Stephen Colbert: Self - Host

Quotes 

• Himself - Host : [after introducing him]  thanks for being here, we booked you over a month ago and I know you guys are busy at the "real news" and so I appreciate you still being here tonight. You pay attention to everything that happens especially after a national tragedy like this one. What have you heard "out there" in the first twenty-four to thirty-six hours that sounds like a "good response" to you? If it was "President O'Reilly," who would you be listening to and what would you do?

  Bill O'Reilly : well first, it wasn't a "tragedy" in the sense that one of our contributors said it wasn't like an Amtrak train derailing. This is the basic "war" that we're in and I look at the news from not only a "contemporary point of view but a "historical" point of view so I think in times like these and as Americans after the "appropriate" out pouring of grief which we've had and the "appropriate" care for the families involved which they're raising millions of dollars now and actually there was a line to be give blood that was eight hours long in Orlando today and all of that is "appropriate". Then you have to basically step back and say, "how do we solve this problem?" Because it's an ongoing problem, it's a war. These people these Islamic Jihadists declared war on the United States and the west. That's what they've done. Now they don't represent most of the Muslim world but there's enough of them to cause the world "hate" on a consistent basis, so that's the problem.

  Himself - Host : well, you have "framed" the problem in that way but it can be looked at it in a different way. You can also say the problem is easy access to high capacity semi-automatic rapid-fire weaponry. That's another way to "frame" the problem.

  Himself - Host : [while the audience applauses]  and they don't have to be "either or," as the President said in his address they do not have to be "either or."

  Bill O'Reilly : [interrupts him]  they can deal with both and they can be both part of the problem.

  Himself - Host : would you accept that both of them can be part of the problem?

  Bill O'Reilly : I don't think the "problem" is defined as nearly as the Jihadist level by the American gun experience.

  Himself - Host : tens of thousands of people are killed with guns

  Bill O'Reilly : right

  Himself - Host : and they have nothing to do with Jihadists or Islamic extremists and in mass murderers that have nothing to do with radical ideology. So this is someone with a radical ideology and is motivated perhaps by a Schizophrenic interest in believing a part of something "bigger," perhaps by responding to a call from ISIS to kill people in the United States but then he "had" the access to the weapon to do the "deed."

  Bill O'Reilly : right

  Himself - Host : so, it's both got to be part of the problem don't you think?

  Bill O'Reilly : you have to step back and look at solutions to problems rather than lamenting problems that cannot be solved...

  Himself - Host : [interrupts him]  but if you don't agree on what the problem is, you can never agree on a solution

  Bill O'Reilly : [after applause from the audience]  it's my job as a news analyst to find a solution to the problem and the solution is not some kind of federal gun control at a level of...

  Himself - Host : [interrupts him to tell the audience when they start booing]  listen to what he has to say please

  Bill O'Reilly : Chicago has the toughest gun laws in the country and they have the highest murder rate in any major city in the country, why? Because you cannot "patrol" twenty-four hours a day criminals and terrorists who have access to guns

  Himself - Host : [interrupts him]  but most of the guns come from outside of Chicago but they don't apply to the federal law your talking about

  Bill O'Reilly : right, there's hundreds of millions of guns on the streets of America right now. Legal guns and that's not going to change because we have the second Amendment protections and our history is one of that we use weapons not only to get our freedom from Great Britain but also to forge the west and when there wasn't any control of "the law" and now Australia is the best example, twenty years ago this week a horrific shooting, almost like Orlando, there were thirty five in Tasmania killed with automatic weapons and they banned all automatic weapons and most hand guns

  Himself - Host : [after applause from the audience]  they reduced the number of weapons in the country by about half

  Bill O'Reilly : even more than that and if you carry a concealed weapon in Australia, you can get fourteen years in prison. So we can learn from Australia and the gun murder rate in twenty years has fallen seventy two percent in Australia and in the United States. Roughly in the same period of time the murder rate with guns has fallen thirty percent and the shootings have fallen sixty percent. Nobody knows that our gun problem is going down not up, why? Now this is the "key" to solving the gun problem: why is that there have been mandatory federal sentences handed out to violent offenders including drug gangsters? Those mandatory sentences are now "under fire" from the left, they don't like them but they took off the streets most of the real "big time" bad criminals, they put them away. So my solution to the gun problem is this: Congress debates which guns are allowed, you can't have a bazooka, you can't have hand grenades, so it's perfectly legitimate for Congress to say "what kind of rifles should people be able to buy?"

  Himself - Host : so, if President O'Reilly be open to the idea that AR-15 light weapons or AK-47 could be limited?

