing is, we don't have a show. Second of all, my understanding is he's going to go and do Nightline, you know, this week.

and so I didn't pay too much attention to it. And then the nightline thing for one reason or another, I believe it was because, if it was dragging on too long, tell me, I think that somebody was gonna be executed. And I think that night, and I think that Clinton was, in Arkansas, was nervous about doing it.

So it slid. So I get a call on Thursday or Friday from Ann Ryan Gold and said, you sure you don't want to do this? And I said, we don't have a show. And she said, well, and I started thinking, I said, let me call. You know, I said, are we sure you can get him? And I had a conversation with some people on the campaign, one of whom was Stephanopoulos. And I called up Hewitt. He's in L.A. And I said, can we, you know, we can get Clinton, you know? And he says, well, what are you going to talk about? I said, well, there's only one thing to talk about.

Clinton and that's Jennifer Flowers and he said okay let me see what I could do they were running a 48 hours after the Super Bowl and he had called up and got them to carve out like 10 minutes for us out of the out of the 48 hour piece and so that was it I called I can remember the call was Stephanopoulos and and who was working for Clinton at yeah he was a press guy And, you know, I didn't know George at the time at all. And he said, well, here's the deal, you know. We can do 10 minutes, you know, but it's going to have to be after the game, not in the regular 60 minutes time slot.

So he said, what game? Always at the top of his game, right? So I said, the Super Bowl. He says, wait a minute, this is going to air after the Super Bowl? We're in. So he wanted it. He wanted it. And it was Hillary, too.

And they called back and said, Woody, we'd like to have Hillary on. And I, first of all, Hillary had never been on television, really. But everybody knew that she was incredibly smart and was considered to be a real asset for his campaign. And so we said, sure, you know, bring her along. One of the biggest mistakes Gary Hart made when he got into the monkey business,

was that he didn't bring his wife on the show. And I think she went a long way towards inoculating the damage. Now, is that a tough interview for you to do because of the tawdry nature of the accusations? No, it was pretty straightforward. You know, it wasn't... And he denied everything.

Yeah. And what did she do? You know, she stood up. for him. And she was... Stand by your man, Tammy, why not? She was really great. I mean, what I would say, great. I mean, great in what her task was, was to save his ass. So they just smoothed it all over, right? They didn't really smooth it all over because they didn't really know where we were going to go with this. And they were under the impression that we were going to ask them some questions about his campaign. Are you kidding? They thought that? But you as a

The journalist knew he had to rep in Arkansas. Of course. You knew that. Yes. Did you bring that up? Say, hey, your rep is a little... We didn't have to... I didn't have to go to the reputation and the gossip.

We had the, you know, the Jennifer Flowers. Right. She was out there. Right. Saying this. After you did the interview, what was their reaction to Clinton's? Well, Hillary did not like it. And Hillary went on the air and said that Steve Croft was so nice when he was asking the questions.

And then apparently he came back and asked all these questions, these mean questions. Attacking you. Attacking me and attacking 60 minutes. And Don really went after her. And she shot up pretty quickly because it wasn't true. But it was a weird interview, you know. It was a weird interview. And I think that, you know, I kept trying to think, what's the first question I'm going to ask him?

I have a bunch of wise guy answers, but I'm not going to do it. And I said, I said, so tell me, who is Jennifer Flowers and how do you know her? That was smart. Yeah, because he was completely. Yeah, and you weren't being, you weren't being accusatory. Now it's all about accusation. Now it's like you're a pen ed, you did this, that kind of thing. Yeah.

When you completed the interview, did you have a better assessment of the two of them or a worse assessment? I didn't quite know what to think. You know, this was a time occurred at a time when he had been on the cover of Newsweek the week the week before the interview of this interview. and they had declared him the front runner for the nomination. Yeah. Right. And so, but nobody really knew very much about him. And, you know, I know Clinton now much better than I did.

I didn't know him at all when I did that interview. Right. He's an impressive person. Very smart. Very smart. Yep. I sat between him. Very likable.

Him and Henry Kissinger at Yankee Stadium one time was unbelievable. Yeah. Right. But he's not a truthful man. No. He's not. Well, he's not truthful about certain things. Most of presidents are like that.

I think Obama might be an exception to it, even though Obama made some pretty big mistakes with his rhetoric. They're going to say whatever puts them in a favorable light. Yeah. You know that. Yeah, and with the Jennifer Flowers thing, he had to. If he was going to be in this, he had to law. And he...

