SMITH Bill O'Reilly, respectfully, you don't have a right to say that.
O'REILLY There's nothing I hide, and I mean nothing, from my audience.
SMITH You and I have argued about this on many, many occasions.
O'REILLY We're here. Let's solve it.
SMITH That's where you lose people, and they're not hearing you.
O'REILLY Hey, Bill O'Reilly here, welcome to another edition of We'll Do It Live. And this has really become, you know, something that I wasn't expecting when my younger staff came to me and said, Oh, got to do YouTube, and I'm a Luddite, I don't know anything about this stuff. I said, Is this extra work for me? And they go, Yeah, but you know it'll be it'll be worth it. Well, it's exploded all over the world. So we got some kind of notification. We're in the top YouTube podcasts. We're not really a podcast. This is a broadcast, but I don't care. We're on the top echelon of that, and we appreciate you making it so. So today I have Stephen A. Smith in the on-deck circle, about to walk to the plate. To take some high, hard ones. I figured, Steven A., we'd make you at home doing some sports analogy, you know.
SMITH Yeah, you got it.
O'REILLY I don't want you to be nervous. You are probably the most famous sportscaster in America. What's the one thing you attribute that to?
SMITH Fearlessness, a commitment to being fair. A lot of times, particularly in this day and age, there's pressure to engage in groupthink, to do what the vast majority of people want you to do because it's comfortable and whatever. Well, I didn't get in this business to be comfortable. I got in this business to do what I can to inch closer and closer to the truth in every subject that I tackle. Sometimes you succeed more than others. There's no doubt about that, but it's incredibly important to be fair-minded. Growing up in the streets of New York City being raised by West Indian parents, particularly my mother, who was the greatest human being I've ever known, God rest her soul. She passed away in 2017. My mother was really, really, really big on fairness. She didn't care what your ethnicity was. She didn't care what your gender was. She didn't care about anything but being respectful and being in honest pursuit of getting to the truth, as close to the truth as she possibly could, and if somebody was right, say so, and if somebody was wrong, say so. You can do it respectfully, you can still support people you disagreed with, et cetera, but don't be unfair. And that was a very, very big deal to me. That's why, when I've met people like yourself and others, regardless of what opinions people had, even when I disagree with you, I still don't have any problem with Bill O'Reilly. My issue is looking at you and saying, do you mean what you say? And every time I look at you and others, I always saw that you did, and I was good with it. And that's what really, really matters.
O'REILLY Well, we got to know each other over the past couple of years. You know where I am. I know who you are. But as a young, and I just want to reiterate, so you believe that the secret to your success is authenticity and a pursuit of factual knowledge. So you're not bloviating out there. You know, we've had a lot of trouble, we the country, with news organizations now, and there's going to be more of this. The commentators like you and me are told what to do by management, They're actually told what to say what to do, who to interview, who don't interview, who to stay away from, and they just go cash your paycheck. They have no problem with that. I would assume you would have a problem.
SMITH I would have a major problem with that. And I haven't had that experience where people have come to me and have told me what to say or who to interview or whatever, because that kind of stuff does not fly with me.
O'REILLY Yeah. I never had it either.
SMITH I haven't had that experience, believe it or not. A lot of people think that because my day job is at ESPN and I work for Walt Disney that I've encountered that. I'm here to tell you, I have never encountered that on a personal level. It has never happened.
O'REILLY Well, one of the reasons is you're so successful, but I have another personal question for you. So you're a young man of color in Queens, New York. And you're not affluent. Your mother is a support of the family pretty much. Many young males in that category rebel. They don't do what mom tells them to do. There's no way mom can discipline them. They walk out the door when they want, they come back when they want, they do what they want. How did you avoid that?
SMITH I give all the credit in the world to my mom, because even though my mother worked two jobs, 16 hours a day, seven days a week, 25 years with about one week's vacation a year, that her, along with my older sisters, I have four older sisters. Linda, Arlen, Abigail, and Carmen helped raise me as well, and they were on top of me night and day about making sure that I did the right thing, so that went a long way.
O'REILLY But if you didn't do the right things, what would happen to you?
