We'll Do It LIVE! — Jillian Michaels

Summary

Podcast Summary: "We'll Do It LIVE! — Jillian Michaels"

Podcast: Bill O’Reilly’s No Spin News and Analysis
Host: Bill O'Reilly
Guest: Jillian Michaels
Date: July 9, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode features a candid conversation between Bill O’Reilly and fitness expert Jillian Michaels. The pair explores Michaels’ multi-ethnic family history, personal struggles with weight and self-esteem, her rise to prominence on "The Biggest Loser," adoption and parenting, navigating contemporary social and political controversies, and her current life as both a fitness entrepreneur and a public commentator. It’s a rich, honest dialogue laced with humor, personal anecdotes, and strong opinions on divisive current events.

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Key Discussion Points & Notable Insights

1. Family Background, Identity, and Fear

• Mixed Heritage & Hidden Past
  • Jillian reveals her mother is Jewish, her father Syrian, but she was raised agnostic and only learned of her Jewish ancestry in adulthood via genetic testing.
  • [01:15] Jillian: “I actually had no idea that I had Jewish blood until a genetics test at some point in my 30s... And all of a sudden I'm looking at my genetics going, wait a second, who's the Jew?”
  • Her maternal grandmother fled the Nazis but told her family never to reveal the reason.
  • [02:13] Jillian: “For many years I remember thinking, like, how crazy. What a completely different time. What a totally different mindset. And now for the first time in my entire life, I understand why she felt that way.”

2. Adoption, Race, and Parenting

• Adopting from Haiti
  • Jillian adopted her daughter from Haiti after the 2010 earthquake; her daughter is now 16.
  • She underscores the intent: “She is a gift to me. I’m grateful every single day that she’s in my life.” ([05:03])
  • Discusses safety concerns about visiting Haiti and hopes her daughter will one day use her American privileges to give back.
• Her Daughter’s Resilience and Racial Incidents
  • Her daughter has faced rare but real racist incidents (like being told to "go back to her country"), but handles them with maturity.
  • [08:33] Jillian: “She got into a fight… one of them told her to go back to her country… I was irate… She’s like, mom, relax. It’s totally fine. I can handle it.”
  • Emphasizes her daughter’s groundedness as an American and absence of generational trauma.

3. Early Struggles with Weight and Self-Esteem

• Childhood Obesity
  • Jillian grew up overweight, bonding with her father over food.
  • [09:37] Jillian: “By the time I was 13, I was about 175 pounds, and I'm only 5 foot 2 now.”
• Turning Point: Martial Arts
  • Her mother enrolled her in martial arts, building her self-respect and helping her lose weight and build resilience.
  • [14:54] Jillian: “After my second degree blue belt test… I break these two boards… I began to appreciate that the way I thought of myself impacted the way I carried myself…”

4. Career Path: From Pizza Delivery to Fitness Fame

• From Struggles to Success
  • Early jobs included delivering pizzas and bartending.
  • Shifted to fitness training in her late teens, eventually running a sports medicine facility by age 30.
  • Landed reality TV fame via “The Biggest Loser” due to old entertainment industry connections.
  • Admits faking a degree to get into talent agency “ICM.”
  • [17:16] Jillian: “A little bit of sociopathy here, Bill… hopefully your audience will forgive me.”

5. Reality TV and Public Perception

• On Her “Tough Love” Persona
  • Admits she was aggressive on "The Biggest Loser," but out of necessity.
  • [19:15] Jillian: “Aggressive, yes… it was a life or death intervention.”
  • Confirms she still receives hate mail for her approach ([19:58]), but found the platform invaluable despite the toll.

6. Building a Brand and Facing ‘Wealth Shaming’

• Entrepreneurial Ventures
  • Post-TV, Jillian focused on writing, fitness apps, investments in food brands, and building her business.
  • Discusses the shift in public sentiment demonizing financial success among entrepreneurs.
  • [23:41] Jillian: “I try to honestly take a more empathetic approach and seek to understand these kids who are so greatly disenfranchised... I flipped [envy] in order to excel and get where I wanted to be in life.”
• Leaving California & Family Logistics
  • Left California for Miami in 2021; now resides in Wyoming due to family logistics and seeking a more stable environment.

7. Controversy and Culture Wars

• CNN/Abby Phillip Incident & Slavery Debate
  • Jillian details a fraught segment on CNN NewsNight, where her fact-based arguments on slavery’s history and diverse culpability were misrepresented.
  • [29:22] Jillian: “I brought up the fact that slavery has been around for thousands of years, that every single race and ethnicity has worn the whip and the chains… And you're right, it didn't go well on cnn.”
  • Recounts backlash (“half the country literally wanted to kill me”) and security measures taken for safety.
  • [33:23] “Of course, half the country literally wanted to kill me. Literally went after my wife, my kids, which is definitely par for the course…”
• Leaving ‘Her Take’ Podcast over Antisemitic Content
  • Walked out on a new podcast due to persistent conspiracy theories and antisemitic comments from co-hosts.
  • [35:11] Jillian: “Week after week I would have to sit through my co-hosts discussing things like the Jews being responsible for 9/11 and… for Charlie Kirk's death. And that's when I was like, this is not for me.”

