Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - April 24, 2025


Ep 1178 ｜ Christianity Today Tried to Disprove the Gospels … and Failed ｜ Guest： Bill O'Reilly


Episode Stats

Length

43 minutes

Words per Minute

160.65881

Word Count

7,033

Sentence Count

550

Misogynist Sentences

5

Hate Speech Sentences

10


Summary


Transcript

00:00:01.000 Christianity Today questions the details of Jesus' crucifixion.
00:00:06.720 Also, we've got Bill O'Reilly here to talk about the truth of the JFK files.
00:00:12.940 Also, he's going to give his grade for how the Trump administration is really doing.
00:00:18.600 We've got all of this and more on today's episode of Relatable.
00:00:22.140 And before we get into it, I want to remind you, go to sharethearrows.com,
00:00:25.900 our Christian Women's Conference on October 11th in Dallas, Texas.
00:00:29.360 Go to sharethearrows.com to get your tickets today.
00:00:33.980 Today's episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.
00:00:36.960 Go to goodranchers.com, code Allie.
00:00:38.700 That's goodranchers.com, code Allie.
00:00:49.780 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable.
00:00:51.480 Happy Thursday.
00:00:52.380 Hope everyone is having a wonderful week so far.
00:00:54.900 We've got Bill O'Reilly coming on the show at the end of this episode.
00:01:00.120 But first, I want to make sure that we talk about this Christianity Today article
00:01:04.520 that I have been wanting to respond to for a while.
00:01:07.500 It is crazy.
00:01:09.280 It's crazy.
00:01:09.900 You know, I have started thinking that Christianity Today should be called Discount Christianity.
00:01:16.400 I know some people joke that it should be called Christianity Yesterday.
00:01:20.600 I like that.
00:01:21.560 I also like Discount Christianity because it's a good thing.
00:01:24.900 It's doing some work.
00:01:27.280 You've got a double meaning there.
00:01:29.460 It's Discount Christianity in that it routinely cheapens Christianity.
00:01:34.240 And I think in many ways actually cheapens the Christian witness because of its compromises.
00:01:40.100 But it also, it seems, is trying to discount Christianity.
00:01:44.640 It is trying to make it seem less true.
00:01:47.340 And that is certainly the case when it comes to this article that the outlet decided to
00:01:52.740 publish over Easter weekend.
00:01:55.180 So it was titled, Was Jesus Crucified with Nails?
00:02:00.900 And this scholar apparently is casting doubt on the idea that Jesus was actually nailed to
00:02:08.200 the cross.
00:02:09.240 Maybe he was just tied to the cross with ropes.
00:02:12.460 And we will get into why this actually matters.
00:02:15.240 This isn't just like a tertiary squabble that this is a really big deal when it comes
00:02:21.320 to the reliability of Scripture.
00:02:24.540 So here's what the article said.
00:02:27.540 Was Jesus crucified with nails?
00:02:29.840 Daniel Solomon, the author, says this.
00:02:32.980 Telling the story of Christ's death, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John simply say that Roman
00:02:37.400 soldiers crucified him.
00:02:38.760 They don't say how.
00:02:39.720 Each of the Gospels include specific detail about the soldier's method of dividing Jesus'
00:02:44.480 clothes, a lottery, but none describe the way the soldiers put him on the cross.
00:02:49.340 Jeffrey P. Arroyo Garcia, an evangelical Bible scholar who teaches at Gordon College, thinks
00:02:54.520 maybe there weren't any nails and argue this point in this interview with Christianity
00:03:00.760 Today.
00:03:01.780 Garcia said that the word used there just means to hang on the cross.
00:03:06.520 So staru just means to hang on the cross, but it doesn't give the method of how they
00:03:10.680 hang.
00:03:11.300 The article relies on the absence of detailed documentation of Roman crucifixions to try
00:03:17.140 to make its point.
00:03:18.420 The article references other ancient texts that do reference nails from crosses, but point
00:03:23.680 out that these documents are not clear whether the nails are actually driven into the hands.
00:03:29.240 The article says nails were not required to kill someone in a crucifixion.
00:03:34.340 Death came through suffocation.
00:03:36.360 Garcia, the person being interviewed, says crucifixion is really about barbarity.
00:03:40.620 It's barbarity, humiliation, and the psychological trauma that is inflicted upon the people who
00:03:45.900 have to witness this.
00:03:47.760 The article also cites the gospel of John, John 20, 25, where Thomas mentions the marks
00:03:53.720 of the nails in Jesus's hands.
00:03:55.540 That's the first verse that I thought of when I was reading this article and looking at this
00:04:00.700 headline.
00:04:01.220 In John 20, 27, where Jesus invites Thomas to see his hands inside.
