Bill O’Reilly’s No Spin News and Analysis - No Spin News - Weekend Edition - February 22, 2025

Episode Date: February 22, 2025

Listen to this week's No Spin News interviews with Alexander Green, Scott Keatley and Dr. Veronique de Rugy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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She is the George Gibbs chairwoman in political and economy and senior research at the Mercatus Center, which is a libertarian think tank. I think I have that all right, all that doctor. You're at George Mason University in Virginia. They don't fund you, but that's where your office is. Right? Am I, so far am I, do I have it? Exactly correct, unlike many people. Okay.

So when you're watching this from afar, not too far, you're right across the Potomac. Is Trump doing anything wrong here, in your opinion? Listen, I'm, I was excited to see something I was not expecting with the election of President Trump is that government spending was going to be, and cutting government spending in ways fraud abuse, was going to be elevated to such a high national level. And that's a good thing. I mean, in the last eight years, we haven't talked about cutting spending. As you've laid out, we should be really concerned about it. And it just has been on the back burner.

no one is scared. And certainly the Department of Government Efficiency has elevated the profile of this. Especially, I think it is important. And finally, in 2025, someone is looking at improper payments, 95% of it, which are overpayments. And we're talking, it's like, you know, like improper payment is $236 billion a year. And fraud, actual fraud. Absolutely. And nobody disputes that, by the way. Nobody disputes it. No one disputes what you're saying. They just don't like Elon Musk. Yes. And so, I mean, and it's worth kind of, I was actually shocked by these numbers. In proper payment, I had been following that fraud, only what I know, and it was been projected in 2023 could have been north of $500 billion. This is not nothing. And this is something that should be non-controversial going after this. Why do you think it's controversial? Why is Elon Musk controversial?

I think right now everyone is so polarized that whatever it is Trump or Musk do, I mean, people are against it if you're going to be against something. But it's not controversial. I mean, the government accountability office puts out reports about improper payments and about frauds. And fraud, obviously, they tell you this is only what they know. And the problem... Yeah. Wait till they get into the Defense Department and the Department of Education? Oh, my God.

Where do they see that? But we have now the Democratic Party pretty much opposing the Doge office, and they're using civil liberties, classified information. They're using all that. But they don't want this. And historically, ever since World War II, Democrats have run on entitlements, major spending. They're not the cutback party, where the Republicans used to be the fiscally responsible, but then they, after 9-11, forget it. The Republicans went into the spending spree.

Now it seems like the GOP wants to come back a little. Is that your assessment? Sorry, I didn't hear your last sentence. Is that your assessment? Yeah, it's my assessment. But I think we also, we need to be careful in making a difference between what is improper payment and fraud and what we call waste. Because in a way, if you think about it, waste is in the eye of the beholder, right? I mean, a lot of the government spending that you and I may call waste, actually there's

a special interest behind it. And there's a politicians who could justify it and says, this is why I think we should be doing this and this is not at all waste. Right. And, and this is where I think that the Dodge people may run into a little trouble if they don't do more explaining about why they consider that some of this spending is, that's a good point. That's a good point. But when you see $50 million going to Burma, there's some kind of DEI program, Americans are not going to get back. Nobody's going to be able to explain that. I know what it's about.

It's about bribing the government there. This has been legally appropriated by Congress, right? I mean, that said, I mean, I guess I should refer to. No, they didn't appropriate that money. Considering the agencies. They didn't appropriate. They gave the money to the U.S. AID, but they didn't say give it a Burma. That's what people don't understand.

Congress doesn't micromanaged the spending. You're absolutely correct. The heads of the departments, they tell the people where the money's going. Congress just gives them the lump sum. Last word on this. I think this is hurting the Democratic Party. I think most Americans are willing to overlook some of Elon Musk's pomposity if he can get results. But the Democratic Party is going all in to try to discredit the whole thing.

I think that's a mistake. Your opinion? I think it's a mistake that they're not working along with Musk because I think it's not, it should be non-controversial that we have an enormous debt problem. And it's also not controversial that there's a lot that needs to be done. And by not working, by just being adversarial, they're not preventing some of the problems that Musk may be having. Like, for instance, there was like he put out a table on social security being paid to a lot of

people that probably have been dead for 150 years. And some serious analysts have said, it's weird because it doesn't actually quite, not that they weren't trusting Musk finding, but they were wondering whether some of it was his teams not understanding the way things were reported. There's a lot of collaboration that could exist to actually make this government run better. And by just being adversarial, we're not doing things that the American public deserves. I agree 100%. Dr. Well said. Thank you for helping us out. We appreciate very much. Are you ready to dairy free your mind? This summer melt away your dairy-free expectations with so delicious dairy-free frozen desserts. Enjoy mind-blowing flavors like salted caramel

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You're listening to the NoSpin News Weekend Edition. So there's a big outbreak in West Texas, and this is pretty vicious. Gaines County, 48 total cases, kids 5 to 17, getting a measles, they could kill you and scar you for life. 8% of kindergarten kids in Gaines County had vaccine exemptions. You can get a vaccine exemption, all right? And if you do, then you're more likely to get measles. RFK Jr., who's already in as a Health and Human Services Secretary, and he's an anti-Vax guy.

