O'Round the World - April 12, 2026

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Bill O’Reilly’s No Spin News and Analysis

Episode: O'Round the World – April 12, 2026

Main Theme & Purpose

This episode centers on the ongoing U.S.-Iran conflict, the Trump administration's response, the polarized media and political landscape in America, and the geopolitical consequences of recent decisions. Bill O’Reilly directs criticism at American media coverage, Democratic politicians, and European allies, framing the discussion as a battle of narratives, national security, and political stakes ahead of the U.S. midterms.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Censorship, Media Coverage, and the War Narrative

• Historical Contrast: O’Reilly opens by contrasting WWII press censorship (to protect military operations) with today’s real-time, uncensored media coverage, arguing this shift presents problems for national security and public understanding.
• Media Bias: He suggests that "left wing journalists despise Donald Trump more than the mullahs in Iran," accusing American media of amplifying anti-Trump and even pro-Iranian regime rhetoric.
• Coordination of Messaging: O'Reilly and Mark Simone discuss how left-leaning talking points (like “war crimes”) are coordinated via D.C. political action committees, then mirrored by pundits and politicians daily.
  • Quote [17:53]:

    "There are a number of political action committees in D.C...here’s the theme of the day, and that’s why you hear the same phraseology uttered over and over." — Bill O’Reilly

2. Critique of Congressional Democrats and Pro-Iran Arguments

• O’Reilly airs and refutes statements from prominent Democrats (Adam Smith, Chris Van Hollen, Chris Murphy) who claim that U.S. actions have benefited the Iranian regime or failed to accomplish strategic objectives.
  • Quote [05:17]:

    "If, at the very least, this agreement gives Iran the right to control the Strait, that is cataclysmic for the world." — Sen. Chris Murphy

• O’Reilly’s Response: He calls these statements “absurd,” asserting that the Iranian regime has been decimated ("Half of them are dead"), their military effectiveness is crippled, and the U.S. could take control of the Strait of Hormuz if it chose to.

3. Strait of Hormuz and Military Calculations

• US Military Options: O’Reilly argues that Iran does not truly control the Strait of Hormuz―the U.S. could seize it militarily at any time, but opts not to due to likely casualties and lack of public support for close-combat operations.
  • Quote [40:22]:

    "If the United States military wanted to go in and clear Hormuz, they could clear it very quickly, but that would require more casualties and close quarter combat." — Bill O’Reilly

4. Nuclear Program, the “Imminent Threat,” and Negotiation Skepticism

• Dueling Narratives: A significant segment features O’Reilly debating Chris Cuomo (News Nation) over the evidence for Iran’s nuclear capabilities, with Cuomo pressing for more skepticism and O’Reilly insisting there’s sufficient intelligence to justify U.S. action.
  • Exchange [35:53–36:23]:

    "The justification for this war is a question mark. Not to me. There’s enough evidence..." — Bill O’Reilly
    "When you say it's enough, you’re one choosing to believe that there was an imminent threat the president never specified.” — Chris Cuomo

• IAEA Reports: Both argue over the technicalities of uranium enrichment, with O’Reilly claiming Iran is close to bomb-grade material and Cuomo retorting that enrichment alone does not equate to weaponization.

5. Trump’s Calculus and Confusion over Objectives

• O’Reilly describes Trump as following his characteristic “deal-making” instincts, initially preferring negotiation to military action but ultimately boxed in due to an adversary with “nothing to lose.”
• Impact of Public Messaging: O’Reilly and Sid Rosenberg discuss that Trump’s multiple, sometimes contradictory signals (negotiating for toll revenue on the Strait vs. seeking to open it by force) may be intentional misdirection toward Iran, but risk confusing Americans as well.
  • Quote [50:24]:

    "What Trump is trying to do is confuse the mullahs and give them so many scenarios, they don't know what the deuce is happening." — Bill O’Reilly

6. Political Stakes for Trump and Democratic Tactics

• No-Win Framing: O'Reilly repeatedly claims that no matter what Trump does—bomb Iran or negotiate—opponents will label him a war criminal, a coward, or both.
  • Quote [19:06]:

    “No matter what Trump does, he loses...It’s the art of the steel, I call it. Trump’s book was the Art of the Deal. It’s not going to work out for Trump.” — Bill O’Reilly

7. US, NATO, and European Relations

• European Weakness: O’Reilly is highly critical of NATO and especially Spain, arguing that most European nations are "weak" and unhelpful in confronting Iran, with Spain even "an enemy of the United States."
  • Quote [64:09]:

    "Spain is an enemy of ours. Spain is an enemy of the United States. When you start to root for murderers, then you’re out." — Bill O’Reilly

• O’Reilly stops short of advocating a formal withdrawal from NATO, but suggests travel and economic boycotts to express displeasure.

8. The Limits of Public Debate and Civic Fatigue

• O’Reilly laments the decline of robust, honest debate in media, lamenting that most journalists merely echo partisan lines or avoid conflict entirely.

  • Quote [46:27]:

    "I made THE Factor based on very, very stringent debate...you don't have that now...You don't learn anything." — Bill O’Reilly

• He closes by encouraging listeners to stay informed but not allow geopolitical anxiety to dominate their daily lives.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Media and Propaganda:

  "Those three individuals are sympathizing with Iran by putting out their propaganda. It’s absurd. I've never seen anything like it." — Bill O’Reilly [06:38]

• On Reviving WWII-Era Censorship:

  "If American journalists had done anything like this [in WWII], they would have been arrested by military authorities and prosecuted for treason." — Bill O’Reilly [06:29]

• On Iran’s Leverage:

  "You’re fighting a war against an adversary that really has nothing to lose...if you kill them all...other guys come out and do the same thing and they don’t mind being dead because they’re going to get martyrdom." — Bill O’Reilly [09:02]

• On Strategic Calculations and Public Support:

  "Americans will not accept [close quarter combat]. So the decision has been made not to do it yet. That’s the reality." — Bill O’Reilly [40:22]

• On European Allies:

  "Spain is an enemy of ours...Talk about rooting for Iran. Spain, yeah. I'll never go to Spain again." — Bill O’Reilly [64:09]

• On Media and Political No-win Scenarios:

  "No matter what Trump does, he loses…It’s the art of the steel, I call it." — Bill O’Reilly [19:06]

• On Robust Debate:

  "I don't mind that at all...It doesn’t happen anymore in America. I made THE Factor based on very, very stringent debate." — Bill O’Reilly [46:27]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00–06:15: Opening historical context, critiques of media coverage, and Democratic Congressmen statements
• 08:13–15:03: O’Reilly on News Nation with Leland Vittert—motives of Iran/Trump, nuclear deal skepticism, and public support for war
• 15:43–17:24: Debate over military targeting and impact on Iranian civilians
• 17:39–22:53: Discussion with Mark Simone about media coordination, Trump’s risk tolerance, and potential military options
• 29:25–44:55: Extended debate with Chris Cuomo: Iran’s nuclear timeline, intelligence reliability, justification for war, and the media’s role
• 45:44–49:15: Analysis with Sid Rosenberg: media-hosted debates, Trump’s messaging confusion, and public sentiment
• 49:15–55:42: Rosenberg and O’Reilly on the Strait of Hormuz, military options, and uranium enrichment
• 56:43–64:09: Holocaust analogy, Democratic responses, and U.S.-Europe relations
• 65:47–66:37: Wrap-up, personal reflections, and advice for staying informed without being overwhelmed

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Conclusion

O’Reilly’s episode is an unapologetic critique of American media and left-wing politics regarding the Iran conflict, defending the Trump administration from charges of recklessness or incompetence, and highlighting the limitations of military and diplomatic strategies. The discussions with Leland Vittert, Chris Cuomo, Mark Simone, and Sid Rosenberg showcase the polarized nature of U.S. debate, the complexity of the Iranian adversary, and pessimism toward both the U.S. political climate and European support. O’Reilly insists on the necessity of preventing a nuclear Iran, regardless of domestic or international backlash, and closes with advice to remain engaged, but not demoralized.

