Last night Sarah Palin appeared to be a bit disturbed by Bill O’Reilly’s interruptions, and let her frustrations out a bit in a live interview on O’Reilly’s show. In the video to the left, O’Reilly demands specifics from Palin on how she would reform entitlement programs to balance the budget. Palin is only willing to say that she would not cut benefits for people who have already paid into the system, but is unwilling to give any specifics on future enrollees. When O’Reilly keeps interrupting Palin to ask her for more specific she states rather tersely, “I really apologize that up here in Alaska we have this four second delay. It’s not an easy exchange to get my point across to you if you interrupt.” While Palin says she is apologizing, in fact she seems to be upset with O’Reilly for not letting her finish. Palin then goes on to talk over O’Reilly and finish her point. Palin’s body language appears to show some frustration as well.
It appears that the O’Reilly interview style is beginning to wear on Palin. O’Reilly is not the only conservative who has called on Palin to provide more specific policy proposals and open up to more hostile interviews. For the last two years Palin has largely kept herself within the Fox News bubble. Many of her interviews with Sean Hannity have been criticized for the “softball nature” of the questions. O’Reilly has also done some friendly interviews with Palin, but in this case he began to press her some more.
Many criticized O’Reilly’s numerous interruptions in the pre-Super Bowl interview of President Obama. While liberals were upset, the President seemed to take the interruptions well and freely engaged in a back-and-forth with O’Reilly.
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