I don't expect him to do that while he's in office. I don't. There'll be so much outrage if he does. I think he's going to just put that in the bottom drawer. But one thing he has to do, because he promised to do it, and it's the only reason he was there, is regulate the food in America. Now, you've heard some people say, I don't want the food police. You need the food police. Because if you don't have them, you're going to die a painful death much earlier than you would have if the food police were out and about. So joining south of New York City is a dietician and nutritionist named Scott Keatley. He follows this very closely.

So I've been on a jihad to alert Americans about sugar. militarious effects and other junk food, which leads to obesity and diabetes and all kinds of disease. And the stats are unbelievable. I just threw them here, but let me pick them up. So in the United States in 2000, 25 years ago, 30% of adults are obese. Now it's 40%, 10% rise. And that's all bad diet, right? Absolutely. That's coming from consumer. We're assuming too many calories, not expending enough. We're eating way more junk food than we ever had. Why?

Why are we reading it? Why? Everybody knows junk food is bad for you. Why are we eating more? Why? Bill, it's delicious. I mean, it absolutely is. These companies have been working for 50 or 60 years on formulations of stuff, and it looks good.

When you see these interesting colors, you want to eat it. It tastes good. It's got high amount. Kids would fall for that, but adults, I mean, they know that they're, look, cigarette smoking is a narcotic. It makes you calm down. But the government has succeeded in knocking out most cigarette smoking in this country by scaring people. That's what they did, right? And it worked.

They definitely scared people, but what we did is we replaced cigarettes with something else. If you look at all the scare tactics around cigarettes, at the same time, you've got the rise of orange moka frappuccino's from Starbucks. So we replaced a lot of those cigarettes with food. All right. That's a good point. But still, Americans aren't that cognizant of what they're doing, in my opinion. And then they go to the doctor and they get the blood tests and they're type 2 diabetic already, and they're 40, 50 pounds overweight. And they're absolutely not.

They're not paying attention to what they're putting in their body because you have to do it every day, three or four times a day. And I'm not a cook. See, I don't cook. So I got to figure out what I'm going to eat. And 90% of my options are bad. Yes. I mean, unless I want just broccoli and you can't put any butter on it or legumes, you know. But if I want a steak.

that's bad. If I want pasta, that's bad. So I think people give up. Because if you go out there onto the internet, and you spoke about this earlier, if you go out there onto the internet, you will find every level of crazy and everything in between. And so you'll find people who are saying steaks the worst thing for you and butter's the worst thing for you. And then people on the other side will say, well, don't eat any fruit because that's bad for you. And it becomes maddening out there. All right, let me stop you there. So what are excellent for you?

Let me stop. What is the truth about fruit? So I like a glass of orange juice in the morning or grapefruit juice. I thought it was healthy and now it's not because it's got sugar in it, right? So there's going to be sugar in stock, but it's it's the natural sugar versus the added sugar. Okay, what's a difference? What's a difference?

So molecularly, there's no difference, but it's what you're expecting. So if you're drinking orange juice and it's great orange juice from South Florida, that's, you know, nothing in it other than just juice, it's got a certain amount of sugar in it. But if you get the cheaper stuff, it's going to have an extra five or ten grams of sugar. But you don't even really perceive that. You just know that. I look at the label, though. I look at every label of what I put into my body. Look, you'd be surprised at how old I am.

I got the same waist size I had in college, but it ain't easy, okay? No. It's not easy because there's a craving for dessert. I eat a couple of desserts a week, all right? I'm not a Spartan. But when I'm drinking my orange juice, I'm going, I think this is okay, but I'm not sure. So what I want, and I'm probably wrong on this, is the government to take a more proactive approach. almost put warning labels on the soft drinks that have 80 grams of sugar in them. I want warning labels, just like on the cigarette packs.

Is that food police craziness? That is not food police craziness. I think that we really need to define ultra-processed foods and put those labels right on the front for people. Why haven't they done it then? with obesity at 40% for zero for American adults. Come on. Why haven't the government done it?

