Bill O’Reilly says that he will move to Ireland if Bernie Sanders is elected president. He acknowledges that making this pronouncement might help Sanders by giving Democrats a real incentive to prefer him over Hillary Clinton but he doesn’t care because there’s no way he’s paying a 90% marginal tax rate on his income.
“If Bernie Sanders gets elected president, I’m fleeing,” O’Reilly said Thursday. “I’m going to Ireland, and they already know it.”
The long-running host of “The O’Reilly Factor” cited Sanders’ plan to increase taxes on the wealthy as his reason.
“I shouldn’t say it publicly because that will get Sanders more votes, but I’m not going to pay 90 percent of my income to that guy,” he said. “I’m sorry, I’m not doing it.”
Pretty much everything about this statement is bullshit. Let’s be clear about what O’Reilly is referring to. Donald Trump recently told people that Sanders wanted to tax them at 90% which was rated as a pants on fire lie by Politifact. Sanders has actually promised not to raise the highest marginal tax rate that high on more than one occasion.
But, even if Sanders wanted that kind of tax reform, he’d never be able to accomplish it. He couldn’t accomplish it even if the Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress and had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.
And, if O’Reilly moved to Ireland, where would he get the income he currently enjoys from working at Fox News?
To be sure, O’Reilly makes plenty of money from other sources, including his many best-selling books. He wouldn’t be poor if he gave up his gig at Fox News, but he would lose more money than he’d gain by avoiding high marginal taxation.
O’Reilly would never leave this country for Ireland and it’s a lie to suggest that he would. Everything he was communicating was a lie or based on lies.
And that’s why people who watch Fox News are less informed about current events than people who watch no political news at all.
