October 5, 2025 • 31 mins
Newt talks with renowned TV journalist and bestselling author Bill O’Reilly about his latest book, “Confronting Evil.” The book, which quickly became a New York Times bestseller, explores the actions of some of history's most notorious figures, including Genghis Khan, Caligula, Henry VIII, and modern figures like Putin and the Mexican drug cartels. O'Reilly explains his motivation for writing about the concept of evil, noting a perceived rise in malevolent behavior globally and particularly in the United States. He emphasizes the importance of recognizing and confronting evil, which he believes is often ignored in modern society. Their conversation also touches on current global issues, such as the influence of the Mexican drug cartels and the threat posed by Vladimir Putin, whom O'Reilly describes as a dangerous psychopath. He also highlights the need for a collective reassessment of how society deals with evil and the role of leadership in addressing these challenges.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
In this episode of news World, the concept of evil
is universal, ancient, and ever present. In his new book,
Confronting Evil, Bill O'Reilly recounts the deeds of the worst
people in history Genghis Khan, the Roman emperor, Caliguila, Henry
the Eighth, the Collective Evil, the nineteenth century slave traders,
and the twentieth century robber barons, Stalin Hitler, Mao, the
(00:26):
Ayatollahmani Putin, the Mexican drug cartels. Collectively, these warlords, tyrants, businessmen,
and criminals are directly responsible for the death and misery
of hundreds of millions of people. Confronting Evil became an
instant number one New York Times bestseller. I'm really pleased
to welcome my guests, my good friend, my colleague over
(00:48):
the years, Bill O'Reilly. He is a trailblazing TV journalist
who has experienced on precedent his success on cable news
and in writing twenty national number one best selling nonfiction books.
There are more than eighteen million books in the Killing
series in print. Bill, welcome and thank you for joining
(01:19):
me again on news World.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
My pleasure, mister speaker. You're looking good. I'm glad everything's
going well, for you.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
I have to tell you twenty New York Times bestseller.
I've written a lot in my lifetime, but I have
nothing like the number of books in print. You do.
With that kind of record, you can write anything you
want to. What made you want to tackle evil as
your subject this time.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Well, I came off Confronting Presidents. We switched from the
Killing series to Confronting and that was the first big
book and it was a very big success. Presidents and
these books take a year to research and write. So
this time last year, I was searching around for a
subject and I noticed that in the United States and
(02:03):
all over the world, but particularly in our country, there
was a rise in evil day to day. You could
see it in the criminal justice system. You could see
it the way people behave on the internet, even in
the courts. Civility is gone, plagiarism is crazy, people lie
all the time. And I said, you know, we're looking
(02:26):
away from this as a collective people, the American public
is looking away. So let me write a book that's
going to shock everybody into how much evil there has
been and there is. That's why I put putin in
the iatola on a cover, and maybe that will mobilize
the good people to reassess how they deal with evil.
(02:48):
So that was a goal, and then we carried it
out and the rest, as they say, is history.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Well, you chose fifteen of the worst figures in history.
How did you narrow the group down?
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Every one of them relates to our lives today. That's
how I narrowed it down. So you say, well, why
is it Saddam Mussan in there? Because he was localized.
His evil was localized. Which Saddam Mussane did doesn't influence
us today. Paul Pott Cambodia slaughtered his own people, but
it stayed within the borders of that country. These miscreants,
(03:24):
every one of them from Caligia on, influence the world
today negatively, and that's the binding thread on them all.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
One of the topics which is the current present example
of evil is the Mexican drug cartels. And you write, quote,
the suffering perpetuated by the Mexican drug gangs is uncalculable,
the evil on debated. It is doubtful this wicket industry
will ever be fully eradicated. What do you think we
should be doing to minimize the pain that they inflict
(03:56):
on the American people.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
During Donald Trump's first term. I had dinner with him
on No I'm name dropping here, but it's important to
answer your question accurately. I had dinner with him in
Florida and we were talking about what he wanted to
accomplish and how that might lead to a reelection. This
is about twenty eighteen, I would say. I said to him,
(04:18):
you know this fentanyl Mexico corruption on the cartels. People
aren't jumping up and down and screaming about it, but
everybody I know has been affected by it. They've either
lost family members or friends where their neighborhoods have deteriorated,
or they feel they can't go out to the bodega
or the grocery store because they get mugged by a
(04:40):
drug addict. This is big. I said. The only way
that you can defeat that is to declare these cartels
terror groups, just as you did with ISIS and al Qaida,
and use the US military to blow them off the
face of the earth, but not in a way that's
(05:00):
going to cause World War three. Exactly what you did
to ISIS. Obama and Trump really did a methodical job
in dismantling ISIS. I wrote about that in killing the Killers,
I said, you got to bring the same kind of
vision to knocking out those drug cartels, and he didn't
do it in his first term, but now he is.
(05:23):
And that's the only way to defeat these people. You
got to kill him.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
So when you say, for example, the three boats off
Venezuela get wiped out, that fits how you would approach
this whole thing. You have to literally take them apart.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
That's right. And Venezuela is now in narco state, just
like Panama was when you were a congressman, and Bush
the Elder went in and kidnapped the president Doriega and
just invaded Panama took him out because that whole thing
was a narco state. That's what Venezuela is now. Now
(05:57):
Mexico is a little bit different. Zio cannot control the cartels.
The president Scheinbaum is afraid of them, physically afraid. Obrador
was corrupt, in my opinion, as many of the Mexican
presidents were. The military is corrupted down there, so we
can't count on Mexico to do much. So we have
to do it. But Venezuela is Trump's main target now
(06:20):
because he wants to get Maduro out of there. And Maduro,
according to all of our investigative agencies, is making millions
of dollars being paid off by the cocaine traffickers in
South America, and so I expect to see more of that.