SMITH They would, you know, they would punish me. You know, my mother would be all over me, and my mother would remind me of how shameful it was to her that I did such a thing, and because of that, this insatiable appetite I had to please her, to avoid disappointing her, obviously went a long way. But in fairness too, I also had people in the streets even drug dealers, Bill, that would look, and no matter what they engaged in, they wouldn't let me do it because they felt that I had a future, and they wouldn't allow me to position myself to make the kind of decisions that they ended up making, and they were stuck in that, ultimately derailed their futures. It's very unusual, but it definitely happened. It definitely happened, because when you're growing up poor, there's always that temptation. You see cats on the street corner, you're pulling in thousands of dollars a day or a week, and you're thinking, hey, maybe this is the route that I wanna go. But then suddenly you go home, and you have the kind of family structure that I had and place that support system combined with people from the streets, who said, listen, we made this choice. We felt we had to, but we'd be damned if we're gonna let you do the same thing. So the combination of those two things put me in an unfamiliar or an unconventional position of recognizing, hey, I didn't have to go that route. And then there's another thing that I think is important to bring up. My mother was of mixed race. Her mother, my grandmother, was white. My grandfather was black. And my grandmother, who was a white woman, taught me more about racism and who to identify as racist than my mother did. My mother never talked about it. My father never talked about it. It was my grandmother who did that. And so, as a result, growing up with that kind of connection to that kind of diverse environment, I was able to look at things from the fairness element. Everything wasn't about black and white. Some things were about more than that. And I was able to decipher the difference between that and other things because of not just my parents, but my grandmother as well. That went a long way, and that enabled me not to look at everybody and paint it with a broad brush.
O'REILLY Well, I told you before the interview started off camera that you need to read my book Confronting America because it's very what my analysis of the country is plays right into how you were raised. It's an individual decision whether you succeed or fail in the long run, not in the short run. I mean, a kid in the ghetto doesn't have the same playing field that the kid out in the wealthy suburbs have. They don't. And anybody who thinks they do is ridiculous. But the kid in the ghetto, there are pathways for him or her to make a good life in this country, which is why we got tens of millions of people trying to get in here. Now you chose to go into sports. You were a sports writer in Philadelphia, down south. And then you made the transition to sports broadcasting. A guy as smart as you, and I hate to say it, my knee is quivering. A guy as smart as you. Why did you skip to sports and go into politics or social work or whatever it may be? Why did you take the sports route?
SMITH Well, I didn't feel that I was that smart. That was number one. If I'm being completely honest with you, I got left back and held back for the entire fourth grade because I had reading comprehension issues that ultimately revealed itself to be a form of dyslexia. Then that wasn't, you know, it was undiagnosed at that particular moment of time. Later on in life, you realize that. But the other side to it is that that was where my passion lied. And as I wrote in my book, because you know what? You're the best-selling author multiple times over. I've written one book in my life, and it was my, you know, autobiography, you know, Straight Shooter: A Memoir of Second Chances at First Takes, that was a New York Times bestseller. And in that book, I revealed that there was a parent-teacher night when I was a seventh grader, and the professor's name was Mr. Caravan. And he told my mother at that time, Bill, he said, your son religiously questions his own intellect because he hasn't let go of the fact that he got left back in the fourth grade. He said, what I've noticed is that your son is not dumb at all. Your son is quite smart. The problem with your son is that he drifts. He thinks he doesn't comprehend when, in fact, he's not even listening. Your son has this ability to tune out a room full of noise whenever he wants to because he gets repeatedly very, very bored. He said, but when he's passionate about something, he's on top of it, and there's very few that's better. So he looked at my mother, and he said to her You find what your son is passionate about and get him to do that, and you will have a superstar on your hands. And I knew instantly that sports was where my passion lied, whether it was watching baseball with my dad, whether it was watching basketball on my own, whether it was playing touch football or basketball in the streets. I knew that I loved sports. And when I started engaging in sports, reading the newspaper, suddenly I didn't have a comprehension issue. I understood everything about everything sports related that I was reading, so much so that even when my dad had once doubted my intellect, all of a sudden he's like, this boy is smarter than I thought he was. And from that point, my confidence ballooned. And as my confidence ballooned, I just ingratiated myself in that stuff even more because I knew it was what interested me. And I never felt like I was punching a clock when it came to doing anything work-related to sports. I thought it was a career instead of a job. Not doing what I had to do to elevate or sustain my quality of life, but doing what I wanted to do, and it just so happened.
O'REILLY And that's the key.
SMITH What's the death of me?
