Bill O’Reilly: Tense Interaction With Obama & Why Children Need Discipline

Adam Carolla Show

Adam Carolla hosts Bill O'Reilly to discuss his new book, 'Confronting America,' and the perceived decline of American societal values. The

Key takeaways

Bill O'Reilly discusses his book 'Confronting America,' focusing on the need for societal change.
The hosts argue that moving from a tactile, physical world to a digital one is contributing to widespread psychological distress.

Main topics

Societal decline
Modern parenting and education

Notable quotes

I don't know what we're doing in this society anymore.

Conclusion

The episode serves as a conservative critique of modern cultural shift

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Bill O'Reilly joins me on the show. Also do news with Dawson. We'll do that right after this. BetOnline. Hey, this is Adam Carolla from the Adam Carolla Show. The next big football moments, well, they're waiting for you at BetOnline. Back your team on a Sunday or ride with a primetime underdog. Build a same-game parlay, chase a player prop, or jump on live odds. while the drive is still moving. From the biggest NFL matchups to college football Saturdays, every angle is covered at BetOnline. And when the final whistle blows, hundreds of slots, table games, and live dealers keep the night going. Enjoy the freedom of online gaming where the action moves with you, and every moment is yours. Visit BetOnline today and discover where the action never stops. Speaker 6 (1:01) From Corolla One Studios in Glendale, California, this is The Adam Corolla Show. Adam's guest today, Bill O'Reilly. Plus the news with me, Mike Dawson. And now, Adam Corolla. Yeah, Speaker 2 (1:14) get it on. Got to get on the mandate. Yeah, get it on. And guess what? Prolific author Bill O'Reilly is back on. Confronting America. What has to change? Oh, man. You are so right, Bill. How are you, my friend? Speaker 1 (1:34) Where can I get a Speaker 2 (1:35) hat, Corolla, like you have? I got to get that hat. I don't even know what my hat says. Oh, it's got Speaker 7 (1:39) the, I think it's, you got to go to Pebble Beach. You have to race a car at Laguna Seca. You have to sign up to be a driver and you will get a gift basket. And you can race your car, your vintage car at Laguna Seca up north at Pebble Beach and you will get a hat. Wow. It's a little involved, but I might be able to do it. Or you could probably Speaker 2 (2:02) go online and get one for $9. Speaker 7 (2:05) How have you been? I've been well. I think I'm like you in that I just look around and I go, what is going Speaker 2 (2:15) on and why are we doing this to ourselves? And it all feels like we're undoing what was done. And it feels... like a huge waste of time. I feel like I'm Speaker 7 (2:27) walking around picking up garbage and putting it into a can and someone is just emptying it into the wind. And then we're all going to go walk around and pick up the garbage again and put it back into the can. And then someone's just going to kick over the trash can Speaker 2 (2:40) again. I don't know what we're doing in this society anymore. Speaker 1 (2:45) A lot of people are confused, and we have a big change coming with AI that frightens them, a lot of people. And then you have the, we hate Trump, we love Trump, that kind of thing. So there's a lot of stuff swirling around. Speaker 7 (3:07) Yeah, and there is a lot. And there's always been a lot, but there's Speaker 2 (3:12) another element, which is everyone is invested, communicating. You know, obviously, everyone's picking up their phone. Everyone's getting involved. But there's a thing where we're moving from the tactile world, the world of... barn building and working on farms and cooking stew and stuff Speaker 7 (3:34) like that into some sort of digital world. And it's driving a lot of people insane. Speaker 1 (3:41) I think that's a good analysis because you have the potential to make money. And we are still a capitalist society, although California may go at any time into communism. If you want to make money, you're going to have to put the kettle down and go out to one of these centers that are designing our lives. based upon high tech. And that's pretty damn frightening. There's no doubt about it. But I think there's a Speaker 2 (4:17) larger, I think there's something larger afoot. You know, you take like... male sperm count and testosterone and everything is down. You start factoring in sort of environmental things like, you know, microplastics and stuff like that. There's a sort of thing going on where we're starting to change. Men are not what they used to be. Women are not what they used to be. Something is going on and it's getting kind of weaponized and it's not, we're not going in the right direction. Speaker 1 (4:54) It's always complicated to talk about the battle of the sexes. Can you say that anymore? I don't know if you can say it. I was having a conversation with some very smart people the other night, and I said, have you noticed that if you disagree, if you're a man, and you disagree with a woman, you're yelling. Speaker 2 (5:16) Right, yes. Speaker 1 (5:17) You're yelling. Right. I go, no, if you want to hear me yell, I'll be happy to yell. I'm good at it. All you have to do is punch up. We'll do it live. You can hear me yell. Sure. But I'm not yelling. I'm disagreeing. Yeah. So there's a whole new paradigm in how we treat each other, which has been virtually ignored by almost everybody. But it's absolutely there. And, you know, men are what they used to be. Speaker 1 (5:54) I would Speaker 8 (5:54) say that's pretty true. I don't think women are Speaker 2 (5:58) either. We're going in different directions. I see endless hours of women fist fighting at airports and donut shops. I mean, I never used to see women fist fight. Now, I didn't have the Internet, but I did have my eyeballs and I did go through high school and I did go to a lot of places and I never saw women physically fighting. And now. Well, Speaker 1 (6:22) it's conflict resolution. But this court case in Massachusetts where the woman killed her three children, I don't know, 20 years ago, almost every woman in the United States would have been against her. Speaker 2 (6:39) Yes, yes. Yes. Because of the Speaker 1 (6:42) children. Speaker 2 (6:42) You're saying exactly what I'm saying. No, I know. Something changed from the year 2000 to 2026. She would have been a scourge to society. She killed her children. By the way, all you had to do was kill one of your kids back then, and that was enough to get society to turn against you. Three, you know, my goodness. So, yes. And the fact that there are women out there, the fact that Speaker 7 (7:07) every time there's one of these... anti-ICE, Antifa, whatever events, women are the tip of the spear. I mean, there are as many, if not more women at the protests scuffling with the ICE officers physically than there are men. It looks to me like a more of a 60-40 split out there. Now, if you had said, you know, violent protesters scuffling with uniformed officers. 30 years ago, the percentage would be zero women. Now they're on the hood of the cop car twerking. Speaker 1 (7:45) Yeah, the guys don't want to miss any of the football games. Yes. So that drives their attendance down. And I don't know. I think a lot of people are bored. Yeah, I mean, Speaker 2 (7:58) there's something else afoot. I wish it was boredom. You know, there's more to do now than ever, and people are insane. Speaker 8 (8:09) Well, they're empowered. Yes, everyone's empowered. Speaker 2 (8:12) Women, Speaker 1 (8:12) girls are taught in school that you have to be empowered. Yeah. And Lenny over here has to shut up. Right. So I see that among some of my friends. They got to get permission to do anything. Yes. From their spouse. I Speaker 2 (8:31) know. Speaker 1 (8:33) So it's like, oh, let me see. When I hear the words, let me see, then I got it. I got it. I'm not a chauvinist. I am a think, a rational thinker. But most of our problems that I write about in Confronting America stem from the school system and bad parenting, which is Speaker 8 (8:57) a Speaker 1 (8:57) lethal one-two combination. That is lethal to a kid. So you've got crazy parents smoking pot or on their phone all day, and then you go to school where the teacher is saying, well, Sally has to be empowered, and you shut up. Speaker 2 (9:16) Yes. Speaker 1 (9:16) You know, you're going like this. I think you're on to something here. Speaker 7 (9:22) Yeah, and the schools, you Speaker 2 (9:25) know, used to be, I coined a phrase during COVID, which is they're now trying to crate train the kids. If you get a young dog, you have to crate train them. When they're young, you can't wait until they're middle age because crate training doesn't work on five-year-old dogs. You got to do it as a pup. And you have to get the kids young to crate train them. The crate training is they actually. feel like they're safe inside their crate, even though if the house is on fire, they're just in a crate that's in a house that's on fire. They aren't, but it's an illusion of safety. And they did it during COVID. And they used to Speaker 7 (10:02) keep the training. They would start the training in college. But somebody figured out some of them are a little too old to be crate trained when they get to college. And they started now. And they went down to high school. Then they went to junior high. Now they're grade school. And now we have to have, you know, tranny time story hour. And they're realizing that let's get these kids when