You might even see military action by the US on
(06:41):
Venezuela and soil.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
You describe Putin as an unstable individual who obviously does
not value human life at all. How do you explain
It's almost like he is rejecting the reality of the
United States and the Europeans steadily building more momentum to
defeat him, and he seems almost locked into a campaign
(07:04):
that has no future.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
He's a psychopath. On nine to eleven, you may have
noticed this. I was invited to Yankee Stadium by President Trump.
Now he doesn't invite me to have a couple of
hot dogs and watch the game. I knew that he
wanted to talk about a couple of things. I didn't
know what, but his people called me and I said,
when you're invited by a president, as you well know,
(07:28):
you have to go. So I went and we talked
about Putin. I handed him confronting evil. I said, look,
I know you're busy, mister President, But you got to
read this chapter on Putin because he's not the same
guy that you were dealing with the first time around.
Because that always happens when you embrace evil, mister speaker,
when that is your primary goal in life to hurt
other people, you get worse. There is no rehab for evil.
(07:54):
Every one of these tyrants I write about deteriorated and
got worse and worse and worse. That is happened to Putin.
So he's not the same guy. And that's a mistake
that President Trump made. He felt that when he came
back into office he could contain Putin like he did
the first time around. It's a different Putin and now
there's a self destructive straight to him. Now. I think
(08:16):
he can be contained if the Chinese cooperate, and that's
a big if. But this guy is hell bent on
killing people. He's targeting hospitals and schools and little villages
in Ukraine. That's not a military campaign. That's a terror
campaign and that's what he's doing. And a world needs
(08:39):
to really assess Putin the way he is. Stop with
the bs. This is a dangerous, dangerous individual because he
has nuclear weapons.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Do you think if he, in fact did feel like
they were losing, that he would use tactical nuclear weapons.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Yes, he's capable of it, and he's built the doc
Con a black c where underground he's got an unbelievable
complex that would protect him from any kind of nuclear
fallout in Russia. He's got two big submarines that park
themselves outside the DACA in the Black Sea. This is
(09:19):
an amazing compound, and you don't do something like that
by accident. Now, I'm not going to say that he
wants to do this, because obviously this would destroy his
whole foundation of power any kind of a nuclear activity.
But he's capable of it.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
I think he explains part of why Trump has been
very careful and pushing him but not shoving him into desperation.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
That's right. The key to this is China, and I
was invited by the Beijing government in May to go
there and to have a Q and A all the
cues with a pullit Bureau of Communist China and I
was the A and it was an amazing experience. The
reason they invited me was YouTube. They watched me every
(10:11):
night on YouTube. That's been a big game changer for
the O'Reilly Enterprises. We have an independent news agency based
on Billoreilly dot com and we from the very beginning
eight years ago have been exceedingly successful, but now with
YouTube world worldwide, so she and the boys watch me.
I got the invitation through Harvard because China does a
(10:33):
lot of business with Harvard. They know I'm a graduate
of the Kennedy School, and I went with my twenty
one year old political science major son. It was an
amazing experience. Part of what I suggested, you don't tell
the communist government anything, you're polite and respectful, was that
they should get out of the Putin business because this
(10:56):
is not a long term positive for China. They listen
very intently to that, and if Donald Trump can convince
she to back away from Putin, that will really lessen
the threat. But I'm not sure that's going to happen.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
That would be a huge change in the whole balance
of power.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
In the world, no doubt about it. And to watch
that police state unfold before my eyes in Beijing, it's
an amazing occurrence. In fact, Malzetungu was the worst mass
murderer the world has ever seen, about twenty million of
his own people He killed many through starvation, and we
have that, of course, in confronting evil. And what he
(11:37):
did was just be on the pale. I've never seen
anything like it, Starving baby, starving people to try to
reorganize this crazy communist society the way he wanted it.
But you go to China, Now this Mao's picture all
over the place. Can you imagine American killing twenty million
of his fellow citizens and have his picture everywhere. That's
(11:58):
the taken place in China. We need to understand who
our adversaries are, what their mindset is. But I don't
think China is self destructive. I think that they would
like to prosper on their own terms. But I think
Daytona's possible there.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
I just have to ask you about Gengis Khan in
your judging, Why is he evil?
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Okay? So, Jengas Khan was way ahead of his time
as far as being a tyrant. He took that to
the level that it had never been even thought about.
His empire extended from the Pacific Ocean of China, Okay,
(12:56):
all the way to Hungary. You look at a map
and a Mongol horsemen just devastated everybody because they were
fighting on horseback and nobody else was and Khan's orders
were kill everybody. You don't need to take any prisoners,
We don't want to feed him anyway. Just going to
behead everybody, put the head on sticks, and everybody else surrender,
(13:19):
And that's pretty much what happened. So this guy was
basically the four runner of Hitler and everybody else. He
conquered all of that territory. How he influences us today
is that China is still paranoid of foreigners because of
Djengis Khan. And one of the things that I did
(13:43):
when I was in China was visit the Great Wall,
which it is the most magnificent human structure ever created
on this planet. You go there, in your mouth goes,
how can he have done this? And our wall was
put up to keep the Mongol warriors out of But
the mentality and the terror that Khan brought to China
(14:05):
and everybody else still to this day resonates the suspicion
that so much bad can happen. It's an amazing thing,
particularly in Asia where Americas don't have a great frame
of reference, that fear is still there.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
When you studied him, what do you think there was
about him. He's a slave at about thirteen, breaks loose,
organizes his family, and then gradually builds this entire empire.