8. Her Current Role & Approach

• Not a Political Analyst
  • Emphasizes her role as a learner, not an expert political analyst.
  • [39:21] Jillian: “I see myself like I see my audience. We want to understand, we want to learn.”
  • Weighs in on health issues only when they overlap her area of expertise (e.g., Title IX, sports medicine policy).

9. Reflections on Food, Health Policy, and Leaders

• Praise and Critique for Political Leadership
  • Gives credit to the Trump administration for tangible actions on health and food policy, compared to past administrations.
  • Candid about industry problems: pharma, Monsanto, glyphosate immunity, flavored vapes.
  • [46:13] Jillian: “With Trump, we've won a bunch. We lost some, but we won some and we never won any previously.”
• Society's Disregard for Food Health
  • Both discuss the cultural resistance to healthy eating and the consequential rise of diabetes and ill health in America.
  • Jillian highlights the food industry’s powerful lobbying and opposition to change.

10. Memorable Humor & Candid Moments

• Bill jokes about "eating roadkill" and RFK Jr. working out in jeans.
• Jillian on moving to Wyoming:
  • [26:21] “You go out to get the milk, and there’s a moose staring at you. That’s actually 100% accurate.”
• O'Reilly on American attitudes towards healthy food:
  • [46:44] “If I were the food police, you’d be in the penitentiary.”

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:00-03:34 — Jillian’s family background; discovering hidden Jewish ancestry.
• 04:34-08:33 — Adoption of her daughter from Haiti; navigating race and heritage.
• 09:37-12:12 — Childhood weight struggles and the transformative impact of martial arts.
• 16:31-18:34 — Jillian’s unorthodox career path from fitness to television.
• 19:15-21:18 — The reality of “The Biggest Loser” and public response.
• 23:41-26:09 — The culture shift regarding wealth, and her move from California.
• 29:22-34:46 — CNN incident: discussing race, slavery, and media backlash.
• 35:11-36:08 — Leaving "Her Take" podcast over conspiracy theories.
• 39:21-40:30 — Michaels’ role as a public learner, not a political pundit.
• 43:03-46:13 — Debating food policy, environmental chemicals, and Trump’s mixed record on health.
• 46:44-end — American dietary issues and closing touches of humor.

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Notable Quotes & Speaker Attribution

• “She is a gift to me. I’m grateful every single day that she’s in my life.”
  — Jillian Michaels, [05:03], on adopting her daughter
• “I began to appreciate that the way I thought of myself impacted the way I carried myself… when I respected myself, I ended up commanding respect from other people.”
  — Jillian Michaels, [14:54], on building self-respect through martial arts
• “That which nourishes me, also destroys me.”
  — Jillian Michaels, [20:53], reflecting on the double-edged sword of reality TV fame
• “I flipped [envy] in order to excel and get where I wanted to be in life.”
  — Jillian Michaels, [23:41], on overcoming resentment of others’ success
• “With Trump, we've won a bunch... We lost some, but we won some and we never won any previously.”
  — Jillian Michaels, [46:13], on real policy wins in past and current administrations
• “If New York can fall and there’s sharia courts all over Texas, honey, I don’t even know where there is to run anymore.”
  — Jillian Michaels, [26:21], on her search for a safe home in modern America

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Tone and Language

• Conversational, direct, and unfiltered, with O’Reilly mixing blunt questions and dry humor, and Michaels balancing candor, wit, and emotional honesty.
• Frequent personal anecdotes and thoughtful, occasionally self-deprecating reflections from both.

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Conclusion

This episode delivers an honest, wide-ranging conversation about personal resilience, social change, and the realities of public life. Jillian Michaels shares hard-won lessons from her own journey and does not shy away from difficult cultural and political issues, while Bill O’Reilly challenges, jokes, and probes with his trademark style. The episode is a nuanced look at the intersections of health, politics, family, and modern American identity.

Transcript

[Jillian Michaels]

I was telling my son the other day, I was like, if New York can fall and there's Sharia courts all over Texas, honey, I don't even know where there is to run anymore.

[Bill O'Reilly]

We've never seen this kind of radical left, a power play gain traction. They dismissed you as some kind of white supremacist or whatever.

[Jillian Michaels]

Yeah, well, she lied about it and manipulated the conversation. She's like, you brought it up. I'm like, I didn't bring it up. Your guest just brought. Of course, half the country literally wanted to kill me.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Hey, Bill O'Reilly here. Welcome to another edition of We'll Do It Live. And here now is our guest, Jillian Michaels. Now, you know her, but you really don't. You really don't know her. But after this, you will. So what caught my eye about you as a person is that your upbringing, your mother was Jewish and your father Syrian. That is some combination. How did that play out in your house when you were a little kid?