O'REILLY And you were a basketball player in college, you got hurt, and so then you pivoted, because life's hard, into a successful sports career. Now, you're kind of a controversial guy, not to me, because I pretty much know why you're doing what you're doing, but you've gotta be that to engage the sports audience in America, you can't just sit there. You know what drives me crazy are these football pre-game shows? Why? Why are we listening to this?
SMITH Well, you listen to it because you have people connected to the sport. You have others who are watching the sport and want to learn about the sport before they're actually watching the games because they feel more edified once they're watching these pre-game shows and they know what to look for as the games are taking place. Oh, that's not true. That's not at all. I've told you this. You and I have argued about this on many, many occasions. You understand this is my lane, not politics. This is my lane, and I'm telling you, there's a lot that you learn from watching these pre-game shows because you get insight from people who actually participated in sports to let you know it.
O'REILLY I know for a fact, and I bet you do too, but I'm not sure of that, that the NFL poobahs, I love that word, have basically told all of the people that comment on the football, pro football, not to badmouth the players.
SMITH That's not true. No, no, no. This is what you're missing it. You are right about individual teams who have a broadcast, you don't do that. Like, for example, if you are covering the New York Knicks and you are employed by Madison Square Garden, you're gonna have to answer to James Dolan if you're excessively critical of the team.
O'REILLY Well, here's a good example: Tom Brady. So Tom Brady, best quarterback of all time, in my opinion. He gets this $20 million contract to sit in the booth to be color, color for the NFL games, right? And more power to Brady. Brady, I like him. He gives a lot of money to charity. I think he's a good guy, I don't know him that well, but I like him. Now Tom Brady could tell you, alright, 100% more than he's telling you. He knows who's jakin' it out there, who can't cover whom, who's screwing up, and he never says it.
SMITH Last week, Tom Brady was on the air talking about how lost somebody was in coverage. He said if you're trying to help the other team win, he was very, very critical of them, and Bill O'Reilly, respectfully, you don't have a right to say that. Because we know, you know, a gazillion times more than you say. Now that doesn't mean that you're not saying what needs to be said. I understand that. But what I'm saying to you is I've been around you long enough where I have seen you as edified as you are, as connected as you are, refrain from saying all that you know. You've been in this business longer than most of us, but you've been in business longer than us. You know, that comes with the territory. Stop that.
O'REILLY No, no. No territory for me. I don't have any boundaries. I have an open border. Okay.
SMITH That doesn't mean you always open it
O'REILLY I open it when I know for sure.
SMITH Sure, but not all, not with everything. Not with everything. That's not true, Bill.
O'REILLY No, no, no, there's nothing I hide, and I mean nothing from my audience. Nothing. If I know something's true, I report it. I don't hold back because I know...
SMITH That's not what I mean. Hold on, hold on, let me be clear to your audience. I am in no way implying that you are purposefully keeping things from your audience, what I am saying is, is that there are an abundance of facts that you may have at your disposal and you decide what's pertinent and most important for your audience to know, because they don't get to know every single thing that you know. You make those decisions every day.
O'REILLY Yeah, because if I didn't make that decision, I'd be on the air as much as you are. I mean, I just don't have the time, and I'm old, okay? Look, the litmus test for this is Howard Cossett, all right? That's the litmus test. Howard had no filter. He wanted attention. He was a lot like Trump, Howard. He'd say anything, and half of the stuff he said was BS. Okay. Alright, he was so rogue that when you look at what is there now, you don't know that the game is tilted on a field goal kicker who gets the yips, okay? They don't do that!
SMITH They don't say the yips, but they will say, this guy's missed nine of his last 20 field goals.
O'REILLY They won't tell you why.
SMITH But again, it's contingent on what you know. Like, for example, are you going to get personal and say, look this guy is drinking at the bar the night before a game?
O'REILLY Yeah, I'd say it, I'd report it.
SMITH Again, if you see him, sure. But if you don't know for sure, especially in this day and this litigious age that we're living in, people are ready to sue you for anything because they'd rather sue and make money that way than go out there and work for a living honestly in some situation. You've got to protect yourself.