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Transcript

[Bill O'Reilly]

Foreign

O'Reilly, you're listening to around the World. Let's begin. We got to talk about Iran. Everybody else is, but I'm coming at it from a different point of view. Did you know During World War II, the American press, which was basically newspapers and radio back then, was censored by the Roosevelt administration? And if a reporter in the field violated what the military authorities told that reporter to do, that person go to jail. And it was a very, very strict protocol because the Allied forces were actively engaged in fighting and they didn't want to give an advantage to the Japanese or the Germans. Makes perfect sense. Well, now we have the total opposite. We have war in our living rooms, conflict live. You see the rockets coming in. There is no censorship. That presents a problem. So my belief is that some left wing journalists despise Donald Trump more than the mullahs in Iran. I can't read minds, but the coverage is unbelievable. So Trump could not win if he bombed Iran, killed civilians, a war criminal. If he pulled back for a cease fire, which he did. He's a taco, okay? Trump always backs out. We couldn't win. And that's the way it was set up. In addition, we are getting false reporting, false analysis. Here's Congressman Adam Smith, a Trump hater who lives in Washington State.

Roll it.

[Chris Cuomo]

We've done nothing to set their nuclear

[Bill O'Reilly]

program back any further than where it was before. You're correct.

[Chris Cuomo]

We also don't have clarity on exactly where it's at, but we haven't done anything to affect that. All we've done is solidify the regime.

[Bill O'Reilly]

That's just absurd. Solidify the regime. Half of them are dead. Maybe more than half. I guess they're solidified in a coffin. And as far as nukes are concerned, that's part of the ongoing negotiation. And the Trump administration can't back away from that. So the Iranians are going to have to give in or they're going to get bombed. Now this guy Smith, I mean, you can just see where he's coming from. So we haven't gotten anything out of this. Our military and all authorities flown. And no, we didn't get anything. We didn't degrade their capacity to wage offensive war. We didn't do any of that. It's just a lie. And then we go to another Democratic congressman, probably hates Trump more than Smith does, guy named Chris Van Hollen from Maryland. Roll that. And if you analyze it at the strategic level there, that's where this is being a big loss. And when you're talking about Essentially, Iran being able to now take in revenue, charge tolls for ships going through the Strait of Hormuz. They're obviously going to be making more money now than they did at the start of the war. Well, that remains to be seen. I mean, these are all negotiating points. If Iran cooperates and opens the Strait of Hormuz by opens, I mean, doesn't shoot at them. Iran does not control the Strait of Hormuz. It fires drones, tankers, and the insurance agencies have told the shipping companies, we're not going to reimburse if you go through there, it's too dangerous. But they don't control anything. In fact, the US Military could take over the Straits of Hormuz in a day. But that would require close quarter combat, which Americans don't want. President Trump knows that. So how this works out, I don't know. But to say, as Van Hollen did, that this is a big loss, that's another lie. All right? Iran is downgraded to the point it cannot wage effective offensive war. Lobbing a few drones is not that okay. And their regime, most of them are dead, killed. Well, it's a big loss. And finally, perhaps the biggest Trump hater in the nation is Chris Murphy, the senator from Connecticut. Roll him.

[Chris Murphy]

But if you accept even part of the Iranian statement, Donald Trump has agreed to give Iran control of the Strait of Hormuz. That is extraordinary. If you go deeper into the statement from the Iranian National Security Council, they claim that Trump has also agreed to Iran's right to enrichment, to suspend all sanctions against Iran, and to allow Iran to keep their missile program, their drone program, and their nuclear program. Now, who knows if any of that is true? But if, at the very least, this agreement gives Iran the right to control the Strait, that is cataclysmic for the world.

[Bill O'Reilly]

And every word the man said is not true. But here's even worse. He's using Iranian propaganda. He's using it. Well, this is what Iran said. But who knows? If it's true, then why are you saying it? Why are you saying it? Why are you demoralizing your own country? Why are you elevating terrorists by reading what they say? And they don't have a right, as I just pointed out, to control the straits for Hormuz. That's ridiculous. It's not going to happen, and it isn't happening. So when you get into this, I think back to World War II, and if American journalists had done anything like this, they would have been arrested by military authorities and prosecuted for treason or whatever label you want to put on it. But the Roosevelt administration basically said, look, you can't sympathize with the enemy. Iran's the enemy. Those three individuals are sympathizing with Iran by putting out their propaganda. It's absurd. I've never seen anything like it. It's so irresponsible. Now you got all three of them are in the Democratic Party. They're all three very far left. I can't really condemn the whole party. That wouldn't be fair. I hoping that there are some Democrats that understand the enemy is Iran here, not Trump. I'm hoping that's the case. But I have any confidence, again, I think that there are journalists and politicians in this country who hate Trump more than the terrorists running Iran. Here's my News Nation appearance with Leland Vidder.

[Leland Vittert]

Bill, you said back last week, and I think we played the clip, that President Trump needs a deal. And in the next, what would be now five weeks, who needs a deal more, Trump or the Iranians? Right now,

[Bill O'Reilly]

it's not a valid comparison, Leland, because as you pointed out very accurately, the Iranians don't care about a deal. That's why I wrote a chapter on them in Confronting Evil. They don't mind slaughtering their own people. They don't mind developing a nuclear weapon that could destroy Israel or another country. They like it. It's like Putin. Very similar with Putin. Does Putin need a deal in Ukraine? Yeah, he does. Economy's going south. It's got a million casualties. Does Putin care about that? No. So you're fighting a war against a adversary that really has nothing to lose. And that is a statement everybody should think about, because if you kill them all, right, then other guys come out and do the same thing and they don't mind being dead because they're going to get martyrdom or whatever they get. So it's a very tough negotiation. However, I think that the United States has got to do everything it can to make sure this nuclear thing stops. That's number one. And then Strait of Hormuz would be 1A if they can get that somehow, whether it be a raid, you know, Israeli led raid, I don't know. That would be a very, very significant victory. But a total victory over people who don't care if they lose. Almost impossible.

[Leland Vittert]

Well, does that mean starting the war was a mistake in your mind?

[Bill O'Reilly]

No.

What else were you going to do?

[Leland Vittert]

Right. But I guess

[Bill O'Reilly]

if you have a country on the verge of having a nuclear weapon and the country says, we're going to develop it, we don't care what you do. Which has borne out to be true.

[Leland Vittert]

Absolutely. So why would we think they would make a deal now and live up to it when every deal they've had, they've cheated on? And we're making a deal with people, as you point out, who have nothing to lose? That doesn't seem like the kind of people you want to make a deal with.

[Bill O'Reilly]

What's the alternative, Leland?

