Bill O’Reilly’s No Spin News and Analysis - Breaking Down Presidential Pardon Power, Brandon Straka on His Trump Pardon, House Passes the Laken Riley Act & Rep. James Comer on What’s Next in the Biden Family Investigation

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

Tonight's rundown:  Hey BillOReilly.com Premium and Concierge Members, welcome to the No Spin News for Thursday, January 23, 2025. Stand Up for Your Country.  Talking Points Memo: Bill outlines what the Constitution says about presidential pardons and how Biden and Trump have exercised this power. Brandon Straka, founder of the #WalkAway Campaign, talks about his charges and plea deal related to January 6, and his pardon from Donald Trump. The House passes the Laken Riley Act, sending the bill to Trump’s desk. Congressman James Comer joins the No Spin News to discuss the ongoing Biden family investigation and whether Trump will push charges against Joe Biden. Smart Life: Kathy Hochul proposes a full phone ban in NY schools, but how much will it cost taxpayers? This Day in History: The Carpenters “Please Mr. Postman” hits number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Final Thought: Why DEI is wrong. In Case You Missed It: Read Bill's latest column, He's Back For a limited time, get Bill O'Reilly's bestselling The United States of Trump and a No Spin Mug for only $39.95. Get Bill's latest book, CONFRONTING THE PRESIDENTS, out NOW! Now's the time to get a Premium or Concierge Membership to BillOReilly.com, the only place for honest news analysis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Visit MailChimp.com. Hi to O'Reilly here. Welcome to the No Spin News, a Thursday, January 23rd, 2025. Stand up for your country. Well, President Trump tomorrow going to North Carolina, California, Vegas. He's got to fix FEMA. It's not operating the way it should be. And we, the people, pay into this emergency fund to help our fellow citizens.

And poor people in Western North Carolina got hosed, people in Florida, now out in California. And we've got to be able to deliver services to them. And FEMA's got to be redesigned top to bottom. So I think President Trump knows that. And I'm glad he's going to boost the spirits of the folks in North Carolina. and hopefully in L.A. where there's more fires. And we'll keep an eye on that. It'll be interesting to see how Newsom behaves out there, or if the Trump people say don't even bother to show up, governor, which they have the power to do. So Newsom can't just

intrude, right? So we're on all this. It's obvious president's really shaking things up, causing controversies. He always does. That is the subject of this evening's talking points memo. So the presidential pardon continues. I talked about it on W.ABC radio with Sid Rosenberg this morning. We've posted that on bill o'Reilly.com. You know my position because I stated it yesterday. I wrote a in-detail message about how most of the Jan 6 protesters were brutalized by the Justice Department. That's true. They did commit crime. That's true. Two things can be true at once. And I would have set up a review of three-judge panel to look at the violent convictions against the cops. And then they would have written a recommendation to President Trump. I would not have pardoned them outright. And the reason is that the president should always do its best for the country. Right? And sometimes that's hard. A lot of times that's.

It's hard. But here, if we want the rule of law, we have to have protections for police. Have to. And there's all kinds of stuff like, well, the people who attack the police have served enough time. That's not our job here. That's not it. But I think that 170 cases of alleged violence, convicted violence, need to be reviewed.

I think that's fair. Anyway, there are a number of things going on, particularly in the pardon situation. So let's just review it, so you understand it. So Article 5 of the Constitution gives the power to the people to overturn the Constitution. So a lot of people say, we don't want this presidential pardon anymore, don't want it, because it's been abused.

And it has, to some extent, throughout history, not just now. But the Founding Fathers put it in there for a reason. I'll explain it in a moment. But if you want to boot it out, there are a couple of ways you do it. Two-thirds majority in both the House and the Senate. So they have to vote on it. Two-thirds have to say, yeah, we want it out. And then it goes back to the states, and the state legislatures, three quarters of them,

30 out of 50, have to approve what the federal Congress has approved. That's a very heavy left, obviously, in a polarized country. So it's not going to happen. Presidential pardon is going to stay there. And then you get into, well, what about a president pardoning himself? Because Joe Biden's still in trouble. He didn't pardon himself, part of his family, but not himself. Well, the constitutionality of that is vague.

