Former Newsmax host Eric Bolling lost a bet to Bill O’Reilly on his No Spin News show this week due to a technicality.
Bolling’s appearance on O’Reilly’s show came as former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) was still in the running for attorney general. Both O’Reilly and Bolling had vastly different takes on how the nomination would progress.
“He’s going to get murdered when the House Ethics Committee comes out, you know that. It’s going to be horrible,” O’Reilly said of the committee’s report on allegations Gaetz had sex with underage girls. Ultimately, House Republicans blocked the report’s release, despite senators’ demands to see it.
O’Reilly continued, “But my beef is, he’s not qualified to be the attorney general. He’s not! He’s never done a job like that — It’s a humongous agency, it needs to be drained from top to bottom. Yeah, he can go in and throw grenades. But, what’s he gonna build it up with? He doesn’t have that kind of law enforcement experience. Am I wrong?”
“The hackers already allegedly revealed it, but again, Bill, you said it earlier, you’re innocent until proven guilty,” Bolling said. “The investigation has been dropped. He cannot be held accountable for anything in that report because he has not consummated with a guilty verdict.”
Bolling argued that senators would vote to confirm Gaetz because they wouldn’t want to risk re-election.
“Anyone who comes up over the next four years does not want to get into the buzzsaw that is Donald Trump right now,” he said.
That’s when O’Reilly made the bet with Bolling, “for charity, of course.”
Fast forward to Thursday, and Gaetz announced he was removing himself from consideration because his confirmation “was unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance Transition.”
On Friday, the defeated Bolling said in a statement:
While I would like to point out that Matt Gaetz WITHDREW himself from the nomination process, and our bet was whether or not he would get through the senate confirmation hearings… I am a man of my word and will be making a substantial monetary donation to the ASPCA in Holly O’Reilly’s name. And I look forward to debating Bill again soon, assuming he is up for more lively debate with a competent opponent.
Holly is the name of O’Reilly’s beloved pooch.
Watch the clip above via No Spin News on YouTube.