00:04:05.400 However, Garcia, the person being interviewed, argues that John's gospel was written so late,
00:04:11.680 it was written so long after Jesus's crucifixion, that it may reflect crucifixion practices from
00:04:17.940 that later period, such as in Ephesus, but not actually what happened to Jesus.
00:04:23.460 And he says, we really don't know.
00:04:25.820 We don't really have a lot of evidence.
00:04:27.480 And the evidence we do have, it involves interpretation.
00:04:30.540 I have so many questions.
00:04:32.020 I've got so many questions about why Christianity Today felt that this was the best article to
00:04:40.500 publish over Easter weekend, an article that is clearly meant to question the veracity of
00:04:47.040 scripture, the truth of John's gospel, which has been accepted by Christians as the inerrant,
00:04:54.460 infallible word of God, part of the infallible biblical canon for centuries now.
00:05:01.000 Why on Easter, it was important to cast doubt on the reliability of scripture and therefore to
00:05:07.480 poke holes in the reliability of Christianity altogether.
00:05:11.340 That's what this does.
00:05:12.800 When you look at John 20, 25, the verse says,
00:05:17.200 So the other disciples told him, we have seen the Lord, but he said to them, unless I see in his
00:05:22.120 hands the mark of the nails, talking to Thomas, and place my finger into the mark of the nails and
00:05:26.660 place my hand into his side, I will never believe.
00:05:30.020 And then Jesus says to Thomas in John 20, 27, put your finger here, see my hands, put out your hand,
00:05:37.360 place it in my side.
00:05:38.680 Do not disbelieve, but believe.
00:05:40.280 Colossians 2, 14, by canceling the record of death that stood against us with its legal demands,
00:05:46.400 this he set aside, nailing it to the cross.
00:05:51.100 Psalm 22, 16, for dogs encompass me, a company of evildoers encircles me.
00:05:56.940 They have pierced my hands and feet.
00:05:59.100 What is significant about Psalm 22 is that when Jesus is on the cross and he says,
00:06:04.740 Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, my father, my father, why have you forsaken me?
00:06:10.700 The Jewish crowd at that time would have recognized that he was speaking Psalm 22 and that he is the
00:06:18.160 fulfillment of Psalm 22.
00:06:20.640 So in Psalm 22, when we read, they have pierced my hands and feet, that is what Jesus is also
00:06:28.200 expressing on the cross as he repeated the first line of that Psalm.
00:06:33.520 We see Luke 24, 39 through 40.
00:06:36.700 So not the gospel of John.
00:06:38.960 See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself, touch me and see.
00:06:43.140 For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.
00:06:47.220 And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet.
00:06:51.040 Now, it doesn't say pierced.
00:06:52.600 It doesn't say nails.
00:06:53.640 It doesn't say holes in that verse.
00:06:55.780 But why else would Jesus be showing them his hands and his feet?
00:07:00.460 And so, again, when Christianity today is questioning this on Easter weekend of all
00:07:06.460 weekends, it's not just an interesting thought experiment.
00:07:10.040 They are poking holes in the reliability of scripture.
00:07:13.660 They are casting doubt on what the gospel writers say happened to Jesus.
00:07:19.600 And then the natural question is, well, what else did they get wrong?
00:07:23.280 What is really true?
00:07:24.520 Is all of this just kind of guesswork by people who were alive around the time that Jesus died?
00:07:30.900 What about the miracles that Jesus performed?
00:07:33.420 What about the words that he said?
00:07:35.400 Can we believe with any assurance that these things happened?
00:07:39.080 This was the message that Christianity today decided to convey around Easter weekends.
00:07:44.960 That's a choice.
00:07:46.400 So obviously, we had a lot of Christians who were very upset about this, understandably so,
00:07:50.300 on X, and I'll get to some of their responses in a second.
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00:09:10.560 Okay, so community notes for the win.
00:09:18.300 The tweet or the post from Christianity Today says,
00:09:21.120 The Bible doesn't say Jesus was nailed to a cross.
00:09:23.720 Okay, that is just not true.
00:09:25.560 Like, come on, that statement, even if you are going to say maybe it was ropes or whatever.
00:09:30.500 Christianity Today.
00:09:31.760 The Bible doesn't say Jesus was nailed to a cross.
00:09:33.720 One evangelical Bible scholar thinks the crucifixion may have been done with ropes.
00:09:38.740 The community note says,
00:09:41.220 The Bible says explicitly that Jesus had wounds in his hands and sighed following his crucifixion, burial, and resurrection.