What was it about him personally? You think that enabled
him to be such an extraordinary change agent.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
He's a warrior. He was the toughest guy on the block,
and the Mongols respected that. A lot of times. He
would actually lead the campaigns himself until he got older,
that he handed over to his grandsons. But this guy
who was a savage and he had no compassion, he
(15:04):
had no weakness that the warriors could see, and so
he was an energetic, charismatic leader. And most of them
were mal is a coward now hidding the mountain the
sea didn't fight Shan Kai Schek, but Hitler got the
Iron Cross in World War One. Okay, Stalin, he wasn't
a warrior, but you are really tough guys down. So
(15:27):
you go down to these villains and many of them
are personally courageous, and Kahn leaves the league in that.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Now in the modern era, one of the people you
write about is Ayatollahomonia. Why do you include him in
this list of evil?
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Because he lighted the fuse to terrorism to the Jihad.
And it's an amazing story because the Persian people, as
you well know because you're a historian, not about country
educated people. And they had a terrible leader, okay, who
(16:06):
they booted out, and that happens all the time, Okay,
the Shah of Iron. And we tell you in confronting evil,
how bad the Shah? What? People aren't ha any money.
And this guy's got eighteen residences and he's flying in
ducks from Austria to eat. So the Ayatola comes in
with the full compliance of the Persian people, all right,
(16:29):
and he basically says, I'm running the show. No freedom,
none and we're gonna kill as many infidels as we can.
It was the same Hitler asked stuff. Hitler wasn't deceiving anybody.
He wrote a book Mine Coffee. He says, look, you
give me power. I'm gonna kill everybody I don't like.
That's what the Iotola did. The Iotola didn't walk in
(16:50):
and go yeah, wait, they will negotiate or something. Nah.
He goes they're all gonna die, and person goes okay.
So he gets power. He sets up this police state.
But the police state doesn't just stay in Iran, it
goes to Hamas, it goes to Hezbula, it goes all
over the place. Al Kaita, the money's coming in. Any
(17:12):
arms are coming in and kill the infidels. And who's
the infidels? Well in the USA and Israel because the Jews,
we got to kill all of them, of course, and
so he so insidious And to this day the world
is dealing with what the Ayatolahomani set up.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
It's amazing. Look, I'm confident that Confronting Evil is not
just going to be a popular book because your books
are always popular. I think it's an important book because
we've had a very hard time with the word evil
in the modern secular world. And yet unless you're prepared
to understand that evil does exist, you really can't develop
any kind of serious understanding of what it takes to
(17:53):
defeat it. And that's as I think this is an
important book, both an interesting book, but also in getting
and reminding us that some people in the world who
really are truly evil and you have to deal with them.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
The problem for Americans is this the amount of interest
in religion theology has declined so dramatically in the last
fifty years that there are a number of Americans who
don't even believe is evil. Everybody's got an excuse, all right,
(18:24):
there's always a yeah. Now, you can't punish the violent
criminal because it's society's fault, all right. So once you
get a population that looks away, that looks away, doesn't
mitigate evil even in their own families. Here's the best
example I can give you. Charlie Kirk is assassinated. That's
an individual evil act, no debate, Okay. His father in Utah,
(18:51):
Saint George, Utah, and I've been there, a very nice town.
Small is a sheriff's deputy for many, many years. He
tells the press. The father tells the press, my son
became mentally ill, deteriorated, and the family could see it
because he was on the dark recesses of social media
(19:15):
of the internet, and we could see it. So my question,
and I would say this with all sensitivity, is why
wasn't there any intervention? Why didn't you do something or
bring it to a level where it was hard for
your son to act out? I'm sure the answer, And
again I believe that family, and that was one of
(19:37):
the things that I suggested to President Trump at Yankee Stadium.
I said, you got to mention the legs assassins family,
their lives are. That's what evil does. Evil metastasizes and
destroys everything in his way, including the assassin's family. And
Trump did he mentioned them. Okay, But the vivid description
(20:00):
of the decline of this mentally ill person to kill
Charlie Kirk was noticed. And I submit to you that
most Americans see evil and turn away from it because
it's unpleasant. They don't want to get involved. It's not
my purview, it's not my responsibility. It is well.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
I mean, if you watch the four minute video of
the young Ukrainian woman who has stabbed to death on
the train in Charlotte, not a single person calls nine
one one, Not a single person tries to help her.
If the woman sitting next to her simply helps, she
might well have been alive. I mean, it's an astonishing
(20:44):
comment on the degree to which any sense of society
has broken down. And this poor young woman who'd come
to America to escape the dangers of Ukraine ends up
getting killed by a total stranger for no reason. And
the total stranger says openly, look, I had evil in
my head and it forced me to do it and
(21:04):
says I'm crazy.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
I took that story two steps further. Number One, I
understand the people on the bus for afraid. I got
it guy hat a knife. They're afraid. That's natural. I
would have done something. You would have done something. But
we're different people. But the judge who let that guy
out on the street, that judge still sitting there in
(21:28):
North Carolina. That judge should have been removed immediately by
the governor, immediately suspended. That's what I mean. A governor
looked away from it. It's evil to put dangerous people
out on the street when you don't have to. That's evil.
So the book was written with this passion that if
(21:53):
we continue down this road of apathy, of cowardice, of denial,
evil's going to grow and grow quickly.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
You have been amazing in understanding the new technologies, the
new communications systems. Could you just talk for a mare
or two about the whole concept of no Spin News
and the way that Billreilly dot Com has become such
a remarkable success.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Well, it's an evolution. I've been in the business fifty years, Okay,
you've been in politics for me than I've been in journalism.
