Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly Talks About Russian Interference

On Thursday evening, as Fox News transcripts show, O’Reilly started off his show talking about the alleged Russian interference in the presidential election.

“Today in Washington, the Senate Armed Services Committee held hearings about Russia allegedly subverting the presidential election. Front and center was the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper,” O’Reilly pointed out before showing a video where James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, claims that the Russians have a history of interfering in elections.

Bill O’Reilly says he believes Mr. Clapper, but that there has been no definite proof put forth that Russia and (specifically) Vladimir Putin tried to interfere.

“Mr. Clapper saying he cannot expose his sources or explain how the USA got the information about the Russian hacking. So this becomes a very complicated matter because some Democrats are charging that the hack of Democratic stalwarts like John Podesta influenced votes,” O’Reilly continued, adding that Republicans call the accusations nonsense and believe that the exposed emails point out political and press corruption.

However, Bill O’Reilly simply doesn’t believe that the actual votes were influenced by Podesta’s exposed rants. However, Theodore Johnson of Slate disagrees.

“So how exactly did Russia hack the election? Well, it didn’t. It hacked us — the voters. Why screw around with inefficient, resource-intensive brute force hacks on voting machines to flip ballots when you can simply convince voters to do it for you?”

Johnson concludes that by targeting voters’ decision-making process instead machines, Russia was able to influence the election without breaking into a single electoral computer. However, some of the commenters after the article aren’t so sympathetic to Hillary Clinton’s loss.

“Hillary Clinton destroyed her own credibility with her actions. The exposure of those actions cost her votes, and lent credibility to the fake news stories against her, and robbed credibility from the fake news stories against Trump,” says David Horning.

“I find it amusing that most liberals blame the hacking instead of the emails content. It was the content of the emails that sank HRC. The hacking was bad…the content was worse,” claims Matthew617.

Content aside, O’Reilly said he believes the hacking should be a serious matter.

“For you and me, Americans who sincerely want fair elections and justice, the hacking should be a serious matter. Again Talking Points believes the Russians were involved with the intent to create as much chaos as possible for America,” he stated, adding that nothing happens in Russia at that extreme level unless Putin approves.

O’Reilly then had some guests on to react to his talking points.

“I think what’s really important here is not to argue in a partisan matter. This was an attack upon the fundamental tool of our democracy — free elections. The response has to be bi-partisan,” Fox News Strategic Analyst Ralph Peters said.

“You know Bill, this is an ongoing discussion we’ve been having for a long time, and one of the big things that came out of this hearing is that it’s pretty clear that we’re very bad on defense,” claimed Morgan Wright, a cybersecurity analyst, adding that until something important is done, we’ll keep having these constant discussions.

When Bill asked Wright what he would say to those who believe there was no interference, Wright said that at some point, people have to trust intelligence officials. He believes the situation is being completely politicized as well.

Do you agree with Bill O’Reilly and his guests that Russia is responsible for all the hacks, or do you think Democrats are just using this as an excuse as to why they lost the election? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section.

[Featured Image by Rob Kim/Getty Images]