Bill O’Reilly’s No Spin News and Analysis - Trump Meets with Zelenskyy & Europe's Leaders, Mikhail Troitskiy, Ph.D. on the Putin Summit, & Bill Barr Testifies on Epstein

Episode Date: August 19, 2025

Tonight's rundown: Hey BillOReilly.com Premium and Concierge Members, welcome to the No Spin News for Monday, August 18, 2025. Stand Up for Your Country.  Talking Points Memo: Bill reflects on the aftermath of Trump’s meeting with Putin, and what this means for Ukraine. Mikhail Troitskiy, Ph.D., Visiting Professor, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, enters the No Spin Zone to discuss Trump’s approach to increase his chances of success with Putin. Former Attorney General William Barr testifies in front of House investigators today on Jeffrey Epstein. A new poll reveals the vast majority of college students lie about their political views. Final Thought: A very special announcement about  "Confronting Evil." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is bedtime a nightmare? If you fear the chance of accidental leakage and skin irritation, you need to try tennis-sensitive care overnight pads. Its skin comfort formula acts as a barrier to help protect your skin. Try them now and have a smooth night. Hey Bill O'Reilly here. Welcome to the Knowsman News Monday, August 18th, 2025. Stand up for your country. Important broadcast tonight. We are very happy you are watching and listening cross-country on our radio affiliates. I've been doing a lot of work this weekend. Getting you the inside stuff that nobody else has. And we've been pretty successful on that. Some of it I cannot report because it's so national security sensitive. But I can give you a pretty good. idea what's happening. And it changes by the hour. But if you are investing your time in other media operations, they're not going to come close to this one. I'm sorry to brag, but that's true.

So let's begin with the Talking Points memo on Putin summit with Trump. So President Trump's angry. That was not a pleasant ride home from Anchorage to Washington, D.C. They landed at three in the morning. And when President Trump is angry, people stay away. Okay, same thing with me. So I know how that is. He's angry because Putin's leading him along. And he went out of his way, as everybody knows, to be respectful to this evil dictator. A lot of people object to that. But, of course, as I wrote in my column on Sunday and my message of the day today, there's no other way to deal with Putin. You can't threaten him. He's got nukes. All right. You can't diminish him because then he'll just dig in and you'll never get a deal. So the president rolls out the

red carpet and the flyover and the car and all of this. And of course, the anti-Trumpers who don't care about their country at all or the world, they use that as a criticism. And we'll get into that a little bit. But Trump really thought he was going to walk away with something concrete like a cease fire for 30 days, they could work out details of a peace agreement in Ukraine, between Ukraine and Russia. And it didn't happen. And it wasn't even close to happening. So Trump believes that Putin is now, you know, disingenuous. And I think to be fair, that President Trump overestimated his ability to bring this madman in. And the key to it would have, is, as you'll read on my book Confronting Evil, which is coming out in what, two weeks

now, Putin likes to kill people, enjoys it, and I'll prove it. And it's tough dealing with somebody like that. And Trump was fairly successful the first four years using the same techniques, flattery, respect, whatever. And he, it worked then. But now Putin's even further into is psychopathic cycle. Okay. So today, there was a meeting in D.C., and we're still awaiting the micro details, I'll have it for you tomorrow. Zolinsky showed up, and that was the right call. Got to get Zolinsky in here. And then a bunch of European leaders, the European Commission President Ursula van der Leyen, NATO Secretary General Mark Ruta, British PM Kier-Starmer, French President Manuel Macron, German Chancellor Frederick Mertz, Italian Prime Minister Georgia

Maloney, Finnish President Alexander Stubb. So they're all at the White House. And what is their collective take? It's interesting because it's not what you think. They're get hemorrhaging money over there. All of these countries, all the NATO countries, they got to pay for this Ukrainian thing. We've paid more than $200 billion, the USA. But we have the money. They don't have it. So they're really, really trying to get some kind of leverage. Putin knows that. Now Putin's running out of money too, interestingly enough. So tomorrow, under no spin news, I'll have a little bit more specificity on this. Changes.

I mean, you know, Zelensky goes in and goes, oh, we're not going to make any deal that are going to change our borders. Yeah, you will. Okay? You'll have to. Unfortunately, it's not fair. It's not right. But you're going to have to give up some territory.