There is no precise wording. Here's what it says. Quote, the president shall have the power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment, against the United States. Not him. Okay. So there are people who believe that President can pardon himself.

President Trump said, yeah, well, I don't understand why Biden did more. pardon himself. That's not in there. It has to go to the Supreme Court. If that ever happened, would have to rule. Now, Donald Trump's under some fire for the pardons of the violent people at the Capitol. And here's what he said last night about his pardons go. It would be very, very cumbersome to go. And look, you know how many people are talking about? 1,500 people. Almost all of them are, should not have been, this should not have happened. The other thing is this, some of those people with the police, true, but they were very minor incidents, okay? You know, they get built up by that a couple of fake guys that are in CNN all the time.

Okay, I mean, I'm not going to dispute that, but in the case of violence, again, I think it needs to be reviewed by a panel of federal judges. I think that's the fair way to do it, but it's not going to happen. It's already done. The presidential pardon has been issued. It's not going to be rescinded. You cannot challenge it. That is that. All right.

So the situation with Joe Biden is that he is still out there. And there are going to be congressional investigations into him about whether he took money. That's what it's all about. Now, I have Congressman Comer. It's going to lead those investigations. He's got a new book out coming up. They'll talk about what he knows, how he knows it, how this is going to advance. But Joe Biden's, he's in trouble.

All right? It's not like he's just going to go off. He's in trouble. And we'll get into that. And that's a memo. Okay. Now we have a guy who was convicted for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. His name is Brandon Strayka, comes to us from D.C.

He got a pardon. Initially, he pled guilty to disorderly conduct on capital grounds. October, 2021. Received 36 months probation, including three months home detention. $5,000 fine, $500 restitution. You do not believe you were treated fairly in this case. Is that correct? 100%.

Yeah, absolutely not. in a nutshell, don't go in the weeds. What was unfair? Well, the details of my case weren't true. So important for people to know, I didn't enter the Capitol on January 6th. I was outside of the east side of the building for eight minutes shooting a video. So there are four major details of my case that were blatant fabrications by the FBI DOJ. One was that I entered into a restricted area of Capitol grounds and knew that the area was restricted, but did it anyway. When I arrived at Capitol grounds, and by the way, I was a scheduled speaker at a permitted event on Capitol grounds. So not the area where I was, but on an outer area of the grounds,

I was supposed to be a speaker. But I started getting text messages saying that something was happening at the Capitol and people were going inside. So I started shooting a video and I approached the Capitol from the east side. The barricades at the time were fully open. There were no signs indicating that people were not allowed to be there. There were literally zero police officers on the east side of the building when I was there, and there was a crowd of thousands of people standing outside. So I walked up the open sidewalk and into a crowd of thousands of people, and this is when, according to the DOJ, I committed my first felony. So they charged me with a felony charge of occupying restricted grounds, in other words, a trespassing felony outside of

the Capitol. But then I walked to the top of the stairs, and when I got to the top of the stairs, doors on the east side of the Capitol were open. There were a crowd of several hundred people. Some were trying to push their way in. The majority like me were standing outside shooting a video. I stood outside of the building for eight minutes shooting a video. And then a man came out of the building, got on a bullhorn and said, they've cleared Congress. Everyone's left the building. Move out, move out. And I immediately turned around and I left. And then I uploaded that video that I had just shot to Twitter. Two and a half weeks later, I was raided by the FBI, a team of agents and tactical gear came into my apartment, began stripping it of computers, phones,

hard drives, iPads, et cetera, put me in handcuffs and took me to jail and told me I was facing multiple felony charges for what I had done. Let me stop you there. So you never went inside the Capitol building. Let's face it, the U.S. economy is under stress. National debt rising, trade war, shaking the markets. And meanwhile, China is dumping the dollar and stockpiling gold. That's why I protected my savings with physical gold and silver through the only dealer I trust, American Hartford Gold. And you can do this. Get precious metals delivered to your door or place in a tax advantage gold IRA. They'll even help you roll over your existing IRA or 401K, tax and penalty free.