00:09:48.300 And then quotes John 20, 27, which we've already read a couple times,
00:09:51.500 and links to the Bible gateway verse.
00:09:55.520 So, Christianity Today, after some backlash, issued a clarification on the article.
00:10:02.340 This they published on April 22nd.
00:10:04.600 They admitted that there is evidence that Jesus was crucified with nails.
00:10:09.020 So, this is part of Christianity Today's clarification.
00:10:12.700 Garcia said that there is proof that Christ was crucified with nails, but he isn't completely convinced.
00:10:17.960 Jesus doesn't explicitly say nails, and the Bible does not say Thomas touches Christ's hands or his feet.
00:10:23.420 And Garcia said many scholars also think John was written later, perhaps after crucifixion with nails had become more common.
00:10:30.760 The clarification also admits that, besides the Gospel of John, there are other references to crucifixion with nails in the Bible, such as Psalm 22.
00:10:38.320 I don't really see how their clarification of what Garcia says helps their case at all.
00:10:44.100 Like, it just really looks like you are—this is what it looks like.
00:10:47.660 It looks like he is trying to find a reason to doubt it.
00:10:50.500 Like, you are trying to nitpick here to try to find a reason to not believe the Gospel of John, and that's a really big deal.
00:10:59.060 So, the guy who interviewed him, who actually posted the article on Christianity Today, Daniel Silliman, he posted an apology on Acts and a follow-up article that also apologized for the initial publication.
00:11:11.840 He said on Acts,
00:11:41.820 And the details in those accounts, I didn't think about John 20, 25, and the implication of the idea that Thomas was mistaken to think the resurrected Jesus would have nail marks in his hands.
00:11:54.820 Thomas clearly would not have said that if the Romans at that time had used ropes.
00:11:58.740 And that's a really big problem, okay?
00:12:00.580 I—like, I don't—this person considers himself a biblical scholar.
00:12:04.060 Like, I wouldn't call myself a biblical scholar.
00:12:06.240 I am blessed to have been raised in a Christian home, went to a Christian school, went to church, loved the Bible.
00:12:11.660 Bible memorization was a big part of my upbringing, and I credit that and the Holy Spirit to my recall of Scripture.
00:12:18.200 But as soon as I saw this headline, that is the first verse that I thought about.
00:12:22.640 I didn't think about Psalm 22 right away.
00:12:24.680 I thought about Thomas.
00:12:25.840 And I thought about how Jesus said to Thomas, like, look at these holes in my hands and my feet.
00:12:31.160 You can put your hands there and see for yourself.
00:12:34.100 And then he goes on to say, blessed are those who haven't seen and yet still believe.
00:12:38.220 Like, and so anyone who has, like, any familiarity with the Scriptures, I think, would have thought of one of these contradictory verses.
00:12:49.600 And he admits that he didn't think about that.
00:12:53.300 My article implicitly called into question the inerrancy of Scripture, he admits.
00:12:57.400 In my eagerness to explore the historical context of Christ's death, I miss that, and I'm sorry.
00:13:00.880 Well, I appreciate the ownership there.
00:13:03.080 I appreciate his apology.
00:13:04.980 I mean, Lord knows I have said things that I did not want to say.
00:13:08.780 I said it differently than I wanted to say it.
00:13:10.640 I accidentally implied something that I didn't mean to imply.
00:13:15.020 And so there is abundant grace for when you make that kind of mistake.
00:13:20.060 Now, what I hope, just like I would hope for myself or hope for anyone, that maybe there's something deeper there.
00:13:25.480 Maybe there's something deeper there for him.
00:13:27.120 Like, why would he want to cast doubt in that way?
00:13:30.720 And why would that be something that's interesting?
00:13:32.760 Why did those contradictory verses not come to mind?
00:13:36.440 I think those are good questions to ask.
00:13:38.940 Just, again, like we would all want to ask ourselves.
00:13:41.280 But my bigger question is, why would Christianity Today publish this?
00:13:46.100 Why would they publish this?
00:13:47.720 Because, okay, it's one thing for one person to have an idea and to run with it.
00:13:52.240 It's another thing for a group of editors at an ostensibly Christian organization to see this, to read it multiple times, to edit it, and then say, yes, you know when would be a good time to publish something that questions the veracity of the Gospels?
00:14:07.660 Easter weekend.
00:14:08.340 So there's social media response here.
00:14:12.420 We've got some people on one side, like Beth Moore.
00:14:16.520 She says, you're in hefty company to be counted among those who mess up.
00:14:20.520 Admirably, much less company among those who own mistakes and apologize.