And in return, you'll get security guarantees, which is going to be good for the Ukraine. people. But there's a lot of puffing and puffing going on over here. I will be on News Nation tonight at 9 p.m. with Leland Vittert. I may have updated specific information by that time. But I don't have it now. We're taping this in late afternoon. Okay. So ahead of the meeting in Washington, Trump puts out a social post. quote, President Zelisky of Ukraine can end the war with Russia almost immediately if he wants to, or he can continue to fight. Remember how it started? No getting back Obama given Crimea

12 years ago without a shot fired, and no going into NATO by Ukraine. Some things never change. So, yeah, the NATO thing is the easiest. Ukraine does not have to join NATO. And that, yeah, Putin is using that. It's a straw card. Remember, NATO is no threat to Russia. None. NATO's never going to invade Russia. European countries is the last thing they want.

Putin has made, oh, NATO, they're going to come after us. Oh, come on. It's just an excuse. But you take the excuse off the table by saying, okay, you know, Ukraine's not going into NATO. Crimea is gone. It's gone. Not coming back unless you roll NATO tanks into it, and it starts World War III.

Again, the column that I wrote over the weekend is called Dancing with the Devil, what should happen now. So Trump's got to get tough with Putin. But here's the essential point. Trump does not have to get tough with Putin in public. It doesn't. Because that works against him. And he's got to tell Putin privately, look that, this is what's going to happen to you.

I'm not going to make an announcement. So it's mono-limano, a cage match between you and me. That doesn't get us anywhere. But you continue killing innocent people. And we're in a bankruptcy country. And you're not going to be able to pay your generals millions of dollars to protect you, which is what it's Putin. Putin's power is based on the fact that he pays his army.

an extraordinary amount of money to protect it. Okay, those payments go down, the oligarchs that support Putin, they're already gonna get in hammered. Putin's gonna, they'll throw them out. It's not like Putin is one of these guys they love, they don't. So anyway, but to do it publicly is not the way to go. And that's a memo. The press coverage is pitiful.

is pitiful. And, you know, look, I compete against all these people. I'm up front about it. We're 10 times better than they are every day. If you're watching them, you're wasting your time. They just don't report the truth. They're all ideologically infected. They're not interested in giving you what's really happening.

Not only on Trump and Putin, but on anything. It's all spin. That's why this program is the no spin. news. All right, I'm going to run it down. MSNBC got booted today from NBC. You might have known that. They're changing their name. What's the point? Everybody knows what it is. One of their people is Nicole Wallace.

She used to be a communications person for Bush the Younger in his first term. Sold out for money. Makes about a million dollars over there. but now she works for a different company because NBC booted them. Here's what she said, go. This was for Trump, a television production

that may have been rooted in different motives, but one of them was likely to change the topic of news coverage. It succeeded in that. We've all been covering this all day, for better or for worse. But clearly, Trump was not in control of anything. I mean, Putin was the alpha all day long

from Trump holding on his plane and waiting for him like a, you know, middle schooler, waiting for their first date? Yeah, so Trump should split, right? Go down to Juneau, maybe had a couple of cocktail. I don't even really, you know. Talk about fifth grade. It's just ridiculous.

Trump organized a summit with Putin to try to end the Ukraine war to distract from another story. I mean, come on. This is just, you're sitting there and you go, I've never seen stupidity like this on national television in my life. I've been doing this 50 years. I've never seen stupidity like this. The second one is ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul.

He was Obama's guy over there in Moscow. Hates Trump. Roll the tape. So Ukraine has actually worse off under President Trump, and this myth that he keeps going back to and Putin did him the courtesy of underscoring the myth, that there would be no war and everything's better under President Trump. The facts on the ground are exactly the opposite. And this guy just isn't telling the truth. Okay. So he says that Ukraine is actually worst off under

President Trump. Trump was president four years, 16 to 20. Putin didn't invade Ukraine. So you're telling me now, Mr. Ambassador, that now that Putin has invaded under Biden, that they're better off than they weren't at Trump when there was no invasion. That's what your point is? Again, this is stupidity. Absolute rank stupidity. And these people don't care because they didn't pay. Next soundbite.

Farhide, Zakhorea, CNN. Go. Look, the atmospherics of the entire summit was somewhat cringeworthy. the fact that Putin was being welcomed on American soil, the fact that Trump gave him literally a red carpet treatment, the kind he has rarely given to any, you know, a democratic ally of the United States. So what?

