Bill O’Reilly’s No Spin News and Analysis - No Spin News - Weekend Edition - January 17, 2026

Episode Date: January 17, 2026

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Welcome to the No Spin News Weekend Edition. Let's go to the Clinton's Bill and Hillary. They've been asked to testify in the front of the House Oversight Committee tomorrow and Wednesday, the president tomorrow and the former Secretary of State on Wednesday. They're not going to show up. I'll be stunned if they show up. So what happens then? The Oversight Committee, James Comer,

says, you know, we want your depositions, closed-door private, about Epstein. Why? Because Bill Clinton took 26 trips aboard Epstein's plane, a lot of them in conjunction with the Clinton Foundation, which Hillary Clinton is a chief officer of. That's why. That's legit, I think, right? So they're supposed to show up, but they're not going to show up. And then what happens? Joyce now from Washington is lawyer Bob Driscoll. He is a partner in Dickinson and Wright.

He is very well experienced in these matters. So we have a frame of reference with Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon. Both defied subpoenas to appear before Congress, and both were sent to prison because of it, correct? Yes. They both blew off their subpoenas completely. There was a referral to the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice prosecuted both of them and gained convictions.

In both cases, went up on appeal, and both convictions were upheld. Okay, so that was Merrick Garland and Joe Biden, the president. And they put them in the jail. and Navarro and Panon both said, okay, I'm willing to do the time. Now, that's not going to happen with Bill and Hillary Clinton, is it? I wouldn't be so sure. I think it could happen. Do you think they're sitting present? A former president of the United States is going to get sentenced to prison because he won't show up and testify?

I think there's a chance. I think the precedent is there. The better approach for him to take would be to show up. and object if they can object to specific questions, as harassing, as irrelevant, as simply asking embarrassing questions for the sake of that. But the ability of Congress to issue subpoenas is pretty well established.

There are limited circumstances where courts have held that Congress has gone too far. But I think that he's in better shape to protect himself by either showing up and objecting to the questions, having his lawyer object to the questions he thinks go too far, he doesn't want to answer. or by filing suit immediately before he's supposed to show up in trying to challenge the subpoena in a federal court in Washington. But to just blow off the subpoena puts him at risk of being held in contempt because the committee can hold him in contempt,

refer to the whole House to hold him in contempt, and then the House would vote to hold him in contempt and make a referral to the Department of Justice. Yeah, the House is so close, though, it might not, you know, he might not get, you might not lose. But even if they don't show up this week, and are you thinking they're going to show up tomorrow and Wednesday? My guess would be that they will either show up or they will file suit in D.C. to try to challenge a subpoena and drag it out in litigation. I just think it's too big a risk to not show up at all. The case law is pretty clear that the courts do not like it if you blow off subpoena completely. If there's a dispute over what you say when you're there, okay. I got it, but there's no tomorrow, we looked at the House oversight schedule, there's nothing on it.

The subpoena still stands. So I understand, though, that they would have a second chance. They would get warned by Comer, and if they don't come next time or whatever, then they're going to get it. Will they give them a second chance if they don't show up this week? Typically, the way this would work and the way the chances he would get is the committee would schedule a vote to vote on contempt. and presumably he could cure his contempt by saying he would show up before they took that vote. After that, the whole House could vote. The other thing that's happened this year that's a new development in this area of law is

Jim Jordan made a referral of a witness for his committee straight to the Department of Justice for obstruction when he didn't like the, he thought the witness was too obstreperous and wouldn't answer the questions and he made a straight referral to the Department of Justice without going through contempt hearing. So I just think there's a lot of risk for the former president and the former first lady to not show up at all. They've got experienced counsel. I'm sure they're looking at all this. But I mean, I wouldn't bank on him. If there were a Democratic DOJ, okay, great.

They would probably be open to hearing that this is a harassing subpoena and doesn't have to do with the merits. That's going to be very tough. When you're on a play. But this DOJ, they're not going to want to hear that. No. And I think that they're going to look at it. They're going to be sure over the banning case. And they're going to say, look, if our guy had to go to jail, so do you.