00:14:24.300 Don't worry about those with whom it won't be enough.
00:14:27.120 You could throw yourself into a sizzling skillet and it wouldn't be enough.
00:14:31.080 Okay, I mean, that's an interesting commentary to give to this situation and that commentary alone.
00:14:39.020 Personally, I'm more upset about the fact that some people could have read that and gone on down a path of doubt and deconstruction because they started picking holes in the rest of Scripture.
00:14:51.140 Not that we should not give grace to this person.
00:14:54.060 I just thought that was interesting that that's all she said there.
00:14:56.640 Kate Shelnut is a writer for Christianity Today.
00:14:59.900 She said, with any correction, we want to take responsibility for what we get wrong and make it right.
00:15:05.300 In this case, a mistake around the crucifixion and a piece published during Holy Week.
00:15:08.420 We wanted to extend an apology.
00:15:12.080 And you know what?
00:15:12.640 I think that she's more than just a writer at Christianity Today.
00:15:18.080 I think she's an editor, if someone can fact check that.
00:15:21.060 Megan Basham was not satisfied with the apology.
00:15:23.740 She says, so, well, Mike Cosper, she's responding to Mike Cosper, who also works at Christianity Today, says,
00:15:31.460 I'm grateful to work with people who have the clarity and integrity to publish something like this, which is not an easy thing to do.
00:15:36.620 Thanks, Daniel Silliman, for your curiosity and your honesty.
00:15:40.920 Okay, so the curiosity thing bothers me, too.
00:15:43.260 Because it's like, why are we thanking him for the curiosity that led him to publish something that was so erroneous?
00:15:50.420 Or are you talking about the curiosity that led him to apologize?
00:15:53.800 Because I agree with Megan that that's not enough.
00:15:58.000 Megan says, Mike, respectfully, this doesn't go nearly far enough to address how this article made it through the editorial process,
00:16:03.120 especially given that the new information that led to Silliman to reconsider was literally included in the original article.
00:16:09.960 That's exactly what I thought, too.
00:16:11.560 I've never, ever seen a retraction like this where the author himself apologizes and the editors say nothing as if they weren't involved in the process at all.
00:16:19.320 And yes, Kate Shalnut, by the way, to clarify, she's not just a writer.
00:16:22.740 She is an editor, which is why she made the post that she did.
00:16:25.860 Megan Basham also said, last comment on the Christianity Today controversy.
00:16:30.280 Dr. Russell Moore, who is the editor-in-chief at Christianity Today, should absolutely be the one speaking to how and why this article got published.
00:16:40.240 Well, I'll tell you why.
00:16:41.380 It is because he is the how and the why this article got published, and it accomplished what he wanted it to accomplish.
00:16:47.140 That's my opinion, that he actually is interested in people being doubtful about things like that.
00:16:54.800 Any other editor-in-chief would address it himself, whether it is cowardice or something else,
00:16:59.480 preventing Moore from doing so, it is deeply unethical of him to simply send the writer out to comment, which I completely agree with.
00:17:08.080 I mean, the editorial team, where are you?
00:17:11.040 And is there an apology?
00:17:12.840 Is there an understanding of the heftiness of the implications of an article like this?
00:17:17.820 Again, yes, how it can get through one person, that person can make a mistake.
00:17:22.420 All right, the editorial team at Christianity Today, Russell Moore, who considers himself a theologian.
00:17:29.060 Now, this doesn't surprise me from Russell Moore.
00:17:31.700 Every entity that he has been a part of for the last several years has compromised, has gone the way of progressivism, has started to punch right and tickle left.
00:17:42.960 That is what his leadership does.
00:17:44.420 You'll remember the episode that I did a few months ago, where he said that I was defending my interpretation of Matthew 25 with all of the fervor of a 20th century German soldier.
00:18:01.060 Okay, that's a Nazi.
00:18:03.000 Because I said, when Jesus refers to the least of these my brothers in Matthew 25, he's actually talking about fellow Christians.
00:18:08.840 He's not talking about the world's poor in that particular passage.
00:18:11.860 I didn't come up with that interpretation.
00:18:13.680 That's been held by mainstream interpretations, or theologians, rather, for decades.
00:18:18.740 And Christianity Today, writers in Christianity Today and the Gospel Coalition have reiterated that interpretation many times over the years.
00:18:27.720 And yet, of course, he implied that I'm a Nazi in the pages of Christianity Today.