You nitwit? You don't have anything. You're like Bolton. You got nothing. So what? He comes to the United States, Putin. If they had a deal, would not have been fantastic? Does it matter where they are?

And finally, one of the strangest things I have ever seen. Mark Halpern, he's a journalist, he does a lot of internet stuff. He was on, he's been all over the place, this guy. Here's what he says, go. I think they're going to arrest him. I think they're going to arrest him. I think that's the whole thing is to trick him to come into the U.S. and going to arrest him.

He's a war criminal. I mean, really. He says before Putin shows up that U.S. authorities are going to arrest him. All right. They haven't made my point. I think I have. Bill O'Reilly here. I recently sat down with President Trump in Florida,

and I can tell you, he is laser-focused on helping Americans prosper during his second term. That's why I have joined forces with Alexander Green, chief investment strategist at the Oxford Club. a special presentation called The Rebirth of the American Dream. In this groundbreaking event, you will discover why Donald Trump's policies could trigger an economic boom, how the AI revolution could help create more millionaires than at any other time in history, details on six specific stocks that could soar during Trump's presidency, and most importantly, how you can achieve the American dream.

Now I followed Alex's work for more than 20 years, and he spotted some of the best performing stocks of our time. So please don't miss this opportunity. Visit Trump's American Dream.com, Trump's American Dream.com. Joining us now from Boston is a visiting professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, one of the top schools of the country, Tufts University. Mikhail Troytsky, I think I have it, right. Doctor, you're kind enough to join us a few weeks ago,

and we really appreciate you coming back. So my analysis, where am I going wrong here? Well, clearly, President Trump is trying a different approach to the resolution of the Russia-Ukraine war. So apparently three years. of this war, before Donald Trump took office, showed that there's no way under the circumstances to, you know, force justice upon Russia in the way that Russia has to be held accountable for its invasion and the atrocities and so forth. So Donald Trump is trying a different

approach. He is trying to convince the sides, including Russia, to end the war while keeping the stick in his hand as well. He did hint about the possibility. Did you object to the red carpet and Putin coming to Alaska? Did you have any problem with any of that? Well, I mean, it depends on your optics. No, no, I want you. I want you. So you, you, so you, you will. You know both countries, you know Putin, you know you're one of the top experts in here, when you watch that exposition. Aggressers do not get red carpet treatment, but in a situation when the decision was made and it is supported by virtually everyone, including Ukraine and Europe and others, including, I guess, China, India, that there needs to be a negotiation. then you have to give the parties in that negotiation some kind of treatment

to just make sure that there's nothing, you know, personal that can prevent the exposition. So you didn't object to the exposition. You understood why it was happening. Now, Trump clearly was disappointed in the outcome. He wanted to get something. And I understand that he was assured he would, and then of course, of course, evil Vlad didn't live up to what was suggested in advance.

You're not surprised by that, are you? No, I'm not. Of course, Putin was supposed to be evasive. Yeah, and that's what Donald Trump, I think, got out of him in Alaska. Well, you know, Putin's words means nothing. And that's why Trump's angry because he believes that Putin is manipulating him. But now he's got to find a seam. And the only seam that I can think, and you read my column, A Dancing with the Devil, is harsh, really harsh economic measures against Moscow.

I don't see any other way to force Putin to stop the madness. Do you, is there another way to do it? The new BMO, V.I. Porter, MasterCard, is your ticket to more. More perks. More points. More flights. More of all the things you want in a travel rewards card, and then some. Get your ticket to more with the new BMO ViPorter MasterCard

and get up to $2,400 in value in your first 13 months. Terms and conditions apply. Visit bemo.com slash ViPorter to learn more. I think, you know, speaking softly is clearly one sort of part of reaching deal but yeah the stick is is there as well so and and I believe there are ways to kind of put additional pressure on the Kremlin short of you know having a showdown a trade showdown with China or India over buying Russian oil and I think the Trump administration has been doing some of that at least in the run up to this to today's meetings in the White House so yeah yeah pressure

needs to be maintained, and I think Donald Trump does indicate that he wants a resolution soon. He wants a decision. No, he's going to have to, he's going, but I don't think it should be made public. You don't have to do all this stuff in public. You can do it beyond the scenes, a lot of this stuff. I understand that Putin's running out of money to fund his war machine. Is that what you're hearing? Yeah, of course. I mean, even if you don't look at the figures, and of course, out of Russia is certainly completely skewed these days and you cannot know what to believe and whatnot. But running a war, waging a war like that for three and a half years is unbelievably