[Jillian Michaels]

You know, boss, I actually had no idea what any of that meant because my parents didn't raise me with a religion. They raised me as agnostic and to be respectful of everybody. And I actually had no idea that I had Jewish blood until a genetics test at some point in my 30s. And here I was just thinking, you know, I'm Arab and my mom's like a mix of Mediterranean, I don't know what. And I thought her mom was British and. And had become a war bride, married my maternal grandfather during World War II, and that was that. And all of a sudden I'm looking at my genetics going, wait a second, who's the Jew? And it turns out that my mom's mom had run from the Nazis through Russia into Austria into the UK and told my mom, don't ever tell anyone why. And she never did.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Why did he say that?

[Jillian Michaels]

I think it was fear. And what was. What's so ironic about that is for many years I remember thinking, like, how crazy. What a completely different time. What a totally different mindset. And now for the first time in my entire life, I understand why she felt that way.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Yeah. I mean, but Los Angeles has always been known as a town that's fairly kind to Jewish people. And they're run the film industry, or at least they used to, is a heavy component there. So when you were growing up, there was no prayer rug on your father. He wasn't invoking Allah, and your mother wasn't going to synagogue. They raised you strictly secular, is that correct?

[Jillian Michaels]

Yeah, I think that they must have dealt with these issues before I was born. And it's one of the only things in my entire life that they have agreed on unilaterally. And again, I really didn't appreciate why that would be until now. But the one thing that I do respect and appreciate about it is that I was raised to respect all different religions. But it certainly takes on a whole new meaning in today's day and age

[Bill O'Reilly]

now in our polarized society. But this is recent. So you're in Los Angeles. You're being raised as a California kid who was fleeing the Nazis. Your grandmother, was it? She was fleeing the Nazis?

[Jillian Michaels]

Yeah, my mom's mom. Fleeing the Nazis.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Okay. But you never were told the stories or anything like that. They kept that away from you completely. Okay. Because we had Gene Simmons. I mentioned him earlier. His mother herself, as a young woman or child, even fled the Nazis. And that had a tremendous influence on Mr. Simmons, that whole thing. But you were in a totally different circumstance. Now, you adopted a daughter from Haiti, correct? Yes. And how old is she now?

[Jillian Michaels]

She's 16 now.

[Bill O'Reilly]

16, wow. Yeah. Now, I've been to Haiti a number of times, covered some pretty grisly stuff that went on there. How do you handle that one? Does your daughter, adopted daughter, know what Haiti is? Know how you saved her? Because you literally did save her. That country's out of control.

[Jillian Michaels]

I know. You know, the way that it's been positioned to her is that I wanted a child. All very true. And to be fair, God or the universe, fate call it, give it whatever label you would like, led me to adopt internationally. And most countries were closed to international adoption, and Haiti was still open because she was born in 2010. That's when the earthquake happened, and we adopted her in 2012. So we just so happened to pursue adoption in Haiti because that country was still adopting out to the United States. So I position it to her as something that it is. She is a gift to me. I'm grateful every single day that she's in my life. But I have explained to her, because she is inquired about visiting, that it is not safe at the moment. And my hope is that one day she will take all of the gifts and all of the lessons and the education that she has gotten from being an American citizen and pay it forward to Haiti when she is older.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Okay. Is she aware of the history of the island that was shared with the Dominican Republic? Does she know, or we kind of steer away from that?

[Jillian Michaels]

No, she knows, and we've told her. You know, your ancestors were so powerful and so Strong that they actually fought off the slave masters. You know, this is the stock that you come from. But this is a child that doesn't hold any of that multi generational trauma because I don't have it to give to her. I'm not saying that's a good thing. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. She has an understanding of the facts, but she also lives in the moment and she loves being an American, Okay. She's not treated any differently than any of the other kids she goes to school with.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Do you. Does she know you saved her?

[Jillian Michaels]

I don't know. We certainly don't position it that way.

[Bill O'Reilly]

I'm asking personal questions, but if you know Haiti as I do, and you know the turbulence and the uncertainty that the population has to endure every single day, nobody is immune to it. All right? And then you're in Los Angeles living an affluent life with Jillian Michaels. I mean, that's a big save. That's a big save. Okay.

[Jillian Michaels]

She definitely does not take the opportunities that being an American gives her for. For granted. She loves the country. She. She's an American kid. You know, she sees it that way. How she revisits her heritage as she gets older remains to be seen. You know, I never want her to feel like she is beholden in any way, because, you know, she isn't. This is a. This is a kid that lights up my life every single day. I don't know what I would do without her. But she is well aware that the. The country is in complete and total chaos and turmoil. Yes.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Any skin color stuff come up? You know, she's. I'm assuming she's black. You're white, Wife is white. Any skin color stuff at all in LA or is that.

