RUSH: This is last night on The O’Reilly Factor on the Fox News Channel. Bill O’Reilly had on Juan Williams to talk about the nation’s loss of Jon Stewart and The Daily Show. Yes, the nation’s in mourning, and everybody’s trying to figure out how we’re gonna cope. (interruption) Well, I mean, depending on where you go, yeah, that’s the attitude you get. The left certainly is. And Juan Williams is brought on to discuss why. O’Reilly wanted to know why.
O’Reilly said to Juan Williams, “Say I get run over by a bus tomorrow. I think the media would just mist over. Right, Juan? Wouldn’t that happen? Why would I not get the same treatment that Jon Stewart’s getting?” Now, I don’t know — (laughing) I’m sorry. I don’t like commenting on other people that do this. I really don’t. It’s been a policy of mine to avoid any kind of contrived rivalry, fight or any of that sort of stuff. But to bring somebody on, “Why would the media not cry over my leaving like they did Jon?” Anyway, he asked the question and my guess is he didn’t like the answer. Here’s what Juan Williams said.
WILLIAMS: His numbers, in terms of ratings, are not that good. His impact goes beyond the ratings in terms of liberal media. I mean, you start to think about the impact he’s had on everybody from Jimmy Fallon to Stephen Colbert and then you saw MSNBC and all the rest. They tried with people like Bill Maher. They tried with Al Franken, now the senator from Minnesota. They could never find somebody to go up against the likes of Rush Limbaugh.
RUSH: (laughing) That’s why I played you the bite, folks. That’s why I played you the bite. (laughing) So Juan Williams told O’Reilly, yeah, they did everything they could. By the way, I am getting a lot e-mail. I wasn’t gonna mention this, I really wasn’t, but I’m gonna mention it now. I have gotten a decent, a fair amount of e-mails from people who — I’m uncomfortable saying this. I really am. Well, because my parents taught me manners and so forth. But people have been sending me e-mails and asking me, “How come your name never gets thrown in as having done The Daily Show before The Daily Show even existed?”
In fact, God bless him, John Podhoretz. He had a tweet, somebody sent me his tweet, John Podhoretz sent a tweet out there, he said, “What is all this folderol” or some such thing. “Rush Limbaugh was doing the Jon Stewart show while Jon Stewart was still doing stand-up.” That’s what I thought. Podhoretz. J. Pod. Somebody sent me that. I don’t go to Twitter. I have spies that go to Twitter for me, among them, my brother, but he’s not the one that sent me that. A friend of mine in Kansas sent me that tweet from J. Pod.
This is illiterate, provincial nonsense. Rush Limbaugh was Jon Stewart when Jon Stewart was a stand-up comic. http://t.co/Gi2CVwr3B3
— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) February 15, 2015
Anyway, here, listen to this one more time now that you know the whole context. Here’s the question. O’Reilly is asking Juan Williams. “Say I get run over by a bus tomorrow, I think the media would just mist over, right, Juan? Wouldn’t that happen? Why would I not get the same treatment that Jon Stewart’s getting?”
WILLIAMS: His numbers, in terms of ratings, are not that good. His impact goes beyond the ratings in terms of liberal media. I mean, you start to think about the impact he’s had on everybody from Jimmy Fallon to Stephen Colbert and then you saw MSNBC and all the rest. They tried with people like Bill Maher. They tried with Al Franken, now the senator from Minnesota. They could never find somebody to go up against the likes of Rush Limbaugh.
RUSH: Ooh. Just not something you expect to hear on the Fox News Channel, but there it was from Juan Williams.