Bill O’Reilly’s No Spin News and Analysis - No Spin News - Weekend Edition - May 3, 2025

Episode Date: May 3, 2025

Listen to this week's No Spin News interviews with Rob Finnerty, Charles Kupchan and Dr. Peter Grinspoon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the No Spin News Weekend Edition. All right, pot. Now, for years, I have been suggesting to you that marijuana is not good. And I base this on personal information. I've never smoked pot in my life. But I know people who got addicted to it, mentally addicted to it, and their lives crashed hard. And I also know that the THC level of pot is like 25 times what it was when I was in college in the Vietnam era. It's a serious drug you're ingesting into your brain. And if you're doing it every day, there's going to be unintended bad consequences for you. So there's a study presented at the European Psychiatric Association's Congress, comes out of Australia that is stunning.

okay this is prenatal effects of cannabis use disorder 98% the mom uses okay increased risk of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder on the baby when the baby is born 94% risk of autism 46% at risk of intellectual disability okay and in europe about 4 million people smoke pot daily much more in the United States, much more, about 1% of the population of the EU. Now, here are the countries that have legalized recreational marijuana. Not many of them. Canada, Georgia, Germany, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, South Africa, Thailand, Uruguay, and in the USA, 24 states, including and three territories in the District of Columbia. So I keep telling everybody, this is not good.

This is going to hurt people. And if the moms are pregnant and they're smoking pot or taking the candy or whatever, kids are going to suffer. Have you heard that in the media? Have you heard the media bound? I can't understand why pot is glorified in the media. I could never understand it. In the Vietnam War, I got the hippies, and I got the Crosby Still's Nation Young, and all, I'll care.

Willie Nelson, I spoke fun every day, Snoop Dog, all right, fine. You guys want to do that, you do it. But to incur, where is the counterweight? There's no counterweight. So now you've got the pot shops all over New York City, where I live. Thank God they're not in Nassau County, not many of them anyway. were on. But the kids see this. And a lot of parents use pot in front of their kids. Oh, I think that's child abuse. Joining us now is Dr. Peter Grinspoon. He's a cannabis specialist

from the Harvard Medical School. He's up in Boston where he joins us now. So in my analysis, my setup, am I making any mistakes? Well, what you're saying is true, but it's only part of the story. I mean, cannabis or marijuana does have a lot of side effects and can certainly harm people like any other drug. It also helps a lot of people medically. And according to recent polls, about 93% of Americans support legal access to medical marijuana. So I think like any drug, you could use it in a healthier way or less healthy. But isn't that, aren't you deflecting doctor the real problem?

because with morphine, which is heroin, okay, that helps people. Nobody objects to opiates when you're having an operation or you have severe pain. But why do we always deflect into the medical marijuana area, where I don't know too many people who object to that at at all if it's done under the auspice of a doctor in a hospital? I'm talking about promoting recreational drug use. and you saw the stats. I mean, they are really frightening to me.

Am I wrong? Well, no, the stats, the study you, the hard part is we don't really know how dangerous it is with pregnant women. A lot of pregnant women use cannabis because they think it's safe and natural and they think it's harmless. And it works really well for a morning sickness. I never recommend a pregnant woman that use cannabis because we don't know how safe or dangerous it is. Most likely the smoking of cannabis is what makes it dangerous. because when you smoke cannabis, just like when you smoke tobacco, you get dangerous combustion products. But I do, for the sake of fairness, need to mention that there are just as many studies that don't show any problems with fetuses or children if the parents use marijuana.

Again, I don't recommend it because we just don't know, but the data is all over the place. And the other point I wanted to mention is it's a very fine line between medical and recreational use. You take poles of people that buy marijuana recreationally, you know, three quarters of them are using it for. pain and two-thirds of them are using it for sleep. So I don't think there's like that clear a distinction between medical and recreational cannabis. Certainly some people misuse it. There's no question, but I think we had a lot more trouble when it was illegal and the supply was dangerous and people were getting arrested. And you might agree with this. Why criminalize something that people were going to do anyways? It was a disaster when we criminalized alcohol

