Bill O’Reilly’s No Spin News and Analysis - State of the Union Aftermath: Did Trump Shift the Political Momentum? Doug Schoen & Buck Sexton Weigh In

Episode Date: February 26, 2026

Hey BillOReilly.com Premium and Concierge Members, welcome to the No Spin News for Wednesday, February 25, 2026. Stand Up for Your Country.  Talking Points Memo: Bill breaks down President Trump���s State of the Union address and explains why it was damaging to  the Democratic Party. Democratic political strategist Doug Schoen weighs in on what to expect in the midterms following the 2026 State of the Union address and whether there is a leader of the Democratic Party.  Author and radio host Buck Sexton enters the No Spin Zone to discuss his new book, the manufactured delusion by the left, and the traps Republicans set last night. Will Kamala Harris run for president again? Final Thought: Bill shares why he'll be off tomorrow. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey Bill O'Reilly here. Welcome to the No Spin News. Wednesday, February 25, 2026, stand up for your country. Big victory for the Republicans last night in the State of the Union, not a partisan statement. Based on facts, we'll prove it to you. And we have a Democrat and a Republican to react to what I'm saying and to what President Trump said. And that is a talking points memo this evening. So Advantage GOP, because the momentum has shifted at least temporarily into President Trump's zone. Now, the speech was one hour, 48 minutes, the longest state of the union ever. Only William Henry Harrison gave a longer speech. He wasn't called the state of the union.

It was an inauguration speech. And then he died after he gave it because he caught pneumonia. So he was outside, it was freezing, and just William Henry wouldn't stop. You can read about that and confronting the president. But anyway, the longest state of the union. And it wasn't boring. I thought it would be. It wasn't because what the Trump speechwriters did was kind of lay traps for the opposition.

And they spent much of the time denigrating Democrats, rather than propping up Republicans, but it worked. Let us walk through it. So about an hour and 20 minutes was spent on domestic policy. All right? And that's the key, because people are feeling squeezed financially. So the president came out and said, and they all do this, every president does it. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that.

Okay. Standard issue. The last 30 minutes was spent on a little foreign policy, but other things. But about 15 minutes in, the tone of the speech changed from here's what Republicans are going to do to here's what Democrats have done. very, very important for you to understand this. Okay? So it was, you may not like all of the Republican policies, but these people, the Democrats, are way worse. That will be the theme for the next 18 months to limit terms come. Okay. So the president, as he always does, wraps himself in the flag.

Patriotism, because patriotism is very emotional. Roll a take. But now we're winning too much. And I say, no, no, no, you're going to win again. You're going to win big. You're going to win bigger than ever. And to prove that point, to prove that point, here with us tonight is a group of winners who just made the entire nation proud.

The men's gold medal Olympic hockey team. Come on in. Okay. So it was predictable that that would happen. And that is a feel-good moment. Here's the most frustrating thing. I couldn't see how the Democrats were reacting to that because the camera was not on that crew.

And I expected some of the reporters in the room would write about how the Democrats reacted to the hockey team coming in to the raptious applause. on the part of the president's supporters. Nothing. We couldn't find anything. We don't know.

I'm embarrassed for my profession. We don't know how the Democrats reacted to it, having the American hockey team go in there. It's maddening. And I was watching it last night. I said, where is the react shot on the Democrats? Where is it? It never came.

It's stunning because that is important. Okay? All right. So the president, he basically was telling the American people, and some of them obviously don't believe it, that this is the golden age of America. We're in it. Up to you.

Up to you. Now that people hate Trump, they'll never believe anything he says. People who love him will believe everything he says. But the big middle, up to you. Do you think it's the golden age? I think we have momentum in this country. I do. Golden age?

Not yet. Okay. So the key moment, the whole thing. And this is a well-laid plan. And the Democrats should have anticipated something like this was going to happen. Roll it. One of the great things about the state of the union is how it gives Americans the chance to see clearly what their representatives really believe. So tonight I'm inviting every legislature to join with my administrative.

in reaffirming a fundamental principle. If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support. The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens. Democrats didn't stand. Okay? If I were a Democrat, I would have stood. Because under the Constitution, the first duty is to protect Americans. Democrats didn't stand.