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Terms apply. See Chevron, Texcores.com, for more details. I did not enter the Capitol on January 6th. All right. You were outside. All right. Correct. So they come in and they arrest you. Now, you hired an attorney guy named Stuart Dornan, right? Correct. Now, did you have to pay for him? I did. I had a private attorney. Okay. And what did he tell you when you hired him?

So when I met with my attorney, what he had told me was that I was facing multiple felonies, but that he had had a conversation with the prosecutor. And the prosecutor told him that they were open to dropping the felony charges if I was willing to plead guilty. to a misdemeanor. The problem with that, I mean, besides the fact that I assert that I wasn't even guilty of a misdemeanor charge, unless perhaps you wanted to say I was in a restricted area and I was in the wrong place, fine. But the problem is they didn't leave it at that.

What they said was that I stood outside of the building shouting, go, go, go to encourage people to go into the building, and that I witnessed the crowd taking a shield from an officer, and that I shouted, take it, take it to encourage the crowd. Do they have videotape of that? No. Okay, that was just the allegation. But I'm interested in what your attorney told you, and then we'll get it.

I'm not doubting your story. I want to all my viewers and listeners. I'm not doubting Brandon's story at all. But I want to walk through the process so that everybody understands what you guys went through. Okay. So, Dornan is your lawyer. You're paying Dornan out of your own podcast. And the government says, okay, plea it down, which happens all the time.

Does Dornan recommend you plea it down? A lawyer really can't recommend anything. What a lawyer can tell you is these are your options and this is what I think is going to. Well, my lawyers recommend Brando all the time. Do this, do that, do this, do that. I don't know about this guy, but you're telling that he was neutral on us? He didn't say, plea it down or fight it. He didn't give you one of the two.

one of the two? What he told me was that we could fight it all the way to the end if we wanted to, but we both knew, and I didn't need to be told, that we were going before a D.C. judge and a D.C. jury in a very biased political case, and that the likelihood of being successful at trial was very, very small. But they didn't have hard evidence of what they were accusing you of, which is inciting a riot. Go, go, go with it. There's no evidence at all. In discovery, Dornan didn't find anything like that. It was no smoking gun to use a cliche. Is that correct? Well, there was no smoking gun,

but when I stood outside the building and I filmed, my camera captured somebody grab a shield from one officer who walked by, and you can hear voices in the background shouting, take it, take it. It's quite obvious. It wasn't your voice. The voices were not mine. Okay. I didn't. And again, I'm believing you. I'm like the Ghostbusters, right? I'm believing you. All right. So you sign the guilty plea and it's disorderly conduct and then you have to go through a three-month ordeal, a three-year ordeal of probation of home confinement of fines. All right. Do you regret signing that guilty plea now? Yes. I don't think I would have changed because to me, I've always said it wasn't a question of how do I win and how do I lose when you're going. up against the government, the question is, how do you lose the least? For me, the only path forward to lose the least and to come out of this with some of my life intact was to plead

guilty to the misdemeanor charge, which I do not believe. But you wouldn't do it again. In hindsight, you would have fought it? If your question is, would I take the plea deal again? The answer is yes. You would take it again. All right. So for you, President Trump's pardon is a legitimate be a kindness. Would that be accurate? I'm sorry, Bill. I'm having trouble with my signal. Could you repeat what you said? For you, President Trump's pardon was a kindness. I would say that Trump's pardon, yes, I would describe it as a kindness, but I think that it was a level of justice for all of us because I think what a lot of people,

