Why is Bill O’Reilly Afraid of Bruce Fein?

FOR RELEASE: October 10, 2011

Remarks by Ralph Nader:

For weeks Bill O’Reilly’s producer Jesse Watters has been saying that his boss does want to have Bruce Fein on his show to talk about the unconstitutional and unlawful overseas aggressions of the Obama Administration, much like those of the Bush Administration but extended. It has not happened. It never seems to be the right time, despite the lurid headlines of ObamaBush.

On his cable show, Bill O’Reilly is not the Bill O’Reilly I knew and worked with years ago at Inside Edition. There, he was considered a genial working class type New York liberal. He is a different Bill O’Reilly now. His theatre is one where he sharply draws the line with many of his guests, often bullying and overtalking them, before he dismisses them. So he has to disagree with Bruce Fein, but he knows that Mr. Fein, a high official in the Reagan Justice Department, a constitutional scholar and litigator who has testified over 200 times before Congressional Committees, knows how to respond and rebut. He can’t be bullied. And he speaks quickly and persuasively from his deep historical and contemporary knowledge of American legal history.

Bill O’Reilly has a practice of calling out guests who are invited but decline to go on his show as being “afraid of coming on the Bill O’Reilly Show.” He has made this assertion more than a few times. Well, Bill, Bruce Fein is decisively not afraid to go on your show. One-on-one! It would be a show much viewed. But there is one precondition. Bill O’Reilly has to find the guts to stop procrastinating and invite him.