But I'm the last man standing from my journalism class
at Boston University, and all the people that I worked
with throughout the decades, they're all retired, playing pickleball, whatever
they do. I'm still here. The only one really probably
(23:01):
parallels me a little bit. And what I always wanted
to do with my life was tell the truth. That's it.
So that when I got in a position of responsibility
by anchoring broadcasts, it was a very simple equation. Tell
the truth and the people will respond to that. That's
(23:24):
exactly what happened. Don't be a weasel, don't be bis,
don't equivocate, come to a conclusion, back it up as
best you can as what journalism is supposed to be,
and let it fly. And it worked. What happened to
me was that once I left the corporate structure, and
(23:45):
I should have done it much earlier, because the corporate
structure and Bill O'Reilly are not compatible. I don't want
people telling me what to do. Number one, I know
what to do, all right. I've been the eighty six countries,
covered four wars. I know what it's about, and I'm
a historian to boot, So I don't want some guy
(24:07):
named Randy who doesn't know anything saying no, no, I
never been campatible. Once the technology was developed whereby I
could get my message across without the big corporate umbrella
bank and I hired great people, a lot of young people,
(24:29):
trained them like Navy seals to get through me. Everybody
I trained at Fox News is now either producing. They're
all successful because when a media company sees O'Reilly factor,
they know to get through me. It's like the Marines.
I mean, you have to have the goods. But what
(24:51):
stuns me now is that I can deliver my message
to Mongolia to everywhere, all right. I have to be
honest and say I did not anticipate that when I
started bill O'Reilly dot Com in the No Spin News,
I did know I'd be successful because I took so
(25:12):
many people away from the cable universe and the network
news because they still had an interest in what I
wanted to say. I believe, and this goes back to
my room in Catholic upbringing. I believe I'm here for
a reason. I'm on this planet for a reason, that
(25:33):
I've been given certain talent, and that my obligation is
to use the talent for as much good as I can.
It's a simple equation. But that's what Catholicism is. You
have a decision. You can either try to be good
or bad, or evil, good or evil. You got to choose,
(25:54):
and based upon what you do choose, it will be
either rewarded or damn. That's it. That's what it is.
So a lot of it isn't me. I believe that
I've been directed to do this stuff. I mean, I
should be in a jar someplace with all I've been through,
but I'm here and I'm kind of still feisty, and
(26:15):
I don't think it's me. I think that this is preordained.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
And you have the great virtue that you do something
you love, and I think that keeps people healthier and
allows them to stay active far longer than if you
had retired and tried to play pickleball.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Look, there is a rhythm to life. A lot of
younger people because they never get this kind of instruction
in school, or a lot of times they have bad parents,
and there's a rhythm to life. Some of it. The
rhythm is real, tough, real bad, bad things happen to everybody,
and you have to be persistent, you have to get
(26:55):
up and everybody gets it. Nobody escaped. But if you're
genuinely a good person and you want to help your
country or family, whatever, you'll get a chance to do that.
But then it's out of your hands. You do the
best that you can.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
I mean, you are a great example for people that
if you're persistent, if you're willing to learn, if you
willing to do new things. Who would have thought when
you had the highest rated show on cable news that
you would turn around and then have twenty consecutive New
York Times bestsellers. And then the process, by the way,
also go on this emerging technology at YouTube and now
(27:37):
have a worldwide audience. You have evolved with the world
around you in ways that I find very admirable, which
is why I always like doing a podcast with you.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
One more thing though, and this is important for all
of your listeners. A lot of evil people tried to
derail me, and I didn't quite figure that out as
quickly as I should have big money behind it, because
they saw me as a threat to what they were
(28:08):
up to. Across a boy, we got to get this guy.
And if you look throughout history, Lincoln, I can name
ten of them that were really really solid individual, always
always at risk, always evil want to take them down,
all of them. And that is another factor in why
(28:33):
there aren't more good people that step up and run
for office or write things or whatever because they're freed.
Because they're going to come after you. The evildoers are
going to come after you. They came after me big time.
I fought them and I won, but boy was it painful.
And now you have corporations, entire media corporations, powerful powerful people.
(28:58):
Disney is the best example, that go out of their
way to enable evil, to allow things they never should allow.
That's totally different than when it happened in the past,
when corporations are basically never benign, but they were neutral.
Not it promote and crap. That's destructive, and if you're
(29:20):
on the other side of that, they cancel you. So
I can't get on any of the networks to talk
about my book, even though it's the best selling book
in the country, then won't put me on. That is
dangerous because that's the real assault on freedom of speech.
Not Kimmel and Colbert. These are just piffles, all right.
(29:44):
The real is censorship by the corporate media, and that
I'm trying to expose it and people are trying to
figure it out. That's the real danger.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
You are remarkable on thus a reporter, a great historian,
a terrific writer, and a very inventive God. I want
to thank you for joining me, as you know, I
really value your friendship. Your new book, the best selling
Confronting Evil Assessing the Worst of the Worst, is available
now in Amazon and in bookstores everywhere, and our listeners
(30:19):
can catch up with everything you are doing, including no
spinnews at Bill oreilly dot com. So thank you, Bill
for joining me.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Always a pleasure, mister speaker, stay well. The country needs you.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
Thank you to my guest Bill O'Reilly. You can get
a link to buy his new book, Confronting Evil Assessing
the Worst of the Worst on our show page at
newtworld dot com. Newtworld is produced by Gingishtreet sixty and iHeartMedia.