[Jillian Michaels]

She's had a few. A few things happen, but they are few and far between. You know, she got into. This is the. Actually one of the first times I've heard about this. Very recently, she got into a fight with other teenage girls at her school. And apparently one of them told her to go back to her country. And I was irate when she told me that. And I was like, do you have any idea how much work we went through to make sure that this is your country? But she's like, mom, relax. It's totally fine. I can handle it. I'm just telling you what happened. Cause you asked me about your day. My dad.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Yeah. Kids are dopey.

[Jillian Michaels]

I mean, yeah, she didn't care. I was so pissed, but she didn't care at all. So I was like, maybe I should take a.

[Bill O'Reilly]

The best way to handle that kind of stuff is by humor, but you have to make the overall point. There are bigots and there are ridiculous people running around. We're never gonna do away with them all. Now let's go to you. So when you were a kid, you're a little zaftig, right? A little chubby, were you?

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh, yeah, very. My dad always struggled with food. I definitely had his metabolism. Wish I could have gotten my mom's. This is a person that could eat whatever she wants and not gain a pound. But unfortunately, it went the other way in this instance. And in addition to that, one of the ways that we would bond and relate to each other was over food. Our the favorite shawarma restaurant, or my dad would make homemade ice cream, and we'd bond over that. And so by the time I was 13, I was about 175 pounds, and I'm only 5 foot 2 now, so I was probably 5ft at the time.

[Bill O'Reilly]

So that must have caused you some social problems, particularly in a cosmetic place like Los Angeles or California, where you're evaluated on how you look.

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh, unquestionably. But it did give me an appreciation for what it means to be an underdog and a huge amount of grit and resilience, and I wouldn't trade it.

[Bill O'Reilly]

How long would. Did you stay chubby? And then what was the conversion of getting out of that circumstance?

[Jillian Michaels]

So it was a confluence of factors that helped me get healthy. That happened when I was about 15 and my mom had the foresight to get me into martial arts. Honestly, when I was around, like, 12 and a half. 13.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Yeah.

[Jillian Michaels]

She. You know what, she had been dating somebody whose nephews were in martial arts. She had a friend whose kids were in martial arts, and I was curious about it, and she thought, you know, maybe this will give her some. Some self respect, help her with her self esteem, her self image, and. And it did. It got me into a place where, over time, I gradually began to redefine my belief in my abilities and what I was capable of. And I began to learn about fitness and nutrition. So right around 15, I began to take the weight off, and by the time I was 17, I was pretty fit.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Were you an unhappy child up to the time that you got into the martial arts, or were you? Okay,

[Jillian Michaels]

Complex upbringing, I would say, you know, nothing crazy, traumatic. I wasn't beaten, nothing, nothing like that. You know, not a perfect childhood, not a terrible one. There were things that I had to work through. But again, those things made me who I am today and they weren't so intense or difficult that I couldn't find my way out of them.

[Bill O'Reilly]

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[Jillian Michaels]

Okay, so the transition there happened after my second degree blue belt test. I had to break these two boards with a sidekick. And I remember thinking, there's no way I could do it. And at this point, I still had a nose the size of a softball, which got fixed when I was 15. Terrible skin. I'm heavy and I break these two boards. I go to school the next day and I'm just waiting for one of these mean girls to say something nasty. And no one did. And I began to appreciate that the way I thought of myself impacted the way I carried myself and the way I behaved. And when I respected myself, I ended up commanding respect from other people. And that was really the key shift.

[Bill O'Reilly]

And that was at age 15.

[Jillian Michaels]

A little bit prior to that, probably around like 14 on the journey.

[Bill O'Reilly]

That's young. That's young for that kind of a Self awareness to kick in.

[Jillian Michaels]

I don't know, Bill, that I was aware of what was going on internally at the time. Looking back, I'm able to appreciate what was going on, if that makes any sense.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Okay, so then you take the martial arts thing and you develop a fitness regimen, and you get on tv, which of course is in America. You know, that's it. You got to get on tv. How did that happen? How did you get from Jillian Michaels, martial arts person in la, to national television?

[Jillian Michaels]

All right, I'm going to try to make this quick because it's a bit of a long road. I graduated high school early at 17 years old. Not because I'm a genius, because my birthday fell on a strange date. So I was always the youngest in my class. I'm looking for a job. I'm delivering pizzas and parking cars. And I end up learning, as I'm training for my black belt test, that I can train people in Fitness and make $15 an hour instead of five. So once again, my mom steps in and she helps me get my first little fitness certification, and I begin training people. I'm in college, not doing well at it. End up dropping out after about a

[Bill O'Reilly]

year and a half. What school was that?

[Jillian Michaels]

California State University, Northridge.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Okay.