  Bill O'Reilly : Absolutely, you bring out and say we believe these weapons should not be sold in the United States no matter what the states say because federal law always takes precedent, they debate it and define it in 1996, I believe they did stop many of the high-tech rifles: they banned them and that lapsed you should look at that

  Himself - Host : alright, let's get back to Islamic terrorism.

  Bill O'Reilly : [referring to the audience members]  let me make one more point on guns because your "crew" out here is applauding something they shouldn't be, what we need to do here is every single crime committed with a gun in country, whether its Orlando terrorism, whether its Chicago in the inner-city drug gangs every crime is then a federal crime, no more local, no more state...

• Himself - Host : [interrupts him]  don't you there would be "outcry" from people who believe in state's rights

  Bill O'Reilly : "outcry" doesn't concern me

  Himself - Host : but there's an "outcry" over the second Amendment and that does concern you

  Bill O'Reilly : I don't care

  Himself - Host : you don't care about the second Amendment?

  Bill O'Reilly : I do but the second Amendment doesn't give anybody the right to commit a crime with a gun, it doesn't give anybody that right

  Himself - Host : I understand that

  Bill O'Reilly : so, it's all federal crimes, including selling illegal guns is a federal with "mandatories," so if you rob a 7-11 with a gun, not only are you convicted on the of the robbery which is a local beef, but you get ten years in the federal penitentiary on top of that, that takes away...

  Himself - Host : [interrupts him]  so wait, "mandatory sentencing, "you believe that you some limiting of access to high capacity and semi-automatic weaponry is a reasonable thing for Congress to...

  Bill O'Reilly : [interrupts him]  Congress passes that law and federal the gun crimes

  Himself - Host : let's get back to the specificity of the Orlando attack, what do you think is a proper response to stop something like this which does not fall under the category of the crimes you were talking about

  Bill O'Reilly : [interrupts him]  it's impossible, you're always going to have your Timothy McVeigh's, you're always going to have your Boston Massacre bombers, and you San Bernardino killers, its throughout history, if you look it from Jack the Ripper...

  Himself - Host : [interrupts him, referring to the Orlando shooter]  this person who was interviewed twice by the FBI.

  Bill O'Reilly : right

  Himself - Host : [interrupts him, referring to the Orlando shooter]  this person who was interviewed twice by the FBI and the FBI had something to answer for on that because he can still get access to automatic weapons...

  Bill O'Reilly : so, his broken a law

  Himself - Host : uh huh, how can we keep him off a flight? He wasn't on the no-fly list but people who are on under investigation can be kept off flights...

  Bill O'Reilly : [interrupts him]  the private airlines "they" are the ones keeping him off the flight

  Himself - Host : [interrupts him]  no, there's a federal no-fly list people can take off from the plane under their own volition they can but the feds created this list

  Bill O'Reilly : if I'm the President of Jet Blue and I say to the federal government "I'm going to let anybody I want on this plane," they can't do anything to me

  Himself - Host : has any airline done that?

  Bill O'Reilly : No, of course not

  Himself - Host : then why would you argue that?

  Bill O'Reilly : I wouldn't argue it, I'm just you can't impose on the FBI and I don't think you can blame them either, you can't say this terrorist "Omar", you had him, you knew Mateen was a bad guy but you didn't him in commission of a crime, so what can you do? You can't just "detain" him, unless Congress declares war against the Islamic Jihad which I say on my program should happen.

• Bill O'Reilly : I don't know, I had Trump tonight on The Factor, we were close to getting Hilary Clinton on, I hope she'll come on later in the week

  Himself - Host : but she's had a statement put out, do you think she's doing the same thing?

  Bill O'Reilly : look, here's the difference: Trump is bringing a robust "I'm gonna get these guys" attitude to the table

  Himself - Host : uh huh

  Bill O'Reilly : Mrs. Clinton is bringing a more nuanced situation

  Himself - Host : uh huh

  Bill O'Reilly : Trump is "betting" now that the country wants a "real avenger" that's what his "betting." Mrs. Clinton is very "tied in" to the Obama legacy because she needs him to campaign, it's a political advantage if that's what we're talking about...

  Himself - Host : [interrupts him]  yeah

  Bill O'Reilly : to Trump on "this one", he has the advantage on "this one" and he wants to be President, so his gonna use it

  Himself - Host : that is true

  Bill O'Reilly : thank you

  Himself - Host : ok, let's try to agree on something, are guns a problem "here"?

  Bill O'Reilly : guns are a problem in the hands of criminals and terrorists but they "afford" the population a level of self-protection which is why the Founders put it in the Constitution

  Himself - Host : ok

  Bill O'Reilly : can I make one more point before we go?