[Leland Vittert]

The alternative is what I laid out, which is setting the groundwork for a popular revolution, which is what Trump said the day he announced the war starting. Why has he backed off from that?

[Bill O'Reilly]

Look, the odds of a popular revolution in a country of 93 million, when you have 200,000 troops going to shoot you in the head, are infinitesimal. I mean, talk about an unrealistic expectation. So what President Trump laid out is we've tried to bribe them a la Barack Obama, we've tried to decapitate their leadership, which we did. We've tried pretty much everything. Now, I don't. I don't object to arming and funding dissenters within Iran, but do you really have a lot of confidence that would work?

[Leland Vittert]

This is what President Trump talked about on day one of the war. He said, the time is going to come for the Iranians to stand up. It was he who had all the conflicts.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Okay, but that's theoretical.

[Leland Vittert]

So was he being. Was he being unrealistic?

[Bill O'Reilly]

No, he was being theoretical. He said, well, we're going to soften him up, going to take out their high command, which the Americans and Israelis did, and we're going to make life very unbearable for these people to govern. And hopefully then after that, the Iranian people will rise up and throw them out. So that could still happen, but when you're dealing with guys who don't care whether they live or die, it makes it exceedingly difficult for it to happen. Right.

[Leland Vittert]

We already knew that, though. Right? We already knew that. These.

[Bill O'Reilly]

I don't know if we knew the extent. I don't know. No, because I had a conversation with President Trump, had to be a month ago, where we discussed a deal, a framework of a deal, and he believed that if we gave Iran enough economic assurances to rebuild their country, they might go for it. Because all they're giving up is the right to have a nuclear weapon. That's it.

[Leland Vittert]

Right, but they're not. They will never do that. That's like asking you or I to give up.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Well, you gotta try.

[Leland Vittert]

I.

[Bill O'Reilly]

You gotta try.

[Leland Vittert]

Oh, okay.

[Bill O'Reilly]

And on that note, and on that note, and this is important, For News Nation viewers, are you for letting Iran have a nuclear weapon? The New York Times seems to be for it. Ms. Seems to be for it.

[Leland Vittert]

Is that a rhetorical question?

[Bill O'Reilly]

All of NATO seems to be for it.

[Sid Rosenberg]

No, no.

[Bill O'Reilly]

I mean, the Pope seems to be for it. All of these people seem to favor Iran having a nuclear weapon. Why else would they object?

[Leland Vittert]

Well, this isn't, though, about what NATO or the Pope is doing. This is about how the President of the United States is going to do and carry out the policies that he stated. And I think what you're setting up, Bill, is a position where he has no good options. As you pointed out, the Iranians have him over a barrel when it comes to oil prices. And there's no way to force them to make a deal.

[Bill O'Reilly]

There is a way to force them to make a deal, and that's to bomb the infrastructure that the president talked about today. I would probably go heavy on Hormuz before I went into Tehran and knocked out their power grid.

[Leland Vittert]

You try to reopen the Strip.

[Bill O'Reilly]

I don't want to second guess the war.

Yeah.

I don't want to second guess it. I don't have the CID reps and everything like that that our military has, but I think if Hormuz were under control of the United States, that that would go a long way to neutralizing the Russians.

[Leland Vittert]

Want to play something real quickly for you. President Trump keeps saying he's going to go after bridges and power plants, which creates enormous suffering for the ordinary Iranian people. This is an Iranian dissident who spent years in Evan prison for trying to start an uprising in Iran, warning President Trump about that. Take a listen.

[Chris Cuomo]

I was not hearing a clear distinction being made by the president that the targets that the military would attack would be carefully chosen, would be discerning, that they would be related to the military capacity of the country, and that they would, of course, go out of their way to avoid civilian targets. I just didn't hear that.

[Leland Vittert]

The more the Iranian people are made to suffer, the worse it is for the United States. The more we can separate the regime being punished from the people, the better the chance there is for an uprising. Why isn't President Trump doing that?

[Bill O'Reilly]

Because he doesn't know what the cause and effect is going to be. So if you bomb the country back to the Stone Age, then the country may say, we got to do something with these mullahs. It's very, very possible. I mean, General Grant waged this kind of warfare in a civil war. We dropped the bombs on Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Firebombed Dresden. None of those people. None of them. All right. Rose up against the United States. They all capitulated, right?

Yeah.

[Leland Vittert]

None of them were fundamentalist Muslim regimes. But look, your point's made, and I'm not saying.

[Bill O'Reilly]

But it's not fair to second guess what, how to wage the war when you've tried just about everything.

[Leland Vittert]

Okay, well, I hear you, Bill. It's good to see you, as always. Thank you.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Here's my weekly appearance with WOR's Mark Simone.

[Mark Simone]

Hey, let me ask you something. When they, they all start yelling war crimes. Morning Joe, Rachel, Matt, they're all yelling war, Crime, war, crime, war. Tell us, explain to everybody how this is coordinated. The talking points are coordinated among Democrats.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Yeah. There are a number of political action committees in D.C. on K Street, that every morning about 8am they send blasts to the liberal pundits and some Democrats in Congress. And it's like the word of the day. So here's the theme of the day, and that's why you hear the same phraseology uttered over and over and over on television and in certain newspapers. So the phraseology today is war crimes, and tomorrow it'll be that Trump is not competent. They should have the 25th Amendment to remove him. It's every day something else. And so it's picked up. And then people hear this over and over again, and they make of it what they will.

Yeah.

[Mark Simone]

So they'll repeat war crimes over and over. You'll hear 10,000 times a day. Now, the average person who's not that partisan actually thinks it's true. If you talk to a real legal expert, it's not true, but they'll walk around thinking there's war crimes going on, so what can you do?

[Bill O'Reilly]

I think you only think it's true if you don't like Trump. And so the Democrats and the Trump haters, the far left, they seize upon anything negative in order to define the president. So in Iran, what they're trying to do here, and you'll see this play out in the next few days, no matter what Trump does, he loses. So say he says at the last minute, well, we're not going to bomb the infrastructure of Iran. We're going to pull back and we're going to do X and Y all. He surrendered. Okay. And he said, no, no. Now we're going to go in and blow up some water plants and bridges. No, no, no. This is war crimes. So whatever he does. And this is the art of the steel, I call it. Trump's book was the Art of the deal. It's not going to work out for Trump. He's going to be the villain no matter what.

[Mark Simone]

Now, you know him as well as anybody. You wrote the book about him. What is going on in his mind? What is he really up to?

[Bill O'Reilly]

Well, I think there's a lot of confusion in the department of War right now, and things change from hour to hour. It's the generals that are running it, not Hagseth, not the civilians. I don't know exactly what the intel is going to Trump, but I know he gets it early in the morning, just like the propaganda people put it out. He gets what the general suggests that that line of the day should be from him. Now, nobody really can predict that there aren't very many leaks. Interestingly enough, there was a talk of one yesterday. But in this first term, there's just leak after leak after leak. They seem to have clogged that up. So the press doesn't get a lot coming out of the White House right now, and that's where we are.

[Mark Simone]

Well, and like any billionaire entrepreneur, he'll take big risks. He'll go way out on a limb. But you know him as well as anybody. Do you have confidence that he really knows what he's doing here?