[Jillian Michaels]

And I'm making a bunch of money training people. I'm bartending at night now. Get a little bit older, and I take it all for granted. And I just. I'm making handover fist cash at this point. I'm in my early 20s. Everything's great. Someone tells me I need to get a real job. I work in Los Angeles at the time, so of course I get a job in the entertainment industry, and I pull a David Geffen and a Michael Ovitz and I fake a diploma. A little bit of sociopathy here, Bill. Tell yourself, hopefully your audience will forgive me. I get hired into the training program at a talent agency called icm. I've never been more miserable, and I've never made less money. However, it turns out that those connections I made at ICM were the ones that ended up putting me up for the job at NBC on the Biggest loser. So by 27 IC, I'm miserable. I end up leaving the entertainment industry. I go back to fitness. I work at a sports medicine facility for a little while, learn that business, open my own sports medicine facility by the time I'm 30, and all the doctors work under me for my business. And at that point, some of the people who knew me from back in my talent agency days put me up for this job at NBC and I ended up getting it.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Okay, That's a logical progression. So you get the job. Now, I didn't watch the Biggest Loser because I know so many losers that I don't want to be reminded in my leisure time of losers that are even bigger than the ones I know because I'm in the political game. Talk about losers. Anyway, I didn't watch it, but friends of mine did. And the consensus is that sometimes you get a little mean to the hefty people who were coming before you. Is that true?

[Jillian Michaels]

Depends how you would define mean. Aggressive. Yes. But you have to appreciate that Biggest Loser for me was a life or death intervention that I was running on a ticking clock because people could go home in a week, two weeks, three. And I needed them to have very specific or hit very specific benchmarks before they would get eliminated in order for there to be any hope of them continuing on their healthy journey.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Okay, so you were. You were doing tough love then with these.

[Jillian Michaels]

Yes, very much so. Yes. 100%.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Did you get letters saying, hey, you, B word. Why are you doing this?

[Jillian Michaels]

Still do.

[Bill O'Reilly]

So you did tons. You got some pushback from the general public because about 50%, I think, of Americans are overweight to some extent, and most people don't want to be overweight. But we live in a sugar culture here, which is really what drives this kind of crazy stuff. So you're on a Biggest Loser. You become a big star with these other reality people. And when you were there, you were there for quite some time. Let's see, you started in 04, and your last appearance was 13. So there's nine years of the Biggest Loser. I would have committed suicide. But you. Got through it and prospered by it. Right?

[Jillian Michaels]

Somehow I will. I will admit that there is a great quote that I will butcher in the translation, but it is that which nourishes me, also destroys me. So I did manage to avoid suicide, and I am grateful for the platform because I wouldn't be sitting here with you today. But it. It definitely had its. Its downs along with its ups, for sure.

[Bill O'Reilly]

So you. You know, all of these reality shows play themselves out, just. Yeah, I think there are now at least 400 people stranded on some island, and CBS ran out of money, so they're not coming back. I mean, it's like these reality shows are just. People watch them and then they go, I've seen it. So you did what after the Biggest Loser lost?

[Jillian Michaels]

Gosh, I spent a lot of time just building my fitness brand, writing Books, creating fitness apps, investing strategically and other better for you companies, whether it was boutique fitness gyms or better for you food brands like Crave Jerky, for example, or Pop Chips. And I was able to do really well for myself in that arena up until right around 2021 when the world went totally crazy and I began exploring other areas and speaking to truth tellers like yourself. Taking the audience on a journey with me to learn more about what in the heck's going on in our world today so that we can take powerful actions to try to honestly save the country is what it sure seems like.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Bill, it's hard, but you at the same time were running. You're an entrepreneur, you were running businesses, and it made it easier with the Internet and social media for you to reach all these people. That's what I've done. So I got out of the straight television market, went right into social media and boom, we've exploded because we have a product nobody else has. So you're an entrepreneur, you're making pretty good money. You're doing what you like to do, getting people in shape and all that. Now, today we hear that people like you are the problem that the socialist communist movement goes. Wait, no, no. Jillian Michaels and O'Reilly, they make too much money. They don't have a right to make it. It's the country that did it. The government did it. They didn't do it. How do you react to that?

[Jillian Michaels]

Well, I try to honestly take a more empathetic approach and seek to understand these kids who are so greatly disenfranchised because I have been poor and I have been envious and jealous. But living in that headspace and focusing on the king of the hill instead of myself and what I need to do to get where I want to go was never productive. So I had great mentors that taught me to invert that jealousy and that envy into admiration and inspiration. And I flipped it in order to excel and get where I wanted to be in life.

[Bill O'Reilly]

All right, so you went up, but again, the money is coming in. You're living well, you're an affluent American and now you have a movement that is demonizing wealth tax. They want to go to Jillian Michaels house and take your stuff. That's what they want. Particularly California. I mean, you ought to build a very, very big fence so you can at least get some of you jewels out before Newsom's cops come in and try to take everything. But you know what I'm talking about.