  Himself - Host : oh, but we won't be able to talk about anything else

  Bill O'Reilly : Legends & Lies is what originally, I came on here to talk about

  Himself - Host : oh, I know, I've got the book right here and it's a series on Sunday nights and it's fantastic

  Bill O'Reilly : the reason we beat these British oppressors because everyone had a gun and all these redcoats running around and Bang! That's what self-protection brings

  Himself - Host : I just don't think our situation is comparable to Lexington and Concord

  Bill O'Reilly : you have to understand the history and emotion tied into the Second Amendment, it's a self-protection for law abiding people, that's why it's there and it's not gonna be overturned

  Himself - Host : a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state is not the same

  Bill O'Reilly : whatever, it's not gonna be overturned: deal with it

  Himself - Host : I don't think its going to be overturned

  Bill O'Reilly : punish people who abuse the guns, punish them!

  Himself - Host : but restrict some guns, you said it's possible

  Bill O'Reilly : yes

  Himself - Host : so, guns, ISIS, you say destroy ISIS, you say this kind of problem will never end but what?

  Bill O'Reilly : it will go down significantly if you "cut off the head of the snake"

  Himself - Host : but isn't the physical not the problem but the idea of Jihad against the United States is the problem, how do you kill an idea?

  Bill O'Reilly : you don't, there's still Nazis around, there's Communists running around wanting to dominate: you don't. What you do is you take the playing field and destroy the people who are destroying your people! This is war, accept it

  Himself - Host : do you see this is as a hate crime? That he chose a gay club?

  Bill O'Reilly : everything ISIS does is a hate crime

  Himself - Host : his not a member of ISIS

  Bill O'Reilly : he used the ISIS ideology...

  Himself - Host : [interrupts him]  I understand

  Bill O'Reilly : to justify killing gays because ISIS wants to kill gays, just like Hitler wanted to kill gays, same thing

  Himself - Host : last thing: do you think this is a mental health problem?

  Bill O'Reilly : no

  Himself - Host : because this person, his wife said he had a history of domestic abuse, he was bipolar and on steroids

• Himself - Host : thanks for being here

  Bill O'Reilly : sure

  Himself - Host : we booked you over a month ago and I know you guys are busy over at the "real" news, and I appreciate you still being here tonight. You pay attention to everything that happens after a big news story, especially after a national tragedy like this one. What have you heard out there, in the first twenty-four to thirty-six hours that sounds like a "good" response to you? If it was President O'Reilly, who would you be listening to and what would you do?

  Bill O'Reilly : well, first of all, it wasn't a "tragedy" in the sense of as one of our contributors said, it wasn't an Amtrack train derailing, this is a basic "war" that we're in and I look at the news from not only a contemporary view but a historical point of view, so I think in times like these, Americans, after the appropriate outpouring of grief, which we've had and then the appropriate care for the families, involved, which their raising millions of dollars now. Actually, there was a line to give blood eight hours long in Orlando today and all of that is appropriate, then you have "step back" and say "How do you solve this problem?" Because it is an ongoing problem, these people, these Islamic Jihadists have declared war on the United States and the West: that's what they've done. Now, they don't represent most of the Muslim world, but there's enough of them to cause the world hate

  Himself - Host : uh huh

  Bill O'Reilly : so that's the "problem"

  Himself - Host : well, you have "framed" the "problem" in that way

  Bill O'Reilly : yeah

  Himself - Host : but it can be looked at a "different" way, but you can say the "problem" is easy access to high-capacity rapid firing weaponry, that's another way and they don't have to be "either/or" as the President said in his address, they do not have to be either/or", they can both be the problem, would you accept that those can be both part of the problem here?

  Bill O'Reilly : I don't think the problem is "defined" nearly at the Jihadist level, by the American gun "experience"

  Himself - Host : tens of thousands of people are killed with guns

  Bill O'Reilly : right

  Himself - Host : and have nothing to do with Jihadis, or Islamic extremists. So, this is someone with a radical ideology, and is motivated by perhaps a Schizophrenic interest in believing his part of something "bigger" perhaps by responding to a call from ISIS to kill people in the United States, but then he had the access to the weapon to do the deed, don't you think?