[Bill O'Reilly]

Well, knows what he's doing? Well, he certainly understands the situation and he believes, and this is key, that Iran was within weeks of developing enough uranium to make a nuclear bomb. So he believes that it's not fake and not phony, it's not contrived. This is what he believes. And so that all the way down the food chain, that's pretty much what the Trump administration is putting out there, that's not going to change. So once you understand that, that he sees it as a direct threat, not only to the United States, but to the world, Israel and Europe, that he's going to basically take the uranium away from the Iranians and he'll do what he has to do to make that happen. Now, it could be, and this is just a guess, that there might be raids on these nuclear facilities by infantry. Now, that would cause a lot of trouble in the United States, but I can't see any other way to get that done. If the mullus aren't going to make a deal, and it looks like they are not.

[Mark Simone]

Yeah, well, we've had boots on the ground now twice in both rescue operations. And you think maybe during all of this bombing, that's when the commandos will go in and try to get that material?

[Bill O'Reilly]

You know, I can't. I just don't have the. The information to guess at what the commanders believe. But there are only a few options. So there is a chance that the mullahs at the last minute, may ask for an extension of negotiations. There's a chance. And that would happen late this afternoon. And they said, well, wait a minute now, we want to go to Islamabad, Pakistan, and we want to talk about it a little bit. That could happen. And let's hope it does, because then that could lead to some kind of arrangement where the mullahs say, okay, see, it comes down to this. Why did the mullahs want a nuclear weapon? For what? Their whole country is being destroyed, their whole structure being assassinated. Does it really mean that much to you? That's what you have to wrap your head around. Why do they want this? All they have to say to Trump is, yeah, we'll let the weapons destructors come in and make sure we don't cheat on the uranium deal. That's it. Then the whole thing falls into place. And we would help Iran, the Iranian people, rebuild their economy. So you have to say to yourself, these crazy mullahs are so insane that they would rather have their whole country destroyed and tens of thousands of people dead. And that's happened already to keep their uranium enrichment program. Well, why would they want to do that if they weren't going to use it? Right?

[Mark Simone]

Absolutely.

[Bill O'Reilly]

So, you know, I'm a logical, simple guy. I'm just walking through this and, you know, and I'm listening to people, and my question is unanswerable because I have a lot of people that, you know, don't like this at all. And why would you like it? It's hurting the economy. It's hurting people's personal finances. Why would you like it? But then I look at them, and I said, are you okay with Iran having a nuclear weapon? Yes or no? And I would put that question of Pope Leo. You okay with that? And they can't answer it. They cannot answer it.

[Mark Simone]

Well, we'll see tonight. Hey, let's change subjects for a minute. Your new podcast, Do It Live. I love it. The Steve Kroft interview was fascinating. Now, he's a great guy, love Steve Kroft. But he couldn't seem to acknowledge that CBS 60 Minutes has gone a little biased. And you see this at msnbc, cnn, they don't realize how biased they've become, do they?

[Bill O'Reilly]

But it doesn't matter. They're like the mullahs in Iran. The mullahs in Iran don't care how many people die. So I Putin who doesn't care how many people are dead. Right?

[Mark Simone]

Yeah.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Mothers don't care. Ms. Doesn't care how crazy they get as long as they have a million two watching their prime time every night where they can make money from it.

[Mark Simone]

Yeah.

[Bill O'Reilly]

They couldn't care less about anything else. It's a bottom line. We want to make this kind of money and if we have to say crazy stuff, we'll say crazy stuff. That's it. There's no more to it than that.

[Mark Simone]

Hey, Colbert is going off the air now. They've announced the replacement will be a comedy show with no politics and a game show. We'll do the next second half hour.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Well, they stole the comedy concept from Gutfeld. Yeah, Absolutely stole it from him. And so Byron Allen, who I know a little bit, he's always been respectful and a very successful businessman. So he'll sit there and he'll bring in some comics and he'll make fun of everybody.

[Mark Simone]

But he said he instructed everybody. No politics, no political jokes of any kind.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Yeah, but they have to get into if it's going to be relevant. They have to get into whatever the news of the day is. What are they going to talk about? Your mother in law? Are we going to bring Rodney back or what are we going to do?

[Mark Simone]

Yeah, well, he's probably thinking ahead.

[Sid Rosenberg]

You could rerun.

[Mark Simone]

He said I Love Lucy. Want to be able to rerun these forever and ever so that they're timeless.

[Bill O'Reilly]

I don't know if Ricky can stay up that late. Certainly little Ricky can. But sit around and you know, this is a CBS play. Maybe to make a little money. I don't, I doubt it. I don't think it's going to work at all. But you know, that whole genre of late night is over. Yeah. It's not coming back. Yeah.

[Mark Simone]

Well, we love. You can watch Bill O'Reilly. Go to billow reilly.com make sure you watch this YouTube channel. I like the new podcast Do It Live. You know what I love the most? All these guys, they have to wear like a lumberjack shirt and do it from their basement. You at least do it in a TV studio and you wear a suit. That's the way to do it, I think.

[Bill O'Reilly]

You know, look, I'm a traditional guy. My staff said, why don't you wear fatigues? I'm going, no. Okay. This is ridiculous. I know there's a divide between the over 50s and the over 50s. I got it. But the information flow that we can bring to these broadcasts with Steve Croft, I work for cbs I know everything about it. So I could ask him questions that nobody else could ask him. And we got, you know, a lot of publicity on that. He was very honest. He's 80 years old. What has he got to lose? And that's the way we're going to conduct ourselves.

Chris Cuomo and I duke it out on News Nation.

[Chris Cuomo]

In terms of the dynamic here, what is your assessment of how the negotiations seem to be being approached by the various parties here? Is this America letting the regime lead?

[Bill O'Reilly]

There is an accommodation being made by President Trump because he does this in his negotiating history. He wants to get a deal, and he told me four weeks ago that this was his preference, not military action. And he thought he might be able to crack the first wave of the mullahs before they ideally departed. But that didn't happen. Now the mullahs basically are playing to their jihadist crew. So they're not going to admit any weakness. They're going to say, we're going to do X, Y and Z. But the power is all in the hands of the United States and Israel at this point.

[Chris Cuomo]

Hegseth saying, we know exactly what they have. Israel doesn't say, they know exactly what they have. Obviously, there was a miscalculation during the initial campaign last summer, and the assessments were grossly exaggerated, if not outright deceptive. But they haven't had any real monitoring in five years.

[Bill O'Reilly]

No, but the director, Rafael Grassi, on March 22 of this year made it very clear that he believes the enriched uranium in Iran stands at 60%. So why would he say that? He would say.

[Chris Cuomo]

Well, that's not. That's not exactly what he said. He said that they have 60.

[Bill O'Reilly]

I got the quote right.

[Chris Cuomo]

Me, too. Yeah, me too.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Well, I balance then.

[Chris Cuomo]

What do you think? I'm just going to let you take it out of context like you did on your show last night. Not here.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Here.

[Chris Cuomo]

We're going to give you the context.

[Bill O'Reilly]

The context is I didn't take it out of context on my show.

[Chris Cuomo]

Yeah, you did.

[Bill O'Reilly]

No, no. You said, quote, we don't know what the nuclear capabilities work. Rossi knows. Rossi knows. So it's who's weak.

[Chris Cuomo]

No, he doesn't. No, he doesn't.

[Bill O'Reilly]

He doesn't.