But it was the arrogance because after that he goes to Lewinsky. He doesn't even learn his lesson. Well, actually, I can't remember exactly the timeline. The timeline, whether it was Lewinsky or the other woman from Arkansas. Okay, but be that as a day. That was where he got in trouble with Perjury.

Yeah. Okay. He admitted that he had lied about Paul Jones. If you're caught doing that and your own. whole career wobbles, maybe you don't do it again. Not him. See, I know you're not a psychiatrist, but I would not- No, but I would point out the fact that, I remember, Izzy Stone once said, the first thing you need to know when you go to Washington is that are all politicians. Why? And I don't think that's, with the exception of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln's pretty honest guy.

Washington, you know, he'd lie to Martha, but he didn't do a lot of public policy. Financial stress is hitting an all-time high. Millions of Americans are stretched thin with no extra money, no room to breathe. And this isn't just lower-income households. Middle-class families are also running out of options. If debt has been weighing on you, you are not alone. And waiting usually makes things worse. Interest grows. Minimum payments trap you. Nothing changes. You don't need another loan or to consider bankruptcy. You need a strategy. That's why I like done with debt.

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That was a good piece. Yeah. And people have forgotten about that. And that brings us back to Iran and the nukes. Chernobyl wipes out this whole area, to this day, contaminated. Yeah. And you had to then broach the Russian bureaucracy. They didn't want you reporting over there, did they? Well, it was a Soviet Union then, and Chernobyl was in Ukraine. So I was dealing with the Soviet apparatchiks. Okay. Why would they let you even do that? They let a couple of print

reporters in, and that's when I saw the opening, and then we pushed for it. I think that they thought that it would be a sense that they were being open as they could about it. Because they made some really big screw-ups at the beginning. And I think that they wanted to demonstrate that they were doing everything they could to try and put out the mess. So this was a PR campaign. I never considered it part of a PR campaign because I thought that there was too much stuff that they were never going to be able to like turn to their advantage. and there wasn't. Getting back to CBS, 30 years,

did you make any friends over there? I mean, real friends. Few. But it's not easy to make friends in a television news industry, right? No, it's not. And I'm being honest, and goes back to what I said earlier,

if people seem really friendly, you need to check your wallet. And the worst one is your buddy Mike. What is it that drives this kind of deviousness. Now I've been doing this 50 years. I think I know the answer, but I think the audience wants to hear from you. It's rough. This in Hollywood are the roughest. Yeah. Why? Because everybody is so paranoid, I think. They're all, because everybody knows the environment and they think that somebody is behind them, you know, going to put a shiv in their back.

Why? Just for fun or be for competitive reasons? For competitive reasons. They want the story or they want the status. Jealousy or whatever, you know, I think that that's part of it. You know, there's a lot of, look, you must know this. I can remember when I was tapped to go to 60 minutes, I thought this was fantastic. And I expected to a lot of people who would just come up and say,

that's really great, I'm really happy for you, whatever the thing. And then you realize after a while that not everybody was happy that I got this job. Right. There were other people that wanted it. And so then you've all of a sudden made a bunch of enemies. And that's, it's just, you know, it's a snake pit. It is. It's a snake pit.

Is it any way to live? If you had to do it again, would you do it again? I think that I, no, I probably wouldn't do it again. Really? Yeah. I hated it I mean I was look the best job I ever had at CBS

when I was a correspondent at the London Bureau and got to see the world that was the job I always wanted 60 Minutes was really appealing and I thought I wasn't really sure I was ever going to get there I didn't really seriously think about it

and then when I did there's so many things that first of all the job is just 24 hours a day. I mean, you may get a couple hours of bad sleep. Beepers going off. Beepers going off. Getting on jets going here and there, the whole thing,

then coming back and spending, you know, three or four days writing the script and then going to the screenings and then starting it all over again. And, you know, it was exhilarating in the sense that the reason I loved the job was because of the stories that I could do. and the fact that they liked good stories. The level you can't go into that job and not do, I was kind of at a disadvantage. I was the first person on that show

that had not been an anchorman. It wasn't really well known. I'd been, you know, a lot on the evening news and was obviously, and I had been at West 57. But I didn't have, I had to keep doing it, you know. I had to keep doing what I had been doing. I couldn't just go in there and allow a couple of producers. Did you get addicted to it?

Like a drug? You had to do it? Yeah, probably. Yeah. And you're willing. Because you get excited about the fact that you're still alive. And what you do a good story in people, you know, that people, millions of people see it. Yeah.