O'REILLY Absolutely. If I know it happened, I'm not going to report it. I'm going to speculate. I don't use other sources because the other sources are corrupted. Now it's segueing into politics. So I guess about three or four years ago, you broadened your brand. You said, look, I am going to go on NewsNation or the other invitations I get, Hannity, whatever it may be, and I'm gonna mix it up, all right? Because I'm an independent thinker. I'm going to bring the same sensibility. That I use in sports to the political arena. And there's no one else who has done that. Not one sportscaster has done it. No one. Why did you decide to do it?
SMITH I had a passion to do it, Bill, because I grew up in the television age, and I've seen, to point, lean to your point, I saw too many people giving us lip service and not calling it like we see it. Not sitting there and seeing, based on the information we have, not only is this the information that I'm capturing from it, this is what I deduced from it, and this is how I feel. As a black man in America, I think that, you know, obviously since 1964, the Democratic Party has had a chunk of the black vote. Whether that's right or wrong is depending on one's politics, and I understand that. But for me personally, I just think that it's important to keep an open mind because I've always been of the mindset that we've given a party a license to take us for granted, the other party, a license to ignore us because they weren't gonna get a vote anyway. And as a result, we've ended up being the ones that are disenfranchised. And I don't think any other community in America can say that. I've always been appalled by that. And so if I had an opportunity, I positioned myself to have an opportunity to address that. That's what I wanted to do. Now, as I've ingratiated myself with it more, I'm not as interested in politics as I once was, certainly not being a politician, but I absolutely love talking about the issues and hearing from both sides and having them debate and discuss openly about where they're coming from and why, to assist in enlightening. My community and various communities throughout this country about what the real issues are so they can go to the polls and make a cogent decision about who should be in power and who shouldn't as opposed to just one party engaging in demagoguery about another and oh my goodness they're awful they're racist they're this they're that and that's why you should have voted them as opposed you telling me why I should vote for you and that's one of the things that that's one of the things I wanted to contribute to assist in the betterment of our society and my community as well.
O'REILLY Well, why do you think you're the only one who did it?
SMITH I think that a lot of people look at it and they say it's not worth it.
O'REILLY Why is it worth it if you're helping your country, right?
SMITH Well, because they're looking at it, and they're saying the country can't be helped because politicians on both sides of the aisle are sleazy, they can't be trusted, it's not gonna change. No, no, I'm saying that's what they're saying, and I think, I just don't have that fear. I just don't have that fear.
O'REILLY I know. That's why I like you. I don't have it either. So we have that in common. Do you think that a white guy like me, raised in a white neighborhood, the Levittown was built by the Levitts who redlined all black families, wouldn't sell to blacks, all ethnic whites in the neighborhood. Do you think that I'm capable of analyzing the black community?
SMITH I think to some degree you are, based on numbers and the facts that are out there. I think your perspective would religiously be challenged because, to speak to Bill O'Reilly, you're very dogged in your beliefs and your approach, and you're hard to move off of your positions because the facts are what you lean on as opposed to perspectives. I give you a perfect example about your president. Right now, somebody would look at the economy, and they're looking at issues like affordability and what have you. They would sit up there, and they would say, things are not as bad as people had pretended them to be. Whereas others would sit there and would say President Trump is talking to people like CNBC and CEOs as opposed to folks at the kitchen table. Because he's not really paying enough attention to people who are really feeling what's going on right now that aren't paying attention to the fact that things aren't nearly as bad as it was projected to be. They're looking at the price of gas, the price of groceries, the price of rent, et cetera. The price of health care. And they've got major, major concerns, and they're looking at it from that. To me, that's where you would have a problem with Bill O'Reilly.
O'REILLY Well, what, but that encompasses all colors, though.
SMITH Yeah, but I'm getting to that, I'm getting to that point. I'm saying, you're looking, you would look at the big picture, and there's a lot of people from the African-American community, from disenfranchised communities, that would say Nah, it ain't that simple. You're not living in this, because you can't relate to what we're going through when we tell you our perspective. The numbers from a factual perspective are not enough. There are other things that get take that need to get taken into consideration that you can possibly relate to. That's what they would say to somebody like yourself.
O'REILLY All right, but they don't know Trump. I'm not gonna, I'm going to get into.
SMITH I'm not even talking about Trump. I was just using an example to talk about somebody like you or others. They would accuse you of not being able to relate to their plight because, like you said, if you're from a neighborhood. You know what, they didn't sell homes to blacks. You haven't had to worry about living coming from a poor, impoverished background, scratching and clawing uphill to gain some kind of advantage, understanding that, from a systemic perspective. You know what, when white folks catch a cold, black folks catch pneumonia, it's usually always worse for us. That kind of stuff. They would accuse you of not being able to relate to that plight. So your perspective would never mirror ours. That's what they would say.