Our executive producer is Guarnsey Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson.
The artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley.
(30:55):
Special thanks to the team at gingerishtreet sixty. If you've
been enjoying Newsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcasts
and both rate us with five stars and give us
a review so others can learn what it's all about.
Right now, listeners of New World can sign up for
my three freeweekly columns at gangristrey sixty dot com slash newsletter.
I'm newt Gangwich. This is neut World
In this episode of news World, the concept of evil
is universal, ancient, and ever present. In his new book,
Confronting Evil, Bill O'Reilly recounts the deeds of the worst
people in history Genghis Khan, the Roman emperor, Caliguila, Henry
the Eighth, the Collective Evil, the nineteenth century slave traders,
and the twentieth century robber barons, Stalin Hitler, Mao, the
(00:26):
Ayatollahmani Putin, the Mexican drug cartels. Collectively, these warlords, tyrants, businessmen,
and criminals are directly responsible for the death and misery
of hundreds of millions of people. Confronting Evil became an
instant number one New York Times bestseller. I'm really pleased
to welcome my guests, my good friend, my colleague over
(00:48):
the years, Bill O'Reilly. He is a trailblazing TV journalist
who has experienced on precedent his success on cable news
and in writing twenty national number one best selling nonfiction books.
There are more than eighteen million books in the Killing
series in print. Bill, welcome and thank you for joining
(01:19):
me again on news World.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
My pleasure, mister speaker. You're looking good. I'm glad everything's
going well, for you.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
I have to tell you twenty New York Times bestseller.
I've written a lot in my lifetime, but I have
nothing like the number of books in print. You do.
With that kind of record, you can write anything you
want to. What made you want to tackle evil as
your subject this time.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Well, I came off Confronting Presidents. We switched from the
Killing series to Confronting and that was the first big
book and it was a very big success. Presidents and
these books take a year to research and write. So
this time last year, I was searching around for a
subject and I noticed that in the United States and
(02:03):
all over the world, but particularly in our country, there
was a rise in evil day to day. You could
see it in the criminal justice system. You could see
it the way people behave on the internet, even in
the courts. Civility is gone, plagiarism is crazy, people lie
all the time. And I said, you know, we're looking
(02:26):
away from this as a collective people, the American public
is looking away. So let me write a book that's
going to shock everybody into how much evil there has
been and there is. That's why I put putin in
the iatola on a cover, and maybe that will mobilize
the good people to reassess how they deal with evil.
(02:48):
So that was a goal, and then we carried it
out and the rest, as they say, is history.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Well, you chose fifteen of the worst figures in history.
How did you narrow the group down?
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Every one of them relates to our lives today. That's
how I narrowed it down. So you say, well, why
is it Saddam Mussan in there? Because he was localized.
His evil was localized. Which Saddam Mussane did doesn't influence
us today. Paul Pott Cambodia slaughtered his own people, but
it stayed within the borders of that country. These miscreants,
(03:24):
every one of them from Caligia on, influence the world
today negatively, and that's the binding thread on them all.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
One of the topics which is the current present example
of evil is the Mexican drug cartels. And you write, quote,
the suffering perpetuated by the Mexican drug gangs is uncalculable,
the evil on debated. It is doubtful this wicket industry
will ever be fully eradicated. What do you think we
should be doing to minimize the pain that they inflict
(03:56):
on the American people.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
During Donald Trump's first term. I had dinner with him
on No I'm name dropping here, but it's important to
answer your question accurately. I had dinner with him in
Florida and we were talking about what he wanted to
accomplish and how that might lead to a reelection. This
is about twenty eighteen, I would say. I said to him,
(04:18):
you know this fentanyl Mexico corruption on the cartels. People
aren't jumping up and down and screaming about it, but
everybody I know has been affected by it. They've either
lost family members or friends where their neighborhoods have deteriorated,
or they feel they can't go out to the bodega
or the grocery store because they get mugged by a
(04:40):
drug addict. This is big. I said. The only way
that you can defeat that is to declare these cartels
terror groups, just as you did with ISIS and al Qaida,
and use the US military to blow them off the
face of the earth, but not in a way that's
(05:00):
going to cause World War three. Exactly what you did
to ISIS. Obama and Trump really did a methodical job
in dismantling ISIS. I wrote about that in killing the Killers,
I said, you got to bring the same kind of
vision to knocking out those drug cartels, and he didn't
do it in his first term, but now he is.
(05:23):
And that's the only way to defeat these people. You
got to kill him.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
So when you say, for example, the three boats off
Venezuela get wiped out, that fits how you would approach
this whole thing. You have to literally take them apart.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
That's right. And Venezuela is now in narco state, just
like Panama was when you were a congressman, and Bush
the Elder went in and kidnapped the president Doriega and
just invaded Panama took him out because that whole thing
was a narco state. That's what Venezuela is now. Now
(05:57):
Mexico is a little bit different. Zio cannot control the cartels.
The president Scheinbaum is afraid of them, physically afraid. Obrador
was corrupt, in my opinion, as many of the Mexican
presidents were. The military is corrupted down there, so we
can't count on Mexico to do much. So we have
to do it. But Venezuela is Trump's main target now
(06:20):
because he wants to get Maduro out of there. And Maduro,
according to all of our investigative agencies, is making millions
of dollars being paid off by the cocaine traffickers in
South America, and so I expect to see more of that.