  Bill O'Reilly : but you have to "step back" and look at solutions to problems rather than lamenting problems that cannot be solved

  Himself - Host : [before the audience applauds]  but if you don't agree on what the problem is, you can never agree on a solution

  Bill O'Reilly : ok, it's my job as a news analyst to a find a solution to the problem, and the solution is not some kind of federal gun control

  Himself - Host : [to the audience when they boo]  listen to what he has to say please

  Bill O'Reilly : Chicago has the toughest gun laws in the country, Chicago has the highest murder rate in any American city in the country, why? Because you cannot patrol twenty-four seven criminals and terrorists who have access to guns

  Himself - Host : and the guns come from mostly outside of Chicago because they are not the federal laws that you're talking about

  Bill O'Reilly : there are hundreds of millions of guns on the streets of America right now: legal guns and that's not gonna change because we have the second Amendment protections and we used guns to get our freedom from Great Britain and to forge the west and there wasn't any control of the law. Now, Australia is the best example, twenty years ago, I think it was this week, a horrific, almost like Orlando, thirty-five people killed in Tasmania with an automatic weapon and they banned all automatic weapons and most handguns

  Himself - Host : they reduced the number of weapons in their country by about half

  Bill O'Reilly : more than that and if you carry a concealed weapon in Australia, you get fourteen years in prison, so we can learn from Australia. The gun murder rate has fallen seventy two percent in Australia. In the United States, roughly in the same period of time, the murder rate with guns has fallen thirty percent and the shootings have fallen sixty percent: nobody knows that, our gun problem is going down here, not up, why? Now, this is the key to solving the gun problem, why is that there have been mandatory federal sentences handed out to offenders including drug gangsters? Those mandatory federal sentences are now under fire from the left, they don't like them but they took off the street most of the real big time bad criminals, they put them away, so my solution to the gun problem is this: number one, Congress debates which guns are allowed, you can't have a bazooka, you can't have hand grenades, so it's perfectly legitimate for Congress to say "What kind of rifles should people be able to buy?"

  Himself - Host : so, President O'Reilly would be open to the idea that AR-15 or AK 47's be limited?

  Bill O'Reilly : absolutely, you bring it out and say "We believe these weapons should not be sold in the United States because no matter what the state says because federal law always takes precedent, alright? They debate it and define it, in 1996, they did stop many of the high-tech rifles: they banned them and that lapsed, you should look at that

  Himself - Host : let's get back to Islamic terrorism, I want you to address that...

  Bill O'Reilly : [interrupts him]  one more point about the guns because your "crew" out here is applauding something they shouldn't be applauding. What we need to here that every crime committed with a gun, whether it's Orlando terrorism, or in Chicago in the inner city, drug gangs, every crime is then a federal crime, alright? No more local, no more state

  Himself - Host : do you think there would be outcry for state's rights?

  Bill O'Reilly : outcry doesn't concern me, alright?

  Himself - Host : but there's an outcry over the second Amendment and that does concern you

  Bill O'Reilly : I don't care

  Himself - Host : you don't care about the second Amendment?

  Bill O'Reilly : I do but the second Amendment doesn't give anybody the right to commit a crime with a gun

  Himself - Host : I understand that

  Bill O'Reilly : so, their all-federal crimes, including selling illegal guns is a federal crime with mandatories. So, if you rob a 7-11 with a gun, not only are you convicted of the robbery, which is a local beef, but you get ten years in the federal penitentiary on top of that

  Himself - Host : ok, mandatory sentencing, you believe that some limiting of access to high capacity and semiautomatic weaponry is a reasonable thing for Congress to pass that

  Bill O'Reilly : and federalizes the gun crime

  Himself - Host : let's get back to the specific Orlando attack, what do you think is a "proper" response to something like this which does not fall under the crimes that you're talking about?

  Bill O'Reilly : it's impossible, you're always going to have your Timothy McVeigh, you're always going to have your Boston marathon bomber, San Bernardino killers

  Himself - Host : uh huh

  Bill O'Reilly : its throughout history, if you look at it...

• Himself - Host : [interrupts him]  this person who had been interviewed twice by the FBI, can still get access to automatic weapons...

  Bill O'Reilly : [interrupts him]  so, his broken the law

  Himself - Host : so, how can we keep him off of a flight? He wasn't on the no-fly list but people who are under investigation, can be kept off the flights...

  Bill O'Reilly : [interrupts him]  the private airlines, "they" are the ones keeping him off the flight

  Himself - Host : no, there's a federal no-fly list, people take people off of their own volition, they can but the feds create the no-fly list

  Bill O'Reilly : if I'm the president of Jet Blue and I say to the federal government "I'm gonna let anyone on this plane"

  Himself - Host : uh huh

  Bill O'Reilly : "They can't do anything to me"

  Himself - Host : has any airline done that?

  Bill O'Reilly : no, of course not, why would they do it?

  Himself - Host : ok, so why would you argue it?

