Obama To Appear On O'Reilly Factor

[daihashi]

O'Reilly is a hack, but he tends to back off his "jerk factor" a bit when he has prominent politicians on. I think Obama is smart enough to handle him, and it will be less exciting than it could be. It adds to your credibility I think if you do interviews, especially if you do them with hostile interviewers. It's probably a good move on Obama's part. I hope all the candidates do some decent interviews --- it's almost more revealing than some of the debates if you get a good interviewer. If I can be home at that time, I'll watch it.

My biggest fear is if O'Reilly does take it easy on him because he's a well known politician. Then every supporter will be screaming from the rooftops about how Obama threw down against O'Reilly when it's really the fact that good ole' papa bear is actually being controlled in the background.

They will praise Obama for something that may not even be Praise worthy.

[flyingimam]

My biggest fear is if O'Reilly does take it easy on him because he's a well known politician. Then every supporter will be screaming from the rooftops about how Obama threw down against O'Reilly when it's really the fact that good ole' papa bear is actually being controlled in the background.

They will praise Obama for something that may not even be Praise worthy.

true. O'Reilly better be business as usual! lol now that will be a heck of a show to watch and will make headlines!!

[daihashi]

true. O'Reilly better be business as usual! lol now that will be a heck of a show to watch and will make headlines!!

honestly that's the show I want to watch.. LOL.. not because I like O'Reilly (ugh I hate the guy).. but mostly because I feel like being entertained and watching the Radical Right Winger border line racist O'Reilly against Obama would just be amusing to watch (just because of the craziness that it would be.. my god could you imagine?).

I'm sure we'll all be talking about this later tonight after it airs :jointsmile:

[dragonrider]

My biggest fear is if O'Reilly does take it easy on him because he's a well known politician.

I didn't really mean he backs off on the type of questioning he does, more that he is a bit less douchebaggy when it is someone worthy of some respect.

I just watched the interview, and he WAS a bit less douchebaggy than I remember (it's been a long time since I watched the Factor). I thought they were pretty good questions and pretty good answers.

O'Reilly asked him if he thought we were in really engaged in a War On Terror. Obama said absolutely yes.

O'Reilly asked him how much of a threat Iran is and how far Obama would go to prevent Iran from getting The Bomb. Obama said Iran is a threat and said he would not preclude military action to prevent them getting the Bomb, but also said he thought there was much more to do diplomatically. O'Reilly said he thought diplomacy would probably fail and wanted to know specifically what the Plan B would be. Obama said again he would not take military options off the table, but he declined to say specifically what military options would be open --- bombing, invasion, etc. When O'Reilly pressed him on it, he said it would not be appropriate as a candidate to tip his hand about specifically what measures he might take, and O'Reilly let it go at that.

O'Reilly aksed about Iraq. O'Reilly said that he agreed with Obama that Iraq was "the wrong battelfield" and he agreed that there were no terrorists there until after the invasion, but then said the surge has worked and he asked whether Obama was wrong to oppose the surge. Obama said the he agreed the surge had succeeded better than he or anyone had imagined it would, including Bush. But he did not say that he was wrong to oppose it. His argument was that the surge had reduced the violence and had brought some stability, but the purpose of the surge at the time was to allow the Iraqis to take control of their country, and they have not been able to do so yet. They went back and forth on this a few times with Obama agreeing that the surge had had it's good results but not that it had "succeeded" or that he was "wrong."

The last toipic was Pakistan. O'Reily referenced Obama's speech in which he said McCain would not follow Bin Laden into the cave where he lives, and asked what Obama would do differently with Pakistan to "get" Bin Laden if that is where he is. Obama said he thought that we could use the military aid we give Pakistan to pressure them to do more. He said that he thought we had not attached enough strings to the $10 billion we had given Musharraf, and that most of the money had been used by Pakistan to arm for war against India.

All-in-all it was a decent interview. The crappy thing is that the interview is being broken into segemnts and now I'm going to have to watch the freakin' Factor Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday next week.

Mostly I agreed with Obama's responses. We are definietly in a War on Terror. Iran is a threat and we need to take nothing off the table militarily when dealing with them, but we need to pursue diplomacy more aggressively. We need to put more pressure on Pakistan.

The surge is the one area I'm not in complete agreement. I agree that it has worked to some degree, but I also agree it has not succeeded by the measures set out at the time. I do think the surge was the right thing to do. Long before the surge, I thought we either needed to go all out and win or get the hell out --- one or the other. I favored going all out, but if we weren't going to do that, then I didn't think we should just accept the half effort and slow bleeding. I see why he won't say he was "wrong," seeing as his option was never tried, and the surge has not succeeded by it's original benchmarks, but I do think the surge was right.

[the image reaper]

a VERY well-written piece, dragonrider ! ... kudos for being informative, explanatory, and unbiased ... good reading material :thumbsup:

[moebius420]

All-in-all it was a decent interview. The crappy thing is that the interview is being broken into segemnts and now I'm going to have to watch the freakin' Factor Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday next week.

My concern here is that Fox News may "creatively" edit the interview to make Obama say something he does not mean or put him in a certain light. If they had shown the unedited interview I would be less skeptical.

[flyingimam]

My concern here is that Fox News may "creatively" edit the interview to make Obama say something he does not mean or put him in a certain light. If they had shown the unedited interview I would be less skeptical.

yeah that is a concern!

I luv live feed!!

[Psycho4Bud]

Here it is for those who missed it:

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luA0AMP51Gc[/YOUTUBE]

Have a good one!:s4:

[daihashi]

Here it is for those who missed it:

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luA0AMP51Gc[/YOUTUBE]

Have a good one!:s4:

I'm surprised, that was actually pretty good. Although I am stunned that he still sticks by what he says about the surge. He won't acknowledge being wrong. It was never the intent of the surge to help Iraqis take more responsibility, it was to drive the terrorists out and create safety so they could get this country off the ground THEN the iraqi's could take responsibility for themselves and they slowly but surely have been taking more and more responsibility.

I am confused how he can still say that he was right.

[Reefer Rogue]

I saw it and agreed with Obama on practically all points, suprising i know me being a loony liberal, not saying anyone's saying that but me by the way :stoned: I don't know in such circumstances as surges that there are clear defined concepts such as victory, right, or wrong, in war there are no winners only survivors. Well, blahdee blah i guess you can make people sign documents and treaties and surrender but is this victory really such in a holistic view. Wtf am i babbling about lol, perhaps new enemies arise as dark phoenixes, when you cut their head, they divide and multiply. When will there be peace, has there ever been? Who am i talking to? How can there be peace when there is so much domination? Why don't they just freakin legalize it already so i can write more crap like this?

I look forward to the next parts :rastasmoke: