Before the Seahawks dominated the Broncos, some would say Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly tried to dominate President Obama in their pre-Super Bowl interview by asking him some hard-hitting questions.
President Obama referenced the big game and tied it into his presidency, saying he tries to “focus not on the fumbles, but on the next play,” and he predicted the game to end 24-21.
Politico reports they covered topics such as the Affordable Care Act, Benghazi and the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups.
O’Reilly asked Obama why he has not fired Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius but he said he isn’t interested in doing that. Instead, he answered, “I promise you that we hold everybody up and down the line accountable.”
When it comes to the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi in 2012, Obama said “People understood at the time something very dangerous was happening,” but they didn’t “know at the very moment why something like this happens. Bill, listen, I’ve gone through this, and we have had multiple hearings on it.”
O’Reilly pressed him on it being a terror attack, which the President denied. He also pressed him on the 157 meetings he had with IRS head Douglas Shulman. President Obama called them “routine meetings.”
He said of the IRS scandal there were some “bone-headed decisions” but not “mass corruption, not even a smidgeon of corruption.”
New York Magazine notes at one point in the interview, the President told O’Reilly it was Fox News who keeps false gossip alive. "These kinds of things keep on surfacing in part because you and your TV station will promote them,” he said.
image: Wikimedia Commons
