Former Fox News host and author Bill O'Reilly told Newsmax on Thursday that former President Donald Trump is not a "doctrinaire conservative," but his appointment of three Supreme Court justices is his "signature" on presidential history.
O'Reilly joined "Eric Bolling The Balance" to detail Trump's political ideological history while lauding him as the president who saved the U.S. from "unbelievably serious trouble."
O'Reilly, author of more than a dozen books, said he has known Trump for more than 30 years.
"In all that time, before he got into politics, I never saw any ideology in Trump at all," O'Reilly told Bolling. "He was a Democrat, a pretty strong Democrat, in New York City for a lot of years. ... Trump kind of went where the political winds blew him.
"Then he decided to run for president because some of his traditional beliefs — like being tough on crime, social order, that kind of thing — were in decline. And he didn't want wars. He didn't like the Bush family because of the wars in Iraq and things like that," said O'Reilly, whose new book, "Confronting the Presidents," will be out in September.
"He is not a doctrinaire conservative. Next time you have him on the show, if you want to prove that point, ask him to explain what William F. Buckley espoused. Donald Trump's not gonna be able to do that. He doesn't think in those terms," O'Reilly said. "So what he brought was a commonsense approach to a certain segment of voters. 'We need to solve this problem; this is how I'm going to do it.'"
Then there are the three names, according to O'Reilly, that cement Trump's place in history: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — his Supreme Court appointments.
"But what he brought to history was the appointment of three traditional judges to the Supreme Court," O'Reilly said. "Now if Hillary Clinton had defeated him in '16, this country would be in unbelievably serious trouble. And you would have a whole bunch of new legislation — intruding on private property, intruding on the Second Amendment, intruding on freedom in general — and some of those decisions would have gone against freedom if the Supreme Court was stacked with liberal judges.
"That is his signature right now in the historical sentence. He kept the country on a traditional track because of his Supreme Court appointments," O'Reilly said.
O'Reilly blasted what's happening to Trump in New York, where he faces a $454 million judgment after his fraud trial. But O'Reilly said seizure of Trump's property, if it happens, could be the start of where the case could turn for him.
"This might work in the end to Trump's advantage," O'Reilly said. "No. 1, if [Attorney General] Letitia James starts to seize his property, I can assure you that that will be blocked in the federal courts, that the Trump lawyers will get the case in the federal court system, which they have to do. It violates the Eighth Amendment.
"It's clear Trump will win. Gotta get it out of New York state. New York state is no longer part of America. It's not. Albany does not believe in the protection of individual rights; it believes in a collective state," O'Reilly said.
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Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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