Jon Stewart and Bill O’Reilly have reunited for the first time in a decade to trade barbs.
The “Daily Show” originally planned to cover the Republican National Convention from Milwaukee this week, but after Saturday’s attempt on Donald Trump’s life and increased security measures at the event, Stewart had to settle for a debate with the former Fox News pundit.
O’Reilly, who was ousted from the conservative news network and settled a sexual misconduct suit for $32 million in 2017, has long relished sparring over politics with Stewart — and argued Tuesday that doing so actually softened bipartisan vitriol.
“Now, I truly hate him,” O’Reilly joked on the show. “But I don’t show it.”
“But now, that’s not rewarded,” he continued. “That kind of detente where two people look at life differently isn’t rewarded. The haters get the big money, and so that’s what you have, and I think all Americans have got to hold the corporations accountable.”
The former pundit famously made his bones as the irate host of “The O’Reilly Factor.” Despite his own history of sowing division on Fox News, O’Reilly seemed to suggest it was liberal media’s fault for America’s hostile political climate.
“You can’t do anything about the guys in the basement … these conspiratorial nuts, you can’t do anything about that,” he said Tuesday. “But you can say to corporations, ‘You better knock this stuff off. You better stop calling people racists and Nazis and this and that.’”
Saturday’s assassination attempt on Trump naturally invigorated partisan tensions. The former president, as well as two rallygoers, were injured — while one man was killed, in addition to the 20-year-old shooter. Republicans have since claimed that the shooting was a result of Democrats characterizing Trump as a threat to democracy.
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“We don’t know what caused him to do that — we knew he was a miserable kid who was bullied and all of this stuff … but we don’t get into, ‘Oh he’s a Republican!’” O’Reilly said of the shooter on Tuesday. “That’s the first thing they said on ‘The View.’ The first thing they said!” (It was not the first thing they said.)
“Stop it,” he added. “That does nobody any good.”
Stewart pushed back, reminding O’Reilly, “You and I are both somewhat fossilized practitioners of the rhetorical arts …. and we made a really spectacular living pushing those envelopes. It seems now, to say, ‘These other people should stop…’” he trailed off, to applause.
O’Reilly then falsely claimed that President Joe Biden had likened Trump to the Third Reich in an interview Monday with Lester Holt.
“You know he didn’t say that, right?” Stewart replied. “Stop monetizing your anger!”
Things took a lighter turn when O’Reilly tried to slam Biden’s economy and said, “My job as a journalist is” — before Stewart interrupted.
“Oh, when did you get that job?” the “Daily Show” host quipped, to applause. “You really make it too easy.”
Watch the full interview below: