Bill O’Reilly’s No Spin News and Analysis - Did Pete Hegseth Make the Case for Trump's Iran Action? How Rising Oil Prices Are Affecting the Economy With EJ Antoni, & Democrats Fuel Airport Chaos

Episode Date: March 10, 2026

Hey BillOReilly.com Premium and Concierge Members, welcome to the No Spin News for Monday, March 9, 2026. Stand Up for Your Country.  Talking Points Memo: Bill breaks down the latest on the Iran War, from rising oil prices to Pete Hegseth’s 60 Minutes interview. Senior Fellow at Unleash Prosperity EJ Antoni joins the No Spin News to discuss whether Americans will feel economic pain from the Iran War and how Putin comes out the winner in this situation. How the Democrats’ refusal to fund Homeland Security is causing chaos at airports across the country. Crime in San Francisco is so out of control that two police officers on Mayor Daniel Lurie’s security detail were injured during an altercation.  The House Oversight Committee concluded that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s (D) administration was aware of the fraud but failed to take action. What happens next? Final Thought: Bill's launching his new interview podcast, We’ll Do It Live! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, Bill O'Reilly here. Welcome to the NOSPN News Monday, March 9, 2006. Stand up for your country. So I'm walking up to do the program to tape it. We do that in the late afternoon. And I got a poll handed to me, NBC News. It's like a fair poll, registered voters, even Democrat-Republican, independent 16. And it's pretty good news for Donald Trump. Pretty surprising. So job approval. He's a job approval. He's up one point since October. Okay, approved 44, disproved 54. So he's actually improved with the Iranian stuff. Wow.

This is interesting. Do you have a positive or negative opinion of the following people? Trump, positive 41, negative 53, 12 point difference. Kamala Harris, positive 34, negative 51. 17 point difference. Whoa, Kamala. And Gavin Newsom, who's running for president in 2008, positive only 27 percent, negative 45, 18 percent difference. So, Donald Trump's, people are waiting to see about this Iranian situation. And that is the subject of this evening's talking points memo. Okay, so the stock market opened today down 800 points,

and you know, it goes up and it goes down, but it's lost more than 2,000 points since February 28th, the start of the Iranian conflict. Okay, so if you have stocks, hold on, because they'll come back, but painful. Oil is the worst. So oil was $72 a barrel at the start of the Iranian conflict. It's now way above $100. About $104. Now, that's a problem because it just spirals into everything. Food costs, travel costs, on and on.

I'll get to that in a moment. And then inflation ignites because everybody's paying more money for the products because oil drives commerce in not only United States. States, but the world. So this is the key component now in the Iraq war. The Strait of Hormuz is where the oil tankers, 20% of the world's oil comes through the Persian Gulf. They've got to go through the Strait of Hormuz, which is fairly closed. So it's easy to attack it with drones, which is what Iran is doing, but they're running out of drones, I understand. and some ships are getting through.

So 16 million barrels of oil a day has been held up worldwide. And that just means everybody is going to suffer the whole world. I do believe that will unclog itself because, as I said, the Iranian munitions, your ability to attack, is declining rapidly. Secretary of War Pete Higgseth, we're on 60 minutes last night. Now, some of you will remember, I was not a supporter of him being appointed to that position, Secretary of War because he's too young. And I was at Harvard talking to the students at the Kennedy School on Thursday.

And Mr. Hexeth has a Harvard Kennedy School degree. He got in 2013 public policy. My master's degree is public administration, but it's pretty much the same thing. Hexman is a smart guy. All right, but he's a little bit too undisciplined, in my opinion. But here, in the Iran situation, he did pretty well, I thought, and you want to be fair about it. He didn't make any major gaffs. He came across a little cocky, and that doesn't do anybody any good.

I think that's his nature. I mean, I do that, but I wouldn't do it if I were talking about war. I think you've got to be very circumspect. Now, HECSeth addressed two questions by Major Garrett. You remember that name. Major Garrett used to work at Fox News. Excellent correspondent. CBS is working him into the big interviews because he's not an ideologue.

He's not a liberal. He's neutral. I don't know what Major is, and I've known him for 30 years. I don't know what he is. but he conducted a very good interview. All right, here's the first part of it. Go. This is war.