00:18:33.200 That is apparently kind of what he does.
00:18:35.720 He's very nasty and vindictive in that way.
00:18:38.040 And so the lack of leadership here is maybe the least surprising thing ever.
00:18:43.260 So very sad, the direction that Christianity Today has gone in this regard.
00:18:48.200 Kudos for humility, asking for grace for this particular writer.
00:18:52.100 Again, I hope it leads to better exploration theologically for him.
00:18:55.920 But man, heart check for Christianity Today.
00:18:59.240 I mean, discount Christianity.
00:19:01.080 All right, before we get into this conversation with Bill O'Reilly, I do have a couple points of preemptive clarity about the conversation.
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00:20:03.540 Okay.
00:20:04.640 A couple things.
00:20:05.860 You might notice in one of the questions that I ask Bill O'Reilly that there was a little bit of a miscommunication, misunderstanding.
00:20:13.800 Our connection was a little spotty.
00:20:16.900 And so there were times where we weren't able to hear each other where I ask about tariffs.
00:20:21.620 And he answers the question differently.
00:20:24.080 He talks about actually Trump's good moves when it comes to terrorism and terror around the world.
00:20:31.680 And so you could see how that would be easy to kind of like mishear with this spotty connection.
00:20:37.860 But the answer that he gives regarding Trump's policies to fight back against terrorism is really good and worth listening to.
00:20:45.660 And then I have one question to Bill O'Reilly about the man from El Salvador that has been deported, that Democrat senators are going down to visit, that people are saying he was unjustly deported to this prison in El Salvador.
00:21:01.100 But I wanted to give some context for that because I kind of landed us right in the middle of that story and asked him the question and we haven't talked about it on the show yet.
00:21:08.420 So I just wanted to back up a little bit and give a little bit of clarity about that.
00:21:12.660 So Kilmar Obrego Garcia, he was not actively in the process of getting asylum at the time of his deportation in March of 2025, just a few weeks ago.
00:21:22.940 In 2019, he applied for asylum.
00:21:26.080 This is according to the ABC and to ABC in the White House, by the way, but was denied because he did not submit the application within one year of arriving in the U.S. as required by U.S. immigration law.
00:21:36.560 However, during the same proceedings, an immigration judge granted him withholding of removal status, which barred his deportation to El Salvador at the time due to a credible fear of persecution by the Barrio 18 gang.
00:21:49.620 The status allowed him to live and work legally in the U.S., though it is distinct from asylum.
00:21:55.240 The Trump administration then deported him, though, and people are saying, hang on, he had a stay of deportation.
00:22:00.740 How did he get deported?
00:22:01.940 The Trump administration is looking at his different immigration cases and how those judges observed that it looks like this guy is a part of MS-13.
00:22:12.200 And he has tattoos that have the symbols of MS-13.
00:22:17.360 And he is has also been in trouble with the law many times for allegedly beating his wife and some other very serious crimes.
00:22:26.420 So the Trump administration basically ignored this stay, deported him.
00:22:30.880 The Trump admin did admit that his deportation was an error.
00:22:34.860 It seems like they've admitted that.
00:22:37.140 But they've argued that it doesn't matter.
00:22:38.860 He doesn't have a legal right to be here and that he is a part of MS-13 and that his deportation is justified.
00:22:46.340 And Bill O'Reilly sees that very differently and does not believe that that was a just deportation.
00:22:53.220 So his answer is super interesting.
00:22:55.400 And I'm sure a lot of you will agree with it.
00:22:57.440 But I just wanted to give more context on the story before we got into this conversation with him.
00:23:02.620 And we'll be talking about the JFK files and lots of interesting stuff.
00:23:05.740 So without further ado, here is Bill O'Reilly.
00:23:08.000 Bill O'Reilly, thanks so much for taking the time to join us.
00:23:16.420 I'm wondering if first you could give your thoughts about the state of the Catholic Church.
00:23:20.980 I'm not Catholic, but I know you are.
00:23:23.580 And the new pope and the new direction of the Catholic Church.
00:23:27.680 I know, you know, Pope Francis was maybe more on the liberal side, although maybe in the middle.
00:23:32.280 What direction do you think this goes?
00:23:33.860 It's impossible to say right now, Ali, about the conclave that's going to start next week after the pope's funeral on Saturday.