and it was a disaster when we criminalized cannabis. We had 20 million arrests for nonviolent cannabis And if it's legal, at least it's regulated, it's labeled. But it isn't regulated. It's not regulated at all. I mean, look, where you live in Boston and you're associated with Mass General, if you're to Roxbury tomorrow, okay, and you stand outside a marijuana clinic that's selling recreational pot, the hardcore heroin fentanyl addicts go in, they buy a bunch of pot, your pot and they come out and they sell it to kids because you have to be 18 to buy the pot

and they're selling it to 14 15 year old kids that's a big big industry in every urban city in this country so i think you're being a little naive here um this kind of uh i wouldn't be people in jail unless you were a big weight mover of marijuana but if you're you know smoking marijuana you know small beef i'm not putting you in jail but i think that the media should be just discouraging the use of it, not only because physically, the unintended consequences, as you point out, could be terrible, but you've got automobiles and every legalized state, every one. Hey, it's Sean Spicer from the Sean Spicer Show podcast, reminding you to tune into my show every day to get your daily dose inside the world of politics. President Trump and his team

are shaking up Washington like never before, and we're here to cover it from. from all size, especially on the topics the mainstream media won't. So if you're a political junkie on a late lunch or getting ready for the drive home, new episodes of the Sean Spicer Show podcast drop at 2 p.m. East Coast every day. Make sure you tune in. You can find us at Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, I'm Caitlin Becker, the host of the New York Postcast, and I've got exactly what you need to start your weekdays.

Every morning, I'll bring you the stories that matter, plus the news people actually talk about, the juicy details and the local. worlds of politics, business, pop culture, and everything in between. It's what you want from the New York Post wrapped up in one snappy show. Ask your smart speaker to play the NY Postcast podcast. Listen and subscribe on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Car accidents have gone up. And it's because directly the law enforcement people will tell you there are more stone people on the highways. So I don't, I don't understand this. benign, well, maybe it's not that bad, you know, self-medication.

I think it's bad across the board, last word. Well, you know, it's hard to say how, no drugs should be, drug use should be encouraged. I think they should ban advertising for cannabis, alcohol, tobacco, and pharmaceuticals. I agree that no drugs should be encouraged. But at the same time, we don't want to magnify the harms or criminalize it, because that harms people as well. And I think with education, we could really teach people, for example, pregnant women, do not use cannabis if you're pregnant teenagers.

I'd be great for that if Bobby Kennedy Jr. who put those ads out and say, hey, you know, put, there'll be public and service announcements, your kid, you get autism if you smoke pot during the praying. I'm scared of all of these people. I'm before that, but I know the media doesn't want that. They like pot. I don't know why. I mean, I kind of do know why. I just think it's wrong. And I'd say the same thing about alcohol.

If you're boozing it up and you've got, you know, you're pregnant. You're not going to help your kid. You're going to hurt your kid. If you're drinking every day and you're pregnant, you're going to hurt your kid. So stop it. Anyway, doctor, we really appreciate your point of view. Thanks for coming on. You're listening to the NoSpin News Weekend Edition.

Now to Canada, the liberal prime minister, Mark Carney, takes over now. He was well behind a conservative candidate a few months ago, but once Donald Trump said he wanted candidate to be the 51st state, Canadians don't want that. And the conservative candidate was a friend of Trump's, so he's done. So Donald Trump, basically, through the election to the liberal prime minister, Mark Carney, and here's what Carney said. Go. Humility is also about recognition.

that one of the responsibilities of government is to prepare for the worst, not hope for the best. As I've been warning for months, America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country. Never. But these are not idle threats. President Trump is trying to break us so that America, can own us. That will never, that will never, ever happen. But we also must recognize the reality that our world has fundamentally changed. All right, so I never knew why Donald Trump did this, did the 51st state deal. And I said that to him. I said that to him in person. I said, this is not going to work out well. Canadiens don't want to be part of the United States. And this is

the proof. Now, does it matter? I still think Canada will sign a trade deal with the USA that's better for us because Canada needs our marketplace. We don't need Canada's marketplace. We don't need it. They need us. So I think Carney's going to have to, you know, he's blustering now, but he's going to have to come to the table and sign a deal. Could be wrong, but I don't think so. Also, intense negotiations continue over Ukraine and Iran nukes. In Gaza, Israel, that's not going to happen anytime soon, because Netanyahu, the president of Israel, doesn't want it to happen.