This is conflict. This is bringing your enemy to their knees. Now, whether they will have a ceremony in Tehran Square and surrender, that's up to them. Okay, so that's the mission to break Iran. Now, when you use war as regime change, okay, I mean, they, United States and Israel and a few others, not that many, want a different mentality running the country. So they want to be able to inspect all the nuke sites because they can't develop nuclear weapons and get rid of all the ballistic missiles that are aimed at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

That's what they want. And that has to happen. They will not stop until that happens. Now, there's a variety of ways to get there. You can sign a treaty. You could have new people. Persian people himself could rise up. There's a lot of coulds.

But it's going to be a different country. Okay, sooner or later, and let's hope it's sooner. The second thing is about, and this is what the left-wing media is obsessed with, U.S. casualties. Go. There will be more casualties. And no one is, I mean, especially our generation knows what it's like to see Americans come home in caskets. But that doesn't weaken us one bit. It stiffens our spine and our resolve to say this is a fight we will finish.

Okay. I don't have any problem with that. I would have a problem if infantry were put into Iran. That would not be good. Base of all what happened in Iraq. So we can't do that. Afghanistan was a different situation. But there are enough militants in Iran, Revolutionary Guard types, that it's just impossible to protect Western troops.

So you break them in a variety of ways the Iranian government, but I can't imagine President Trump putting infantry in there. And I'm not going to use the word boots on the ground because that's a stupid cliche. these people, a booth on the ground. Okay. We're not going to have mechanized units roll in. I'll give you an interesting aside. Last week, we edited out my analysis of the Kurds, which were reported that they were going to go in and fight on the ground.

Now, the Kurds are a group of people, some of whom have descendants in Iran. Some are Turkish, some are Iraqi. It's across the board. Now, I did not believe the report because of resupply. You can't supply them. And I had that in my talking points to tell you. And then this report comes, well, the Kurds are already in there. So I didn't want to mislead anybody, so I pulled it.

But it turns out I was right. And when I pulled it, I went to the producer, I went, and I don't know about this. It does not seem right to me. Just be skeptical of what you hear. Do not believe all of this stuff. Okay. Now, back to the USA and how it is responding to Iran. So the Senate Minority Leader, Senator Charles Schumer, says we should open the oil reserves.

And I had that exact thought, which frightens me because I don't want to be on the same wavelength of the Schumer who I don't respect. But that should happen. So let's put the oil reserves into the marketplace to keep a lid on the rising costs of gasoline. Okay. Now, we did some research. The Biden administration gutted the oil reserves. You remember that to try to get inflation down. They threw everything out.

They didn't have anything left. Trump has tried to replace it, but he started only in last fall and signed a bunch of contracts to replace it, the oil. So I don't know how much oil left in the reserves, but the Trump administration is trying to replace the stuff that the Biden people put out there, just so you know. All right. Finally, President's trying to do the right thing here.

This is important. The right thing is to confront Iran because Iran is a terrorist state that wants to develop a nuclear weapon. That's reality. Everybody knows that. The Iranians say that. We have a right to develop a nuclear weapon. Okay. So the right thing to do is to prevent them from doing that.

Nobody knows a time frame. Nobody knows what secret labs they might have or anything like that. So Trump is trying to do the right thing for the world, not just for the United States, for the world. But sometimes the right thing is the hardest thing to do. Right? In your life, when my urchins come to me with a problem and it's a difficult problem, I said, well, what do you think the right thing is to do? And they'll come up with an answer.

But it's always painful to do the right thing. Always. You know, in theory, it was the correct thing to try to provide a measure of freedom to the South Vietnamese. It was to protect them from totalitarianism. But it couldn't happen. because of a variety of problems. But we did the right thing, and it worked in Korea,

but it didn't work in Vietnam. So sometimes the right thing can't be done. The right thing is to remove Putin. He's a menace to the world. He's a murderer. He's a psychopath. But he's got nukes, and he could use him. But the people who are attacking President Trump for doing the wrong thing are lying to you.

Not the wrong thing. And that's a memo. In California, I feel sorry for you guys. So the national average of gasoline in California, the golden state, the biggest state in the country, is $5.20. National average, even after all the carnage in Iran, $3.48. Now, there's a study from the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business, which is a good school of business, says by the end of this year, U.California is going to pay $8 a gallon for gas. Why? Because of cap and invest, which is a state law requiring oil companies to go through amazing amount of hoops to market their product, because it's a polluter.

So the Marshall School says, get ready in California for $8 a gallon. So you know. Now joining us now from Arlington, Virginia is E.J. Antony, he's a senior fellow at Unleash Prosperi. That's Stephen Moore's economic group. And he's also a chief economist for the Heritage Foundation. All right, so United States Americans are going to experience economic pain, correct? Yeah, absolutely, Bill. And thank you so much for having me.

Look, the unfortunate reality here is that energy affects everything we do and everything we buy. This is part of the reason why inflation was so painful under the Biden years. It was because of their war on reliable American energy. And one of the big problems we're facing now, Bill, is that although we are, using less oil in a lot of our day-to-day use. For example, millions of Americans now have electric vehicles, so they're not spending anything on gasoline. The problem is that as time has gone on, we spend much more on energy for non-energy uses. I can give you one example.

American farmers buy most of their synthetic fertilizer from Europe, and that fertilizer, the primary ingredient is urea. It's derived from natural gas. So they take natural gas in lab, they chemically alter it, and that's how you get that, again, the main ingredient for synthetic fertilizer. Well, what's going on right now with natural gas prices in Europe? They've basically doubled. That is going to impose a dramatically higher input cost on American farmers, even though domestic prices for energy have not actually moved that much since the start of this war in Iran. Yeah. Again, those linkage all over the place helps Putin because Putin's got oil to sell, and there's a lot of embargo on that.

But believe me, they'll break the embargo the country's will. If they're desperate for oil, food prices are the ones that Americans are complaining about the most. We can expect those food prices to rise. The question is how much, right? Exactly, Bill. You're spot on. And I'm so glad you brought up Putin because, unfortunately, this is one of the saddest things about this whole conflict, right? Now, Putin really is the big winner because he in a lot of ways is the marginal producer. And he's one of those, Russia is one of those nations where higher energy prices right now

help not hurt because they are such a large net exporter. So these higher prices, unfortunately in the short term, are literally funding his war machine against the Ukraine. And sadly, even though so many countries in Europe are giving aid to Ukraine, they are giving more to Russia in the form of those energy purchases. And they need them. Now, the United States has an advantage because we are control of Venezuela in oil content. All right.

And we have a robust domestic production because that's what President Trump did when he first got in, pull the regulations off. Do we have enough oil here to keep prices under control? Bill, the problem is that combination. Do we have enough oil? Yes, but at what price? In other words, because look, we have rolled back a lot of Biden error regulations. That's true, but there's a long way to go. In other words, there's still such a high regulatory cost in this country that there's a lot of oil production that simply isn't profitable at $60, $60 or even $100 a barrel, but crank it up to $120, $130, and all of a sudden all of these wells become profitable. So yes, we have enough oil, but the question is at what price? The other thing, and I'm so glad you brought up Venezuela, we do have that. One of the problems with sources like Venezuela, though, although it is a very large supply of oil, it's also the quality of oil here. Taking Iranian crude off the market is a big problem because of the high quality. Oftentimes, refiners will actually buy light, sweet crude so that they can blend it with heavy sour, crude to make it easier to process. So by taking the most valuable crude off the market, it hurts more than taking two or three times as much of the less valuable crude off the market. Now, the Trump people say that when the conflict ends with Iran, that the prices will all

come back down to where they were before the war. Do you believe that? I believed it on Friday before the weekend. The reason that all changed on the weekend is because all of a sudden we saw these strikes against Iranian oil infrastructure, and then Iran returned the favor and started striking other oil infrastructure in the area. So now it's not just a matter of turning the pumps on and off, which is a multi-week process, to be clear, you don't turn on and off oil infrastructure like you do a light switch. It takes weeks or months, but now you're talking in some cases years because you have to literally rebuild what was just blown up over the weekend. So unfortunately, again, after the developments of this weekend, I'm not nearly as

confident we'll be able to return mid-east oil production to where it was before the conflict. But can't Saudi Arabia and the other Arab states fill the gap that Iran has because they are not going to be able to produce as much well? I think OPEC could fill that gap, no? to a certain extent, Bill, absolutely, yes, there is a lot of excess production capacity right now. And so you could fill the bulk of that missing production. Absolutely, that's a very, very good point. The question just becomes, how extensive is the damage going to be before I ran Cry's Uncle here? Look, we're basically, if you want to think of it in World War II terms, we're already in 1945. It is very clear the allies are going to win. not the axis. The question then becomes, can the axis inflict enough damage that the allies give up beforehand? And that was really the mentality that Germany and that Japan had. Sure. That's what the weapon they have now is the economy. Final question. The president is supposed to meet with Xi and China and Beijing in April. And China is dependent on Iranian oil. And they'll buy from