00:23:44.180 Like the United States, the worldwide Catholic Church is divided between liberation theologians who are liberal but not crazy left.
00:23:58.800 That would be Pope Francis's crew.
00:24:01.240 And traditional Catholics who want to get back to this is what the church says and we have to follow it and we don't need to revise the rules and all of that.
00:24:13.540 And there's always been a clash inside the church.
00:24:17.720 I believe that probably a more traditional pope will be elected by the cardinals that meet next week.
00:24:26.000 But I'm just guessing because I don't really have any inside info on it.
00:24:31.080 Well, we'll see.
00:24:32.240 And even though I'm not a Catholic, obviously, I'm hoping that the Catholic Church would stick in that traditional direction.
00:24:37.600 I think it's good for the Catholic Church and good for the world, if so.
00:24:40.080 Well, I'm curious your take on the JFK findings, JFK files of findings.
00:24:45.300 And obviously, this is something you've talked about a lot.
00:24:48.840 Killing Kennedy was a revelatory book for me in addition to Killing Jesus.
00:24:54.380 I've read so many of your books and appreciated them.
00:24:56.640 But what did you think about the files that were declassified?
00:24:59.820 Did we learn new information?
00:25:01.580 No, there's nothing in there that startled me.
00:25:05.900 And we did some pretty heavy duty research on killing Kennedy.
00:25:08.800 We were lucky enough to get the original FBI notes.
00:25:12.700 And this is the key.
00:25:14.420 There are two keys to the assassination of President Kennedy.
00:25:18.280 Number one, a number of people have made millions of dollars by trumping up conspiracy theories about who killed Kennedy and how it all happened.
00:25:29.140 Just remember, there is an industry that does that, and they make money.
00:25:35.100 Now, when I went in to write Killing Kennedy, my second book after Killing Lincoln, I wanted to get the primary source material.
00:25:42.400 And we were lucky enough to find an FBI agent who was assigned by J. Edgar Hoover himself and got down there shortly after JFK was killed and pronounced dead at Parkland Hospital.
00:25:56.180 And he allowed us to see all of his notes and all of the filings that came from the FBI office in Dallas.
00:26:05.340 Originally, the case was run by the Dallas Police Department because it was a local murder.
00:26:13.200 And they didn't know how Jack Ruby got so close to Oswald to kill him because the Dallas PD was just chaos.
00:26:20.940 They were incapable of investigating something this big.
00:26:24.220 The FBI swooped in and took everything over.
00:26:27.620 And the FBI concluded, with evidence that is rock solid, that Oswald was the gunman.
00:26:35.760 Now, did he have help?
00:26:37.680 I believe he did, but not in the actual killing, but in the planning of it and maybe some financial stuff.
00:26:47.160 I believe he had some help.
00:26:50.020 But he was the lone gunman.
00:26:52.920 What is this chatter that I heard?
00:26:56.120 I didn't see this in any of the files that were released, anything I read.
00:26:59.200 But I saw chatter on acts from people saying, oh, Israel was involved in some way.
00:27:04.300 Is there any truth to that?
00:27:06.920 No, of course not.
00:27:07.700 Look, like the Kennedy conspiracy people, there's a group on social media that desperately want attention.
00:27:18.980 And some of them can monetize that attention by saying outrageous things they can never back up because there's no editor on social media.
00:27:27.980 No one.
00:27:28.360 Nobody tells me what to do.
00:27:30.380 I run a responsible corporation on Bill O'Reilly dot com.
00:27:34.900 And we make a tremendous profit because we report honestly.
00:27:41.000 But there's nobody telling me what to do.
00:27:43.720 If I wanted to be a loon, I could be a loon and get a lot more attention and I can, under the First Amendment, say pretty much whatever I want, unless it's defamatory.
00:27:55.380 Then I'd have to defend myself in court.
00:27:57.380 But most social media operations, they don't know what they're doing and they crave attention.
00:28:06.040 So they say whatever they want to say and they can never back it up in a million years.
00:28:11.220 So let the buyer beware.
00:28:15.260 That's an important note.
00:28:17.140 Tell me more about Oswald going to Cuba and what happened with that.
00:28:22.160 So Oswald was a former Marine sniper, very important, because it was not an easy shot from the school book depository to the convertible that JFK was riding in.
00:28:35.660 He was an expert marksman.
00:28:37.740 He comes back, he defects to Russia.
00:28:40.920 And then after a few years, he gets married and he comes back to the United States with his bride, Marina.
00:28:47.180 All right.
00:28:47.580 But he's still a nut.