You might even see military action by the US on
(06:41):
Venezuela and soil.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
You describe Putin as an unstable individual who obviously does
not value human life at all. How do you explain
It's almost like he is rejecting the reality of the
United States and the Europeans steadily building more momentum to
defeat him, and he seems almost locked into a campaign
(07:04):
that has no future.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
He's a psychopath. On nine to eleven, you may have
noticed this. I was invited to Yankee Stadium by President Trump.
Now he doesn't invite me to have a couple of
hot dogs and watch the game. I knew that he
wanted to talk about a couple of things. I didn't
know what, but his people called me and I said,
when you're invited by a president, as you well know,
(07:28):
you have to go. So I went and we talked
about Putin. I handed him confronting evil. I said, look,
I know you're busy, mister President, But you got to
read this chapter on Putin because he's not the same
guy that you were dealing with the first time around.
Because that always happens when you embrace evil, mister speaker,
when that is your primary goal in life to hurt
other people, you get worse. There is no rehab for evil.
(07:54):
Every one of these tyrants I write about deteriorated and
got worse and worse and worse. That is happened to Putin.
So he's not the same guy. And that's a mistake
that President Trump made. He felt that when he came
back into office he could contain Putin like he did
the first time around. It's a different Putin and now
there's a self destructive straight to him. Now. I think
(08:16):
he can be contained if the Chinese cooperate, and that's
a big if. But this guy is hell bent on
killing people. He's targeting hospitals and schools and little villages
in Ukraine. That's not a military campaign. That's a terror
campaign and that's what he's doing. And a world needs
(08:39):
to really assess Putin the way he is. Stop with
the bs. This is a dangerous, dangerous individual because he
has nuclear weapons.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Do you think if he, in fact did feel like
they were losing, that he would use tactical nuclear weapons.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Yes, he's capable of it, and he's built the doc
Con a black c where underground he's got an unbelievable
complex that would protect him from any kind of nuclear
fallout in Russia. He's got two big submarines that park
themselves outside the DACA in the Black Sea. This is
(09:19):
an amazing compound, and you don't do something like that
by accident. Now, I'm not going to say that he
wants to do this, because obviously this would destroy his
whole foundation of power any kind of a nuclear activity.
But he's capable of it.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
I think he explains part of why Trump has been
very careful and pushing him but not shoving him into desperation.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
That's right. The key to this is China, and I
was invited by the Beijing government in May to go
there and to have a Q and A all the
cues with a pullit Bureau of Communist China and I
was the A and it was an amazing experience. The
reason they invited me was YouTube. They watched me every
(10:11):
night on YouTube. That's been a big game changer for
the O'Reilly Enterprises. We have an independent news agency based
on Billoreilly dot com and we from the very beginning
eight years ago have been exceedingly successful, but now with
YouTube world worldwide, so she and the boys watch me.
I got the invitation through Harvard because China does a
(10:33):
lot of business with Harvard. They know I'm a graduate
of the Kennedy School, and I went with my twenty
one year old political science major son. It was an
amazing experience. Part of what I suggested, you don't tell
the communist government anything, you're polite and respectful, was that
they should get out of the Putin business because this
(10:56):
is not a long term positive for China. They listen
very intently to that, and if Donald Trump can convince
she to back away from Putin, that will really lessen
the threat. But I'm not sure that's going to happen.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
That would be a huge change in the whole balance
of power.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
In the world, no doubt about it. And to watch
that police state unfold before my eyes in Beijing, it's
an amazing occurrence. In fact, Malzetungu was the worst mass
murderer the world has ever seen, about twenty million of
his own people He killed many through starvation, and we
have that, of course, in confronting evil. And what he
(11:37):
did was just be on the pale. I've never seen
anything like it, Starving baby, starving people to try to
reorganize this crazy communist society the way he wanted it.
But you go to China, Now this Mao's picture all
over the place. Can you imagine American killing twenty million
of his fellow citizens and have his picture everywhere. That's
(11:58):
the taken place in China. We need to understand who
our adversaries are, what their mindset is. But I don't
think China is self destructive. I think that they would
like to prosper on their own terms. But I think
Daytona's possible there.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
I just have to ask you about Gengis Khan in
your judging, Why is he evil?
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Okay? So, Jengas Khan was way ahead of his time
as far as being a tyrant. He took that to
the level that it had never been even thought about.
His empire extended from the Pacific Ocean of China, Okay,
(12:56):
all the way to Hungary. You look at a map
and a Mongol horsemen just devastated everybody because they were
fighting on horseback and nobody else was and Khan's orders
were kill everybody. You don't need to take any prisoners,
We don't want to feed him anyway. Just going to
behead everybody, put the head on sticks, and everybody else surrender,
(13:19):
And that's pretty much what happened. So this guy was
basically the four runner of Hitler and everybody else. He
conquered all of that territory. How he influences us today
is that China is still paranoid of foreigners because of
Djengis Khan. And one of the things that I did
(13:43):
when I was in China was visit the Great Wall,
which it is the most magnificent human structure ever created
on this planet. You go there, in your mouth goes,
how can he have done this? And our wall was
put up to keep the Mongol warriors out of But
the mentality and the terror that Khan brought to China
(14:05):
and everybody else still to this day resonates the suspicion
that so much bad can happen. It's an amazing thing,
particularly in Asia where Americas don't have a great frame
of reference, that fear is still there.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
When you studied him, what do you think there was
about him. He's a slave at about thirteen, breaks loose,
organizes his family, and then gradually builds this entire empire.