He wants to wipe out Hamas. So once you have the leader of Israel not really wanting to have a deal, It takes, you know, it's very, very hard to get one. So joining his now from Washington is Dr. Charles Cupchan. He is a professor at Georgetown University, an expert in foreign relations. He's been everywhere, knows everything. He wrote a book, Isolationism, A History of America's Efforts to Shield itself from the World. First of all, Doctor, it's very nice to see you.

Thank you for helping us out. Did I make any mistakes in my run-up to introducing you? No, I, you know, I think you got it about right. The one comment I would make about Trump in Canada, having written a book about isolationism, is that we've been here before. You know, we tried repeatedly in the 19th century to either invade Canada or by Canada from the British, and it failed. And Trump, I think, is looking at a map. He's a real estate mogul. He sees good property up there across our northern border. And he says, I like that. But I completely agree with you that it's backfired. It's turned Canadians into a people that want to

stand up to Trump. And in many respects, as you put it, it led to the win of Mark Carney and the Liberal Party when the conservatives were actually set to win this election. And Trump undercut him. But I don't think Trump cares about internal politics in Ottawa. What he wants is a better trade deal. And I think that's going to happen, even with Carney in office. I think that's likely. You know, I think the rollout of these tariffs has been chaotic. By the time you and I finish this conversation, policy on Canada, policy on China, policy on Mexico may have changed.

And that's because the initial rollout, didn't go over very well, right? We're looking at a possible trade war. We're looking at a huge hit to the American car industry because parts and cars get passed back and forth across that northern border multiple times as they're being constructed. And so, yeah, I think Trump is getting a lot of negative feedback. The poll numbers are going down. The bond market crashed, the stock market crashed. He's now recalibrated. So I basically agree with you that we're likely to see trade deals with Canada and perhaps with a whole bunch of other countries.

I think that'll happen, but it better happen fairly quickly because once a president gets on the wrong side of the American people, it takes a while I get back on the right side. Now, there was a picture at the Pope's funeral of Trump and Zelensky together, close together, in the Vatican, and I continue to believe that there is a good chance that this Ukraine thing will calm down.

How do you see it? You know, Trump is doing the right thing by reaching out to Putin. This is not a war that Ukraine is going to win on the battlefield. And I think Biden made a mistake in not having a strategic dialogue with the Russians to try to end the war. And so I think the proposal on the table right now has some real strengths, and one of them is ceasefire in place. The other is that the 20% of Ukraine that is occupied by Russia will for now stay in Russian hands. That's just the way it is.

That's just a recognition of reality. I think what we need to see Trump do now is get behind the Ukrainians to ensure that the 80% of Ukraine that is still free, still controlled by Zelensky in Kiev, emerges as a success story. And that's going to take a lot of American support, as well as Trump saying to Putin, hands off. If we end this war, you need to keep your hands off the rest of Ukraine and allow it to prosper as a democracy that's anchored in Europe. Well, that's why they have the mineral deal, because they'll send in U.S. personnel to mine, the minerals, and they don't have to provide security.

And that deal comes along with the Ukraine ceasefire. Iran. So the Iranians continue to, I don't know what their goal is, because in the next three years plus, Donald Trump's never going to let them progress any further on nuclear weapons. And he'll give the green light for the Israelis to just take out their ports, blow them up. And the mullers know that, so I expect there'll be some deal there. Power, politics and the people behind the headlines. I'm Miranda Devine, New York Post columnist,

and the host of the brand new podcast, Podforce One. Every week I'll sit down for candid conversations with Washington's most powerful disruptors, lawmakers, newsmakers, and even the president of the United States. These are the leaders shaping the future of America and the world. Listen to Podforce One with me, Miranda Devine, every week on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. You don't want to miss an episode. You know, I think that's probably the case. If I look at the various conflicts and negotiations that Trump either is proceeding with or has, U.S. Russia, U.S. China, U.S. North Korea, U.S. Iran, Iran in some ways, may be the one that's easiest to bring across the finish