Putin, and they'll make that up. But I expect an oil deal where our country sends oil to China. I think that's going to be part of any equation that happens over in Beijing. Yeah, Bill, it's a great, great point, and it would certainly be very, very advantageous for the United States if we could start being that marginal producer instead of bad actors like Iran or like Russia. If the United States, and again, this is going to require rolling back more of those regulations, if the United States could be that marginal producer, and now we have China over a barrel, as opposed to what was the situation just a few weeks ago, where China is buying so much from Iran and buying it under the table at a discount that it really, really benefits the CCP.

But China has not said of work. So I know there's stuff in play there that we, don't know about. Mr. Antony, thanks very much. Very good interview and I hope you'll come back. Thanks again. All right, Cuba didn't have any oil and they had a big blackout on March 4th last Wednesday. And they can't even, you can't fly there because they can't refuel the jets. That's how bad it is in Cuba. I expect Cuba to make a deal with the USA, brokered by Secretary of State Rubio, who's Cuban and has a motion invested in this, whereby the government there in Havana basically gives up, says, okay, we won't be communists anymore,

and then we'll rebuild, and it'll be kind of like an alliance, but like in Venezuela, Havana will do what Washington tells them to do. I expect that to happen fairly soon. It's never too early to plan your summer story in Europe with WestJet, from rolling countryside to cobblestone,

Streets. Begin your next chapter. Book your seat at Westjet.com or call your travel agent. WestJet, where your story takes off. Okay. Hope I'm right, but all right. Now here we have chaos at the airports because of the TSA not being funded. So in Houston, they say three and a half hours, New Orleans three hours, you have to wait to get through security. because 50,000 TSA screeners are not getting paid. And that has created chaos. Now, all of this is because the Democratic Party wants, in writing, changes to the Department of Homeland Security and ICE.

And they're not going to vote to fund Department of Homeland Security until I get concessions on that front, and President Trump says no. Well, if you're planning on flying, this is another thing that we're going to have to deal with. The president also says that Democrats don't pass the Save America Act, which is voter ID, we would provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship

when you register to vote with your state. Remember the state's control. Democrats don't want that. I talked to a stalwart Democrat over the weekend. I mean, it's a fanatical Democrat. And it's the same old stuff. Oh, you know, people don't have an ID. The states will give you an ID free.

They'll come and give you the ID. Oh, married women with different names. It's always something. All right. Now, the polls say the vast majority of Americans want this, 71%. Support voter ID and 71% encompasses some Democrats. Will they get this done? I think they might get this done.

Maybe they'll modify a couple of things, but, you know, Democrat Party killing themselves. And that was my column. yesterday, if you didn't read it on Bill O'Reilly.com, President Trump's biggest enabler, the people helping him the most, aren't MAGA, the Democratic Party. That's who's helping the president. So I hope you read the column on Bill O'Reilly.com.

Okay, announcement, Thursday, March 26th, News Nation, Bill O'Reilly Special, the collapse of San Francisco. It's good. Now, over the weekend, the mayor of San Francisco a guy named Daniel Lorry, who wouldn't talk to me. I talked to Willie Brown, the former mayor, for the special, but Daniel ran, ran away. I want to talk about the collapse of the city. So he's driving with his security detail and three thugs go out in the street, block his car. Security detail gets out and is a brawl.

And two cops are hurt. And the mayor just stands there and watches it. Okay? So you imagine this. Crime in San Francisco is so far out of control. They attack the mayor's limousy. And getting in brawl with cops. Here's what Lori said. Go.

I saw two individuals in the middle of a street, not on the sidewalk, but literally in the middle of a street. And I was worried about them. And I was worried about, you know, safety of pedestrians and cars coming. So I stopped. We asked them to get up. And then the incident began. Obviously, that incident unfolded. I'm just really happy that the members of my detail are okay.

Well, I had to go to the hospital. At least one of them did. So the two suspects were arrested, Abraham Simon, nobody knows anything about him. And a guy named Tony Phillips, who was previously arrested for a homicide. He stabbed somebody to death, allegedly. And they dropped the charges on him.