That's partisan, no. It'll, as you know, go beyond the, it'll go into the federal court system. And if you are on Epstein's plane 26 times under the banner of the Clinton Foundation, you've got to ask the questions about that. So the courts are going to go, it's a legitimate line of questioning. This isn't something just to embarrass the Clint's. last work. I think not showing up puts him in the worst position because his argument there is there's not one

relevant question I could be asked. And that's clearly not true. The better course for him is to show up and answer what is fairly asked and object if he thinks they're trying to make a spectacle of it or asking inappropriate questions just for the sake of exposing personal flaws he may have. Okay. I think not showing up is not a great idea for him and I think he's at risk if he doesn't do it. All right, well, we're obviously on it. Thank you, Counsel. Appreciate your time very much. You're listening to the NoSpin News Weekend Edition.

All right, so the Justice Department is investigating Jerome Powell, the Fed chair. Now, nobody cares about this, but I do. I'm one of the few that do, 72 years old. And Trump hates this guy. And so a lot of people say it's another revenge play by the president, Jerome Powell being investigated, but a little bit more here. So Powell had to testify in front of Congress about a $2.5 billion, $2.5 billion renovation of Fed headquarters in Washington.

Now, how do you spend $2.5 billion on a building renovation? How is that possible? I like to know it's my money. So I'm not real sympathetic to Powell. All right. I understand a personal animus here. But, hey, $2.5 billion? Joining us now from Philadelphia.

Anthony Esposito, he's a founder and CEO of Ascalon Six Capital. Okay, so he follows all financial things, including the Fed. What's really going on here in your opinion, Mr. Esposito? I think that Jerome Powell, and Bill, thank you so much for having me, first of all. Jerome Powell has positioned himself in a really bad way with the president because he's done two things that President Trump despises. First, he's attacked America. Second, he's attacked President Trump.

And he's done both of those things through his seat at the Fed and monetary policy. How is he attacked America? He's attacked America with his use of interest rates. If you go back to Trump, one, and I'm not. I've looked at this pretty in depth. If you go back to Trump 1, we had a strong economy. We had low inflation, sub 2%, and Jerome Powell decided that he needed to increase interest rates

heading into the tail end of that election, the tail end of that term heading into the election. That made zero sense. Jerome Powell's consistently saying that he's data-driven. There was no data at that time to support raising rates into a healthy economy with good employment and with low interest rates. Keep in mind his mandate is full employment and price stability. We were in that position.

He was raising rates. He then was told to cut rates by President Biden when he came into office. He cut 175 basis points in 10 days, which is unheard of in 2020, brought rates to basically zero. And then in 2021 into 22, jacked rates up as inflation was going ballistic, and we had 12, 13, 14, 14 percent inflation rate under President Biden, threw rates up and created a regional banking crisis. That was that scenario at that point.

Then we have a point where he is, where it was steady in rates. We're coming into the election. And he decides to cut rates again, 50 basis points heading into the election to be supportive of, or you can make a very strong argument to be supportive of Kamala Harris, because there was really no reason to cut rates at that point. Okay. All right. So we got it.

We got it. So Trump believes, and I think you're right, that number one, Powell is a deep state, guy who favors the Democratic Party and was manipulating the U.S. economy to get Democrats elected. Correct? That's what Trump believes, right? I think he pulls back the U.S. economy when he needs to under Trump, and I think he manipulates the rates to benefit the Democrats. Okay, but Powell's out of there. He's retiring in May, so why go after him on a Justice Department beef? Well, now I think you get to the point of the personal attack on President Trump. President Trump is taking this, in my opinion, as an attack on him. He's not only using the rates

to hurt the economy and hurt the American worker, he's actually hurting Trump, whether it be downplaying or pushing back against an economy that's shrung under term one, whether it be trying to influence voters heading into the election last year. I think that Trump at this point is not a fan of Powell. There's no hiding that. But I think when the Justice Department decides to investigate or or at least just ask the questions about what he said under oath in front of Congress, in front of the Senate, I don't think President Trump is going to step up and say, I don't think that we should do that. He's a big boy.

He should be able to answer questions. Yeah, I mean, $2.5 billion is a lot of dollars. Sure is. You know, come on. All right. So there is a bit of retribution in your opinion in the Justice Department, but there's enough legitimacy to make it not some kind of control. tribe situation.