people don't understand is the punishment that all of us have faced that has gone even outside of the judicial branch. I mean, the brutality that all of us have faced for January 6th goes far beyond what we were sentenced to. We were all placed on terrorism watch lists. We were all mass-de-platformed and debanked and removed from every big tech platform that you can imagine. We had to fly with air marshals on our flights. We were treated like domestic terrorists and insurrectionists for four years. Do you blame the Biden administration for that? Do I'm sorry, do I? Do you blame the Biden administration for that? Yes, 100%. All right. Okay. I'm glad you got the pardon. I think you deserve the pardon. I wrote almost exactly what you said, Brandon, on bill

o'reilly.com yesterday. I hope you go and read it. And I didn't, this is the first time we've ever talk. Okay? That's right. I said this, what they did was they terrorized these people on January 6th, the Merrick Garland Justice Department. For all of that, that's legit for what President Trump did. And we appreciate it. You're going to have a, I hope, a very happy and productive life going forward. You're a young guy. If you ever need any help or you find that anything is inhibiting your life due to this, you call us immediately. And we'll help you. Okay. Thank you, Bill. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So I want to give fair coverage to this, and I think I have. And bill at bill o'Reilly.com, bill at bill o'Reilly.com. All right, migrant arrest is what we know

so far as according to straight arrow news and other news service that's not corporate. 40060. Undocumented migrants have been arrested so far since Donald Trump's inauguration. 460. Mostly big cities, Boston, Denver, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Seattle, D.C., Miami. ICE officers have a big target list. Okay, they've been putting it together since the election in November. So this is going to continue.

So that's the fact on the arrest. troops at the border, a 60% increase since inauguration day. It's amazing what's happened so quickly. 1,500 more active duty service members added to the 2,500, brings you up to 4,000. This is information coming from the Defense Department. And those soldiers now, it's not just supervising, they can physically stop you from coming across the border. And if to see a cartel person, they'd have to get orders to do it, they could shoot them right in a head because their designation is the cartel's a terrorist group. But all of that has to follow chain of command.

Okay. Lake and Riley Bill passed. All right. And it goes to Trump. He will sign it. I don't know when. We call. We don't know when.

All right. In the house yesterday, 263. Yes. 156. No, 14 didn't vote. easy pass, and the law basically says that if you are an undocumented alien in this country, you are arrested, that you have to be taken into custody by the Department of Homeland Security. Okay, let's turn to President Biden and what might happen to him in the future.

This is a major story, history story. I said, and if you read my book confronting the presidents, he's the second worst president in our history. I can back that up 50 ways. all right um there is another book out it's called all the president's money investigating the secret foreign schemes that made the biden family rich the author is congressman james comer you know him from kentucky he's a chair of the house oversight and accountability committee and the congressman is going to continue i understand looking into the biden family grift the key question of course is whether Vice President Biden or President Biden took money, took abroad.

That is the key question. Now, on page 47 of the book, there is this, quote, Congressman Coma writes, the China Energy Company wired millions of dollars to various shell companies that would eventually be passed through the Biden family members bank accounts, large sums of which ended up in Joe Biden's pocket. Now, if that can be proved, that would be the biggest presidential scandal in history. No other chief executive has been convicted of bribery. Joining us now from Washington is the aforementioned Congressman Comer. So I'm a little skeptical here because I follow you very closely and your hearings. And I have not seen the cliche smoking gun. If it went into his

pocket, Biden didn't put it on its tax returns. You know that. I don't know where that money would have wound up. Can you tell me? I can. So there were two payments that went directly to Joe Biden from the influence peddling schemes. Both payments came through a laundered process. The money from China started out as the $5 million wire. That was the wire where Hunter Biden sent the WhatsApp message, where he said, my father sitting beside me. It was just weeks after he left the vice presidency and said, we expect those commitments to be fulfilled.

So there was evidence of Hunter with his father, according to Hunter, sitting beside him, demanding that the Chinese comply with whatever deal they made while Joe Biden was vice president. Days later, a $5 million wire went through a series of shell companies. One company that I said was not a shell, but it was a corrupt company, was Hunter's law firm, even though he didn't practice law. It was his professional LLC.