You got to follow the money. There's very, very powerful people and very powerful companies out there that put a lot of money into the pockets of people that represent us. And this is not just a Republican issue or a Democrat issue. This is an everybody issue because food is so prevalent. And we've got to have people that are making. decisions who say, I don't want your money, I'm going to make decisions based on stuff that's good for the American people. All right. And there's one thing else. A lot of people I'm generalizing

here who are grossly overweight, obese, are poor. Not a lot of money. And the fast food stuff is cheap. Is that play into it? This episode is brought to you by San Pellegrino Chau. The kind made with real fruit juice, a pinch of Sicilian salt, and the sparkle of the Italian sun. With no added sugar and just 10 or less calories per can, enjoy with love from Italy. By San Pellegrino Chau now. This MailChimp-Forific jingle is brought to you by MailChimp. MailChimp your marketing with AI and more. Advanced automations to connect to your store.

MailChimp, Your Marketing. Marketing and booster clicks, multi-channel campaigns now with SMS, that's lit. MailChimp, your marketing today with the number one AI-powered email marketing and automation platform, Intuit MailChimp. Number one, based on publicly available data on competitors' customers. Plans vary. SMS available as that on. Visit MailChimp.com. So socioeconomic status definitely plays into it. If you don't have a whole lot of, if you don't have a whole lot of money, you probably don't have a whole lot of time. And I know that goes against what some people think. People think people are just sitting around doing nothing.

But you're probably working a job or two jobs that are not the greatest in the world. And so you can sit there and I can sit there and we can look at these labels. But other people don't necessarily have that time. And when you get home late at night, you've got to put something on the table. Right. It's convenient. You're tired. I can drive through the window.

They throw the bag at me and it's garbage. All right. I hope RFK Jr., that's the, you know. if he makes it a campaign and really wages this an aggressive way he'll save a lot of lives and we appreciate your time very much tonight scott thank you okay and i do that segment because i we want you guys to be healthy you know i've seen it i know what i know what diabetes is i don't have it thank god uh but it is in my DNA and i got to tamp it down like crazy because a lot of its heredity. And I'm not out in, you know, riding horseback for five hours a day and doing

all that stuff. I'm sitting on my butt talking to you guys. So, but I don't want, I just, I want everybody to be as healthy as they can big. This is the No Spin News Weekend Edition. The most important thing in your life beside family, friends, and your physical health, taking care of yourself, is your money. Why? Because we live in a capitalistic society where the competition for money is intense. There are ways to make money outside of corporations, outside of entrepreneurship. You've got to be very, very careful. The stock market is very, very risky. Gold and silver, very risky. But it can pay off.

We take American Heart for Gold and our sponsor for, I don't know, eight, nine years, eight years. And I do business with the Oxford Club, which is an investment company. It puts out a newsletter. And that's the only newsletter I get because the others, I don't trust them. Oxford Club has made me money overall. It's lost me money, too. when they recommend a stock that goes down, which is going to happen if you go into the market. Now, why am I telling you all this in a smart life segment?

Because now there's a transition between a heavily regulated government, Joe Biden, and a robust, let's say, capitalist Donald Trump, who doesn't want to, want government regulation. He wants all of this stuff to be in the marketplace. However, Trump's a big tariff guard. All right? And that's scaring people. And then there's AI, which is coming in big time. And then there's crypto. So the average American, and I work hard for my money, I bet you do too. We don't know what to do under the Trump economy. Joining us now is a man who I do business with, and I recently did a major interview with him to the Oxford Club, Alexander Green.

He's living large in the Bahamas, celebrating his anniversary, and, you know, when you're a capitalist and you do well, you can go to the Bahamas and, right, and pay all that hotel tariff out there. But anyway, I think I've set you up in a way that's fair. And I want people to be very, very cautious. I'm a conservative investor. As you know, I've known Alex now. I'm early 90s, so 30 years almost.

So look, first question, the stock market was pretty good under Biden. Why? Well, let's be clear. The last two years of the stock market, 2003, 2004, were good under Biden. And let's go a little further back, 2002, when Bidenomics had a chance to kick in. Remember, he's elected in 2020, he starts implementing his plans in 2022, 2021. By 2022, we have the highest inflation in more than 40 years. We have interest rates that have soared.

And the stock market, the S&P 500 declined 19% in 2022. The NASDAQ lost a third of its. value. The bond market with interest rates soaring had its worst year in over 100 years. And even a conservative, diversified portfolio, 60% stocks, 40% bonds had its worst year since 1940, pre-World War II. So Biden caused a lot of damage with his regulations, which shackled the oil and gas industry and businesses everywhere, his massive multi-trillion dollar deficit spending, which he was warned by even by liberal economists like Larry Summers, you're going to stoke the highest inflation we've seen since the 1980s, and that's exactly what we saw. But business is resilient,

business is adaptable, and by the 2023 and 2024, sales were up, profits were up, and the stock market was up again. But it wasn't due to Joe Biden. It was a recovery from Bidenomics, which even the Biden administration had to stop using because it had such a negative connotation. Right. And one of the big things was it started to drill oil again and the oil harvesting got ramped up, and this is from Mr. Global Warming. Now, Trump has been in office 31 days. The Dow is up 1.2 percent, 531 points, NASDAQ up 285, 1.4%. But every day when I check, it's up, it's down, it's in, it's out. I mean, this isn't, anything could happen. And that worries me as an investor. How do I get over that worry?

