Bill O’Reilly Conducts Extremely Civil Interview With Janet Napolitano

Tonight on the Factor, Bill O’Reilly welcomed President Barack Obama’s homeland security chief, Janel Napolitano, on for a grilling. And though most might think “fireworks!” when hearing an Obama Cabinet member appeared on Fox News, the O’Reilly-Napolitano conversation was notable mostly for the lack thereof.

In fact, part of the interview consisted of O’Reilly praising Napolitano for “deporting people in record numbers” who are breaking the law, and wondering why that’s not being talked about more – he even threw in a, “You’re doing a lot more than the Bush administration did.” He didn’t go too easy on her, however. There were questions on how much it costs to send illegal immigrants back out of the country annually (Napolitano didn’t have any figures but called the expenditures “worth it,” and O’Reilly agreed), there were questions on the Obama administration’s lawsuit against Arizona over that state’s immigration laws.

And then, there were questions on the Meg Whitman-Nicky Diaz controversy. And here, Napolitano didn’t have an answer, and O’Reilly called her on it (“Shouldn’t you know the answer to that question?”). And while it was hard not to flash back just a bit to last night, when Michael Steele didn’t know the minimum wage, like Steele and Lawrence O’Donnell did in that case, O’Reilly and Napolitano avoided a shoutfest.

Video of the O’Reilly-Napolitano interview below. As always, a reasonable discussion between people at different points on the political spectrum is a welcome sight.

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