In an interview with liberal actress Shirley MacLaine, HLN's Joy Behar admitted that Bill O'Reilly "bullies you around a little bit" and suggested he needs to a figure to "smack him around" as the two women teed off on the popular Fox News host.
"Well, he is little bit intimidating as you say," Behar remarked to MacLaine confirming her . He bullies you a little bit, I think. I felt that." At the end of the segment MacLaine insisted that O'Reilly needs a motherly figure like Joy Behar to control him. "To smack him around," Behar added, and MacLaine agreed.
"He's a bully, Joy. He's a bully," MacLaine spat during the segment. Behar had narrated O'Reilly's recent appearance on ABC's "The View" where she infamously stormed off the set, offended by his take that "Muslims killed us on 9/11." She attempted to explain why she left the set.
When MacLaine began to talk of when she met O'Reilly at a social event, Behar butted in and jokingly asked if it was at a "bund meeting." She was probably referring to meetings in the 1930s of the German-American Bund, an American Nazi organization.
A transcript of the segment, which aired on April 18 at 10:08 p.m. EDT, is as follows:
BEHAR: Now Bill O`Reilly, let`s talk about him for a minute.
MACLAINE:: Oh, dear.
BEHAR: You know, I walked off the show on him with Whoopi. Did you see that?
MACLAINE:: I saw that show. You should have kept going.
BEHAR: Yes. But I mean – well, we came back because he apologized. And it`s not just because he`s a right-winger sort of guy. It`s because I didn`t like what he was saying about, you know --
MACLAINE:: No, he`s a bully, Joy, he`s a bully.
BEHAR: Tell me what he did to you when you went on his show.
MACLAINE:: I called him. Because I know he`s very interested in UFOs. And he`s had the courage and guts to put some people on. And I don`t think that he actually spent a lot of time calculating and strategizing how to humiliate those people who were interested in UFOs. And I thought, well, he might try to do that with me but I have had a lot of experience with it and I could probably counteract it. We`re ready to go on and he came in the dressing room. You know, he`s 6`9 1/2 or whatever.
BEHAR: Yes. He`s big.
MACLAINE:: And he likes to act like he`s bigger. And he uses the body movement, et cetera, as a bullying movement tactic, if you ask me. And, "Hey, MacLaine." I said, "Hello, Bill" because I`d met him socially, liked him pretty well.
BEHAR: Where, at a bund meeting? No, I`m kidding.
MACLAINE:: Very funny. He turned to me at one point and said, "Well, you`re really nice. Well, you`re nice, you`re not stuck up." I thought, oh, God, come off it. So stupid.
And he said to me, I`m not going to talk about what you want to talk about. We`re going to talk about Iraq. I said, come, on Bill, I don`t want to talk about Iraq. It`s ridiculous that we`re there -- and you know, "No, no, well, you think you Hollywood people know." And he went on and he went on.
And, you know, I`m from Virginia, Joy. And I`m -- I`ve got the founding fathers in my blood. I feel very patriotic about protecting what the founding fathers were on about in the first place.
BEHAR: Right. Right.
MACLAINE: And so as he`s talking, well, we don`t -- "You don`t know anything about Iraq, you people in Hollywood." And I forgotten the first time I said no (EXPLETIVE DELETED) to him, but I did. And he kind of blinked and thought, she`s really done that. And then I said it again. And he still didn't stop. And it was -- what I remembered was that the people who go on with him never really call him on his stuff.
BEHAR: Right.
MACLAINE: They laugh. And they giggle.
BEHAR: Well, he is little bit intimidating as you say. He bullies you a little bit, I think. I felt that.
MACLAINE: Well, of course.
BEHAR: When he was on with us, he turned to me, and he said, listen and learn, like I`m some kind of idiot or a young girl or something. You know I`m probably older than he is. Anyway, we`re going to take a break.
MACLAINE: You could be his mother too.
BEHAR: I could be his mother?
MACLAINE: And he is -- he needs a mother like you. He needs something.
BEHAR: To smack him around.
MACLAINE: Yes.