Trump knew they weren't going to stand, and he scolded them. Roll the tape. Isn't that ashamed? You should be ashamed of yourself, not standing up. You should be ashamed of yourself. That is why I'm also asking you to end deadly sanctuary cities that protect the criminals. All right, and then you have Congresswoman Omar, Minnesota, and Talib of Michigan, screaming at Trump, screaming that he's killing Americans on and on.

This is not a good look for the Democratic Party. These radical members of the party are damaging the Democrats among independent voters. Radicalism is not what the majority of Americans want. And these are radical, these are people who want to just blow up everything and to see them scream at the president doesn't help the democratic party and that's becoming more and more common now there is no leader there's no democratic leader so schumer is the top guy in the senate jeffreys is the speak minority guy in the house there's ciphers They get run over.

In fact, Cortez is going to challenge Schumer, who I don't think will run again. She'll beat him in New York. She'll beat Chuck, okay, because it's New York. So there's no leadership within a Democratic Party, none. Trump knows that. The last effective Democratic leader was Nancy Pelosi. And here's what Trump said about her. Go.

As we ensure that all Americans can profit from a rising stock market, let's also ensure that members of Congress cannot corruptly profit from using insider information. They stood up for that. I can't believe it. Did Nancy Pelosi stand up if she's here? Doubted. Pass the Stop Insider Trading Act without delay. So, Nancy Pelosi worth about $300 million.

Okay? And she was there, but of course, once again, a camera didn't, couldn't find her. Boy, that was poorly shot. Whoever was in charge of that, awful. Because that camera should have right on Pelosi on that one. Okay, so then, Trump knows he has momentum.

And here's an aside. I'm a professional broadcaster, as you know. Donald Trump spoke for nearly two hours. He did not stumble once. That's almost impossible for a human being to do. He rode right through that whole thing. Now, yeah, he rehearsed it, but two hours? Everybody stumbles.

Not him. Then he goes after the Democrat's signature achievement, Obamacare. Go. I'm also confronting one of the biggest rip-offs of our times, the crushing costs of health care caused by you. Since the passage of the Unaffordable Care Act, sometimes referred to as Obamacare, big insurance company that's gotten rich. That's why I introduced the great health care plan. I want to stop all payments to big insurance companies and instead give that money directly to the people

so they can buy their own health care, which will be better health care at a much lower cost. All right, so you can see he's dismantling the opposition, step by step. And it was effective. The president does exaggerate. everybody knows that. CNN spent all his time fact checking him. Some of the fact check was accurate. Some of them wasn't. You can manipulate crime stats, economic stats, all day long. It's easy to do.

I just give you one example. So the president says in the last three months of 2025, inflation was 1.7%, 1.7%, it was 2.4. but he's got his own numbers and he can try it out something. I don't pay attention to that anymore. I know what inflation is. It's running a little over 2%. She isn't bad. But not bad. Okay.

Now, in the end, it got down to the point where the Democrats didn't know what to do. and you could see that when they walked out of the chamber, that they were in disarray. So now here's what you can expect. Epstein. You think it was bad before? Now, it's every time you turn around to Democrats, Epstein, Trump, even though there's not a shred of evidence. Not a shred. Okay?

you're going to hear it and hear it and hear it. And CNN kicked it off last night right after the speech. Go. He didn't make any mention of Jeffrey Epstein during that speech, despite the fact that there were some survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's in the chamber. Many were. What did you make of that moment? Well, it was, again, I don't even know if that was state of the nation speech.

I don't know what she's talking about. Collins, he didn't mean. made any image, why would he make any mention of Epstein? Why? I mean, she's just, I used to have respect for her no longer. Jack and CNN, I don't know what the deuce they're doing over there. They go down and down and down and down. They don't care. They don't care. No semblance of fairness whatsoever on the network. None. Okay. Finally, Finally, the midterm election is, as I said, a much more contained than a presidential election. But what Trump did last night was he put down a marker.

No matter how you look at Republicans, and he's talking to independent voters now, they're worse. So we gave you a tax cut. They want to raise taxes. We're protecting Americans from illegal alien criminals. They don't want to do that. On and on and on, one after the other, after the other. That will be the theme for the next eight months. And that is the memo.