O'REILLY Yeah, but it's a crutch.
SMITH I don't think it's a crutch. It might be false, but I don't think it's a crutch.
O'REILLY It's a crutch. They don't want to acknowledge that there are people who aren't like them, who sympathize with them. I'll give you an example.
SMITH Oh, okay. I see what you're saying.
O'REILLY Perfect example. So one of the highlights of confronting America when it has to change is my belief that the black community's main problem, okay, is youth dereliction. What does that mean? It means the parents don't pay attention to these kids, the fathers split, they're of feminine household, they don't have a lot of guidance. That's my belief system from years and years of reporting, and that these kids develop an attitude, they're covered with tattoos, they'll learn to speak English properly, and then they go out, and they can't compete in the corporate world. So I designed, along with President Obama, a program to help these kids, these kids who are being deprived of responsible parents. All right, let me. And it got real high. I'm not gonna give you the program, I want you to read the book. It got real high, okay? And I had a lot of interaction with President Obama, who I never had a problem with as far as what he wanted to do. I knew he wasn't gonna be able to get there, okay, because he just didn't have chops and the experience to negotiate the Washington DC experience. He didn't have it. Anyway, I got, and the program is called Brothers Keeper. Okay? And I developed this program that would have raised more than a billion dollars for one pay-per-view concert starring the two Living Beetles, Bono, Billy Joel, those guys I know pretty well. And a billion dollars that would then be used for publicity, marketing, recruitment. All right, mentors don't have to be black, just human beings, men who are successful, passing along what made them successful, alright, and helping those kids who are rudderless. It never happened. And the reason it happened is stunning. The reason I couldn't close it is stunning, alright. Now, I've been attacked, and Tavis Smiley was one of the guys who did it. You know Tavis, right?
SMITH Yes, I do.
O'REILLY I like him. I like it too. But he's really entrenched in that if you're not black, you can't analyze it, okay? So, Smiley, I go on his radio show, and he attacks me. I say, oh no, this isn't the main problem. It is the main problem, okay? And anybody teaching in those neighborhoods, and I did, I did, knows it's a main problem, but I couldn't get it done. Me, I can get everything done.
SMITH Well, let me allow me to respond, because I listen to you and I hear what you're saying. Let me say this, and I need you to listen to me, because it's very important what I'm about to say. If it wasn't you and I hadn't gotten to know you over the years, I would have been insulted by what you just articulated. Because when you speak to African Americans and you talk about youngsters from the community. Who don't necessarily speak well, et cetera, et cetera. Here's what I would say to you. There's plenty who do. What kind of opportunities were they given? And it almost seems, if not literally seems, like there are an abundance of white folks in America who are anxious to help, no doubt, anxious to contribute to making the world a better place. But they want to be the ones who are the leaders of the pack. And they wanna be the ones in position to get credit for being conscientious.
O'REILLY They're banal in their pursuit of doing good.
SMITH Okay, all right, let me finish. But I wanna get to you because of what you just said. The issue in question is that on far too many occasions when you point out those things that plague the black community, whether right or wrong in terms of focus, the reality is that there are an abundance of black folks in the United States of America that look at the system itself and people who happen to be white, emanating from the system, acting like the system played almost no role in the plight that exists within the community, and that's where you lose people, and they're not hearing you. Because when you're talking about the problem, but you're not talking about where it originated from, it becomes problematic. That's like me pointing to somebody and saying, you know what? They're violent. They punched me in the face, but I ignore the fact that I might have robbed their house. Okay, and now they caught up with me, right? And they might have wanted to punch me in the face. Wait a minute, what came first? You've got to pay attention to stuff like that. You can't ignore that, which is how you're coming across, Bill.
O'REILLY It doesn't matter, well, and I'm going to agree with you that my focus isn't on the deprivation of African Americans since the Mayflower, okay. Because my goal is to make things better now, not...
SMITH Okay, that's fine. That's not wrong.
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O'REILLY Do you know how many kids- and I don't think this happened when you were in public school in Queens- it happens now, are taught they're victims, they can't make it. No matter what they do, it's rigged against them. So why not?