I would say I don't think President Trump had anything to do with the subpoena, but I'm sure that he's not losing sleep over it. No, but he knew about it. I mean, you know how it's the top down Washington run. He might not have known about it before it was issued, but certainly he's up to speed. All right, Mr. Esposito, thanks very much. Very kind of you to help us, and we appreciate it very much. This is the No Spin News Weekend Edition.

There's been a lot going on foreign policy-wise in this hemisphere, and we'll get to Iran in a moment. But there's a guy that we like. He's a professor of history at the University of Arkansas, and he's got a book, John Quincy Adams, a man for the whole people. And Adams is very involved with foreign policy because he was an ambassador overseas in the early part of our republic. and Randall Woods, Dr. Woods, joins us now from Fayetteville, Arkansas. So you say, apparently, that John Quincy Adams would not have approved of Donald Trump trying to reshape this hemisphere to be more pro-American. Do I have it correct?

No, I think that he would have proved efforts to recreate the Americas to suit our interest I'm not sure he would have gone about it in exactly the same way. You know, the Monroe Doctrine was both expansionist and isolationist. It was a warning to Europe, the Holy Alliance, to stay out of hemispheric affairs. But it was also a kind of statement that the hemisphere was going to be, we were going to be the hegemon in the hemisphere and not Europe. Right, but I would get an A in your class because my hand would go. up and go, hey, doctor, did you know that John Quincy Adams, the Secretary of State under

James Monroe? How about that? Okay, that's an A. So that when the Monroe Doctrine was forged, John Quincy Adams was standing right there going, yay, and now we have the Don Roe doctrine, which isn't that much difference in the Monroe doctrine? It's really not, is it? Yeah, it is.

the, it's about the kind of threat. You know, the U.S.-Latin American relations is a history of U.S. intervention in Latin America from the Spanish-American War when we converted Cuba into a protectorate through Theta Roosevelt's Big Stick, and then Woodrow Wilson's missionary diplomacy. We intervened, you know, in the 19th.

1930s because of the threat of Japanese and Nazi aggression, and then during the Cold War to combat Castroism and the threat of Sino-Soviet imperialism. But I don't think there's the existential threat now. Well, let me challenge you on that. Narcotics flooding into this country killing millions of Americans over periods of time. And they're coming from nations in Central and South America. That's a national security threat, is it not? Nobody's forcing Americans to take drugs.

No, no, that's true. But you have, no, no, no, right. Nobody forces anybody, and I have been very harsh on drug addicts because they're helping these cartels. However, that doesn't negate the threat to the country because we have a bunch of idiots that want to get high. And these cartels and Mediota, Medoro, and the Colombian guy, who's going to be neutralized very quickly soon,

these are people making money off hurting our country. So president's supposed to just do nothing about it? Is that what you're saying? I'm not sure that's a good reason. I think the Maduro was a bad actor. He's a bad actor. He's a corrupt guy. He's got indictments all over the place.

There's a lot of other corrupt regimes around the world. Well, you're doing a what about now. We'll knock them down one by one. You got Noriega out of there. It was in a scream policy then, and it's the same thing with Maduro. And now, did you know that Maduro seized, along with Chavez in Venezuela, $19 billion with the U.S. assets? And people are complaining about Trump seizing their oil or regulating your oil?

What is supposed to do? Just walk away, doctor, of $19 billion in theft? Is that what you would do? Why did Donald Trump pardon the Honduran president? What? Say that again? Why did Donald Trump pardon a convicted drug dealer, the former president of Honduras? Well, he did that for political reasons inside of Honduras, as I explained on this broadcast. And it was about getting a pro-American party elected.

And this guy, this thugged that we convicted, is still popular down there. And that's why he did. It was a purely political move. So, but you can what about all day long. I'm not saying that everything Donald Trump does is correct. I'm saying the overarching of challenging anti-American countries, countries that are hurting me, my children, my family, is a legitimate way to use our power. Last word. Absolutely, I agree with you. I just think it's, there's a better way to do it.