[Jillian Michaels]

I sure do.

[Bill O'Reilly]

That is not. That is new to Our society, we have never seen this kind of radical left, a power play, gain traction. So I'm just wondering, from an entrepreneurial's point of view, you're an entrepreneur. How you. How you processing it? You still live in California?

[Jillian Michaels]

No, no, boss. I actually left in 21 because I saw the writing on the wall. I moved to Miami.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Oh, so you're a Floridian now?

[Jillian Michaels]

Well, so I couldn't fully extricate members of my family that I have to be close to. So during COVID the kids were able to go back and forth because they weren't in school for two years. My daughter ended up going to school in Florida. My son did homeschooling, and then when that ended, unfortunately, my ex didn't move. So I ended up getting a place in Wyoming, which is where I live now. I can get back to California in an hour and a half.

[Bill O'Reilly]

I go back to California. I know you lived in Wyoming.

[Jillian Michaels]

I do now. For about a year and a half.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Two years.

[Jillian Michaels]

Two years now.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Beautiful state. But it's cold. It is cold in Wyoming. And then you get up every morning, you go out to get the milk, and there's a moose staring at you.

[Jillian Michaels]

That's actually 100% accurate. It's the cutest thing in the world. But I'll tell you that it is. It is well worth it. I can leave when I need to leave. Because honestly, Bill, I was telling my son the other day, I was like, if New York can fall and there's sharia courts all over Texas, if Florida goes down and Wyoming goes down, honey, I don't even know where there is to run anymore. This has always been the place that people escape.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Yeah. It's not going to tyranny. The red states will stay red because there's so many people there that don't want the progressive point of view. That's why they're there. So, anyway, I did not know you. I should have known it. My research should have told me. But I did not know. Some of you know I do not recommend companies lightly, especially regarding the irs. I've done my homework. In America, Tax Group is the real deal. Their seasoned attorneys aggressively fight for individuals and businesses nationwide. They specialize in eliminating penalties, stopping collections, resolving audits. No matter the size of your debt, your balance doesn't sit still. It grows every day. Penalties up to 25% plus daily, compounding interest on everything you owe. The IRS and state tax authorities do not need court approval. They can seize your home, freeze your bank accounts, garnish your paycheck and start taking what's yours at any moment. Every day you wait, this gets worse, not better. So please call 888-300-8035. Call them now before they act. Use my code BILL26. And you will receive $500 off priority access to their team and a free consultation. So now you're kind of building up a portfolio of you appear on programs like mine and others. And you were on CNN News Night with Abby Phillip. Abby loves me. I mean, she just doesn't stop calling. She, you know, Abby just loves me. Okay, that's totally you. That's a total lie, by the way. But anyway, so she's on there with you and you guys are arguing about American slavery, about the roots of it and how it's displayed and which drives Trump crazy in the Smithsonian and other things. But in this society, if you are going to take on a person of color about slavery right away, okay, you're seven points down. And I was wondering what that experience was like.

[Jillian Michaels]

Well, you know, Bill, it started out actually as a conversation about the Smithsonian and one of Abby Phillips guests, Julie Roginski, was making the claim that, you know, everybody who's MAGA is a racist and Trump was dear leader, like this authoritarian fascist. And I said that's not true. Cuz I had actually done my homework and reached out to the investigation, I'm sorry, to the administration saying, you know, listen, what is it that the President is taking umbrage with? And it had nothing to do with erasing slavery and it had everything to do with deep demonizing white people. So for example, there's a poster or there was in the Smithsonian about white culture that talks about how aggressive white people are. It was things of that nature. So I started to defend against that when Richie Torres and Abby Phillip began engaging in a conversation about slavery. And at that moment I thought, okay, you know what? If we're going to go down this road, let's go down this road. And I brought up the fact that slavery has been around for thousands of years, that every single race and ethnicity has worn the whip and the chains and that it doesn't do our society any good to demonize just one race for all of the evils of all of humanity throughout the history of humanity. And you're right, it didn't go well on cnn. But I think a lot of other people appreciated the fact that I was challenging them on this topic and brought up a fact from the 1860 census that showed less than 2% of white Americans owned slaves. And of Course, I understand that the entire south built an economy on it. But then the counterpoint is that the north didn't and that the country went to war over it and that 350,000 white people died to end it because they also found it abhorrent. And I don't understand why we cannot appreciate that, yes, these evil things happened, but that there were good white people standing alongside their white or their black brothers and sisters throughout the history of America fighting for what was right as well. And until we can find this unity, I don't know how this ends, Bill. And I have a black kid and I have a white one. And I think this begets more racism and more hatred.

[Bill O'Reilly]

And I have to take a very charismatic leadership. Now, when you were making your fact based case, okay, which is always the way to go on these crazy. It was not well received on the panel. I mean, they thought, they dismissed you as some kind of white supremacist or whatever.