SMITH But that's not what I'm saying. That's not... What I'm challenging. But listen to what I challenge you on. I'm saying there is a difference between being listened to and being heard. If you want to be heard, if you want somebody to truly embrace where you come from, they've got to know where you're coming from. Like, I had an example; I remember I told years and years ago, I had a cousin, okay? He's still alive, he's a good person, the whole bit. But we used to have a problem. Everybody in the family used to have a problem reaching him because he seemed so damn hard-headed, he wouldn't listen to anybody but me. Why would he listen to me, Bill? Because the first order of business that I realized from him was the importance of at least comprehending where he came from and articulating that position. Okay, is this what you saying? Are you sure? This is where you're coming from? I got it. Now let me respond. As opposed to responding, like you just said, I don't care about all of that. I'm trying to resolve the issue. I'm trying solve the problem. How can you have a chance of resolving the problem with people that you fail to embrace where they're coming from? If they don't think you're embracing where they're coming from, they're not gonna wanna hear you. That's the point.
O'REILLY It wasn't, I didn't bring it to the people. I brought it to the President of the United States because I admired the Brothers Keeper program because I was a big brother. I did it. I had three urchins, okay? So wait, wait. So, I'm a technician, and I bring in this unbelievable program, Brothers Keeper, where if you went out now and asked people, what's brothers keeper? They wouldn't even know. Okay, if this thing had gotten up, which it should have, all right, then the problem itself would have been mitigated despite Community resistance. All right, because it would have been there, and there are enough American men of all colors who see it the way I see it. We live in the world. We want to improve things for people who are disadvantaged, who don't have what we have. And I didn't have some little bo-peep upbringing. I mean, my upbringing was tough Irish, okay? I wasn't, I wasn't...
SMITH But your tough upbringing, which was tough Irish, was also accentuated by your dominance on a network that was Fox News for, what was it, 19 years, if I remember correctly, it was 18 to 20 years, right? And so Bill O'Reilly, No Spin Zone, Mr. Independent, okay, tell it like it is, et cetera, et cetera. You had ingratiated yourself, essentially, with the right. Okay. And you're talking to a...
O'REILLY Wasn't done on purpose.
SMITH I didn't say it was. I didn't say it was. I'm only talking about the reality of what happened. You, there's nobody in my opinion, that the Republican Party should thank for awareness, for relevance, for the ability to diversify its own constituents more so than you. Because when you brought light to so much that was going on within the Republican Party, It's to be respected, but it was in the aftermath of the Democratic Party securing the black voters of voting bloc and convincing a bunch of people that the other side was anti-etc. So you were going up against that, and you can't ignore that. So I appreciate your upbringing, I appreciate where you're coming from, but we saw you on TV 8 p.m. Eastern time every single night as the number one cable show for 20 years. All of these people came after you! All of them, Tucker Carlson, Hannity, and everybody else. They all came after you. You were the number one guy. You were a dominant figure. You were one that everybody knew they had to come through in order for relevancy in the political stratosphere for nearly two decades. And so when that happens, and you have that kind of attachment to you, but in the same breath it's not perceived as being relatable or embracing of the African-American community, you're going to have people to have questions. That's just the way it goes.
O'REILLY Well, okay, and I don't mind that. But I can't be preoccupied with what they call the universality of how we got where we are. We're here. Let's solve it. And the program that President Obama embraced, and I'm giving him full credit for that, the Brothers Keeper mentoring program would have worked. And it would have mitigated unbelievable amounts of suffering.
SMITH Who stopped it?
O'REILLY You've got to read the book. And it's a big name. The name is bigger than Stephen A. Smith. That's who stopped it. But Obama could have overridden it and didn't.
SMITH Okay, and is why he did not do it in your book? Is that in your book?
O'REILLY It is a little bit, but I didn't speculate cause I can't read his mind.
SMITH Got it.
O'REILLY All I know is that he had assigned people to this. And when I was up at the White House, sitting next to Colin Powell, when he gave the speech, the initial speech, about Brother's Keeper with the kids from Chicago standing behind him, when the speech was over, he came to me first. Because he knew exactly what you just said. If I'm going to get on board with this... I'm going to change some minds, which I did, but I didn't do it to its full extent.