they're pups so we can crate train them. And they're smart. I mean, if you were trying to indoctrinate somebody, you wouldn't want to wait until they're 18 and a half. You'd want to grab at seven. And that's what's going down. And all the stuff. Speaker 2 (10:40) It's tons of women in tons of unions, and it really has nothing to do with education anymore. It's one big political thing. Well, I Speaker 1 (10:47) tell a story in Confronting America about my high school experience. I was a history teacher and civics in a school, and I was 22, and my students were 18 and 19. and a lot of them were on the road to nowhere. You could tell they weren't gonna make anything. So I brought in one day houses on Biscayne Bay mansions, and I said to the class, how many of you guys like to live in these houses? They're beautiful houses. This is a slideshow. And every hand went up. And then I said, I brought in the hovels, the slums, which some of those kids lived in. And I said, how about these houses? You want to live there? And I said, if you don't pay attention, if you don't learn the essentials of life in this school. Speaker 1 (11:53) then you're going to live in that shack. That's where you're going to be. Right. Okay? Now, I got in trouble for doing that. The principal, oh, you're scaring the kids. I said, it's my job to scare the kids. Okay? These kids are on their way out. They're seniors, and half of them don't know anything. So it's my job to get them into the real world. The principal couldn't care less. And that Speaker 8 (12:17) kind of presentation in the nation's schooling, has Speaker 1 (12:22) just been on steroids for the last 30 years. So when you go out and you ask these kids anything, who's the vice president? Speaker 8 (12:35) You know, and that impacts their whole life. If you don't know anything, you're going to fail. Speaker 1 (12:42) Whether Bernie Sanders says he's going to give you everything every second, you're going to fail. Speaker 2 (12:47) Yeah, you know, I was thinking about the whole democratic socialists and all this stuff. You know, we hear all the time, oh, they want free this, they want free health care, they want free child care, they want free tuition, they want, you know, government run supermarkets. And everyone always sort of focuses on what they want. You know, they want rent control. They want every they want all this stuff for free. But the Speaker 7 (13:12) reality is, is the real. thing everyone should focus on is these people don't want to work. They don't want to work. If you work, then you can have most all the stuff you want. Or if you choose not to work, then you can focus on trying to get everything handed to you for free. But the real epidemic we're having is them not wanting to work. I mean, you know, I said it, you know, you're older, I'm older. Let's just say the guys I know, you Speaker 2 (13:42) take guys like Dr. Drew, you take guys like Mark Garagos, guys like yourself. Guys like me, all middle-aged plus, all past 60, every one of these guys I'm talking about works almost every weekend. I can't tell you when the last weekend I didn't work. I'll say the same for Mark Garagos, Dr. Drew. How come all the old dudes I know work their ass Speaker 7 (14:07) off and all the young dudes I know, there ain't no weekend action for a lot of them? There's an ethic that's going on. It's a problem, and everyone's sitting around talking about arguing over free stuff, but it's really a work issue we're having. Speaker 1 (14:25) Also a vision problem. So after World War II, my parents got married. My father was in the Navy, occupied Japan, came back. And I lived in a place called Levittown on Long Island. And there were just hundreds of kids. And everybody worked. I'm 10 years old, shoveling snow. You heard all the stories. Cutting lawns. Whatever it may be. My father wasn't going to give me any money. And if I wanted that toast and almond ice cream bar, I had to find the money and I wasn't going to steal. So there was an ethic. It was an ethic. And the ethic was you pay your way. Okay. And if you pay your way, then you'll rise because people will say, yeah, that guy's a hard worker. Maybe I'll take him on and give him a couple more bucks an hour, whatever it may be. And you go up. Now. You don't have to pay your way because your parents will do everything for you. You can create your own existence on your telephone. Yeah, I want to be a bocce king. And you can be a bocce king, whatever they want. And so that you go Speaker 8 (15:37) away from the real world. You're on a track not to be in reality. I have a... portion of Confronting Speaker 1 (15:50) America where I say tattoos, I discuss tattoos. Now, if you want to be a longshoreman, go ahead. Are you going to have tattoos? Are you going to play for the Lakers next