[Jillian Michaels]

Yeah, well, she lied about it and manipulated the conversation. She's like, you brought it up. I'm like, I didn't bring it up. Your guest just brought it up. And then she brought up chattel slavery. And she's like, you're trying to say that in America. And I'm like, nope, that's not what I said. You're mischaracterizing what I said. And then it became like, you know, and then she literally dined out on it for a week on her show, educating people about how the white supremacist Jillian Michaels got slavery wrong. And I have confronted her repeatedly on the facts and invited her on my show to debate that. But of course, you know, that hasn't happened.

[Bill O'Reilly]

No, it's not going to do it. She's a privileged woman of color and whatever she says is right. And if you disagree with her, then you're not worthy. That's basically what it comes down to. But, boy, when you get into these precincts, as you saw emotions fly, I mean, all rationality goes out the ears. I was wondering what the reaction to you was. I don't know what your. The accessibility to Jillian Michaels is, but did you get a lot of heat from people?

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh, goodness. Okay. Well, of course, half the country literally wanted to kill me. Literally went after my wife, my kids, which is definitely par for the course, you know? I know.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Did you have to get security like I do? Did you have to do that?

[Jillian Michaels]

We've got. Yeah, you know, we. The house, the dogs, the this, the that, the guns that. Like, we've got it. We've got it all. Which is kind of a gross and sad thing to say, but. But is true, you know, but the other half of the country it was like, thank God you said something. Thank God you said something.

[Bill O'Reilly]

It's a divisional thing. Right? Right. Did you take solace from that or did you go, never again? I don't want to get into this swamp?

[Jillian Michaels]

This is, this is one of the key conversations I think we need to be having because if we don't, it's going to beget more racism from disenfranchised young white people who are feeling unfairly demonized for things they had nothing to do with and then become angry and racist. And I could give you many different examples. I think that's one of the good reasons that people like Nick Fuentes, who is a self proclaimed white nationalist, has arguably one of the most successful podcasts in the world. I think this is why people believe

[Bill O'Reilly]

what they want to believe and they often go to echo chambers to tell them what they already have incorporated. Now, you also left your podcast in 2025 under kind of. I didn't really understand it. It was doing very well. I was on it a few times. And you left it why?

[Jillian Michaels]

Well, not my personal podcast. There was a podcast that Patrick Bet David had asked me to participate in that was called Her Take. And the idea was to have a group of women that had differing opinions. He wanted to bring a more common sense version of the view to the masses. And it ended up very unfortunately getting to a place where not. Not because of pbd, by the way, just unto itself, because of the natural inclinations of the other hosts. Getting to a place where it was dealing in conspiracy theories. And week after week I would have to sit through my co hosts discussing things like the Jews being responsible for 911 and the Jews being responsible for Charlie Kirk's death. And that's when I was like, this is not for me.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Right? I mean, you don't want to be involved with the. With the loons, as I call them. In today's uncertain economy, families need a way out of the high interest rate trap. We're heading into summer, but economic clouds are not clearing up. Between persistent inflation and daily costs, you are likely feeling the pressure. You've worked hard and your home has equity, yet you're forced to rely on credit cards. It's an exhausting cycle, but American Financing understands their salary based mortgage consultants can help with mortgage rates in the fives. Customers save an average of $800 a month by wiping out high interest debt. It's money in your pocket. No upfront fees start today. Delay two mortgage payments. Please call American Financing. 8884-629557-88462, 9557American Financing.net Bill 888-462-957American Financing this Independence Day, celebrate your medical freedom. Our friends at all family pharmacy want to make sure you can always get the medications you trust. And right now is the perfect time to stock up. From July 1st through July 7th, they're running a buy one, get one free sale on all their essential medications.

[Jillian Michaels]

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[Bill O'Reilly]

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[Bill O'Reilly]

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[Jillian Michaels]

I don't see it that way, Bill. I'm the farthest thing from a political analyst. I see myself like I see my audience. We want to understand, we want to learn. I want the facts. And that's when I go to people like yourself or people like Victor Davis Hansen or people like Mike Baker or politicians that are running for office, and I ask them questions and and the audience gets to hear those answers and get that information and form their own opinions about it. You know, if I do give an opinion on something that is considered political, it's because usually it's intersecting with health and my wheelhouse in the Venn diagram. So, for example, I just did a press hit about the Supreme Court upholding Title nine because I owned a Sports medicine facility. And I've been a fitness expert since I was practically out of the womb. So I can comment on that with a unique expertise or things on Maha, for example. But stuff that falls into your wheelhouse, all I can do is ask the questions, honestly.

[Bill O'Reilly]

All right, so you dabble in the public policy arena, but your core, to use a workout phrase, is still making people healthy. So enter Robert Kennedy Jr. Who apparently eats roadkill and snakes. Should I be doing that? Should I? No. Appetizer. I don't have to get an entree of the boa constrictor.