[Chris Cuomo]

Here's what he said. He said that they have 60% enriched uranium. Why? Because Iran says they were going to do it. After what they said was Israel hitting one of their enrichment facilities. They were never able to go in and verify it. The weeks away idea, says Grassi, is a hypothetical that could be enriched further. However, he says that is only one step in building a usable nuclear weapon. That could take additional complex steps. That could take months or even years. All right, look, that's the context.

[Bill O'Reilly]

You can believe what you want to believe, but no, no, no, no, no. I'm believing his goal.

[Chris Cuomo]

Just say, just say, I'm corrected, let's move on.

[Bill O'Reilly]

And I'm not going to say that because it wouldn't be true. You made the mistake and this is the quote.

[Chris Cuomo]

I did not make a mistake.

[Bill O'Reilly]

All right, go ahead, keep quiet for a second.

[Chris Cuomo]

No, it's my show, pal. If you don't like it, you don't

[Bill O'Reilly]

want me to read your quote because it's going to make you look foolish.

Read it, read it.

Here's the quote.

[Chris Cuomo]

Good point. Be a man, don't be a big mouth. Read it.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Margaret Brennan. This is a quote that grassi gave her. 1. Most notably the inventory of enriched uranium at 60%, which is very close to the degree you need to make a bomb. That's what the man said. Now where did he get his information?

[Chris Cuomo]

He said more than that. He said, well, first of all, that's a good question. I'll give you that one. That one's not some ham fisted opportunistic judgment.

[Bill O'Reilly]

He got it from God and the American intel agencies.

[Chris Cuomo]

No, no, that's not what he says. He says they still have their own surveillance mechanisms, it's just been broken down over time. And that they haven't had any real eyes on the situation for years. Which is why no one really knows, Bill. I know they have things, we just don't know how much and it doesn't really matter cuz they're saying they won't stop.

[Bill O'Reilly]

If you have a shred of logic left. If, if Iran didn't have uranium enriched to 60%, why wouldn't they let weapons inspectors in?

[Chris Cuomo]

Oh, listen, they didn't let weapons inspectors in before they had 60% because they're a bunch of psycho zealots that want to destroy everyone they can. Okay, so they are liars and cheaters.

[Bill O'Reilly]

You're watching that country be dismantled and you don't have a nuclear system. So why don't you just say, well, we'll let you in.

[Chris Cuomo]

Who's saying they don't have a nuclear system? I'm saying. It's called a straw man argument. Go look up what a straw man argument is, Bill. This is where you make up an argument that's a proof of a proposition that has a flawed premise.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Why do that when your country is being destroyed?

[Chris Cuomo]

Well, first of all, they don't care about the country. They care about their own existence, which

[Bill O'Reilly]

it seems the administration is okay with is in play. It's in play.

[Chris Cuomo]

Is it? Trump has said he's not going to change the regime, and he's negotiating with them right now like they were an ally.

[Bill O'Reilly]

They had to kill 30,000 of their own people just recently because they hate

[Chris Cuomo]

their own people, because they're terrible people. They don't love their country. They don't love their people. It's all expendable.

[Bill O'Reilly]

People believe what they want to believe. If you don't believe.

[Chris Cuomo]

No, no, Bill, that's.

[Bill O'Reilly]

That Iran doesn't have a nuclear key.

[Chris Cuomo]

No, I don't believe that.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Okay.

[Chris Cuomo]

No, I don't believe that. I don't believe that. And it's not What I said, Mr.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Accuracy.

[Chris Cuomo]

What I said was. Mr. No spin was, we don't know what they have. That's what I said. And you know who agrees with me? The head of the iaea. You know who else? Israel. You know who else? America. Except Pete Hegseth. The intelligence people who I speak to, the guys in Riyadh that are conducting the operations and surveillance. They don't know exactly what they have. They don't know how close they were to a weapon. They just say we got to make sure they could never have one. Which is fair. Which is fair.

[Bill O'Reilly]

You said the justification for this war is a question mark. Not to me. There's enough evidence that shows that the Iranians were working to build a nuclear weapon, and the evidence is down. From Rossi to Mossad to the U.S. intel services. That's enough for me, Cuomo. It's not enough for you. Okay. What else you got?

[Chris Cuomo]

Well, it's. When you say it's enough, you're one choosing to believe that there was an imminent threat that the president never specified. They're saying now they don't know where the stuff is. For all of the bombing that they've done, just had this guy Enumerate them. 10. Over 10,000 hits. We still don't know where the nukes are, how you get them, or how you go about getting them.

[Bill O'Reilly]

You don't know.

[Chris Cuomo]

And that's all.

[Bill O'Reilly]

You don't know. The CIA knows. Look, I don't use Pete Hexseth on my program.

[Chris Cuomo]

He's the Secretary of War.

[Bill O'Reilly]

I don't use him because what he says plays into a narrative that. That the administration wants the American public to believe. So why would I use somebody like that?

[Chris Cuomo]

I'm not disrespectful you seem to be echoing the narrative. I'm not acting to be echoing the narrative. You don't need them. You say the same thing he does.

[Bill O'Reilly]

I say there's enough evidence that they were close to enriching this bomb coming from other sources, that I believe it. And I don't believe there's a fraud going on because Trump would be absolutely insane because it may break his legacy. And I said at the very beginning, it's the biggest gamble he's ever taken. If they didn't know anything, why would they do this?

[Chris Cuomo]

I thought the tariffs were the biggest gamble he'd ever taken.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Well, this makes it.

[Chris Cuomo]

I thought this was actually a nice pivot away.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Make a. This makes the tariffs look like a weekend in Mar a Lago. It doesn't make any.

[Chris Cuomo]

Not a small business owner in America because they're getting crushed by those terrorists.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Okay, fine. This is bigger. And what is interesting is the reportage on this is terrible because very few civilians. Journalists know. You don't know. But when you have experts like Grassi and other people coming out. And I use one of them, Lindsey Graham. Okay. And he walked through. Okay, you laughing at Lindsey Graham. But that's.

[Chris Cuomo]

Yeah, in his face. In his face. You won't use Pete Hegseth, but you use Lindsey. Bomb first, check second gram. That guy wants to bomb every country every five minutes.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Bill, the information that he had, we verified.

[Chris Cuomo]

Oh, really?

[Bill O'Reilly]

Yeah.

[Chris Cuomo]

How? Isn't it classified? Isn't he one of the gang 8?

[Bill O'Reilly]

No, we verified it from the IAEA

[Chris Cuomo]

and the IAEA hasn't checked. Bill, there's no. You couldn't have grassy on your show and have him say, we think there are weeks away from a nuclear weapon.

[Bill O'Reilly]

He was a thread. Okay. There's a thread that goes through. Perhaps the best intel of this is Mossad. You certainly wouldn't quibble with that.

[Chris Cuomo]

I think that they have excellent intelligence infrastructure. They're also. They're also not leaning on. But they're not leaning on the enrichment program the way America is. They just want to. The regime wants to kill them.

[Bill O'Reilly]

This is a pretty explicit statement on March 22nd. That's it. It's explicit. It's CBS News.

[Chris Cuomo]

Let's say it's true, Bill. Let's say it's true.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Okay.

[Chris Cuomo]

What do you do with the fact that they say it's not in the 10 points? We're not here to discuss not enriching uranium. So Trump stops saying we're not going to enrich uranium because we are. If you don't Want us to have a bomb? Well, let's talk about it. But that's not even on the table. So how do you change that? Do you believe they have a plan to change that?

