This is a RUSH transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," January 10, 2011. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
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BILL O'REILLY, HOST: In the "Weekdays With Bernie" segment tonight, let's bring in the purveyor of BernardGoldberg.com. He joins us from Miami.
Bernie and I were talking in the break, and we both say this is the worst we've ever seen, the worst media exhibition we've ever seen. So take it away.
BERNIE GOLDBERG, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Well, in all my years as a working journalist, I have never seen such shallow, thoughtless, agenda-driven drivel as I have in the past 36 hours, and it's all masquerading as serious analysis and commentary.
Liberals in the media -- and, no, not every single one but way too many of them -- have taken a page out of Rahm Emanuel's playbook, and they've decided that they're not going to let this crisis or any other go to waste.
The crisis is a terrible, terrible tragedy in Arizona. Now, nobody -- nobody on the right, nobody on the left -- wanted to see that happen. Nobody. But once it did, you just know that the Paul Krugmans of the world were crossing their little fingers and hoping it was somebody in the Tea Party who pulled the trigger, because then they could say, "You see? You see? We were right all along. We told you that these were vile right-wing haters."
But then, when it turned out that it wasn't a Tea Party person but a psychopath that went into his backyard, into a tent, and prayed to a skull, and who probably would have been touched off by a red balloon or a recipe on a box of Betty Crocker cake mix, when they -- when they found out that it was that kind of person, then they had to round up the usual suspects. The usual suspects were Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and you, Bill O'Reilly. And they said that you created a culture of hate.
Now, we're all against a culture of hate, but a culture of hate to these people is anything, as you said in the "Talking Points," that they disagree with. So what did they do? They didn't do what a journalist must do. They didn't connect the dots and make a connection between anything any of you have ever said and how that influenced the gunman. There's not a shred of evidence, at least not as of tonight, that there is any connection between anything that any of you supposed hate-mongers have ever said and what went on in this -- inside this young man's mind.
Now, they pointed specifically to Sarah Palin's map, congressional map with the -- with the crosshairs or whatever, the targets on them. But as you pointed out also in the "Talking Points," the Democrat Leadership Council -- Democrat Leadership Council -- also ran a congressional map a few years ago with targets on them. Where was the liberal outrage over that? Where was the liberal outrage -- let me just make one other point.
O'REILLY: OK.
GOLDBERG: Where was the liberal outrage when a liberal producer and director made a movie called "Death of a President" about the assassination, not of a generic, make-believe president, but of President George W. Bush? No, that was art. No outrage from the left over that.
O'REILLY: No. There hasn't been any outrage.
GOLDBERG: And when President Obama...
O'REILLY: Right.
GOLDBERG: When President Obama, in June of 2008, when he was running for president, when President Obama said, "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun."
O'REILLY: Yes, quoting "The Untouchables" movie.
GOLDBERG: Where was the liberal outrage over that?
O'REILLY: Well, they shouldn't have been because he was just quoting a movie, and he was just saying we're going to be tougher than the other party, and it was perfectly fine.
GOLDBERG: The point is -- the point is that was just a movie. But could you imagine if George Bush said that?
O'REILLY: No. Look, the hypocrisies are just legion. But here -- the other disturbing thing about this case is that the sheriff of Pima County, this Dupnik, he gave these haters some cover. You see?
GOLDBERG: Absolutely.
O'REILLY: He gave them cover, and I'm not sure whether Sheriff Dupnik understands that. I wanted to talk to him tonight, but he's not -- I don't know. He didn't want to come on the program, although he did some other programs. But he doesn't want what I'm going to bring.
But once they got a little cover, The New York Times in particular, that's what they look for, OK? The New York Times -- see MSNBC, they're in business to do this stuff. That's what they sell. They have nothing else to sell, so you expect them to do it. The New York Times looking for legitimate cover, all right? And they got it from the sheriff. Then bingo, here it comes.
GOLDBERG: Right. Exactly. Exactly. What the sheriff did -- don't be too kind to him. What the sheriff did was despicable, nothing less than despicable. He talked about the hate and this and that, but then when he was asked by Megyn Kelly a direct question: "Do you know if there's any connection? Do you have any evidence that these people know anything about any of this?" He said, "No, I don't."
O'REILLY: No.
GOLDBERG: So without any connection...
O'REILLY: Right.
GOLDBERG: ...keep your damn mouth shut. And one word about the hypocrisy that you mentioned. If they were giving out Pulitzer Prizes for hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty, there would be a whole bunch of little men and women in the world of the so-called mainstream media who would be clawing all over themselves, creeping all over themselves to try to get their hands on it, because what they did this time is worse than anything, almost anything. I'm sure if I thought long enough...
O'REILLY: I think this is -- I think this is the nadir. I haven't seen anything worse than this.
GOLDBERG: ...I could come up with something worse, but this is as bad as anything they've ever done.
O'REILLY: I haven't -- 9-year-old girl murdered and you exploit that? Nine-year-old girl? No. This is the worst, the lowest point ever.
Last question. I asked this question to Hume and to Ham. Is there going to be backlash against these people?
GOLDBERG: Well, it's a good question, but the best answer I can come up with is, of course, I hope so. But who's there going to be a backlash against? The people on the Upper West Side of Manhattan aren't going to forsake...
O'REILLY: That's the key. They have to. All of those liberals…
GOLDBERG: They have to.
O'REILLY: ...who support these organizations. They have to do it, because they've lost everybody else.
GOLDBERG: That -- you're absolutely right. You said earlier that the conservatives, they've lost the middle-of-the-road people, the independents they've lost. It's going to take those people. And I'd say, what, a million people read The New York Times. What do you think, 27 of them are going to cancel their subscription over this? They're a dying institution. They're a dying institution.
O'REILLY: Yes, but so morally repugnant that I just hope that there is.
GOLDBERG: I hope decent -- I hope decent liberals out there who are listening to us and who have seen what happened turn against them. That's my hope. That's my biggest hope tonight.
O'REILLY: All right, Bernie. Thanks very much. We appreciate it.
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