[Jillian Michaels]

Listen, you know, he might be a little eccentric.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Possible, but talking about Kennedy might be a little eccentric,

[Jillian Michaels]

Bill, you know Xavier Bechera, obviously, right? This guy's probably gonna be the governor of California. He's the one who previously held Kennedy's post. And this is a savage that tried to remove all age restrictions for gender affirming care on kids.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Right?

[Jillian Michaels]

So Kennedy could eat frickin the bark off of a tree filled with termites

[Bill O'Reilly]

and

[Jillian Michaels]

I wouldn't care, considering. Considering the alternative.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Kennedy stays away from the trans stuff. Basically, he's a guy that doesn't like the vaccine, doesn't trust pharma. And the one message that has resonated with me is that he has a good view of if you poison your body with a whole bunch of sugar and carbs and you're eating his garbage, you're gonna pay a price. Absolutely. So my son works out in the same gym as RFK Jr and who, interestingly enough, and you should talk to him about this, doesn't wears jeans in the workout. No, no, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta wear either the spandex or the shorts, but he wears the wrangler jeans. And my son goes, why does he do that? I go, am I supposed to know everything? I don't know why, I don't know why he eats snakes. I don't know why he does anything. But anyway, he, he's good on the diet stuff, I think, but some of the other stuff is so out there that it erodes his message sometimes.

[Jillian Michaels]

Well, here's what I would say. One of the things that Kennedy has spoken about that caused a huge amount of controversy was the suggestion that a chemical in our water called atrazine could be linked to why so many kids or why the percentage of kids that are gender dysphoric or gay. You know, could it be linked to this chemical in the water? Now the reason that he was musing about this is because this chemical literally causes sex Changes in frogs. And then of course, everybody's like, ah, he's a lunatic, he's a psycho. He's a crazy man. But what they should be asking is, wait, what in the hell is this thing in the water like?

[Bill O'Reilly]

Yeah, but you gotta have science to back that up. Plus, Kennedy ate the frog, so we don't have the evidence, so the frog kind of disappeared. But I agree that I don't trust a lot of this supplement stuff that's being sold now. I think it's terrible for you and particularly mentally, makes you out of your mind. His view, Kennedy's view. And again, he's not been nearly as bellicose word of the day as he was the first time or the first few months that he was in office. I kind of receded a little. I don't know why. I know him a little bit. So he's been respectful to me. Even with the roadkill jokes, he seems to be able to process that. But we as a society now, we have tremendous food industry, a lot of money, and they don't want any changes at all in the American diet. And diabetes is through the roof.

[Jillian Michaels]

Yeah, I think. Listen, if I could speak candidly,

[Bill O'Reilly]

in

[Jillian Michaels]

my line of work, the President has done some great things and he's done some not so great things. You know, listen, he's working to cut out the middlemen, like the pharmacy benefit managers, to lower drug prices for people. He's got Dr. Oz working on dealing with pre authorization, I'm sorry, pre authorization problems that prevent people from getting the care that they need in a timely fashion. They've restructured the dietary guidelines so that food deserts will have healthier food and healthier food will be more cost effective. I could give you a huge list of great things. I could give you a decent sized list of things that are not so great, like giving immunity to Monsanto for glyphosate, which we know causes non Hodgkin's lymphoma, or having Dr. Marty Makary at the FDA push through flavored vapes, which were banned because he was concerned they would entice kids.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Right. I mean, it's ridiculous.

[Jillian Michaels]

You know, look, yeah, there's good and there's bad, but what I will tell you. Right, well, and here's the thing. I worked with the Clinton administration in the health space and I worked with the Obama administration in the health space. And you know what got done, Bill? Nothing. Zero. So at least with Trump, we've won a bunch. We lost some, but we won some and we never won Any previously. So it's. I'm happy about it.

[Bill O'Reilly]

Yeah. I mean, it's a mystery because you ever seen what the man eats? You know, he and Bobby Kennedy are friends. You said you bonded with your father over food because Trump, he likes assault, he likes. He likes all that. But again, I mean, he's working hard. I don't care what he eats. As long as, you know, we beat the Iranians, you can have five pizzas a day. I don't care. But I like the leadership in the sense that Americans are unaware, I think, of the most important part of their health, which is food. I think most of them are unaware of it. They don't know, and a lot of them don't care. They want to eat what they want to eat. They don't want O'Reilly telling them, what are you, the food police? And I, you know, my answer to that is, if I were, you'd be in the penitentiary. So, anyway, I'm a pleasant guy at all times. We're going to stop now and let Jillian have a glass of water without anything in it that might turn her into a lizard. And then we will go on with our premium and concierge membership. If you'd like to join, we'll enhance your life. You'll be under my protection. It's billoriley.com so this is called killing time. And that'll come up just for premium members.

[Jillian Michaels]

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