What was it about him personally? You think that enabled
him to be such an extraordinary change agent.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
He's a warrior. He was the toughest guy on the block,
and the Mongols respected that. A lot of times. He
would actually lead the campaigns himself until he got older,
that he handed over to his grandsons. But this guy
who was a savage and he had no compassion, he
(15:04):
had no weakness that the warriors could see, and so
he was an energetic, charismatic leader. And most of them
were mal is a coward now hidding the mountain the
sea didn't fight Shan Kai Schek, but Hitler got the
Iron Cross in World War One. Okay, Stalin, he wasn't
a warrior, but you are really tough guys down. So
(15:27):
you go down to these villains and many of them
are personally courageous, and Kahn leaves the league in that.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Now in the modern era, one of the people you
write about is Ayatollahomonia. Why do you include him in
this list of evil?
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Because he lighted the fuse to terrorism to the Jihad.
And it's an amazing story because the Persian people, as
you well know because you're a historian, not about country
educated people. And they had a terrible leader, okay, who
(16:06):
they booted out, and that happens all the time, Okay,
the Shah of Iron. And we tell you in confronting evil,
how bad the Shah? What? People aren't ha any money.
And this guy's got eighteen residences and he's flying in
ducks from Austria to eat. So the Ayatola comes in
with the full compliance of the Persian people, all right,
(16:29):
and he basically says, I'm running the show. No freedom,
none and we're gonna kill as many infidels as we can.
It was the same Hitler asked stuff. Hitler wasn't deceiving anybody.
He wrote a book Mine Coffee. He says, look, you
give me power. I'm gonna kill everybody I don't like.
That's what the Iotola did. The Iotola didn't walk in
(16:50):
and go yeah, wait, they will negotiate or something. Nah.
He goes they're all gonna die, and person goes okay.
So he gets power. He sets up this police state.
But the police state doesn't just stay in Iran, it
goes to Hamas, it goes to Hezbula, it goes all
over the place. Al Kaita, the money's coming in. Any
(17:12):
arms are coming in and kill the infidels. And who's
the infidels? Well in the USA and Israel because the Jews,
we got to kill all of them, of course, and
so he so insidious And to this day the world
is dealing with what the Ayatolahomani set up.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
It's amazing. Look, I'm confident that Confronting Evil is not
just going to be a popular book because your books
are always popular. I think it's an important book because
we've had a very hard time with the word evil
in the modern secular world. And yet unless you're prepared
to understand that evil does exist, you really can't develop
any kind of serious understanding of what it takes to
(17:53):
defeat it. And that's as I think this is an
important book, both an interesting book, but also in getting
and reminding us that some people in the world who
really are truly evil and you have to deal with them.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
The problem for Americans is this the amount of interest
in religion theology has declined so dramatically in the last
fifty years that there are a number of Americans who
don't even believe is evil. Everybody's got an excuse, all right,
(18:24):
there's always a yeah. Now, you can't punish the violent
criminal because it's society's fault, all right. So once you
get a population that looks away, that looks away, doesn't
mitigate evil even in their own families. Here's the best
example I can give you. Charlie Kirk is assassinated. That's
an individual evil act, no debate, Okay. His father in Utah,
(18:51):
Saint George, Utah, and I've been there, a very nice town.
Small is a sheriff's deputy for many, many years. He
tells the press. The father tells the press, my son
became mentally ill, deteriorated, and the family could see it
because he was on the dark recesses of social media
(19:15):
of the internet, and we could see it. So my question,
and I would say this with all sensitivity, is why
wasn't there any intervention? Why didn't you do something or
bring it to a level where it was hard for
your son to act out? I'm sure the answer, And
again I believe that family, and that was one of
(19:37):
the things that I suggested to President Trump at Yankee Stadium.
I said, you got to mention the legs assassins family,
their lives are. That's what evil does. Evil metastasizes and
destroys everything in his way, including the assassin's family. And
Trump did he mentioned them. Okay, But the vivid description
(20:00):
of the decline of this mentally ill person to kill
Charlie Kirk was noticed. And I submit to you that
most Americans see evil and turn away from it because
it's unpleasant. They don't want to get involved. It's not
my purview, it's not my responsibility. It is well.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
I mean, if you watch the four minute video of
the young Ukrainian woman who has stabbed to death on
the train in Charlotte, not a single person calls nine
one one, Not a single person tries to help her.
If the woman sitting next to her simply helps, she
might well have been alive. I mean, it's an astonishing
(20:44):
comment on the degree to which any sense of society
has broken down. And this poor young woman who'd come
to America to escape the dangers of Ukraine ends up
getting killed by a total stranger for no reason. And
the total stranger says openly, look, I had evil in
my head and it forced me to do it and
(21:04):
says I'm crazy.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
I took that story two steps further. Number One, I
understand the people on the bus for afraid. I got
it guy hat a knife. They're afraid. That's natural. I
would have done something. You would have done something. But
we're different people. But the judge who let that guy
out on the street, that judge still sitting there in
(21:28):
North Carolina. That judge should have been removed immediately by
the governor, immediately suspended. That's what I mean. A governor
looked away from it. It's evil to put dangerous people
out on the street when you don't have to. That's evil.
So the book was written with this passion that if
(21:53):
we continue down this road of apathy, of cowardice, of denial,
evil's going to grow and grow quickly.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
You have been amazing in understanding the new technologies, the
new communications systems. Could you just talk for a mare
or two about the whole concept of no Spin News
and the way that Billreilly dot Com has become such
a remarkable success.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Well, it's an evolution. I've been in the business fifty years, Okay,
you've been in politics for me than I've been in journalism.
But I'm the last man standing from my journalism class
at Boston University, and all the people that I worked
with throughout the decades, they're all retired, playing pickleball, whatever
they do. I'm still here. The only one really probably
(23:01):
parallels me a little bit. And what I always wanted
to do with my life was tell the truth. That's it.