[Bill O'Reilly]

I don't understand the question. The President has been very explicit and he said it a thousand times, that Iran is not going to be able to get a nuclear weapon.

Right.

Okay, what's the question?

[Chris Cuomo]

How do you achieve that? You can't even open the Strait of Hormuz.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Well, they could open and this.

[Chris Cuomo]

Really? Yeah, they're choosing not to.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Of course, they don't want to put infantry in or use naval vessels at this time, but that would take maybe two days to clear that strait with American military might. And you. But it would be close quarter combat. And Americans won't at this point, they will not accept that. And so that's why it hasn't been done. But Iran doesn't control anything. They lob some drones and so the insurance companies won't ensure that.

[Chris Cuomo]

And that is giving them control of

[Bill O'Reilly]

the flow, giving them anything.

[Chris Cuomo]

They're not controlling the strait.

[Bill O'Reilly]

It's an act of war, not giving them anything. If the United States military wanted to go in and clear Hormuz, they could clear it very quickly, but that would require more casualties and close quarter combat. So the decision has been made not to do it yet. That's the reality.

[Chris Cuomo]

All right, well, let's see if they have their talks at the end of the week. See if this comes to anything. I'm sure. I would hope everybody hopes it comes to something. The last thing we want to see

[Bill O'Reilly]

is not everybody hopes, not everybody else,

[Chris Cuomo]

you know, that anybody, anybody who. Listen, I gotta be honest, this doesn't work for me as a narrative. The idea that if you criticize what this president is doing, if you criticize the how that means you hate the country and want them to lose.

[Bill O'Reilly]

When you support the regime, you can criticize Trump all day long. And I think when history unfolds what's happening here.

[Chris Cuomo]

What's happening here, I'm not talking about him personally, I'm not going after his language.

[Bill O'Reilly]

I.

[Chris Cuomo]

And that's what's happening.

[Bill O'Reilly]

But I think when history unfolds, you're going to see that mistakes were made in the way this campaign was conducted. I think that'll happen.

Yeah, I agree.

But if you listen closely to many media and some Democrats like Murphy of Connecticut, they want Iran to win. They want them to win. Sorry. To reality.

[Chris Cuomo]

Well, that's what you say. It's not necessarily what they think.

[Bill O'Reilly]

We already Went through the quote thing. I can drag out 15 quotes. I know we're losing.

[Chris Cuomo]

And I can call Chris Murphy and ask him, do you want Iran to win?

[Bill O'Reilly]

Yes.

[Chris Cuomo]

You mean the regime? No. Oh, so he won't admit it, but you know it's true.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Look, this loon. This loon Murphy actually said that the US Military is losing. I mean, come on.

[Chris Cuomo]

Well, I think that. I think the administration has put the US Military into a bad situation.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Do you think the military is losing? Cuomo? Do you think there's no. Do you think it's responsible for a US Senator to say the US Military is losing? Do you think that's responsible in our

[Chris Cuomo]

political state of play? I can't believe it's not worse. I can't believe he didn't throw 5F bombs in there. These people, the state of play, which you only really want to pay attention to one half of, they lie and they are cheapening anything close to true or real, all the time for sport and cliques. So of course it's responsible. This is the game. This is how they talk to one another. Your boy Lindsey Graham can't say enough, you know, crazy hyperbolic things. This is what they do, Bill.

[Bill O'Reilly]

You know that, I know that, but we verify what they say. And nobody would verify that the US Military is losing. So why would a sitting us.

[Chris Cuomo]

That is an opinion based on the fact that.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Why would he say it?

[Chris Cuomo]

Here's why he'd say it. Because you went in there, said this was going to basically be a breeze. You didn't sell it before, you didn't go through the normal chapter alliance, and it has not been a breeze. And they are still alive and calling the shots. And that makes it look like we're not being as effective as we're supposed to be. That's not what exaggerates it and says the military is losing. Same way you took one part of Grassi's quote and made it that they're weeks away from a nuclear weapon. He never said that.

[Bill O'Reilly]

And he certainly didn't mean it. No, he didn't. He said.

[Chris Cuomo]

He didn't say they're weeks away from a nuclear weapon.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Close to the degree you need to make a bomb.

[Chris Cuomo]

And here's the part. Here's the part you don't understand. Having enriched uranium that is bomb grade is different than having a bomb.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Okay, so Grassi doesn't understand it either. He's in charge. He understands only you understand it. Grassi doesn't understand it, and O'Reilly doesn't understand it.

[Chris Cuomo]

Bill, you're better than. You're better than that.

[Bill O'Reilly]

He's much better than what we're hearing tonight. Listen, this is robust.

[Chris Cuomo]

Anytime.

[Bill O'Reilly]

This is what we should.

[Chris Cuomo]

I'm happy to have it. I'm happy to have it.

[Bill O'Reilly]

What we should be doing. Not saying the US Military is losing. You ought to get Murphy.

[Chris Cuomo]

I'm not saying that.

[Bill O'Reilly]

He's the worst. He's the absolute worst.

[Chris Cuomo]

I'm trying. That's not my sell. That's not my pitch to him. Come on. You're the worst. But I'm trying. Bill, thank you very much. Appreciate it.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Please join me and Sid Rosenberg on WABC Radio.

[Sid Rosenberg]

I really want them to punch Chris Cuomo across the face last night. Hey, Chris, listen to me carefully. You got nothing without Bill O'Reilly, your brother. Please. Without O'Reilly, you got nothing. You don't tell my man Bill O'Reilly, this is my show, pal. No, it's not. It's not your show when Bill is on. Because people watch because of Bill, not you, tough guy. So I'm very upset with Chris Cuomo today. Bill, I'm sorry.

[Bill O'Reilly]

You know, it was robust debate. He was challenged by me.

[Sid Rosenberg]

He got obnoxious. But. But he got obnoxious.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Yeah, but I got it now. I get obnoxious to once in a while. You do?

[Sid Rosenberg]

Never. Never.

[Bill O'Reilly]

It's called the heat of battle. Yeah, I guess rhetorically, obviously, but I don't mind that at all. You know, it's interesting, though, it doesn't happen anymore in America. I made THE Factor based on very, very stringent debate. Yeah. And you don't have that now. Tell me more. Or, you know, they. Here's the panel and they all agree with me. Okay, good. Yeah. You don't learn anything. What Cuomo's argument essentially is, and this reflects a lot of the thought in America right now is he just doesn't trust the government, and Trump is part of that.

[Sid Rosenberg]

Hold on a second. That's okay. He trusted Biden, he trusted Obama. So the fact that he doesn't trust Trump, that's fine. Okay. But I didn't hear him talk about trust issues with two of the least trustworthy guys in the history of the presidency, the last two Democrats, Biden and Obama. That's the inconsistency. That's the nonsense.

[Bill O'Reilly]

There's no doubt that both Democrats tried to buy their way out of the Iranian situation and it fell. But now we're in a breaking news situation. So I didn't think it was. I didn't think that bringing it back into what has happened in the past would do us any good because Americans have to make a decision here, and they are making the decision and not supporting the action. You know, my son is an intern at the White House, and one of his jobs is to read all the emails and other snail mail comes in there. And he says, you know, the sentiment is against all of this turbulence. And I understand it, because people don't know what this is, particularly younger people. Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and they don't know. Maybe they saw Oppenheimer, but they have no idea the evil which is confronting the world. And then when the world turns its back on the evil, as NATO certainly has done then, and the Democratic Party absolutely has no interest in confronting Iran at all.