That LLC then took a fee out of that $5 million transaction. That fee was for $400,000. And then money, that $400,000 started going down through a series of money laundering. And the bank suspicious activity reports flagged them as this is the money laundering scheme. There's money being laundered through shell companies. And it ends up the last incremental payment goes to Joe Biden for $40,000. ironically is 10% of hunters $400,000. Now Tony Babelinski's the one that said 10% for the big guy. Tony Bobbelinski came in for both a deposition and a committee hearing. And in the committee

hearing, he cited that $40,000 payment and he said that was the 10%. That was what that deal was supposed to be. He said, but what I learned, what Tony Bob Malinski learned was it wasn't a legitimate business deal. When he signed up to be a part of that, he thought it was a really a deal, a real energy company in China. But what he realized was there was no deal. It was just a bribe. That's what Tony Babelinski said under oath, a bribe to Joe Biden. But where did the money go? All right. So Biden gets 40K in his suitcase and cash. You put it under his bed? Where do you go? It was a check that was deposited into his Joe Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. checking account. Then there was another payment bill.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. So he puts the check in the payment in his checking account. The IRS is flagged on that, anything over 10K. All right, so it goes in. Biden doesn't have that on his tax return, does he? No, no. Oh, that's a felony, isn't it? He disclosed his taxes.

We did, we subpoenaed the bank record. not of Joe Biden, we couldn't get those because he was sitting President of the United States, but we subpoenaed the bank records of the shell companies and of Jim Biden. So the next payment came from a scheme called AmeriCorps Health. And this was a Jim Biden deal. That $40,000 that ended up in Joe's account was from the China deal through Hunter. The next one, which was a larger one, was for $200,000. It was a scheme through a domestic scheme called America.

Health through Jim Biden. And it was a supposedly a loan from AmeriCorps Health, a loan made to Jim Biden for $600,000. The best coast just got better. Introducing Quantum of the Seas sailing from L.A. this fall. Conquer next level thrills on the boldest ship in the West, like flow rider surf sessions, bumper cars, and soaring 300 feet above sea level on the North Star.

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markdowns. It's all about savings on top of savings throughout the store. This is when I stock up on styles from my closet, home decor, and much more, because there's up to 70% off other retailers' prices on clearance. I mean, I'm going every day because these prices too hot to miss. Burlington deals, brands, wow. Styles and selections may vary by location. A loan that he never repaid, he never paid any interest on, and the loan was made right before the company filed bankruptcy. So of that $600,000, it was laundered through a series of shells. It went to Jim and Sarah Biden.

who both got pardons their personal account and then they turn around and write joe biden a check for two hundred thousand dollars and it says in the memo line loan repayment well we caught this and the media said oh it was a it was a loan repayment they were just it's a it was a loan repayment how do you know it's a loan repayment they said because it says it on the memo line loan repayment but bill if i loan you two hundred thousand dollars and you pay me back two hundred thousand dollars You should have evidence that I first loaned you $200,000. Yeah, the original loan. He never produced any evidence.

And he tried to say both payments were loan repayments. For what, though? I mean, look, there's got to be a contract and there's no contract. There was no contract. Well, wait, wait, wait, wait, but let me stop you there. So now you're on the committee now and you're not going to walk away from this. You're still investigating. All you've got to do is hand us over to the IRS because, as I said,

none of this appears on Joe Biden's tax returns. All right? So if he gets 40K in his personal account and doesn't declare it his income, that's a felony. If he gets a repayment of a loan that wasn't even made, that's fraud. So the IRS is the, and you know, you know that under the Biden administration,

that kind of investigation, but now under the Trump investigation, This doesn't seem like a complicated process. You hand over that to the IRS. They do due diligence for a month or two. And then the FBI goes to the Biden House in Delaware and arrest them. Where am I going wrong? No, you're absolutely right.

And because of the investigation, those two Irish whistleblowers came forward, Joseph Ziegler and Gary Shapley. They knew about a lot of this because they were investigating the entire Biden family. Sure. But that's all. I want to move it ahead. We know Garland and the IRS under Joe Biden. Now, I'm going to do any of this.