But at the same time, you're dodging a shivs every time you go into things. Somebody wants to kill you. And the only reason I survived at ABC and I prospered there was because of Peter Jennings protected me. Yeah. He protected me. They would have cut my throat in 45 seconds. Local hot shot. Oh, look at the local hot shot. Because I worked at Channel 2 here in New York. Yeah. I was a local hot shot. Okay, as Bernie Goldberg once said. And Goldberg wrote a book, Bias. Yeah. You read it? No, I know Bernie really well, so I didn't have to. Okay. No, I read parts of. Did you subscribe to what he was saying, that the CBS apparatus had moved so far left,

that it wasn't really covering the news the way it should? Did you subscribe to that? I don't think I did. I think Bernie is a pretty complicated person. And, you know, people create sort of a brand. And I think that Bernie's brand had always been a little bit on the conservative side. And I think that he liked the fact. that he could be outspoken about it to offset pressure,

you know, saying that it was all liberal. Right. And I think that... And he's a contrarian, Bernie. He is. And he took it a little bit too far going after Eric Enberg on a story that Engberg did. I can't remember what it was. And they got him fired.

Bernie was also pretty arrogant. Well, what we all are, aren't we? I have to tell you a story. Bernie had, I think, really wanted to be at 60 minutes and thought he would be. And I really like Bernie. I admire him. I think he's one of the most talented people. You're a great journalist.

Great journalist. But they did 48 hours on Crack Street. And there was some guy wielding a baseball bat who was like the hero of the show. and the story goes that Don Hewitt ran into Bernie in the runchroom and said, I want to ask you a question. How do you know that guy was who he says he was? And Bernie blew him off and said, of course he was. Well, it turns out that he wasn't.

And I think it certainly damaged him with Hewitt. Right. And, but, you know, we had people that, You talk about, I mean, Andrew Hayward, and they were really good friends, and Andrew Hayward protected Bernie. But Bernie was, you know, one of them. He was different, and he was so good. Let's face it, the U.S. economy is under stress. National debt rising, trade war, shaking the markets. And meanwhile, China is dumping the dollar and stockpiling gold. That's why I protected my savings with physical gold and silver. through the only dealer I trust, American Hartford Gold.

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Use code Bill 10 in order to get 10% off your order. One quick story. First day I was hired at CBS 57th Street. You're familiar with it? Yes. I'm in the elevator. I'm 6'4. A guy walks in, he's 5-5,

okay, he looks up to me. He goes, you'll never make it, kid. Andy Rooney. Oh, yeah? He doesn't know him, never spoke to him. His first words to me were, you'll never make it, kid. Did he give you a reason?

No, no reason. And he just kind of chortled and I was going to be a wise guy, but I figured, he's on 60 minutes. Maybe I've already alienated after building. Maybe I don't want it. Well, there's a lot. I tell you, Bernie and Andy had some things in common.

Right. It was a jungle over there. And same thing with ABC. Last question for you. And then we're going to take a little break in for our premium and concierge members. When you look back, you've done, I think.

I mean, you've got to be in the top 10 TV journalists of all time. I don't rank them. No, but you don't have to reply. My opinion. Thank you. And you know I'm always right. I know, I'm always right. Does that mean anything to you?

Yeah, I mean, it's satisfaction. You know, you only have one life to live and you have only one, you know, I got into this business and I got to the, you know, pretty much to the top ranks. And I was very proud of all the work that I did there. But you say you wouldn't have done it again if you had to go around? Well, I'm saved by the fact that it doesn't really exist anymore, that job.

Yang and Yang. Ying and Yang. But I, look, there were great things. I got to go all over the world. Yeah. I got to see, meet all these people. That's what I loved about the London Bureau. I could go. That was also a killer job. But that's what I wanted. You know, when I decided I wanted to be

a reporter and it came in Vietnam when I saw some guys straggled in from one of the networks, I think it was CBS. It might have been ABC. And, you know, they had long hair and they were wearing, you know, camouflage fatigues and they looked really cool and they weren't in the Army. And this is when I was with the 25th Infantry Division, and one of my jobs was to escort some of these people, which I did a few times. And I said, that's what I want to do. I wanted to be a foreign correspondent from that point on. Well, you certainly accomplished it.

Yeah. And we really appreciate you spending some time with us today. Okay. I'm sorry I don't have time to tell you my first day at CBS. My elevator story.