expensive. I mean, you can just refer to the cost of the wars, the United States was waging in the past. This is very expensive. And in Russia, what the Kremlin wants, what Putin wants, is to keep the semblance of normalcy for everyone else, for those who are not involved in the fighting and those who do not want to make money on volunteering to fight. And that puts additional pressure on Russian state coffers. So for sure, you cannot go on like that forever. You'll destabilize your economy. And I guess the Kremlin has finally come to terms to that. And they did loosen up some of their conditions to end the war, which made the Alaska meeting possible and today's engagement also. All right, Professor. We really appreciate it.

Keep an eye on it and thanks for your time tonight. So Ambassador John Bolton, you know if you follow my broadcast at all that I don't have any regard for him, I think he's a Trump hater. It's an article in the Wall Street Journal today. Again, it's the same all stuff. He's got no solution, Bolton. His solution is keep funding Ukraine and they'll defeat Russia on the battlefield, which is impossible, all right?

It's not ever going to happen. But Ball just spits this stuff out, and the Wall Street Journal puts them on the op-ed page. I mean, I don't know what's going on here. Anyway, I call Bolton out on News Nation, and then Leland Vitterd interviewed the ambassador himself, roll the tape. He's Bill O'Reilly on to something that you have it out for Donald Trump? Look, I do my best, and I'm sure I fail.

to talk about the merits of the policies and to say what I think is right with him and what I think is wrong with him. I'm not going to debate Bill O'Reilly. I'm not going to get down in the gutter with him. What gutter are you talking about? I don't attack you personally. I just said the truth. You have no solution. None. You do what Biden did. Okay? Pump trillions of dollars, because that's what it would be. We're into for more than 200 billion now. USA alone. You combine all there, you pump trillions of dollars into Ukraine. Nobody watching the money. And you think that they're going to defeat Russia when the Russian army is four times the size of the Ukrainian army? This is just ridiculous. But this guy is all over the place. And the only reason he's doing it,

it's because he hates Trump. He wants to diminish Trump. But he doesn't want to debate me because there's some kind of gutter thing. And I can run out 30 sound bites, at least of Ambassador Bolton smashing Trump, one after the other after, not all on Ukraine, just on everything. All right, back home. Epstein is back. Bill Barr, former Attorney General under President Trump, called to testify today in front of the House Oversight Committee in a secret testimony, okay? Now, the secret will be out shortly because the Congresspeople on the Oversight Committee will leak it. They don't care whether it's secret or not.

But it's not been leaked yet because Barr spent a lot of the day there. That means he didn't take the Fifth Amendment or he didn't do any of that. Now, I don't know what he said, but I will. Tomorrow will be an important day on the no-spin news. So this starts today. Bill Barr appeared before the House investigators and part of the Oversight Committee about what he knew about Jeffrey Epstein

because he was the Attorney General. Okay. Now, all of this Ukraine, Putin, Epstein, you know, dominating the news cycle, the most important story for Donald Trump's legacy is the economy, the American economy. And the most important part of the American economy is how much you are paying

to the essentials of life. Okay? If Trump doesn't get that down from Biden, a good chance to lose the midterms, it doesn't matter what that happens in Ukraine or Gaza or Epstein, this is the issue. You already know. Now, oil prices are down.

I'm paying less for gas, considerably less, under Trump than I did under Biden. But food prices in many areas are up. So we'll give you the stats. Ready? Here we go. Ground beef, you know, this is burgers and that kind of stuff. It's now 634 a pound. So it's up from 547 a pound when Biden was in office last summer.

That's a pretty big jump. Why? because a big drought in the West, they tell us, and the diminished cattle supply. All right, who knows? Second one, steak, sirline, boneless, top of the line meats. Now 1355 a pound. Okay?

Last year, 1172. Another big jump. Another big jump. I don't eat a lot of meat, so it doesn't affect me a lot, but, you know, you want a good steak, you're going to pay a lot more for it. Same thing. Drought, diminished cattle supply. Eggs. Now everybody got eggs. They're good for you, the protein and all that.