All right, let's get some reaction from two very smart guys. First, Doug Schoen, joins us from Miami, a Democrat political strategist. Where am I going wrong here, Doug? Bill, I don't think you're going wrong if I can just add that it's going to be hard to change the dialogue in the extent and to the degree you're estimating in light of public opinion, which now strongly favors the Democrats largely because of the affordability crisis, which in the 2025 elections proved to be paramount. But where you're right is that Trump's performance was a virtue of. He dominated the dialogue. You did accurately describe what the themes will be of the midterm. I just am skeptical whether there's enough juice in the arguments to hold the House. The Senate, I think, is more likely than not to stay in the Republican hands.

The House, I think, is more likely than not to go Democratic. Well, the polls are going to shift in Trump's favor big time in the next two weeks. You wait and see. Because. Whether it lasts, the big question. Oh, yeah. But remember now, you got tax refunds coming up, okay? So that's going to juice the economy.

Trump is serious about getting the health care insurance costs down. Democrats will stand in the way of that. They're not going to support that. So a lot of things are going to happen. You're going to have Iran come to ahead in the next two weeks. and that probably will go America's way, whether it's a treaty or whether it's military action. So right now, you couldn't deny, unless you were dishonest working in the national corporate media, couldn't deny that Trump changed the momentum in the country, the political momentum.

Don't question that at all, Bill. But in midterm elections, and we've discussed this before, those that are most likely to vote are those that are most angry. And right now, that is Democrats and independents who are, for a variety of reasons, frustrated with Trump because of overreaching by ICE and the continued issue with prices. So I'm not disputing anything you're saying. I'm just not sure it's going to last. Okay.

Well, you know, what most anchorman say is we'll see. I would fire any anchorman who said that if I were the boss. It's not my job is to pinpoint what's happening, not say we'll see. A five-year-old can say that. What is likely to happen is that the, Republicans are going to go out and say, these people running against me are radical leftists, even if they're not, they'll tag them, okay? And they are dangerous people. For the uninformed voter and are a lot of them, that is a very effective way to campaign.

Bill, where I think you're right is the Republicans. have a tough time making an argument that they have performed well enough to deserve to hold both houses. Where their argument is stronger, as you're suggesting, is on a comparison or a contrast with my party, the Democrats, which have moved so far to the left that they're unimaginable from the party I joined many, many years ago. Yeah, the demon eyes. So who's the leader of your party, Doug? No idea. AOC, Bernie Sanders.

Does it disturb you? There's no leader? The idea that AOC could be Schumer, I'm not going to cry crocodile tears for him, but candidly, Bill, she is a competitive presidential candidate against people like Gavin Newsom.

And that is extraordinary, just extraordinary, that somebody on the far left with Bernie Sanders in premature has a theoretical chance and a practical chance of getting the Democratic nomination, having been in the House for, I think, what, four terms now with a prior work record that was largely in the hospitality industry. Well, let me soothe your mind, Doug. AOC is too dumb to be elected president.

Well, she could get the nomination, and that would be very scary. I don't think so. Newsom would beat her in a debate. Newsom is smarter than she is. I mean, I don't think it would be close. I don't think it would be close. Well, she gets 40% or gets, you know, three in 10, four in 10 Democrats,

sympathizing with her. That makes winning any election for the Democrats far more difficult, regardless of who's nominated. That to me is a devastating blow. to my party. So I was on Hannity's radio program today and Hannity was making the argument that the Republicans are going to swamp the Democrats and we have that on Bill O'Reilly.com. And I don't concur. I say what's going to hurt the Democrats is themselves the 20%, maybe 22 or three, that are radical left. And the rest of the Democratic Party isn't radical left, but because

Because of the money flow, yeah, because of the money flow, the radicals call the shots. And AOC is a radical. So if only 22% of Democrats are radical and the rest of the country doesn't want radicals, AOC has no chance for the presidency. But in a Democratic primary among actual voters, the far left is about 40 to 45. Those that turn out and low turnout primaries donate money. There wouldn't be low turnout, though. If you get somebody that radical, everything is going to work.