00:28:48.560 He was a nut when he defected and he's a nut when he came back.
00:28:52.840 So for some reason, he was with Castro.
00:28:56.120 I don't know whether he's a hardcore communist.
00:28:58.260 Lee Harvey Oswald, not an educated man.
00:29:00.800 I don't even know if he knew what communist he was.
00:29:03.000 He lived under it in Russia and he didn't like it.
00:29:05.140 He wanted to come back here.
00:29:06.860 So he's out of Mexico City to try to get a visa to go to Cuba.
00:29:11.180 Mexico City is being monitored by the Central Intelligence Agency because that's where people go to get entry to Havana.
00:29:20.700 He couldn't get there through the United States.
00:29:24.480 So the CIA is watching it.
00:29:25.940 So Oswald saunters in to the Mexico City Cuban consulate and they reject him because he was a nut.
00:29:36.900 But anybody knowing him knew that, you know, we're not going to give you credentials.
00:29:42.720 Yeah.
00:29:43.240 Oswald was mad.
00:29:44.100 He comes back to Texas.
00:29:45.420 So that was what that was all about.
00:29:47.800 CIA picked him up down there, saw him.
00:29:50.500 And then he was surveilled to some extent in Dallas.
00:29:54.860 So he was on their radar.
00:29:56.660 He wasn't a completely random guy.
00:29:58.460 Oh, absolutely.
00:29:59.220 Not only on a radar, he had a minder.
00:30:01.680 He had a CIA minder in Dallas, a guy named George DeMorenchild, who taught at Bishop College, a black school, and befriended Lee Harvey Oswald through his wife Marina because DeMorenchild spelt Russian.
00:30:17.200 And there was no reason for DeMorenchild to be hanging around with Oswald.
00:30:22.860 DeMorenchild was an aristocrat, a college professor.
00:30:26.380 Oswald could barely write a sentence.
00:30:28.040 I believe, and I think I can prove it, that DeMorenchild was Oswald's minder for the CIA.
00:30:37.080 Kept an eye on him.
00:30:38.580 Right.
00:30:39.020 When the congressional committee investigating the assassination approached DeMorenchild in Florida years later, DeMorenchild killed himself.
00:30:50.140 Wow.
00:30:50.420 Wow.
00:30:51.740 Wow.
00:30:52.620 Do you think that this is mostly chalked up correctly to the incompetence of the intelligence community?
00:30:59.980 I mean, as we just said, he definitely was not missing.
00:31:03.280 They knew who he was.
00:31:04.100 They knew that he could be a problem.
00:31:06.400 Is it not some nefarious plot, as so many people have thought for so many years?
00:31:10.360 Is it mostly just incompetence, or is it something else?
00:31:13.280 I don't know if I'd use the word incompetence, Ali.
00:31:16.540 I mean, they were watching thousands of people.
00:31:18.740 Yeah.
00:31:19.480 Because of the Cuban Missile Crisis, because the Russians had infiltrated themselves into the island of Cuba.
00:31:25.260 They were watching a lot of people, the CIA.
00:31:28.700 He was cooperating with Castro, who was spying for Castro.
00:31:32.320 And Oswald pops up.
00:31:33.580 They didn't know a lot about him, so they put somebody on him.
00:31:35.980 I don't know if that's incompetent.
00:31:37.560 Right.
00:31:37.900 Who do you think is the most misunderstood president that you have studied and written about?
00:31:45.440 That's an interesting question.
00:31:46.700 So we have Confronting the Presidents out now.
00:31:49.920 Misunderstood.
00:31:52.980 Maybe Harry Truman.
00:31:56.580 Truman was a really good president, and he got booted out of there with a record low approval rating
00:32:03.260 because the press didn't like him after Franklin Roosevelt's four terms.
00:32:07.180 But Harry is a tough guy, and he did the right thing, made very, very tough decisions.
00:32:12.860 And so maybe Truman got the short end of it and was misunderstood.
00:32:18.900 What's one thing that you wish people knew about the president?
00:32:24.140 It's going to be any one president or just about our presidents in general.
00:32:28.400 Well, it just meant, and some are competent and some are not.
00:32:32.000 Some are honest and some are not.
00:32:34.740 You can't generalize about them.
00:32:36.860 You have to take them one by one, all flawed in some degree because all human beings are flawed.
00:32:42.820 So my job is to study their lives, study their policies, find out if they had a good or bad
00:32:49.260 effect on the country during their term or terms, and then come to that conclusion, which is why
00:32:53.780 Confronting the President was on the New York Times bestseller for six months.
00:32:57.260 Because we tell the truth here.
00:32:59.680 I don't favor any president.
00:33:01.640 I thought Barack Obama was a pretty good president.
00:33:04.160 Got conservatives, go crazy.
00:33:05.900 All right.
00:33:07.400 I said, look, I analyzed this guy.
00:33:09.460 All right.
00:33:11.200 He made big mistakes.