year if you're going to make the team? Every tattoo in the world, go ahead. But if you want to get a corporate job with me, because I run three corporations, and you walk in with a panther on your neck and a couple of sleeves, I'm not hiring you. Speaker 2 (16:16) Number Speaker 1 (16:17) one, I don't want your uncle, who's obviously a hell's angel, showing up. Number two, I mean, why are you doing this? For what? And Speaker 8 (16:27) some of these people are really good looking. Speaker 2 (16:29) They Speaker 8 (16:30) don't need to have the forehead or the piercing Speaker 1 (16:35) of the nose. Speaker 2 (16:36) And Speaker 1 (16:37) I never ask them about it. Because number one, I'd be yelling. And number two, that I'd be... in court somewhere getting sued for defaming tattoo people. So I just look and Speaker 8 (16:52) evaluate, but people are evaluated by the way they look. Speaker 7 (16:58) Yeah, I mean, Speaker 2 (17:00) it suggests to me that you are spending a lot of time and a lot of money on something that's unnecessary and would be much better suited. getting bonded, getting your welding license, you know, or whatever, whatever it is. See, it kind of suggests you waste time. And it also suggests to me that you're trying to elicit reactions. You're trying to get me to think of you a certain way based on how much money you spent on your right arm. I want to judge you by your actions. I want to know. Do you show up early? Do you show up often? Do you stay late? Do you bust your hump? Are you polite? You know, I want to, I want, I don't want to think anything about you before I watch you work. And I don't want the nose hoop in the woman. And I don't want the tattoo on the dude. I don't want to have any preconceived anything. I just want to see how you operate and what you're. skill level is. I mean, I used to be a carpenter, and when a guy would walk onto the job site, you could Speaker 7 (18:07) watch him work for 10 minutes, and you knew whether the guy was skilled or not. As a matter of fact, you could tell if the guy was skilled by looking at his bags, just his construction bags, what he had in them, Speaker 2 (18:19) sort of how things were arranged. You could go, oh, that guy's a journeyman, or that guy's a skilled guy versus that guy's, you know. glorified goomper. He doesn't know what he's doing. I want to watch you and then draw my determination based on your work. I don't want you to get me to think something about you as you come in. I mean, it's like I'm a car guy through and through. Speaker 7 (18:47) And I race cars and I have a bunch of old, you know, cool cars and everything. I drive a white Tesla with a white interior, Y model. middle of the road, pedestrian, housewife, school teacher car. I don't want to be Speaker 2 (19:02) noticed. I don't want to make an impression on you. I don't want you to think I'm a high roller. I'm going to pull up in a Lamborghini and turn your head. I just want to drive my Tesla to the Home Depot, get a sack of type S mortar, throw it in the back and be left alone. I don't want you to think anything. Speaker 1 (19:19) Yeah, Speaker 8 (19:19) I mean, it's further down the road than that, though. So when I'm on the beach and I see a 14-year-old girl with tattoos, I go, what the deuce is wrong with their parents? Speaker 2 (19:35) Yes. Speaker 8 (19:36) Why are you allowing that? The girl's 14 years old or whatever. Because I ask. And I, how old are you? Yeah, I'm 14. And, you know, giant tattoo. I said, what is wrong? And parenting is at the root of many of our problems in America. Yes. America, what has to change, and the government can't come in and tell you how to be a good parent. They want to. Childcare, that's what the childcare thing is Speaker 1 (20:05) all about. Get them in to this big indoctrination hall and tell them that they got to do X, Y, and Z. Have a big picture of Chairman Bernie there. You know, that's what they want. Speaker 8 (20:17) But if you're a responsible parent and you're allowing your 14-year-old to be covered with ink, what's wrong with you? Well, the parents covered. I Speaker 7 (20:27) mean, Speaker 8 (20:27) I'll make those judgments. Speaker 7 (20:29) I do, too. Speaker 2 (20:29) Yeah, there's Speaker 7 (20:30) a Speaker 2 (20:30) lot of that. The Speaker 7 (20:31) parents Speaker 2 (20:31) covered with ink, too. Because, you know, I think Dennis Prager used to say it, but, you know, we went from calling your boy son to. and then we decided they were your best friend. And it basically became about making friends with your kids versus actually being a parent. And being a parent means not winning popularity contests sometimes. We wanted to be good friends with our kids. And also, you know, disciplining is a, I want to say a lost art, but it is frowned