[Sid Rosenberg]

Yeah.

[Bill O'Reilly]

And so it starts to pile up, and people who are not sophisticated or not interested in geopolitics, I mean, they go, oh, this is disrupting my oil and I have to pay more for gas. And I don't know.

[Sid Rosenberg]

Well, it is. Well, it is.

[Bill O'Reilly]

And that's what's happening.

[Sid Rosenberg]

Well, it is. Well, that is. And let me say this. And by the way, Spencer's a great kid. I love him. You always talk about this, and now that I'm in this industry a little bit, not nearly as long and as great as you. But you're right. You always talk about messaging. First of all, it's not just Democrats or plenty of Republicans, including the vice president, that hate every second of this. Hate it. But the messaging. I know President Trump spoke to the nation a couple of nights ago. You know, nobody loves this guy more than me. Trump, I love him. You know, you're a bear down the middle guy. I'm not. I'm completely biased. I love him. Lousy messaging. When I hear yesterday that Trump is interested, and maybe you can deny this, that he's interested in splitting a $2 million toll with Iran, he's interested in doing that. Let's split the money. But at the same time, this whole thing is about opening the Strait of Hormuz. So which one is it? Bill O'Reilly, what exactly are we doing?

[Bill O'Reilly]

You know, I think that what Trump is trying to do is confuse the mullahs and give them so many scenarios, they don't know what the deuce is happening.

[Sid Rosenberg]

I know. But when he does that, he's also confusing all of America, even some of his supporters. He has to realize that it doesn't matter.

[Bill O'Reilly]

He's saying doesn't matter to him. The end deal is what matters to him. So he's basically saying, look, if I want to Any could. I can open the Strait of Hormuz tomorrow. That's why there's, you know, the Iranians control. The Strait of Hormuz is the biggest bunch of garbage in the world. They don't control anything. All the United States would have to do would be to send in close quarter combat infantry and we could seize that thing in a day. And so what is around controlling? They're not controlling anything. We just choose not to do that. We, the United States, because the people aren't backing it. They're not backing the play right now. And Trump knows that. But it's not like Iran has got the power to control anything. They don't.

[Sid Rosenberg]

Well, they do. Right now they are controlling the strait. Now we can big stop, but we're not doing it. So the fact is they are controlling it.

[Bill O'Reilly]

They're not really controlling it, Sid. Letting people, they're letting tankers go.

[Sid Rosenberg]

Bill, you know how many tankers, you know how many ships went through the Strait of Hormuz yesterday? 4. 4. Not 40, not 100. You did this stupid ceasefire deal on Tuesday night when you should have just bombed the living daylights out of these people. They let four ships go yesterday and they've completely closed the Strait of Hormuz today. You bet your ass. They're running the show. What are we doing? If we can fix it, let's fix it.

[Bill O'Reilly]

It's when you say they're running the show, what, this is a chess game? All right, so this is what Iran is doing now. But in the end, they're not going to be able to do that. It's like the Battle of the Bulge. Remember the Battle of the Bulge? The Nazis made one last attempt to break through. This was Patton and Baston and all that. Well, you could have been. Look at that. Look at the Germans. Look at them. They're controlling Belgium. They're going to make it to Antwerp. They're going to do this, that and the other. They're not. In the end, it's going to come down to what the president wants to do as far as neutralizing these mullahs.

[Sid Rosenberg]

Yes, but here's the problem. In the end, Bill O'Reilly, with the midterms a couple of months away, and don't tell me you can't talk about that during this. You absolutely can. In the end, it's gonna be too late. How far do you let this thing go? How many times do you bend over for Iran to make sure that you don't upset them before the unfavorable poll goes from 52% to 62%. And you've just wiped out any chance of winning in November. In the end, maybe too late.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Okay. But I think it would have been worse for the Republicans and for President Trump had he eviscerated the whole country, because then it would have been a worldwide uproar that he's a war criminal, and then, you know, they would have trotted out the dead babies.

[Sid Rosenberg]

But he's gonna have to do it anyway, because when this maybe.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Right, but he's sending a message like, we are trying to resolve this situation without all this bloodshed. Now, does the world care? No, it doesn't care. And I understand that. And in the United States, we do have a opposing party, the Democrats, who are absolutely seizing on this to try to get power in November. There's no doubt about it. Now, what's the next chess move by the Trump administration? That's what we're all waiting to see, is a possibility that maybe they'll get some kind of deal in Islamabad, in Pakistan. There is. There's a possibility, but I wouldn't bet on that. Okay, but then there's a plan B. And I would assume the plan B is to open Hormuz by force.

[Sid Rosenberg]

And you're telling me that that would not require a heck of a lot.

[Bill O'Reilly]

It would require more casualties. Remember, the United states has lost 13 dead, most of those shot down by friendly fire in Kuwait. Now, just think about that. This big, massive operation that's destroyed the infrastructure of a country of 93 million and we've lost 13 people. That's it.

[Sid Rosenberg]

Yeah. Pretty amazing. You're right about that. Yeah.

[Bill O'Reilly]

So you have then. If you inject the ground troops into Hormuz to keep it open and to regulate who goes through, you're going to take more casualties, Right?

[Sid Rosenberg]

Well, this is war. What can I tell you? The second part of this is not just her moves. It's the uranium enrichment. Can't get to 60%. That's all you keep hearing, right? No matter who you watch, you or Sean or Mark or anybody. Two things at play here. The straits got to be open. Gotta be more than four ships, and they cannot be allowed to enrich their uranium to 60%. What are we doing to make sure that's not the case?

[Bill O'Reilly]

Well, that's what's on the table. Now. You have those two issues, and that's what I was slugging it out with Cuomo because Cuomo doesn't believe for some reason, and I threw everything I could at him. The iaea, which is adjunct of the United Nations. And the guy comes out on March 22 and he says, X and Y, people believe what they want to believe. Said, you know that. And the Democratic Party is just going to look away. The whole party's going to look away. I don't believe it. Okay. And I hate to make this comparison, but it's absolutely historically accurate. People didn't believe in the Holocaust. They didn't believe this was happening. They didn't believe it. And even while it was underway and while you could get pictures of trains going into Auschwitz and other camps, still didn't believe it.

Yeah.

And when you're in a situation like that, the leader, the president, has got to say, this is what it is. If you're not going to believe it, I can't force you to believe it. Now, there's a chance, but not a good one, that maybe they don't have this kind of uranium capacity. But you can't. And this is my statement of Pope Leo, you can't look away from the evidence that they do because that would lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths and a worldwide disruption that has never happened before on this planet.

[Sid Rosenberg]

100% people.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Yeah. If these people ever did it. So when you, when you're faced with that, you have a responsibility, I would think, if you're a world leader, to try to do everything you can to make it impossible for a country like Iran to use a nuclear weapon. Am I crazy here?

