(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Conservative former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly and leftist ex-CNN host Chris Cuomo sparred on NewsNation about the quality of Vice President Kamala Harris’s nomination acceptance speech at last week’s Democratic National Convention, the Gateway Pundit reported.
The newly formed network, which pitches itself as a centrist alternative to the cable-news heavyweights on the left and right, has become a home for several major-network castaways, including Cuomo, as well as Fox veterans Geraldo Rivera, Chris Stirewalt and Leland Vittert.
Other prominent contributors include noted NeverTrump ex-Republican George Will, as well as Trump-administration alums Mick Mulvaney and Sean Spicer.
However, O’Reilly’s recurring appearances on Cuomo’s show might especially send viewers down a decade-old time warp, to when both were among the top primetime talent at their respective networks.
Both would go on to meet similar fates after having been caught up in allegations of sexual impropriety while also appearing to fall victim to corporate politics due to disagreements with top network brass.
Cuomo—who regularly had his brother, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, on air during the COVID-19 pandemic—was accused of blurring ethical lines after he was caught moonlighting as his disgraced brother’s public-relations coordinator. He left the network in 2021.
O’Reilly, whose massively popular O’Reilly Factor helped build Fox News into a right-leaning powerhouse, saw his two-decade reign come to an end in 2017 after advertisers threatened to boycott and revenues began to decline. However, he has continued a similar format on his own subscription-based website.
During his NewsNation appearance on Thursday, O’Reilly criticized Harris’s acceptance speech for being long on rhetoric and short on policy.
He said he “would give her a C” because the speech lacked all specifics, calling it “usual, liberal-Democratic lying.”
Cuomo agreed, to some extent, that the convention speech lacked substance, but only because all convention speeches lack substance.
“A convention speech is not known for its specifics,” he insisted.
As the newly anointed presidential candidate attempting to distance herself from President Joe Biden, Harris’s speech was “about capturing the imagination” of the American people, he said. “This was about giving them … something to hope for.”
However, O’Reilly proceded to shut down the bloviating nepo-baby.
“She wants power,” he replied, noting that Harris would like to have that power without the responsibility of telling the American people what she wants to do with it.
“She wants to be president. She doesn’t do press. She doesn’t answer questions,” he added.
Cuomo shot back, claiming that O’Reilly sounded ignorant and naive.
“Is that all you got?” O’Reilly asked. “That I sound like an idiot?”
He concluded that Harris “has no specifics,” and that that is not a sufficient answer because “we need problem-solving.”
Though the Los Angeles Times reported that “Kamala Harris crushed it,” the meandering speech, in which she cited very few concrete policies, opted for vague generalities about “standing up to” various enemies.
What Harris specifically concentrated on, instead, was black female political activists who fought for the acquisition of various “rights.”
She also used the occasion to make reference to her deceased mother, Shyamala Gopalan, who fled India at age 19 to have an anchor baby while attending Berkeley.
