Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly criticized CNN host Kaitlan Collins for “debating” former President Donald Trump during CNN’s town hall on Wednesday, calling her a “young woman with not a lot of experience” in an interview with NewsNation host Chris Cuomo.
“When Mr. Trump came out, he did not look good,” said O’Reilly following the controversial town hall. “His jacket and tie, you see the tie at the bottom. He’s not standing up straight. He’s walking slowly. He looked exhausted.”
“I can tell because I’ve known the guy for thirty years, he’s in a bad mood. Not in a good mood, okay? I picked right up on that, and then Trump went into his greatest hits. The election was rigged, the Ukraine war would stop in 24 hours, Joe Biden had more documents than he did … Just stuff you have heard a thousand times, okay?”
O’Reilly criticized how Collins interviewed Trump, telling Cuomo, “Now, Miss Collins was debating him, which is not her job in a town hall.”
“Her job is to get information from him, not to debate him, but unfortunately, Miss Collins is a young woman with not a lot of experience,” he suggested before remarking that he wanted Collins — who worked as a White House correspondent for the Daily Caller before being hired by CNN in 2017 — to attend the “O’Reilly interview summer camp.”
“There are different kinds of interviews. You have to be a surgeon in some interviews and other interviews a boxing match because you go boom, boom, boom. This wasn’t a boxing match. So let me give you a very clear example. Kaitlan Collins’ question about January 6, an important question by the way, went on for about 90 seconds. Her question… Trump loses interest in the first 10 seconds. He’s already got his answer that he said a million times. What I would have done, and that I did do in an interview with Trump, is say, ‘Did you wait too long before you called off the rioters at the Capitol?’ How long did that take? 5 seconds. Did you wait… And then he’s not going to answer, he’s going to dive, but then you go back. ‘Can you just answer my question? Did you wait too long?’ That’s how you interview Donald Trump.”
Cuomo defended his former colleague and pointed out that Collins was not given “an easy task.”
“The town hall is not a debate format, but Collins is in like an impossible position,” he said. “I don’t know easy it would be to handle it any better than she did.”
After Cuomo asked O’Reilly whether Trump intentionally misled people with his claims that the 2020 election was rigged, or whether he was simply “delusional,” O’Reilly said, “The latter. He believes because he wants to believe.”
“But Kaitlan Collins made two mistakes. Number one, she says flat out, ‘The election wasn’t rigged.’ So what good does that do?” O’Reilly questioned, arguing that since Trump was “never going to concede,” it was pointless to “bother” with such an approach.
“People make up their own mind, alright? But you can ask the question by saying, ‘Mr President, why do you think you lost the 40 court cases?’ Wouldn’t that be better than Kaitlan Collins goes, ‘It wasn’t rigged’? You’re looking for confrontation rather than information.”
Cuomo noted, “But if she doesn’t say that, then she gets jumped by everybody in the media…” to which O’Reilly replied that Collins “shouldn’t care” about the “left-wing press.”
Collins repeatedly attempted to push back on Trump’s claims during Wednesday’s town hall, prompting Trump to call her a “nasty person,” before ultimately praising her for doing a “good job” at the end of the event.
Watch above via NewsNation.
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