  Bill O'Reilly : I wouldn't argue it, I'm just saying you can't impose on the FBI and I don't think you can blame them either, the Bureau does a very good job, you can't say "Look, this terrorist, you had him, you knew he was a bad guy but they didn't have him in a commission of a crime", so what can you do? You can't just detain him, unless Congress declares war against the Islamic Jihad, which I say on my program, should happen

• Himself - Host : so, before we went on the break, you were talking about we need an all-out war on the Islamic state, what does that mean?

  Bill O'Reilly : it means Congress should pass a declaration of war

  Himself - Host : uh huh

  Bill O'Reilly : against Islamic terrorist groups

  Himself - Host : that's a large...

  Bill O'Reilly : [interrupts him]  I'll name them: Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and there are four or five...

  Himself - Host : [interrupts him]  are we not at war with Al-Qaeda right now?

  Bill O'Reilly : we are, the President has the authority to do it but if you make a declaration of war, it does a number of things. Number one, it gives your authority inside the United States, far more latitude to detain an Omar Mateen

  Himself - Host : you can detain American citizen...

  Bill O'Reilly : [interrupts him]  if you're at war, you can do a number of different things, FDR did it with the Japanese and it was a mistake but he did it. So, the war declaration takes the protection of the audience and the protection of you and me away from law enforcement and puts it into the military precincts. Number two, NATO would then be mobilized and they would have to join the fight against these Jihadist groups

  Himself - Host : after 9/11, this was the largest attack on the United States. After 9/11, we went to war in Iraq, why is this not a mistake?

  Bill O'Reilly : we wouldn't be an occupier here, this a war against attrition, against a terror group, it's the same philosophy as the Nazis, it's the Third Reich, it's the same

  Himself - Host : but how does that stop a lone gunman here in the United States?

  Bill O'Reilly : I told you, you can't stop it

  Himself - Host : [confused]  if you can't stop it, so then why would we declare war based on this?

  Bill O'Reilly : because then, rather than outsourcing the fight against ISIS, the Kurds, NATO would do it

  Himself - Host : uh huh

  Bill O'Reilly : and NATO would then destroy the commanding control of ISIS and Al-Qaeda. So, right now, guys like Mateen think ISIS is winning because they're on the internet and ISIS is causing all kinds of trouble, once the world sees these people are being annihilated, and I mean annihilate, that whole propaganda "We're winning the Jihad, the Caliphate, we're gonna get this establishment" vanishes

  Himself - Host : does it necessarily vanish because in a Muslim world, nearly, vulnerable now, regardless what happens to declared enemies against the United States, their given pretty good press, their surviving and their thriving

  Bill O'Reilly : and do you have to hold that land?

  Himself - Host : [adamantly]  no

  Himself - Host : no one has to hold that land? You can't do an "air war"

  Bill O'Reilly : you're not trying to bring democracy to Syria, you're trying to annihilate an enemy that needs to be annihilated

  Himself - Host : and then who takes over once you annihilate them?

  Bill O'Reilly : you work with whoever you feel is trustworthy in the region in the country but we cannot dictate how these countries run themselves, particularly in a Muslim world because that "value system" is a lot different than our "value system"

  Himself - Host : and when is the war over?

  Bill O'Reilly : the war is over when the level of terrorism goes down, the refugees can return home, and you have a basic "handle" on the "situation". Look, we know what the danger is, we know what the "cost" is and we know it's been going on far too long

  Himself - Host : uh huh

  Bill O'Reilly : now it's time for America to step up its power and take care of these SOB's

  Himself - Host : [looks down his notes]  we have to go, let's see what we can agree on here: what do you think of Donald Trump's response so far?

  Bill O'Reilly : well, it's a political response

  Himself - Host : it seems fairly "self-congratulatory"

  Bill O'Reilly : yes, it is, he's a politician, it shouldn't shock you

  Himself - Host : uh huh

  Bill O'Reilly : Trump has two things: the economy...

  Himself - Host : [interrupts him]  there are other politicians who would not say "I appreciate the congrats" or "I called it", that's not political behavior, that's grandstanding

  Bill O'Reilly : [after the audience applauds and O'Reilly shrugs]  he wants to be President, his using this terrorism issue to bolster his popularity

  Himself - Host : so, his making a political "tool" out of a terror attack?

  Bill O'Reilly : that's what his doing

  Himself - Host : is Hilary doing the same thing?

• Bill O'Reilly : look, that's an excuse

  Himself - Host : no

  Bill O'Reilly : this guy...

  Himself - Host : [interrupts him]  she's not excusing him, she got away from him