(NewsNation) — “We have bitterness, acrimony. We will have violence,” political pundit Bill O’Reilly says about the aftermath of former President Donald Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts in his New York hush money trial.
But he tells NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo that President Joe Biden could knock the wind out of the partisans on both sides.
“President Biden should pardon Donald Trump of any and all crimes and suggest publicly that (New York) Gov. Hochul do the same thing. And then … President Biden should pardon his son Hunter. That would throw the whole acrimonious system into absolute chaos.”
Biden cannot pardon Trump in the hush money case because it was a New York state prosecution — only Hochul has that power. However, Biden could pardon Trump in the Jan. 6 and Mar-a-Lago documents cases or any other future federal legal matters.
O’Reilly acknowledges there’s not much equivalence or fairness in comparing the Trump and Biden cases.
“I’m not measuring Biden against Trump. I’m telling Biden what’s best for the country.”
But O’Reilly doesn’t expect Biden to act in a way that, he says, would be comparable to President Gerald Ford pardoning Richard Nixon in 1974.
“The president could bring down the level of hatred, but he won’t … because he doesn’t have the ‘fiber’ of Gerald Ford.”
Hunter Biden faces federal charges in two cases: illegally possessing a pistol for 11 days after allegedly lying on the federal background questionnaire about his drug use and allegedly evading $1.4 million in federal income taxes over three years.
Trump is facing two federal trials over the classified documents seized at his home in Florida and for trying to overturn the 2020 election in Washington, D.C. He also faces a trail in Georgia over his alleged efforts to subvert its 2020 election results.
While proposing a way to calm America in general, O’Reilly was not so calm in his condemnation of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who brought the hush money charges against Trump.
“We all know this is a low-level beef. It’s not the Teapot Dome scandal. It’s not Watergate. It’s not even Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton,” he said.
“Alvin Bragg last year downgraded 60% of all the felonies handed to him by the NYPD into misdemeanors and dismissed 14%. That’s 74% of all the crimes in Manhattan brought to Alvin Bragg were either dismissed or downgraded,” O’Reilly added.
“The big story is not the conviction (of Trump). The big story is the diminishment of America! Not since the Civil War has the citizenry hated each other — and I used that word literally — as much as it does now.”