O’Reilly argued that there were elements of his argument that were troublesome in his eyes, namely that “it was always white racism oppressing white people” that Bell opposed, and not all racism. What’s more, O’Reilly continued, the President associating with Bell made a pattern, given his relationship with Wright. “What President Obama did was support Bell’s crusade to get more minority women professors tenured at Harvard,” he noted, which seemed to O’Reilly one piece to a larger puzzle.

“I don’t know who you hung around with at Harvard,” Rivera began to tease– before O’Reilly cut him off with “nobody!”– “but you should’ve seen me back in the day!” Rivera noted that universities lended themselves to that sort of interaction and “to try to make Derrick Bell’s shoes fit Barack Obama is extremely unfair” and “a sign of desperation.” O’Reilly agreed only with the point that the video seemed not to be “getting much traction” as far as polling indicates.