Barack Obama Super Bowl 2014 pregame interview: Bill O’Reilly grills president on Benghazi
Bill O’Reilly spent the bulk of his interview with the president asking him questions about the Benghazi attacks and the botched health care website rollout.
Evan Habeeb-USA TODAY Sports
President Barack Obama sat down with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly before the Super Bowl to discuss the nation’s affairs, as has been his annual tradition. Also per his tradition, he did not make a prediction for the game.
O’Reilly started off with one of the biggest national issues of 2013, the botched rollout of the healthcare.gov website. Obama acknowledged the mistakes, but reiterated that nobody could have anticipated this problem and they got 3 million people signed up for health care after fixing some bugs.
The interview quickly went off the rails when O’Reilly grilled Obama on the compound attacks on Benghazi. He repeatedly asked the president to go on the record to call it a terrorist attack, although Obama claims he named it an act of terror one day after the attacks. The president admitted that security was lax, but said the attacks were “not some systematic, well-organized process.” O’Reilly came back with more questions about alleged cover-ups by Obama’s administration, which were mostly dismissed.
After that foray, O’Reilly came after Obama about the role of the IRS in various allegations of corruption. Obama admitted there were “boneheaded decisions” but hesitated to call it corruption. The president also fired back at O’Reilly and his network, saying “these kinds of things keep circulating because you and people like you keep saying them on television.”
With that, the interview was more or less over. O’Reilly read a letter from a civilian asking why Obama feels like he needs to fundamentally change the nation when he himself has had so much opportunity. The president gave some generic answers about giving an equal opportunity for all Americans, everyone can succeed if they work hard enough and we need to improve our schools. He then gave his typical non-prediction and that was that.
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