Now, I don't know if Donald Trump has a heart for this. I don't know. He's been asking a couple of times, look, are you going to go after Joe Biden criminally on these situations? But understanding what Trump himself went through in the whole process of everybody coming after him. Number one, the press is, if you ever did that, the IRS ever, charged Joe Biden, press go nuts. It's Trump. It's Trump's vengeance. You know, you know what the

thing would be. Okay. But have you spoken with the president about this? Do you know if he's going to aggressively go after Biden on these criminal charges? I saw President Trump at Marlago. There were some other committee chairs there a couple of weekends ago. And he came up to me and started talking about the investigation and said you did a great job exposing the the fraud in the schemes and all that and i said well mr president you know the investigation's been done i strongly encourage your administration to follow through and hold these people accountable i said you know at the time he had only pardoned heart hunter i said i fully expect him to pardon jim by now i was surprised that he pardoned the spouses because bill the only place you will find the name of the spouses

involved in the scheme is in my book. And I think whoever read my, they read my book, the Biden legal team, and encouraged Joe Biden to issue the pardons for the spouses too, because there were 10 family members, including Joe Biden. Well, they all filed joint tax returns. That's why they did that. So they had to because all of his money wasn't declared. And then that's the crime.

That's like Al Capone. They got him on tax evasion. This is the same exact thing, all right? And Bill, I come from a banking background, from a family that was involved in banking. I was the director of a bank for many years. And tax returns don't tell the true story. Bank records do. Bank records don't lie.

People can cheat on their taxes. The way taxes are set up, they're set up to be manipulated, but you cannot lie on bank records. And the bank records showed where they were laundering money and the banks caught them. So the private banks did everything right. Well, they signaled, look, the case is overwhelming at this point. The problem is whether the Trump IRS is going to go after it. Like they did go after Hunter, all right, now Hunter's pardon, they had them, the IRS got him.

With the IRS, it seems to me if all of the things that you have written in your book, and I'm going to mention it again, because if you want the details, Congressman Comer, has them, all the president's money by James Comer. If the IRS goes after President Biden, even though these offenses were committed while he was vice president, allegedly committed, all right, it's a, it's not a hard case to make, is it? No, no, it's not. No, it's not. And the, the Irish investigators, when they came forward, we had our committee hearing, they said they wanted to question Joe Biden because obviously the money was coming because of Joe Biden. Yeah, sure, but he's never going to do that. But now he's stripped of all protection.

Right. And you got a new Irish commissioner, Billy Long, and, you know, I hope that they do this. Because if you look at what Hunter Biden was charged with in tax evasion, Bill, the IRS let a bunch of statute of limitations expire on some other tax charges. Right. But this one, no. You're, it's in the zone. But anyway, keep us posted here. And if you don't think the Trump administration is doing what it should, you got to let me know. I mean, because we're looking out for the country. You can't have a vice president or a president taking bribes.

That's right. You can't. That's right. All right. And that, and yeah. Go ahead. Last word. Well, look, I think the book goes into detail.

It's a forensic accounting of what they did. Joe Biden lied so many times. I lost count as to who he met with, what he knew. He said there was a wall between the family. What we found out in the book, and it's, in the investigation, I write about it in the book, that Hunter was paying for his legal fees. Hunter was paying for his accounting fees. That was all paid through the shell companies. Everybody knows. Everybody knows. They're just a shame that, but a large portion in a country doesn't care. And that includes the legacy media. All right, All right, Congressman, good luck.

We'll talk to you soon. I hope thanks for coming on. Thank you. And now let's go to our daily media madness segment. No shortage. CNN laying off 200 people. 6% of its staff. Why?

Because they're losing hundreds of millions of dollars because nobody watches it. Now, karma, you know, yeah, I believe it. CNN, you know, MSNBC, it's something. they're not a legitimate anything. And NBC News is just crazy to have allowed that. But CNN at one time was a very positive thing for this war. And to see it destroy the way it has been, and it's self-destruction. You set the table, put on a playlist, even made the lasagna from scratch.

