Bill O'Reilly Chuckles at Newsom-for-President Rumors: ‘J.D. Vance Has Got to Be the Happiest Guy in the World'
With what the Associated Press calls 'the earliest phase of the 2028 presidential election season already underway,' one name being floated for the Democrats is California Gov. Gavin Newsom – and Bill O'Reilly says that should make Republicans feel pretty comfortable in these early days.
Newsom hasn't declared either way, but media outlets from the AP to Politico to NBC News were reading the tea leaves last week as the second-term governor is rumored to be kicking the tires and working on a 'rebrand' as a more centrist candidate than previously advertised.
As he tends to do, O'Reilly just said it outright:
'Gavin Newsom is running for president,' the 'No Spin News' host said. 'I told you this earlier this week, and he sees an opportunity because there's no competition on the Democratic side for him at this point. Newsom — talk about a hypocrite. This is hypocrite number one.'
O'Reilly pointed to Newsom's recent pivots on homelessness and a proposed cap on state public health spending for undocumented immigrants as evidence.
'Well, what took you so long?,' O'Reilly said. 'You've been governor for six years. [Homelessness] has cost the state billions of dollars and has destroyed San Francisco and other cities. And all of a sudden, you're enlightened? You want the homeless camps dismantled?'
He also rolled a clip of Newsom recently talking about his plan to address the state's annual $12 billion spending deficit.
'So here are the solutions,' Newsom said. '$5 billion on a freeze on our Medi-Cal expansion. We're not cutting or rolling back those that are enrolled in our Medi-Cal system – we're just capping it, particularly for those with documentation.'
O'Reilly called spin on that: 'Yeah, a cap. What a weasel this guy is. So, why didn't you do it five years ago? Why didn't you do it? It is so ridiculous.'
And finally, O'Reilly had a good chuckle at Newsom's blame for the state's financial woes on the Trump administration.
'California is under assault,' Newsom said in another clip. 'The United States of America, in many respects, is under assault because we have a president that's been reckless in terms of assaulting those growth engines, has created a climate of deep uncertainty, and certainly has California in his sights.'
The former Fox News host found that truly funny: 'So, it's Trump's fault. It's Trump's fault that California has a $12 billion-a-year deficit. Democrats, is this what you want? This is what you're going to put up?'
O'Reilly concluded that it's only good news for whomever Republicans intend to run in 2028 – especially if it's the current vice president.
'J.D. Vance has got to be the happiest guy in the world,' O'Reilly said, shaking his head. 'He's got to be the happiest guy in the world. Yeah, bring it on. Unbelievable.'
Watch the entire segment in the video above.
The post Bill O'Reilly Chuckles at Newsom-for-President Rumors: 'J.D. Vance Has Got to Be the Happiest Guy in the World' | Video appeared first on TheWrap.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNN
11 minutes ago
- CNN
How a Supreme Court decision backing the NRA is thwarting Trump's retribution campaign
As Harvard University, elite law firms and perceived political enemies of President Donald Trump fight back against his efforts to use government power to punish them, they're winning thanks in part to the National Rifle Association. Last May, the Supreme Court unanimously sided with the gun rights group in a First Amendment case concerning a New York official's alleged efforts to pressure insurance companies in the state to sever ties with the group following the deadly 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida. A government official, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the nine, 'cannot … use the power of the State to punish or suppress disfavored expression.' A year later, the court's decision in National Rifle Association of America v. Vullo has been cited repeatedly by federal judges in rulings striking down a series of executive orders that targeted law firms. Lawyers representing Harvard, faculty at Columbia University and others are also leaning on the decision in cases challenging Trump's attacks on them. 'Going into court with a decision that is freshly minted, that clearly reflects the unanimous views of the currently sitting Supreme Court justices, is a very powerful tool,' said Eugene Volokh, a conservative First Amendment expert who represented the NRA in the 2024 case. For free speech advocates, the application of the NRA decision in cases pushing back against Trump's retribution campaign is a welcome sign that lower courts are applying key First Amendment principles equally, particularly in politically fraught disputes. In the NRA case, the group claimed that Maria Vullo, the former superintendent of the New York State Department of Financial Services, had threatened enforcement actions against the insurance firms if they failed to comply with her demands to help with the campaign against gun groups. The NRA's claims centered around a meeting Vullo had with an insurance market in 2018 in which the group says she offered to not prosecute other violations as long as the company helped with her campaign. 'The great hope of a principled application of the First Amendment is that it protects everybody,' said Alex Abdo, the litigation director of the Knight First Amendment Institute. 'Some people have criticized free speech advocates as being naive for hoping that'll be the case, but hopefully that's what we're seeing now,' he added. 