upon. Quite a bit. You will be ostracized if you discipline your kids in any meaningful way. Society, I mean, the school board may send someone over to your house if you found out that you discipline these kids in any kind of traditional way. So we don't even do that anymore. Speaker 1 (21:30) And when the parent's more obsessed with Speaker 8 (21:34) what him or her is doing, what the parent is doing. How many times have you walked into a Chuck E. Cheese and seen a family of four and they're sitting around a table and they all have their phones? Speaker 2 (21:47) Yes. Speaker 8 (21:48) They're not talking to each other. Speaker 2 (21:49) No. Speaker 8 (21:50) We had a phone ban during mealtime at my house. But then I thought, okay, what do you want to talk about? What happened in school? This, that? No phone. Speaker 2 (22:04) There's also an epidemic of pharmaceuticals. Young people are on so much crap they don't need to be on. This Cindy Crawford's kid, Presley Gerber, just died and 27 years of age. I don't know if he OD'd or whatever. I heard a video. He made a video of basically what he was on. And this is a 27-year-old healthy dude that's on 10 pharmaceutical prescriptions for no reason. People tell me, I need this, I need that, I have anxiety. I'm like, take a hike, listen to classical music, jump in the ocean, wake up. Go ride a horse or something. Go to the beach. Get in the water. No, no, no. They're on. I'll play it for you. I was just listening to it on the ride in. Speaker 2 (23:06) It's a little slow, but you can hear what this guy's on. I guess he's just making a video of himself in rehab a year ago or whatever it is. But listen to what this guy's on. Speaker 5 (23:16) Long story short, where I'm at currently, three classes of medications, four blood pressure, opiate, benzo, antidepressant, Xanax, panic attacks are really, really bad. The Valium. I take a little bit in the morning. I don't know if it's a little or a lot. Antidepressant-wise, ritazapine. And then I take prazosin. Also used to treat night terrors and PTSD and ketamine drips. I definitely use that more than I should. Sometimes it's not in a Speaker 2 (23:50) clinical setting. Speaker 5 (23:51) All Speaker 2 (23:51) right. I listen to the long form, not the one with the dance beat over at Entertainment Tonight. This guy's just on 70 different things. He's a healthy 27-year-old. Healthy. That's it. I mean, there's no reason you need. And listen, everyone hates me because they go, I have anxiety. I'm like, get the fuck over it. Go take a hike. Get busy. Start moving. Break a sweat. I don't know. I had none of this because I had to work every Speaker 7 (24:29) day. I was too busy. Do you have anxiety when you're being chased by a bear? Do you have all these feelings or are you just running with a bear behind you? Wake up. Get back to that. Way too many, way too many pharmaceuticals, Bill. It's insane. Speaker 1 (24:46) Yeah, it's an excuse mechanism, and the doctors play into it. You know, the drug addiction in America is just, number one, it's such an industry, you know, in L.A., that billions of dollars have been stolen from these drug programs supposed to help people. They don't help people. They make it easy to be a drug addict. And in other countries, they make it hard to be a drug addict. And the other countries have a much lower level of crime than we do. You know, when there's a crime committed, there's always a victim. People get hurt. But that's Speaker 8 (25:22) okay because, oh, no, this person, blah, blah, blah. I'm a real hard, to use your expression, dude, when it comes to personal responsibility. Speaker 8 (25:34) If you listen to that kid and you look at his appearance, who's surprised he's dead? Speaker 2 (25:40) Who? Now, it's almost... Speaker 2 (25:45) It's insane because you see it coming from so far down the road. Yeah, Speaker 1 (25:50) so you take a kid like that Speaker 8 (25:52) and you put him into mandatory rehab in a therapeutic center. Take the money that's being stolen and conned from the homeless people and then build real health facilities to get these people off. But the truth is, Carolla, and you know this because you're in showbiz. A lot of these people don't want to get off it. Because as medicines, they can get you off the drugs. They block inebriation. They don't want it. They want to be high. Speaker 2 (26:27) Yeah. Well, no, that's the whole reason we have a homeless problem is the people on the streets are doing drugs. Right. And they have Speaker 8 (26:35) no right to be there. Those homeless people have no right to encroach on any American by being out. and doing things like sticking needles in their necks and stealing and whatever it may be. Kids see that. Speaker 2 (26:54) And Speaker 8 (26:54) they have no right to do it. There