Well, you begin to get over it by recognizing that volatility is the norm. I mean, stock markets, if you could get the kind of superior returns that equities deliver with the smooth upward climb of a passbook saving account, everybody would have all their monies in equity. Volatility is really just the price of admission when you own stocks. But let me also say, Bill, remember, the market started to take off before Trump took office, when the election results came in and they saw that the, the, Kamala Harris was not going to be the victor and Donald Trump was going to be the new president,

stocks took off immediately. Why did they take off? Because not only was it not the end of democracy, as we were told in some quarters, but people know that Trump is a businessman. And he knows that wealth is created in the private sector, not in the public sector. The private sector is where innovation happened. It's where productivity happens. And an administration has policies that can either provide a headwind, which makes it tougher for businesses to grow and investors to get ahead or a tail win, which makes it easier for businesses to prosper and for investors as well. And what Trump wants to do by cutting both the corporate individual tax rates, putting money in consumers' pockets, and giving companies more money to spend on research and development

and new factories and new distribution channels and hire more employees and pay higher wages and better benefits, those are all positive for the economy. His policy, of killing 10 regulations for every new one created, hugely positive. I remember a bank president saying one time that he was hiring more compliance officers than he was loan officers. Why? Because the government set so many regulations. The bank was scared to death. It wasn't going to comply with all these regulations. And what does it do? It raises interest rates. It cuts into profits. It hurts stock market returns. So cutting cutting tax rates, deregulating, unshackling the domestic oil and gas industry, cutting

the waste, fraud, and abuse, these are all positive things for the economy, and that means it's positive for the stock market because if consumers are spending, if they're confident they're spending, and if they're spending, it's adding to corporate sales and ultimately corporate earnings. So I think that we're going to see a wonderful economy and stock market over the next four years. Okay, but remember now that most Americans don't have. a lot of reserve. So if they want to get into the market, some of them are borrowing money to get into it, which is what we saw in 1929. So I understand that on paper it looks like the Trump years might be very good for investors, but it's not a lot. Did you know that at Chevron,

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then you go to Oxford Club.com. Was it Oxford Club.com, right? ElectricClub.com, yes. Okay. You go there and then you can get what they have. But generally speaking, AI and the forward-looking stocks is what you're analyzing now, correct? Yes. Yeah, AI is a very big deal because it's going to increase productivity. I'm on AI every day. Before long, every student is going to have an AI tutor. Every businessman or business person is going to have an AI consultant. Every physician is going to have an AI researcher and assistant. Everybody's going to have an infinitely smart, infinitely available. infinitely cheap source of not just news and information, but strategy and questions asked and problem solved. And this is going to be huge for the economy.

That's why you're seeing all these big tech companies ramp up their AI spending because they know the demand is huge. And in my view, five years from now, there'll be companies that have making full use of artificial intelligence and companies that don't exist anymore because it's just that imperative. As big as the Internet was, in 1999 and 2000, AI is even bigger right now. And we're in the early stages. We're still top of the first inning wage. And you're trying to ferry out the companies with the most potential. But again, it's not that easy to do. I don't do crypto stuff, and I'm not even going to talk about it.

I just way too risky for me. That's a whole different thing. Yeah, you don't do a lot of crypto stuff. When I read your stuff, not a crypto in there, right? It's for gambler, not investors. Yeah, yeah. Okay. All right. So bottom on this is that you believe there's opportunity in a Trump administration

because it's a concentration of free market rather than government regulation. And when you recommend a stock that doesn't perform well, you tell everybody, but it's too late because we've lost the money. How do you feel about that? Well, first of all, you're absolutely right, Bill. If you're going to invest in stocks, you're going to have winners and you're going to have losers. Right. Ted Williams is the greatest hitter of all times. 60% of the time, he didn't get a hit. Still, he still was the greatest. Every investor, Warren Buffett, Peter Lynch, John Templeton, all the greats, they had losing positions.

And so you go into it with the idea that you're buying a business. And if that business grows in profitability, the share price is going to rise and you're going to share in that profitability. And if the business stumbles or runs into competition, then if it can't meet effectively, it's going to work out poorly. We use, as you know, Bill, trailing stops. Yeah, you put stops on the stock. So if it goes a certain level, it automatically sells. All right, Alexander Green, Oxford Club, Oxford Club.com.

Appreciate it. Alex. Have fun in Bahamas. Thank you for listening to the NoSpin News Weekend Edition. To watch the full episodes of the NoSpin News, visit Bill O'Reilly. com and sign up to become a premium or concierge member. That's Bill O'Reilly.com. Sign up and start watching today.