line. And that's because Iran is as weak today as it's been in decades. And that's simply because Israel has taken down Hamas, taken down Hezbollah, the Syrian regime that was in cahoots with Iran has collapsed. The Houthis are getting hit by the United States, and the Israelis have demonstrated to Iran that they can take out their air defenses at will. So in some ways, Iran is standing there with its pants down, and I think that puts Iran in a position in which a deal is more likely than not, where like three rounds, the fourth round of negotiations is scheduled for this weekend in Beaumont. The experts

are at the table. We're not there yet, but I think there's a good chance we'll get a deal. Yeah, I mean, that's what these polls don't reflect is that a lot of things both economically and overseas are going to change. We don't know when. Finally, China is the most

difficult problem for the United States because she and the Chinese government don't care what happens to their people. So if they have to suffer for two years, three years, because their markets are soft and their exports drop dramatically, then it's tough. These people are going to suffer, and they can't do anything about it because it's a totalitarian state. So Trump doesn't have much leverage there over Xi, or am I missing something?

You know, in some ways, I think Trump and Xi are in similar positions. They're both strong will. they're both playing to the nationalist crowd at home, and they both face the situation in which if these tariffs stick, we're talking like 145 percent. If they stick, our populations, the Chinese population, are going to suffer. Folks are going to go to Home Depot and Walmart and Lowe's, and they're going to see prices go through the roof. And so I think the fact that both Trump and she want to be political successes, they don't want to blow up the global economy, they don't want to lose popular support, that would suggest to me that there is some trade space

here. And in the end of the day, I think Trump is more of a transactional president than he is an ideological one. Sure. I don't know who's going to blink first, but I do think, or I hope that we get some movement on the trade front. Because if these terrorists, of stick, Americans are going to suffer, Chinese are going to suffer, and it risks blowing up the global economy. Well, if we get deals with India and Japan and the EU on trade within the next month, China is going to be under tremendous pressure. So that's the thinking I know that to be true.

Dr. I would underestimate the difficulty. A normal trade deal takes months, if not years. Trump says 90 days. Right. His team has a lot of hard work to do in the days and weeks ahead. Okay. Dr. Thanks very much. We appreciate it. This is the No Spin News Weekend Edition. Now, the other polls indicate that Donald Trump is losing support because of the terror. People are scared. And that is true, in my opinion. Okay, they're scared, and his job approval numbers are falling.

Again, my analysis is if the stock market goes up, then the job approval numbers will go up. But nobody knows if that's going to happen, or if prices are going to be lower or jobs, you know, there's a lot of companies now, and I know this to be true, aren't hiring anybody because they don't know how this is all going to come out with the tariffs, and they're not hiring. That's going to suppress an expansion of the economy. So, joining us now from New York City is Rob Finnerty, was his own program on Newsmax, 8 p.m., called Finnerty. Now, I think the show should be called McGillicuddy, just so you're not redundant. Hi, welcome to Finnerty on Rob Finnerty.

But McGillicuddy, it's another Irish guy, but he doesn't have anything to do with the show, so okay. Thanks for helping us out tonight, Rob. What about... Good to see you, Bill. Thanks for having me. I figure about 30% of MAGA people, no matter what Donald Trump does, they'll be fine with it. It was a great depression. They'll be fine with it.

They just love them so much. It's a cult. But conservative people or people who supported Donald Trump, do you see, do your reaction to your program and reaction to Newsmax Network, which is favorable, Donald Trump? Do you see any backlash? So I think there is, the tariffs, I think Donald Trump, the approach could have been a little softer, but softer touch in Donald Trump don't collide in the same sentence very often. Donald Trump and tidal wave, I think, collide more often. So the way that Donald Trump went about this, probably not the most effective.

And I think there is a limit to MAGA goodwill, even when we're talking about the 30% that you say would be behind Donald Trump, even if it was 1929 all over again. I don't know about that, but I do think that if the market continues to go down, look, the Dow is at, it's over 40,000 today. The S&P is way down from where it was after the election, November, December. The NASDAQ's right around 17,000. It's been a good week so far on Wall Street. If that continues, I do think that his approval rating goes up.