What better way? Then how would you stop all the tons of our narcotics coming in. If you look at the history of regime changes during the Cold War, they use the CIA. But what's what they do use it now? The CIA ran that entire Venezuela in operation. The CIA is an alternative to armed intervention. The CIA designs the military operations, military action. The Pentagon carries them out. Anyway, very provocative. The book is John Quincy Adams, a man for the whole people. And I'm sure you knew this, Doctor, that John Quincy jumped naked into the Potomac River every day.

You know, I don't know that had anything to do with its foreign policy, but you get a little brisk. Okay. Thanks. You're listening to the NoSpin News Weekend Edition. That is a website called Mediaite. It deals with a lot of press stuff. And it's a good website.

It used to tilt really far left, and they brought it back to left center. As a guy who created it, along with a few others, Dan Abrams, Kobe Hall. He writes a column, and a column is pretty good. Enough is enough. It's basically criticizing Donald Trump's overreach as president of the United States. I'll read you a portion here, and then we'll bring in Mr. Hall. What distinguishes the current moment is not the impulse to push boundaries,

but the scale speed and brazenness with which these accumulated precedents are being exploited. Obama used drones and faced criticism, but operated within executive branch legal frameworks. Trump exacts extracts foreign leaders and announces it is a fait of complete. At home, the same logic is playing out through federal law enforcement. ICE agents are defended reflexively before facts are known, investigations are complete. Oversight is dismissed as obstruction, questions are treated as a tax. Powers insulated first, examined later, unquote. Kobe Hall joins us now from Brooklyn. So the mindset of the President of the United States is that his opposition is so entrenched

that they don't care about what's good for the country. And so he has to cut through that. He can't go to Congress and say, I want to remove Maduro, and then Congress votes on it five months later because no Democrat will ever vote for anything that Trump wants. This is the president's mindset. Do you understand that? I do. I think that's a generous description, and I'll say, first of all, thanks for having me on. Secondly, I agree with a lot of what you said during your talking points, right? I find that we're pretty much aligned on a lot of this stuff, especially the concern with. with sort of Denmark and Greenland,

which is remarkably risky on a number of levels, not just politically. My column, Enough is Enough, was really about how under an executive branch that literally acts without impunity, or with impunity, with zero checks and balances, is acting in a way that really sort of reinforces might mix right, which is a philosophical construct

that we long moved past, and it's not really democratic. And the actions of this president, reveal a nation that increasingly doesn't look like the America that I grew up, and I still love very, very much. See, I don't have that perception, and I'm just about 25 miles from you in my dwelling. And when you say that Trump officer operates without any constraints, the courts ruled that the president could not send National Guard to L.A. and a few other cities, because he didn't reach the bar of impending chaos.

So he took him out. Trump took the National Guard. He was wrong. So he's been constrained. It was constitutional. You know, Pasi Comitatis basically says federal government cannot send in troops unless the governor, the state, asked for it because of chaos. And that's what was ruled.

He's plotting the democracy or he's flouting the Constitution. But he's obeying. He's not running. rough shot. Well, okay, but that's the way it always happens. Kobe, come on. You take an action and then there's a reaction. It's a way the government always runs. Here's what I would say. You could defend the extraction of Maduro. The sort of way that that was defined is we can do whatever we want with Western Hemisphere because it affects our national security and we're going to use that as a pretext to now threaten to, you know, sort of bomb Iran and to then just

sort of invade and take Greenland. Like you said, that really threatens and is very risky to our Native alliance. To be clear, and I want to say this, I have given credit to the Trump administration where I feel like they've deserved it, and in particular, I think the way that the Trump administration has handled Iran

vis-a-vis Israel was masterful and deserves a great deal of credit. I also give an incredible amount of credit for the way that it cleaned up the abject horror that is the border. The worst thing that Biden ever did was just look away. I think one can be for getting bad guys out, cleaning up the border, but also be opposed to masked ICE agents shooting protesters.

And I don't think Renee Good should be dead as a result of trying to drive away. I don't either. But that doesn't mean that doesn't mean that what the ICE agent did carries any criminal intent. I have said, and you know this, de-escalate it when you have a life-death situation. And some of my viewers don't like that. They don't want to hear that. Okay. But every law enforcement agency that I know of has a de-escalation program when life and death is on the line.