Look, Bernie Sanders did pretty darn well for at least two presidential races. Hillary stole one from him, and he came pretty darn close in 2020. That's because people hate Hillary. Newsom is a very slick campaign. They weren't hate Hillary. They were voting for Bernie because Joe Biden had made a deal with Clyburn yet to get. No, I got it. I got the inner workings, but Sanders never had a chance in my opinion.

All right, Doug, always a pleasure. Thank you for helping us out. Very good conversation. Okay, so unhinged, when you see your opposition, it doesn't matter whether it's politics or sport, or chess or whatever. When you see your opponent get unhinged, you know you've won. And this is what happened last night. Go.

We have a nutjob wannabe king who's doing everything he can to censor opinions he doesn't want to hear. He has his goons arresting, incarcerating, and killing American citizens. He's got funding for cancer research in children's hospitals. While he rakes in literally billions of dollars for him, himself and his family. He's coming after our right to vote. You know, do you think that helps, Jim? You think what you're doing helps your party? My God. All right, joining us now from Miami, same place Doug was, because these guys are not tough enough to take the weather in the northeast. Shone and Buck Sexton, who has a

book out manufacturing delusion of the left uses brainwashing indoctrination propaganda against you you know he is on the radio with the clay and buck program which i do occasionally so sexton uh where am i going wrong where's shown going wrong what are we missing here well missing with what i mean i think that the uh democrats are completely insane i think that jimmy kimmel and what they're presenting to the American people is an alternative reality, dare I say a delusion. I mean, you mentioned my book and Bill. One thing I've learned from doing the research of this is that the problem is fitting in all of the delusions. The problem is getting all of the unreality onto the page that we're forced to live in day in and day out. But I didn't just want to make this a

screed about what's going on today, although certainly we get into, in the book, I get into the transgender madness, the BLM madness, COVID. Obviously, it's not a COVID book, but there's some reflection on the craziness that happened during COVID. But I wanted to go back to some of the people who are the, honestly, the biggest experts of the last hundred years in the fields of psychiatry, of coercion, of psychological operations, and look at how do you. How do you, people in totalitarian states where this really became something of an evil art form, how do they seize minds? And what I kept coming into, Bill, was even the great experts, people like Juist Mirlu, who was a Dutch American psychiatrist, who was fighting against the Nazis,

then joined the Dutch army in exile during World War II and was doing psychological operations for the British, he said, look, I've studied the Nazis, I've debriefed some of the worst of the SS, how they control minds involves a lot of force, a lot of violence, but there are pathways that are similar to even Western countries and the left and the totalitarian impulse. And I think people need to understand that. So I unpack some of those tactics and get into some of the realities of how mass mind control can be achieved without bayonets up against everybody's throat. And that's something that we're certainly seeing in this country.

But it happens on both sides. there are right-wing cooks too, but the left has perfected it here with the tremendous help of the corporate media, which if you watched the State of the Union, and I always do this, I whipped on CNN as soon as it was over, okay? So I know what Fox is going to say, and then they already started on Epstein. Already started that. Boom. They couldn't. They didn't have any kind of defense against Trump speech because it was effective. So they right away try to divert. And that's one of the things in your book.

And I did read your book. To create delusion in people's minds, you've got to first sweep reality away. Yes. Real life has to leave the building. Right. Real life has to leave the building. And that's much easier into totalitarian as you just. said than in a free country. So I don't think that's ever going to happen here on a mass level,

mass delusion. But when you saw last night the traps that the Republican Party laid for the Democrats, I was stunned the Democrats weren't prepared for those traps. How did you see it? No, I think, Bill, that the Democrats got what they deserved and got what needed to be said. Trump just called them out for being crazy. I mean, this party, and I think there's a number of reasons why it has gone in this direction, but you mentioned the corporate media control they had, and most notably until Elon's purchase of X and the breakthrough of the second Trump administration of social media in a whole range of ways, the stranglehold they had over information online, I think created a left that was increasingly authoritarian. And I would,

if I could push back just a little bit on we won't have mass delusion in America. I mean, I would argue that the shutting down of schools and the double masking while you were sitting at your chair, but not while you were getting up to go to the bathroom at the restaurant, but not while you were sitting in your chair and getting six shots and the genuflection of I'm so happy I got COVID, but I'm vaccinated, all these things. I mean, that that was a mass delusion that we were going through. But remember, that wasn't a partisan delusion that Donald. Trump was president and that Fauci, who was a villain in your book, worked for Trump. So it wasn't

