O'Reilly: If Jimmy Carter "were president today, we'd all be speaking Arabic"

On his nationally syndicated radio show, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly said that if Jimmy Carter "were president today, we'd all be speaking Arabic." O'Reilly was responding to co-host Lis Wiehl, who objected to the inclusion of Carter in Bernard Goldberg's book 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (And Al Franken is #37) (HarperCollins, 2005). In the book, Goldberg ranked Carter sixth on his list.

From the July 19 broadcast of Westwood One's The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly:

O'REILLY: Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter screwing up America. Yeah, Jimmy Carter is a second-guesser. And for a guy who was a pretty weak president, I don't know if that's a sustainable position.

WIEHL: But he --

O'REILLY: This is -- wait, wait, wait.

WIEHL: OK. I'm just frustrated. It's Jimmy Carter. I like Jimmy Carter.

O'REILLY: Yeah, I know you do. You know, if Carter were president today, we'd all be speaking Arabic.

Posted to the web on Thursday, July 21, 2005 at 12:34 PM ET