Oh, my God. And then he has other arrests. This guy, Phillips. They're all involved with the drug trade. So far, I've had a control in that town. So Thursday, this month, 26th of March, 9 p.m., News Nation, the collapse of San Francisco. I was right in the middle of it. All right, the House Oversight Committee, as you know, we covered it last week, interviewed Minnesota

Governor Tim Walz and the Attorney General of that state, Keith Ellison. And they say that both knew about fraud and did nothing about it for six years. At Desjardin Insurance, we know that when you're a building contractor, your company's foundation needs to be strong. That's why our agents go the extra mile to understand your business and provide tailored solutions for all its unique needs. You put your heart into your company, so we put our heart into making sure it's protected. Get insurance that's really big on care. Find an agent today at Dejardin.com slash business coverage. Getting ready for a game means being ready for anything.

Like packing a spare stick. I like to be prepared. That's why I remember 988, Canada's suicide crisis helpline. It's good to know just in case. Anyone can call or text for free confidential support from a train responder anytime. 988 suicide crisis helpline is funded by the government in Canada. So the governor and the Attorney General knew 300 million of federal aid was being ripped off and didn't do anything about it. That's what the House Oversight Committee says.

Oversight Committee has not, doesn't have any kind of arrest powers or indictment powers. Now, will they turn it over to the FBI? I hope so. But I get letters, oh, nothing ever happens, nothing ever happened to you. The only thing that happens is that it's exposed. Okay, but I don't expect Walls and Ellison to be arrested. But do I believe they knew about it? Yeah.

All right, big announcement after this message. Okay, final thought. I told you a few weeks ago we're going to be doing some different things here on the no-spin news. And one of them is a new podcast. Now, I hate the word podcast. Because everywhere I go, oh, we love your podcast. I don't do a podcast. Now I'm going to do one.

I do a broadcast. This is another podcast. Podcasts guys in sweatshirts sitting around smoking pot. Or, you know, that's somebody garage. So we're going to do this differently, this podcast thing. It's going to be every Thursday. It's going to have three days of hard news, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then a longer form on Thursday that's relevant to the news.

Okay? So, first one is this coming Thursday, Rob Schneider. He's a big Trump guy, S&L alum. You've seen him with Adam Sandler in the movies. And he lets a fly about how he's been hurt in the entertainment industry and why Jimmy Kimmel is and things like that. It's very interesting. So here's a clip. Go. my latest comedy special probably would not get on Netflix now the stuff that I'm doing and that's okay because the whole landscape is shifting dramatically whereas you know I haven't been on late night TV because if you're conservative it's like they are you know they they say we need equity and equality and diversity but they don't want diversity of thought that's right they want diversity of it's a shame it is a shame because it's diminishing because you know you need to have your uncertainties questioned, your foundational thinking needs to be challenged. So make it better and to be open. And the fact that they don't have me on the late night TV is sad for them. But it also, it affects their ratings because I can do a tweet now. And I can have millions of people see that or put out something on X or put it on Instagram and millions of people see that and maybe 150,000 people watch the late night. Now we get into why Mr. Schneider left California. And then his interaction. with very powerful people in the entertainment industry why I like Trump what

about you know about the president had drawn him in and all that so we're gonna do that on Thursday and obviously you want your feedback on this thing so if you like it we'll continue it if you don't like it then we'll go back to the old format but I think it's worth doing I'm not in this social media world I don't live in this world okay but I see the stats enormous interest in a longer form getting to know certain people better. And that's what we're going to do. It's not going to go more than an hour. And for you premium and concierge members, we've got a special that nobody else will see but you guys. And I understand, because I

talked to Adam Sandler on the phone before Schneider came in to do the interview because they're best buds. And I was getting all of that. kinds of good stuff from Sandler, but they recorded the conversation. Unden be knows to me. And we'll use a little laugh for you premium and concierge members on Thursday. So finally, it's called We'll Do It Live. I hate that because when I was 12 years old, I screamed at the television camera. We'll do it live with some F-bombs.

You know, give me a break. I'm a teenager. And that is, of course, stayed very. there forever. So that's what the name of the podcast is. We'll do it live. My staff forced, I didn't, I said, we can't do it. No, no, we have to do it. All right, okay. So lots of stuff swirling, right? Thank you very much for watching and listening to the no spin news tonight. I'm Bill O'Reilly. We'll see you tomorrow.