'We're seeing courts apply that principle where the politics are very different than the NRA case.' The impact of Vullo can be seen most clearly in the cases challenging Trump's attempts to use executive power to exact revenge on law firms that have employed his perceived political enemies or represented clients who have challenged his initiatives. A central pillar of Trump's retribution crusade has been to pressure firms to bend to his political will, including through issuing executive orders targeting four major law firms: Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, WilmerHale and Susman Godfrey. Among other things, the orders denied the firms' attorneys access to federal buildings, retaliated against their clients with government contracts and suspended security clearances for lawyers at the firms. (Other firms were hit with similar executive orders but they haven't taken Trump to court over them.) The organizations individually sued the administration over the orders and the three judges overseeing the Perkins Coie, WilmerHale and Jenner & Block suits have all issued rulings permanently blocking enforcement of the edicts. (The Susman case is still pending.) Across more than 200-pages of writing, the judges – all sitting at the federal trial-level court in Washington, DC – cited Vullo 30 times to conclude that the orders were unconstitutional because they sought to punish the firms over their legal work. The judges all lifted Sotomayor's line about using 'the power of the State to punish or suppress disfavored expression,' while also seizing on other language in her opinion to buttress their own decisions. Two of them – US district judges Beryl Howell, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, and Richard Leon, who was named to the bench by former President George W. Bush – incorporated Sotomayor's statement that government discrimination based on a speaker's viewpoint 'is uniquely harmful to a free and democratic society.' The third judge, John Bates, said Vullo and an earlier Supreme Court case dealing with impermissible government coercion 'govern – and defeat' the administration's arguments in defense of a section of the Jenner & Block order that sought to end all contractual relationships that might have allowed taxpayer dollars to flow to the firm. 'Executive Order 14246 does precisely what the Supreme Court said just last year is forbidden: it engages in 'coercion against a third party to achieve the suppression of disfavored speech,'' wrote Bates, who was also appointed by Bush, in his May 23 ruling. For its part, the Justice Department has tried to draw a distinction between what the executive orders called for and the conduct rejected by the high court in Vullo. They told the three judges in written arguments that the orders at issue did not carry the 'force of the powers exhibited in Vullo' by the New York official. Will Creeley, the legal director at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, said the rulings underscore how 'Vullo has proved its utility almost immediately.' 'It is extremely useful to remind judges and government actors alike that just last year, the court warned against the kind of shakedowns and turns of the screw that we're now seeing from the administration,' he said. Justice Department lawyers have not yet appealed any of the three rulings issued last month. CNN has reached out to the department for comment. In separate cases brought in the DC courthouse and elsewhere, Trump's foes have leaned on Vullo as they've pressed judges to intervene in high-stakes disputes with the president. Among them is Mark Zaid, a prominent national security lawyer who has drawn Trump's ire for his representation of whistleblowers. Earlier this year, Trump yanked Zaid's security clearance, a decision, the attorney said in a lawsuit, that undermines his ability to 'zealously advocate on (his clients') behalf in the national security arena.' In court papers, Zaid's attorneys argued that the president's decision was a 'retaliatory directive,' invoking language from the Vullo decision to argue that the move violated his First Amendment rights. ''Government officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors,'' they wrote, quoting from the 2024 ruling. 'And yet that is exactly what Defendants do here.' Timothy Zick, a constitutional law professor at William & Mary Law School, said the executive orders targeting private entities or individuals 'have relied heavily on pressure, intimidation, and the threat of adverse action to punish or suppress speakers' views and discourage others from engaging with regulated targets.' 'The unanimous holding in Vullo is tailor-made for litigants seeking to push back against the administration's coercive strategy,' Zick added. That notion was not lost on lawyers representing Harvard and faculty at Columbia University in several cases challenging Trump's attacks on the elite schools, including one brought by Harvard challenging Trump's efforts to ban the school from hosting international students. A federal judge has so far halted those efforts. In a separate case brought by Harvard over the administration's decision to freeze billions of dollars in federal funding for the nation's oldest university, the school's attorneys on Monday told a judge that Trump's decision to target it because of 'alleged antisemitism and ideological bias at Harvard' clearly ran afoul of the high court's decision last year. 'Although any governmental retaliation based on protected speech is an affront to the First Amendment, the retaliation here was especially unconstitutional because it was based on Harvard's 'particular views' – the balance of speech on its campus and its refusal to accede to the Government's unlawful demands,' the attorneys wrote.