But I do think, Bill, there is a correlation between the five polls that came out on Sunday, and then Donald Trump marking his 100th day in office yesterday. And what's the correlation? Well, I think it was targeted. I think you look at the people that did the polling, ABC, CNN, CBS, NBC, the Washington question of- But a lot of them come out on Tuesday. But I wouldn't argue with that.

I mean, these are not organizations that want Donald Trump to succeed. Everybody knows that. But the numbers are the numbers, and all five polls show a stark decline in job approval for Donald Trump. Now, he, on a few times that he's addressed it, I might get into it with him tonight, thinks it's fake news and he doesn't trust the polls. Do you feel that has any validity? The polling wasn't good. I don't believe. MRC, Media Research Center, came out with a study on Tuesday that found that 92% of the Trump coverage through his first 100 days

has been negative, 92%. Now, you were part of the dominant media for a long, long time. The legacy media is dying. They're not dead yet. If the coverage is 92% negative, that is going to impact the way people feel about Donald Trump and people in his administration.

Come on. The coverage is 92% negative when he was running against Comoraris, and he won in a fairly convincing fashion. So I don't buy a that for a second. I think people are looking at their 401ks, and they're going, I'm shocked because they didn't, they weren't prepared. Trump administration did not prepare anybody for what might happen if you disrupt capitalism

and slap tariffs on every country in the world. I didn't get a heads up. Did you get a heads up? What bad things might happen? Well, I would say to that, and I'm not a Trump sycophant, but I would say that, we didn't hear a lot from the dominant media when Joe Biden was president. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but that's what about that, look, Joe Biden. Well, but Bill, but Bill, I just, the reason I say it is because gas prices, inflation rates,

mortgage rates, egg prices, grocery prices, aggregate are down over the last 100 days. Inflation at one point was over 9% June 22, the national average for gas under Joe Biden. At one point, the highest we've ever seen over $5 a gallon nationally. I mean, those days are over, but we seem to have a really short memory if we're going to start Criticizing this administration. That's what I'm saying. Every population in the world is a short memory. And it's even worse than you make it out.

At the same time, all of these bad things were happening to the American people in the economic realm. Biden was saying, Bidenomics is working. How absurd is that? And he was actually saying, oh, no, no, everything's fine. You don't believe your own eyes. Trump doesn't say that. Trump just says, I don't believe the polls and all that. And I think the polls are accurate, but they all, Americans don't, they're not introspective.

They're not looking back. They're not historians. There's no one, I'm getting hurt. I didn't, I wasn't prepared to get hurt. And now I'm mad, so I'm going to give him a bad number. That's what's happening, right? His approval rating is probably somewhere right in the middle. It's probably the aggregate of those five polls.

We had Jim McLaughlin on Finnerty a couple nights ago, McGillicuddy, sorry. And he said that his polling has him just under 50 percent, between 48. And 50%. And he's accurate. He's very good. He's very good. John and Jim are good. And Bill, who really knows?

But it is sort of semantics when it comes to these polls. After January 6th, 2021, Donald Trump was 31%. He's president of the United States today. So I don't know how much I really care what the polls say. This, you will care in late autumn. Or if the economy does demonstrably go down, because that'll be the end of Donald Trump. because that'll be the end of Donald Trump on a midterm scale. One other subject.

I can tell, because I've been in this business 50 years, when Donald Trump is in trouble with his supporters, not the detractors. He's always in trouble with them. By the television ratings, this is fascinating. So I see the television ratings. I see McGillicuddy every night, okay, and what you do and what everybody else. else does in the news arena. I see them every day. And when Trump is victorious on something, they surge. The ratings surge. When he's not doing so well, they go down because people don't

want to hear about it. And that's what's happening right now, that the cable news ratings are declining fairly significantly for Fox Newsmax somewhat, but not as bad as Fox. And the others, MSNBC's picked up a little bit because people go in for the Trump as the devil every night. But you can look at those numbers and almost take the temperature of Trump supporters. Last word. Yeah, I would say you're right.

Stock market, particularly two weeks ago, we had a challenging week in the ratings. And I think there's a correlation between what was going on on Wall Street and people tuning in. They don't want to hear bad news. They don't want to hear MAGA bad news. All right, Rob Friniti, you can catch them on Newsmax at 8 p.m. Monday through Friday. Appreciate it, Rob.

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.