Bill O'Reilly Confronts Carl Bernstein Over GOP Shutdown Criticism: 'Nobody Could Stop Ted Cruz'

10/17/13 - Iconic journalist Carl Bernstein has been very outspoken recently in his comments about the Republican party, and Bill O'Reilly confronted him Thursday night for saying that Republican leadership did a horrible job during the shutdown crisis, telling Bernstein that the bigger issue was President Obama's refusal to compromise.

O'Reilly told Bernstein he unfairly "demonized" the GOP, but Bernstein maintained that Republican "rabid leadership" "appeased this know-nothing faction" of their party instead of buckling down and taking a stand. O'Reilly shot back that they were trying to give the Obamacare strategy a chance, and said that realistically, "Nobody could stop Ted Cruz, and nobody could stop the tea party congresspeople."

Bernstein said Eric Cantor should have whipped the party into shape and decided they should be a "responsible party." O'Reilly said that's what Obama wanted, because he has always been dead set about keeping Obamacare in place and not implementing grand changes to it.

O'Reilly argued that had Obama accepted a one-year delay to the individual mandate, "all this would have gone away," but the president was "too stubborn to embrace that compromise."