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I support this law. All right. For Governor Hockel, write on, get this done. But then she puts a $14 million price tag on the law. What is that? You don't need to do that. The local people in New York fund the schools. I pay an enormous amount of schools tax.

You don't need to add another $14 million into this governor. And that's what you do is spending, spend and spend in highest taxed state and union. But these kids in school now, they can't concentrate because of the cell phones. And that's going to destroy their potential. You have to be able to listen and absorb information. And you can't if you're addicted to the cell phone. I know with my own kids. I know.

I see it. And they're young adults now. They're both addicted. Both of them. And they cannot concentrate when that phone is in their hand. They can't. And they're brilliant kids. This has got to be a national law.

No cell phones during school classes. All right. Recess. I don't care. But, you know, how it goes is that they smuggle the phones in and it's not. And if you're a teacher, take the phone, don't give it back. And a parent wants to come down and scream, let them negotiate with the principal. Smart Life, the reason this isn't a Smart Life segment is American children cannot compete

in the world if this continues. Can't. Because they're all going to be addicted to the device. of them. Bad. And there's a big study out about how, you know, 37% of 13-year-olds are more aggressive because of itself on and on and on and on. And it's just crazy.

All right, Senator Ernst, Iowa introduces a bill to defund Planned Parenthood. Good. You know how much Planned Parenthood gets of our taxpayers? A year? Seven hundred million. Hey, you want your medical stuff? Ladies, get it on your own or go to a clinic. I don't want to be paying for it, particularly abortion.

Next is PBS NPR. We got to stop. That's $525 million a year. No. No. So right on, Senator Ernst. Now we got to get somebody else to introduce. no PBS and PR.

This day in history, January 23rd, 1975. I'm going to give you the top five records on Billboard 50 years ago. I mean, this is just staggering. I go 50 years ago. These were the top five, okay? Number five, Barry White. Never was a big Barry fan. I got the baritone.

I got all that. Then Stevie Wonder for Neil Sadaka, like Neil, laughter in the rain. Mandy, first hit for Barry Mantelow. That was 50 years ago, number two, and here is number one. Roll it. Stop, whoa, yes, wait a minute, that's the postman. Wait, wait, yeah, yeah, Mr. Postman. She's just the Postman who can see, oh, yeah.

And there's a letter in me for me. Carpenter's huge group, Karen Carpenter, I think best pure voice ever. Adele's close. But at the time, this was number one, and that was a cover, please, Mr. Postman. I think it was Marvellous, favorite 50 soul groups who put that out first. Karen Carpenter began her anorexia saga, about the same time that song came out, and then eight years later, she's dead, 32 years old. Staggering. Staggering. Anyway, 50 years ago, can you believe that? I can't. I mean, I know I'm an old guy, but boy. Back with a final thought in a moment.

Okay, here's the final thought of the day why DEA is wrong. So I support President Trump in knocking out all DEA for all federal agencies and any concern that gets federal money. No more DEA. Diversity, equity, inclusion. What that means is we favor people who have a certain skin color or lifestyle. Is that American? No. Is that Martin Luther King, Jr.?

No. Okay? It isn't. Now, the system in America, economic and political, should reward hard work. So if I'm a college admissions director and I get an admission from a zip code that I know is in distress, a bad place, and the student is doing very well, that goes as a big plus in that student's jacket. I don't know what color student is. I don't know what the lifestyle is. But hard work should be taken into account in hiring and academia. Everybody agree? Anybody dissent?

But not skin color. That's on American. This DEI stuff is horrible. And I don't care if it's Costco or wherever it is, you guys need to take a look at that. I know you want to hire good people. Do it on merit. I love Costco.

But do it on merit. And if you know the person applying for the job is from a kind of a dicey situation, then you hire them. Right? How to get that off my chest, final thought. We'll have a brand new column on Sunday. We really appreciate you watching

and listening to the notes of the news. I'm Bill O'Reilly. We'll see you again on Monday.