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O'REILLY OK, so now you've got a Stephen A. Smith hybrid. You're doing some dopey show in the morning, and you're laying out...
O'REILLY Number one morning, number one sports morning show for 15 straight years and counting. But it's dopey. There you go.
O'REILLY Well, okay. I mean, LeBron James wants to get you in a headlock, and but all that's good. All of that is good. I have no objection to any of it. I'd be as outrageous as you can be, but always back it up. This is why I think the way I think. Okay, and you continue to do that, but you're a hybrid now. So and then you scuttle on over to Cuomo, okay, and you're on with him, and you're talking about whatever it may be. And again, you're bringing a sensibility that most television news doesn't have. None of the networks have anybody like you or me. They don't have anybody. All right, I can name names if you want me to. The whole roster is here's bland, and here's blander, the bland and blander show.
SMITH I get on Hannity about this all the time. I don't talk about the competition. I don't talk about other networks. They do what they do. I do what I do.
O'REILLY Unless they're corrupt. You gotta talk about them if they're corrupt.
SMITH Well, again, what I'm doing is my work will show that they're wrong and I'm right. That's how I approach it. But the other thing that I like to bring into focus is I don't even consider myself a hybrid. I think that I'm a sports guy to the core. I love sports. I ain't never trying to leave sports. I just love it. And the more I've done politics, the more I've loved sports, but the thing that people keep underestimating look at the money involved. Look at the politics involved in sports. You're talking about the NBA signing a 77 billion dollar deal. Do you realize that the NFL is on the verge of signing close to a half trillion dollar collective bargaining, I mean, I'm sorry, half a trillion dollar television deal. When you consider their connection to all the networks, all these cable outlets, Amazon, Netflix, and beyond? I mean, this is the kind of money that we're talking about here. With that comes politics, with that comes Wall Street, with that come dollars, with that obviously comes fandom in the world of sports. So to me, the more I educate myself about the world of politics, the more armed I am to talk about sports because it's all inclusive. And that's how I feel about it.
O'REILLY I've always said that sportscasters, at a certain level, are, when they see something that's wrong, Colin Kaepernick, there's a great example, okay? But the reason that, and you might find amusing, and you feel free to use any of this discussion on your podcast, by the way. You can use whatever you...
SMITH Happy to do it. Thanks so much. I will.
O'REILLY Okay. The reason that there are trillions of dollars pouring into the American and UK sports franchises is because they have replaced news and information, because nobody trusts the news industry anymore. And so while the graph goes like this for all of them, there is one growth, not one show that is really growing. NewsNation is probably the best. But they gotta market better if they wanna go with the big boys, okay? But the graph on people spending time watching 60 minutes or whatever it may be is crashing. What's replaced it is the betting. And the betting is what's fueling all of the trillions. So you can bet on what color shoes the wide receiver has on, you know, all of that. So the NFL and all the other leagues, the hierarchy said, in order for us to get into the Elon Musk range, where they are, okay, we have to have another gimmick. Where's Jamie Foxx? Come on, Jamie, we're betting. Betting, betting, betting. Short term, colossal fiscal gain. Long term, gonna hurt the country.
SMITH Well, it could hurt the country, but understood this came about because of the Supreme Court ruling. You've got to remember, former governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, was adamant that this would come into play, and he was pushing for it to be legalized. And he had staunch resistance, I'm here to tell you. Former commissioner of the NBA, David Stern, was not a supporter. Roger Goodell, current commissioner of the National Football League, Rob Manfred, current commissioner of Major League Baseball, none of them were proponents of this. They all resisted, they thought it was partisan, thought he had lost his damn mind, and they didn't want to be associated with it because they thought it would compromise the integrity of their sport. But ultimately, the Supreme Court ruled to legalize it in various states. It was picked up, and it generated billions of dollars in revenue. And so because of that, everybody was going to flock to it because they recognized the money that was there. And, so remember, it's not just about the players. We've had players, we've had owners, we've had coaches, we've had various people involved, and you've got to police your sport in a very diligent way to make sure that it doesn't compromise the integrity.
O'REILLY It's impossible now. You'll see that in the Portland Trailblazers trial. They'll all plead guilty.
SMITH Okay.
O'REILLY Now, I've got to take a quick break. We're going to bring back Stephen A. for another five minutes or so in our Killing Time segment for Premium and Concierge Members on BillOReilly.com.