that there was just one party pushing it. The whole federal government kind of coalesced around these erroneous things, and many of them were, the social distancing, the mask, which didn't provide any protection. But now you've got a radical movement in this country that controls the Democratic Party. I don't see that spreading much more than it has. Go ahead. So let me give you an example

of where I think it spreads. And to be clear, now we can talk about, well, what's a mass delusion? I mean, when we're saying mass, are we talking about 80% of the country? Are we talking about 10 million people or a million people or even a few hundred thousand people who believe something and

then can have enormous effect on the rest of the country? An example of this. would be the transgender madness. Now we could say, okay, well, is that really a mass delusion because only 20% of the country, based on a lot of the polls, really buys into this stuff. But in manufacturing delusion, I get into, we'll hold on a second. It's not just the people in the mass.

It's also the institutions, right? It's the old seizing of the telegraph office paradigm. It's who's parroting this stuff in the media? Who has something that I talk about in the book in manufacturing delusion, the fire hose of falsehood at the, their disposal who can just inundate, can flood the zone with those lies. So even if you don't have the numbers, and Bill, as you know, the Bolsheviks were never the

majority in Russia. Neither were the Nazis. They're actually a faction among. Right, right. A faction among factions. And so you were, and one of the fascinating things about your book, Buck, is that Buck did work for the CIA. And he went to these places and he saw the delusion that was growing.

But in America, we don't have, you either see it my way or you're going to get the hell beat out of you by the SA thugs. That's not happening here. But I don't want to argue that. What I want to argue is my, I think the Democratic Party is almost destroying itself at this point. Put Trump and the Republicans aside. Just concentrate on what's happening within the Democratic Party. the party of JFK, who was really the last true Democrat. Carter was, and Carter had no idea what he was.

Barack Obama was pretty left. Kennedy was not close to being Barack Obama. But now the radicals control the Democratic Party, which I think is going to lead to the demise of that party. But I don't know if it's going to happen in November. Last word. Bill, in manufacturing delusion, I get into a couple of the tactics that are essential to both, not just a totalitarian society when they have the gulags and they have the trunchons and the thugs, but can be used in a propagandistic way to control people in a society like our own, and it's confusion and degradation. And when you see those, those are two traits, two very important things that experts have identified.

When you see the way that Democrats try to confuse issues as well as confuse their followers, to degrade people by lying to their faces or forcing them to be a part of a lie, a whole range of issues, this is sort of a self-reinforcing cycle where they can't self-correct. And I think that's what you're identifying. You say, what happened to the party of JFK? It keeps getting worse because their strategies rely on lying to people, on living by lie. And their goals are much different. Their goals are to tear down traditional America,

whereas Kennedy was not close to that. All right, Buck. The book is manufacturing delusioning. You can get it anywhere. We really appreciate it. Buck, thanks for having me on your radio program as well. And we'll talk again soon. Thank you.

So Kamala Harris serves us. She's on promoting a book or something, on some kind of social media. And here's what happened. Go. Last question. Everybody here wants to know the answer. Okay.

Will you run again? I haven't decided. You're still thinking about it. I might. Gift to the Republicans. Now, she should be the leader of the Democratic Party, Comlaris. Because remember, when Trump lost his run, he remained the leader of the Republican Party in the four years under Biden. Trump was a leader.

It's in Malibu. I don't know what she's doing, but I might. Man, every Republican in the country went, yes. Final thought about me in a moment. Here's the final thought of the day. I will not be here tomorrow because I have to get medical maintenance. As you know, I tell you you need three things in life. You need a doctor who cares about you, an attorney who cares about you,

and a financial advisor who cares about you. I've got them. So I got to check in with my doctors on a regular basis now, fighting a good fight, but I got an appointment tomorrow in the city, got to do it, so I'm not going to be here. But we will be on it, as we always are.

It'll be a column on Sunday, and we'll be back on Monday. Actually, he's a big week with the return of the factor on News Nation, huge. Thank you for watching and listening on our radio affiliates. Tonight, I'm Bill O'Reilly. We'll see you on Monday.