Axios
14 minutes ago
- Axios
Republicans worry DOGE cuts will sink them in Virginia governor's race
Republicans are increasingly worried that budget cuts by Elon Musk 's DOGE could cost them dearly in November's vote for Virginia governor — an early electoral test of President Trump 's policies. Why it matters: Virginia has one of the highest percentages of federal employees in the country — more than 5% of the state's workforce by some estimates — and Republicans' internal polls are starting to show the damage from tens of thousands of federal layoffs. Zoom in: The University of Virginia's Weldon Cooper Center has projected that 32,000 jobs could be lost in the state this year, many of them federal positions. "Northern Virginia is filled with people who suffered the consequences of the DOGE cuts, and it's hard to see them being sympathetic to a Republican candidate who supports the DOGE cuts," said Whit Ayers, a veteran Republican pollster. "I suspect this will be an albatross around the neck of every Republican candidate this year," said Virginia Republican Bill Bolling, a former lieutenant governor. By the numbers: A private poll done for the campaign of a statewide Republican candidate suggested that just 39% of voters had a favorable view of DOGE. Nearly half of voters surveyed said they knew of someone impacted by the DOGE cuts, according to results shared with Axios. The poll showed Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears trailing former U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D) by single digits, outside the margin of error. Between the lines: DOGE could especially hurt Earle-Sears' campaign for governor in Northern Virginia and Norfolk, sections of the state where huge segments of the population are federal workers or have jobs tied to the government. Those areas played a role in Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin's win in 2021, when he cut into Democratic margins and improved on the GOP's performance in 2017. (Virginia governors can't succeed themselves, so Youngkin isn't allowed to run again.) The D.C. suburbs of Northern Virginia are home to upper- and middle-income voters, many of whom have ties to the government and are particularly likely to vote. Even non-federal workers in those areas could be impacted by DOGE, given the role federal funding plays in driving the local economy. Flashback: Republicans already are comparing DOGE's potential impact on Virginia's 2025 election to that of the GOP-led government shutdown of 2013, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of government workers being placed on unpaid leave. Democrats swept the state's highest offices that year — an outcome many GOP strategists blamed on the shutdown. "Washington, D.C., politics have long shaped the outcome of Virginia off-year elections," Virginia-based GOP strategist Jimmy Keady said in a text to Axios. "With over 230,000 Virginians working in or around the federal government, especially in Northern Virginia and Norfolk, any proposal that threatens those jobs — like DOGE — turns into a high-stakes issue," he added. The other side: Democrats are making DOGE a centerpiece of their election playbook. Virginia's Democratic Party has been running ads highlighting Earle-Sears' comments accusing the media of overhyping the impact of DOGE cuts. Other Democratic commercials are linking Republican state legislative candidates to Musk. Behind the scenes: Youngkin has taken steps to try to soften the blow to the state's federal workers, launching a " Virginia Has Jobs" initiative aimed at helping laid-off workers find new positions. Reality check: Republicans say Earle-Sears has an uphill climb, even without DOGE. In every election since 1977 besides one, the state has elected a governor from the opposition party to the sitting president. Top GOP officials — including some close to Trump — have criticized Earle-Sears and her campaign. Chris LaCivita, Trump's 2024 co-campaign manager and a longtime player in Virginia politics, has called her team " amateurs." What they're saying: Peyton Vogel, a spokesperson for Earle-Sears, rejected the notion that federal cutbacks could hurt the GOP candidate.
Bloomberg
18 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
We Now Know the Meaning of 'Religious Enough'
Back in 1959, the chief administrative officer of the United Presbyterian Church warned that churches wielded too much 'economic power' due to their tax-exempt status. Unless religious groups were taxed like everyone else, the nation might soon face 'revolutionary expropriations of church property.' Well, the revolution hasn't yet come for the churches. But regulatory creep has nevertheless nibbled at the margins of religious freedom, with states finding one activity or another to deem not truly religious and therefore subject to tax.
