When people come to a holiday dinner at Bill O'Reilly's house, they find he maintains a no-politics zone while company is gathered.
"I wouldn't talk politics at all," the longtime TV host and author told Newsmax's "Newsline" in an interview that aired on Christmas Day.
"Why bother? The purpose of the holidays, Christmas and Thanksgiving, is to get family and friends together to talk about their lives."
That means asking them what they've been doing with their lives, or if they've seen anything interesting lately, he said.
"And if somebody wants to inject partisan politics, this will come as no surprise to you ... I kind of set the agenda in my house," O'Reilly said. "I sit at the head of the table. [I like to] keep it funny. I like to keep it light and lively. But heavy-duty partisan politics? That's not happening in my house."
There are safe topics, he said.
"I try to get people to talk about their lives, to talk about what they have been doing," he said. "'Did you go on an interesting vacation? All right. What are your hobbies?' I already know what their hobbies are. But how is this going? Or how is that going?"
And for the "urchins, anybody under the age of 25, that's easy for me," said O'Reilly.
"So what do you like about the school?" he said. "What's the most fun time you had? Is there anybody giving you a hard time? That kind of a thing."
O'Reilly went on to say he's like Don Corleone in "The Godfather."
"I'm sitting at the head of the table, and people are talking to me, but Don Corleone had lines," he said. "'We're not going to talk about our extortion rackets at Thanksgiving, OK?' He's not going to do that. We're going to talk about your life and what you've been doing."
But if someone persists in getting out of line?
"I will say, 'Hey, let's go for a walk,'" said O'Reilly. "[We] will go for a walk and we'll sort it out outside of the public domain."
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