Free Pinheads and Patriots by Bill O'Reilly

fascinating. As you may remember, candidate Obama had promised to come on the Factor after I cornered him in New Hampshire in January 2008.
    The confrontation itself received national attention because I shoved one of Obama’s advance men. Although the action made me look like a fool to some, I had to get physical because the guywas blocking my cameraman from shooting Senator Obama as he worked the rope line after a speech. With my microphone on, I asked the guy, who happened to be six-eight, to stop “blocking the shot.” When he did not, I physically removed him from camera range. For my detractors, that just reinforced my image as a thuggish lout. For my supporters, it was another sign that no one will inhibit the Factor from covering events. No one.
    After the shove, the Secret Service, clearly not wanting any part of the situation, let me approach then-Senator Obama, and with the camera rolling, I asked him when he was coming on the Factor . He said it would be after the primaries. And he kept his word.
    But the Obama campaign was smart about the timing. Because they knew the Factor was in Minnesota, covering the Republican Convention, and that millions of Americans would be watching that coverage, they waited until the convention was actually under way before calling us about the interview. They told us we had just hours to get from St. Paul, where John McCain and Sarah Palin were holding court, to central Pennsylvania. The Obama guys knew that an interview on the Factor would garner major attention—and it did.
    Not surprisingly, some GOP viewers criticized me for interrupting their party’s coverage and going to York, Pennsylvania. But for us, that was the bigger news story. Besides, my Fox News colleagues had the convention well covered.
    The Obama campaign gave us thirty minutes with the senator, and I think we used the time wisely. See if you agree.

    Then-Senator Barack Obama with me on the Factor . I don’t think we had gotten to the part where I was giving him jazz about basketball yet.
The O’Reilly Factor
    SENATOR OBAMA’S SEPTEMBER 2008 INTERVIEW ON THE O’REILLY FACTOR
    Complete, Unabridged, and Annotated Transcript
    Â 
    Bill O’Reilly: Well, first of all, thanks for being a man of your word—
    Sen. Barack Obama: You bet.
    O’Reilly: —but I was worried there for a while….
    Obama: [ Laughs. ]
    O’Reilly: It’s been nine months since we, uh, last met—
    Obama: Yes.
    O’Reilly: —in, uh, New Hampshire….
    Obama: It took a little while. I had, I have had a few things to do—
    O’Reilly: Well, I understand, yeah.
    Obama: But I, but I…. And I appreciate your having me on the show.
    O’Reilly: Okay. Let’s start with national security. Do you believe we are in the middle of a war on terror?
    Obama: Absolutely.
    O’Reilly: Who is the enemy?
    Obama: Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, a whole host of networks that are bent on, uh, attacking America; who have a distorted ideology; who have perverted the faith of Islam. And so we have to go after them.
    O’Reilly: Is Iran part of that component?
    Obama: Iran is a major threat. Now I don’t think that there is a—that they are not part of the same network; yeah, you have got Shia and you have got Sunni. And so, Iran…. The threat we have is with Hezbollah, Hamas—
    O’Reilly: But they are behind—they are, they are fueling the—
    Obama: They, they—they have fueled a whole host of terrorist organizations—
    O’Reilly: Mm-hmm.
    Obama: My only point is that, we have got to be absolutely clear that Shia terrorists may not be the same—
    O’Reilly: But they are the same war on terror, right?
    Obama: —of what we have to battle, which is—those who are trying to do us harm. My only point is that we have got to have, uh, the ability to distinguish between these groups. Because, for example, the war, uh…the war in Iraq