So I'm behind the law. But Trump is saying, and with absolute validity, I can't bring in Maduro to Congress. I can't bring in nuke bombing in Iran to Congress. because they, the other side, hates me so much. They're never going to support it. They'll drag their feet. We can't operate secretly in that regard. We can't do military operations with any kind of effectiveness.

If you're going to debate him for two months, and he's right. And when Noriega came out, that shattered that. And that'll never even get into the courts. Maduro is never going to get in. He'll be convicted in Brooklyn. You should go over and see him. He's right near your house. all right and then he'll go to the penitentiary in Colorado and that's what's going to happen

and there's not going to be any court hearing about Maduro. I don't even think the ICE agent's going to be prosecuted. Now do you agree with me that there are 10 states in open rebellion to the United States government because they fail to obey the law. It's okay to protest the law. No problem with that. But when you say, and that's what walls fry, all of these, people are saying, I'm not going to obey the law that has been passed by Congress, not Trump. I'm not obeying it. You're in rebellion, are you not? I think rebellion is a narrative that oversteps considerably. I remember, I'm old enough to remember when states rights were a big talking point on the right, and now that's gone away,

right? Like, suddenly we don't care about states' rights and their ability to make states about stuff that now. That's any issue. If you want, if you want, you are, you are basically making situational decisions, right? And I, and honestly, previously what you just said, you just walked, you just basically said Trump doesn't want to take Maduro to Congress because he knows he won't get what he wants. I'm sorry, you don't get to pick and choose what the Constitution says. You do if you have national security concerns behind you. Yes, you do.

Well, yeah, but that, that's very subjective. and to say that there was a national security threat by Maduro, I think is hyperbole at best. I think it's absurd. Tons and narcotics are coming in here. Far less drugs from other places. Please, let me finish. Look, the whole point in the Constitution is checks and balances.

You can't simply say I'm going to avoid checks and balances if I know that a congressional check and balance is not going to give me what I want. But you can. It perfectly illustrates my point. You can, if there's precedent. about national security after 9-11, all of that changed. All of it changed. Well, I think, well, so herein lies the gray area of this dialogue,

and I appreciate the chance to describe it. I think there's overreach, and I think a lot of people feel that there's overreach. Honestly, in hindsight, I care less about the Maduro extraction because he's clearly a bad guy. And, you know, this is very personal for me because my nephew is on USS Ford. He's a naval intel officer,

and he was very much a part of the whole growler part, And I'm extremely proud of him, but I'm also concerned about it. And so it's a good, it's a good debate, but I live in a real world and I know what's going to happen. And Trump is not going to lose any of these things at all because of the national security. When it comes to ICE, when it comes to ICE, only 28% of the people are sort of agreeing with the narrative that the ICE agent was justified in shooting. Well, now if he has injuries, that that polling is going to change. But even if it doesn't change, all right. Trump is basically saying this, and I'll give you the last word on it.

My job, I was elected to protect the American people. And I'm going to do it. And I am not going to submit to some theoretical process when I believe I have the authority to take out people like Maduro, the Mueller's, people who are threats to this country. And that's his mindset. And the only way you constrain it is the Supreme Court. That's the only way says, no. And the courts of federal court said no to guard in LA and other places, Oregon. All right.

And Trump pulled them back. Last word. I think you're being very generous. I don't think a lot of people feel like Mullahs and Iran pose a direct threat to their lives. Billions to terror groups? Billions to terror groups? I'm telling you, I think geopolitically, they are a huge threat and they should be extracted. You and I agree largely on the foreign policy there.

I'm talking about politically. I don't think a lot of people in Overland Park, Kansas, where I grew up, see that as a perfect threat. I also think that a lot of people want immigrants who are illegals extracted from our nation, but they don't want to see mass ICE agents invading homes without a search warrant. They don't want to see protests. I'll see that point that ICE has to tighten it up a little bit and has to give more of an explanation. All right, Kobe, very good debate. I want everybody to read your column on media.

Thanks to taking time. Thank you for listening to the NoSpin News Weekend Edition. To watch the full episodes of the No Spin 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.