[Sid Rosenberg]

No, you're not. Listen this how crazy? Not crazy you are. Rachel Maddow, who is the darling of Democrat television, what, six, seven months ago, said, he ain't going to do nothing with Iran. He's going to do nothing. Right. He's a big talker. Then once he did it, she criticized him for doing that. That's who they are. They're the ones that wanted the wall 15 years ago. Hillary Chalk, all of them. Now they don't want it. They're the ones that wanted more and more Secret Service and more and more police outside their palatial estates in California. Now they want to defund the cops. They're liars. They're liars. The manipulators. I don't care what they say. I don't care what Chris Cuomo says. I gotta be honest. But I do care what Trump says. And now I wonder if he's going to go to Bibi Bill and say call it. Because even though J.D. vance made the point and he's right, that there's nothing in this ceasefire that talks about Israel and Lebanon, the fact is Hezbollah is still bombing Israel, so Israel is bombing Lebanon. That's how it works. There's nothing in this ceasefire that says Israel can't do that. But the Iranians are claiming that US aggression and Israel bombs is why they can't open the strait. So when does Trump go to Bibi

[Bill O'Reilly]

and say stop tomorrow. Wow. You know, he's got to do. It's a short term play. I mean, you can say, look, let's get this deal done. All right? Because then it would harm Iran's ability to fund and to supply arms, certainly to Hezbollah. So let's pull back a little bit because that's the right thing to do. So I assume that's underway. I don't think there's any kind of debate about that.

[Sid Rosenberg]

But here's my question. Hezbollah continues to bomb Israel relentlessly like they're doing. And I know we, we had that time when, you know, we were taking Scud missiles every day and didn't do anything about it. Israel. Is Israel just supposed to take that? Just take it?

[Bill O'Reilly]

I wouldn't say that. I would say that Mossad should be, you know, isolating these people and maybe they disappear on Tuesday. You know what I'm talking about?

[Sid Rosenberg]

I like that.

[Bill O'Reilly]

So there are just, There are ways to deal with these kinds of things rather than a big show of explosion force. Yeah. And we're talking about a very tight window here. So this thing starts on Saturday. But if you were to ask me, do you have confidence that these mullahs are going to do anything positive, I would have to say no.

[Sid Rosenberg]

God, no.

[Bill O'Reilly]

You got to give it a try.

[Sid Rosenberg]

But we've been trying it for 47 years. And lately for the last months. Months, months. If I had one more meeting with. I like these guys personally. I like them a lot. But Kushner, Witkoff, Kushner, Witkoff, bands. Nothing gets done. Nothing gets done.

[Bill O'Reilly]

It's a different situation now because their top leadership is dead. This is leadership part two. The infrastructure is destroyed.

Yeah.

So they're, they're in a. Iran's in a different situation than it was five weeks ago.

[Sid Rosenberg]

But they may be even more desperate. I don't know. Look, I'll give it.

[Bill O'Reilly]

It's impossible to ascertain.

[Sid Rosenberg]

Right. How they.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Where they are. But they would not have made. If they thought they were winning, Sid. Right. They wouldn't show up in Pakistan. They would just continue to win, which is. But

[Sid Rosenberg]

they may think they're winning, but they don't want to keep getting bombed. And they know that if they show up in Pak, Trump's gonna stop, so they may actually think they're winning. But, hey, how do we stop our places from getting bombed? We'll meet them somewhere.

[Bill O'Reilly]

We'll meet them from there. But that's gonna be a pretty obvious play. Yeah. They'll know very. Very. They'll know very. If they're sincere or not. But the play that the Democratic Party made is unbelievable. So if Trump had bombed, as he threatened to do, Iran. He's a war criminal. The fact that he didn't do it and gave a window of negotiation for two weeks, now he's a taco. Right.

[Sid Rosenberg]

He went from war. That's right. Ro Khanna and all those wonderful people.

[Bill O'Reilly]

So you couldn't. And they set it up this way.

Yep.

This was set up so no matter what he does, he can't win. He's destroying the nation or whatever. And you would think that honest journalists would point that out. Of course they don't.

[Sid Rosenberg]

Well, they don't exist, as you said. Maybe five of them that I would consider honest journalists.

[Bill O'Reilly]

It just infuriates.

[Sid Rosenberg]

I know. You get mad. I know.

[Bill O'Reilly]

I mean, I'm looking at this. It's so nakedly obvious that these people really don't care about their country because a lot of them are rooting against their country, 100% Iran to win.

[Sid Rosenberg]

That's right. It's hard to believe that's true, but that's actually true. People are rooting against our country. They want Trump to fail, they want Iran to win. People who are living wonderful lives. I'm not talking about destitute people living in. In the. In Harlem this morning. I'm talking about people making a lot of money, millions of dollars rooting against us. I know you spoke to Trump a couple of days ago. You're humble about that, but I know you did about the war. If he asked you about NATO. Maybe he did. Whether he did it doesn't matter. If he asked you about NATO, what would be your recommendation moving forward? Because it is clear that at this point, just about all of Europe is no good.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Well, he's got to get congressional approval to pull out a Naito because it's a treaty and it was made by Congress. He can't just pull out.

[Sid Rosenberg]

Would you want him to pull out, though?

[Bill O'Reilly]

I definitely boycott Spain.

[Sid Rosenberg]

Yeah. What about Italy? What about England? What about France? What about Germany?

[Bill O'Reilly]

They've been bad, but behind the scenes.

[Sid Rosenberg]

Yeah.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Spain is the worst. I mean, they're really, really bad. They're throwing in with Iran. That's where they are. And Talk about rooting for Iran. Spain, yeah. I'll never go to Spain again. I've been all over this beautiful country. I'll never go there again, ever. Wow,

[Sid Rosenberg]

that's a big statement.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Now, an enemy of ours. Spain is an enemy of the United States. When you start to root for murderers, then you're out. But Trump can't do anything other than saying, you know, you might want to think twice about going to Spain. That might even help Spain, because the whole state of California would then book a trip to Spain. I don't know if that hurts out, but I'm not going, okay? Because that's so obnoxious. That's so ridiculous what they did. And the rest of them are just weak. It's so weak. And Trump's right, the paper tiger, whatever cliche you want to use, they're weak. There isn't one strong country on a continent. They don't stand up against terror. They don't help the United States. We're doing all the heavy lift. They can't let us refuel our planes. I mean, it's ridiculous. This is absurd. So I would just use the power of the pulpit and just say, you know, my mother think about Spain or this, that. But I don't think you can do anything across the board.

[Sid Rosenberg]

I think you're right. Well, I want to tell you what a great conversation this was. This was one of the greatest ones we've ever had. And it was so nice seeing you and Mack on Friday at Yankee Stadium. I think I'm going to go back this afternoon for a couple of innings and I'm really excited about our date on the 15th for the Mets and Yankees. But Danielle and gave us so happy to see you Bill on Friday because in the Rosenberg household, your. God, we love you so much.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Well, I look good. Everybody in your family look good. That's the most important thing. We don't lose sight of that. We have personal responsibilities. And, you know, this stuff internationally can drive you all nuts. And I tell people, look, don't, don't let it affect your day to day life. Be interested, try to get as much information as you can, but don't, don't let it, you know, get you depressed or, you know, you don't want to go out of the house or whatever.

[Sid Rosenberg]

Good advice there.

[Bill O'Reilly]

There are some people that I encourage not to go out of the house, but you know, I'm talking about.

[Sid Rosenberg]

I do. Well, I'm going outside the house today and I'm sure you are, too. I'm gonna do this again next week. And I can't get enough of you. Bill O'Reilly, amazing, amazing job today. I love you.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Thank you.

[Sid Rosenberg]

Thank you so much.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Thank you for joining us. Become a BillORilly.com Premium Member today and I hope you subscribe to my YouTube channel, YouTube.combillorilly.