Now, 360 a dozen. This is average price. Last year, July, 308, 52 cents up. Why? Evian flu continues to impact production. That killed a lot of chickens. Okay. Chicken breast. good alternative to meat, the beef. Now, 4.20 a pound, up from 3.94 a pound.

Higher costs to feed the chickens. Summer is Tim's Ice Latte season. It's also hike season. Pool season? Picnic season. And, yeah, I'm down season. So drink it up with Tim's ice lattes. Now whipped for a smooth taste.

Order yours on the Tim's app today. At participating restaurants in Canada for a limited time and that's because of weather damaged corn and wheat feel i i goes on and on but americans are going to care about the why they're going to care about you got to get the prices down now a tip from me you can not get hurt as much is if you are a food detective okay That means you look around the big trunk stores, all right, Walmart and Sam's Club and Trader Joe's and all of that. They run specials, but you've got to be alert. You've got to know when they're in, you've got to get in, you can get it down.

Amazon is pretty good now with their big food processing stuff. If you go into whole foods, good chain, you better bring a lot of money. Okay, big bill. The average American is going to receive $3752 in tax cuts from the bill. Is that going to make up for the food? Yeah, it'll make up a lot of it. And this is according to the nonpartisan tax foundation. They came out and said almost $4,000 because that bill was passed.

They're working Americans, wealthy Americans, not poor because the poor don't pay federal income tax. Okay, but everybody's going to get back an average of about $4,000, which is good. Residents of Wyoming, Washington, Massachusetts get the biggest discount. I don't really know why. And no, they're, let's see, which state will have the largest, lowest tax cuts? highest tax cuts. Yeah, Wyoming, Washington, Massachusetts, low as West Virginia, Mississippi. There's a lot of equations going on there. But the big bill was good for working families, in my opinion. National Guard update, Pam Bondi in charge. There are 1,50 National Guard troops in the

District of Columbia. They can't arrest anybody, but they can intimidate. So they're out there in a high crime area is making sure that the carjackers don't come out. And the carjackers aren't that stupid. So that's a lot of them. South Carolina, Ohio, West Virginia have sent guard in. 130 FBI agents on the street, they say, 40 alcohol, tobacco firearms on the street. And 400 arrests since August 7th, made by the increased police presence in D.C. Now, the left doesn't like it. Democratic Party didn't want it. Progressives don't want it. So DC is gonna be safer, no doubt about it, it will be.

It'll be cleaner. They moved out a whole bunch of homeless camps, 44 homeless camps been disassembled. They're gonna take the graffiti down, be a nicer place. Democratic Party doesn't want it. They don't want it to be nicer. They don't want it to be safe. Oh, Trump's going down. Okay.

Well, now it'll go down a lot faster. Lives will be saved. No, we don't want it. And you wonder why Trump won? Oh, back with the final thought. That's very good news for us. All right, final thought of the day. You may remember that I had four movies produced of my nonfiction books.

We did Killing Lincoln. We did Killing Kennedy, killing Jesus, and killing Reagan. All were fabulously successful and made the companies that produced them lots of money. All right? I think killing Jesus was the best movie. One of the movies was what they call a docudrama, where you had film scenes and all that, but you had a major star, Tom Hanks, kind of set the movie up throughout. I'll give you a clip in a moment.

So the people who developed this movie worked for a company called Scott Free, Ridley Scott, brilliant director. They form their own company now. It's called Fifth Season. They just bought Confronting Evil. Boy, that's a big break for us. And they're going to do it as a TV adaptation, which is a streaming thing. So I think this is the way it's going to come down. roll a tape on Lincoln.

In the aftermath of the assassination of the many witnesses who claim to know Booth or to see him on the evening of April 14th, 1865, Booth's friend and fellow actor John Matthews later said, those who were the wisest knew the least.

And the stage is set for the most dramatic and resonant crime in American history. That is what I think the confronting evil series is going to look at. I don't know who. I'm an executive producer, but I don't know who I want yet. A couple of people I have in mind. But it's going to be big. And we are so happy to be working with fifth season because I work with them with the other four movies and they're great.

You know, I don't like a lot of the Hollywood weasels. You know that. But these people were really good. So that was a big break. And, you know, we sent them the book and they loved it. love it. Get it now. So you get it first. It's coming right up. Confronting evil out September 9th. Thank you very much for watching and listening to the NoSpin News. I'm Bill O'Reilly. See you again tomorrow.