So that when I got in a position of responsibility
by anchoring broadcasts, it was a very simple equation. Tell
the truth and the people will respond to that. That's
(23:24):
exactly what happened. Don't be a weasel, don't be bis,
don't equivocate, come to a conclusion, back it up as
best you can as what journalism is supposed to be,
and let it fly. And it worked. What happened to
me was that once I left the corporate structure, and
(23:45):
I should have done it much earlier, because the corporate
structure and Bill O'Reilly are not compatible. I don't want
people telling me what to do. Number one, I know
what to do, all right. I've been the eighty six countries,
covered four wars. I know what it's about, and I'm
a historian to boot, So I don't want some guy
(24:07):
named Randy who doesn't know anything saying no, no, I
never been campatible. Once the technology was developed whereby I
could get my message across without the big corporate umbrella
bank and I hired great people, a lot of young people,
(24:29):
trained them like Navy seals to get through me. Everybody
I trained at Fox News is now either producing. They're
all successful because when a media company sees O'Reilly factor,
they know to get through me. It's like the Marines.
I mean, you have to have the goods. But what
(24:51):
stuns me now is that I can deliver my message
to Mongolia to everywhere, all right. I have to be
honest and say I did not anticipate that when I
started bill O'Reilly dot Com in the No Spin News,
I did know I'd be successful because I took so
(25:12):
many people away from the cable universe and the network
news because they still had an interest in what I
wanted to say. I believe, and this goes back to
my room in Catholic upbringing. I believe I'm here for
a reason. I'm on this planet for a reason, that
(25:33):
I've been given certain talent, and that my obligation is
to use the talent for as much good as I can.
It's a simple equation. But that's what Catholicism is. You
have a decision. You can either try to be good
or bad, or evil, good or evil. You got to choose,
(25:54):
and based upon what you do choose, it will be
either rewarded or damn. That's it. That's what it is.
So a lot of it isn't me. I believe that
I've been directed to do this stuff. I mean, I
should be in a jar someplace with all I've been through,
but I'm here and I'm kind of still feisty, and
(26:15):
I don't think it's me. I think that this is preordained.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
And you have the great virtue that you do something
you love, and I think that keeps people healthier and
allows them to stay active far longer than if you
had retired and tried to play pickleball.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Look, there is a rhythm to life. A lot of
younger people because they never get this kind of instruction
in school, or a lot of times they have bad parents,
and there's a rhythm to life. Some of it. The
rhythm is real, tough, real bad, bad things happen to everybody,
and you have to be persistent, you have to get
(26:55):
up and everybody gets it. Nobody escaped. But if you're
genuinely a good person and you want to help your
country or family, whatever, you'll get a chance to do that.
But then it's out of your hands. You do the
best that you can.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
I mean, you are a great example for people that
if you're persistent, if you're willing to learn, if you
willing to do new things. Who would have thought when
you had the highest rated show on cable news that
you would turn around and then have twenty consecutive New
York Times bestsellers. And then the process, by the way,
also go on this emerging technology at YouTube and now
(27:37):
have a worldwide audience. You have evolved with the world
around you in ways that I find very admirable, which
is why I always like doing a podcast with you.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
One more thing though, and this is important for all
of your listeners. A lot of evil people tried to
derail me, and I didn't quite figure that out as
quickly as I should have big money behind it, because
they saw me as a threat to what they were
(28:08):
up to. Across a boy, we got to get this guy.
And if you look throughout history, Lincoln, I can name
ten of them that were really really solid individual, always
always at risk, always evil want to take them down,
all of them. And that is another factor in why
(28:33):
there aren't more good people that step up and run
for office or write things or whatever because they're freed.
Because they're going to come after you. The evildoers are
going to come after you. They came after me big time.
I fought them and I won, but boy was it painful.
And now you have corporations, entire media corporations, powerful powerful people.
(28:58):
Disney is the best example, that go out of their
way to enable evil, to allow things they never should allow.
That's totally different than when it happened in the past,
when corporations are basically never benign, but they were neutral.
Not it promote and crap. That's destructive, and if you're
(29:20):
on the other side of that, they cancel you. So
I can't get on any of the networks to talk
about my book, even though it's the best selling book
in the country, then won't put me on. That is
dangerous because that's the real assault on freedom of speech.
Not Kimmel and Colbert. These are just piffles, all right.
(29:44):
The real is censorship by the corporate media, and that
I'm trying to expose it and people are trying to
figure it out. That's the real danger.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
You are remarkable on thus a reporter, a great historian,
a terrific writer, and a very inventive God. I want
to thank you for joining me, as you know, I
really value your friendship. Your new book, the best selling
Confronting Evil Assessing the Worst of the Worst, is available
now in Amazon and in bookstores everywhere, and our listeners
(30:19):
can catch up with everything you are doing, including no
spinnews at Bill oreilly dot com. So thank you, Bill
for joining me.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Always a pleasure, mister speaker, stay well. The country needs you.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
Thank you to my guest Bill O'Reilly. You can get
a link to buy his new book, Confronting Evil Assessing
the Worst of the Worst on our show page at
newtworld dot com. Newtworld is produced by Gingishtreet sixty and iHeartMedia.
Our executive producer is Guarnsey Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson.
The artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley.
(30:55):
Special thanks to the team at gingerishtreet sixty. If you've
been enjoying Newsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcasts
and both rate us with five stars and give us
a review so others can learn what it's all about.
Right now, listeners of New World can sign up for
my three freeweekly columns at gangristrey sixty dot com slash newsletter.
I'm newt Gangwich. This is neut World
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