00:33:12.380 There's no doubt about it.
00:33:13.180 But every single president makes big mistakes.
00:33:16.660 All right.
00:33:17.180 But as far as an efficient guy, a guy with a vision, I don't really agree with his vision.
00:33:23.180 He wants a much bigger government to kind of shepherd people through life.
00:33:27.120 I'm more of a self-reliance guy myself.
00:33:30.180 But, you know, my job is to analyze what he did and how he did it.
00:33:34.480 And I thought he's essentially honest when he was in office.
00:33:37.080 And what about this president?
00:33:39.440 What do you think about Trump's first term so far versus his last term?
00:33:45.220 Well, Trump is much more assertive now, much more confident.
00:33:48.560 And he's on a few different missions.
00:33:52.020 One is retribution for what he suffered.
00:33:54.560 And I don't have any objection to that.
00:33:57.220 If evil people, bad people, corrupt people went after him, he should deal with those people
00:34:03.420 now that he has the opportunity.
00:34:05.060 So I'm not one of those people who go, oh, it's bad.
00:34:07.840 It's not bad.
00:34:08.780 All right.
00:34:09.400 If you can take bad people off the map, you take them off the map.
00:34:13.360 That's what my upcoming book, Confronting Evil, is all about.
00:34:16.820 Anyway, it's undefined with Trump.
00:34:19.620 He's trying to do a tremendous amount.
00:34:21.740 Obviously, he was very successful in the border and immigration.
00:34:26.000 He's plotting ahead.
00:34:28.200 It looks like it's going to be effective to get these criminals out.
00:34:31.940 The tariffs could go either way.
00:34:33.680 And his legacy depends on that.
00:34:36.060 I think he wants peace.
00:34:38.640 I think he wants a Ukraine ceasefire.
00:34:42.380 He wants a Gaza ceasefire.
00:34:44.720 He wants Iran to stop with the nukes.
00:34:47.500 All those are good things.
00:34:49.380 Now, his style is his style.
00:34:50.740 I've known him 35 years.
00:34:51.980 I talk to him on a regular basis.
00:34:53.460 I don't have any problem with his style because I'm bombastic too.
00:34:57.540 So that doesn't offend me.
00:34:59.860 But I understand Americans who go, oh, this guy's so over the top.
00:35:03.800 But I think he's trying to do the right thing for the country.
00:35:08.460 And I hope that he succeeds.
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00:36:29.320 If I remember correctly, you had something which some people may find controversial or
00:36:38.380 contentious to say about the guy that was deported to El Salvador.
00:36:44.480 There's a lot of conflict over this right now, whether he should have been deported or
00:36:48.280 not.
00:36:48.600 There was a stay on his deportation.
00:36:51.040 I think, if I remember correctly, you said he should not have been deported, which, of
00:36:55.220 course, Trump is defending his decision to deport this guy.
00:36:58.720 And now he's in El Salvador in prison.
00:37:01.920 And we've got Congress people from the Democrats going down there to try to visit him.
00:37:06.480 What's your take on it?
00:37:08.660 So he should not have been deported.
00:37:10.780 And the Homeland Security admits that because they were rounding up gang members and his status
00:37:18.880 was still ill-defined.
00:37:20.500 What you have to understand about Garcia is that his case, Allie, was in the courts, is in the
00:37:30.660 courts.
00:37:31.600 He applied for asylum.
00:37:34.120 The judge accepted his application.
00:37:37.600 It is being adjudicated now as we speak.
00:37:40.800 So when you are in the system under our Constitution, you have due process, which is what the Supreme
00:37:52.260 Court ruled, that you have to bring him back from El Salvador so he can go through what's
00:38:00.140 already begun, the American justice system.
00:38:04.680 Now, I'm just doing this as a practical matter.
00:38:09.260 I don't think this guy is going to turn out to be a good guy.
00:38:13.020 I think he's going to turn out to be a bad guy.
00:38:15.800 Right.
00:38:16.080 And I base that on the stop that the Tennessee police made where he had a bunch of undocumented
00:38:21.320 people with him in a van.
00:38:23.000 What were they doing there?
00:38:24.380 And the Tennessee people did not arrest him.
00:38:26.520 And he went on his merry way.
00:38:29.380 But if you're in a van, you're in Tennessee with other undocumented, there's a reason you're
00:38:35.120 there.
00:38:35.580 So I think this guy is going to turn out to be dirty.
00:38:38.320 However, I think the president's making a mistake by not doing what the Supreme Court
00:38:46.000 would like him to do, because he's going to need, Donald Trump's going to need that
00:38:50.600 Supreme Court all throughout his term.
00:38:53.500 And I would not be alienating those people if I were him.
00:38:58.400 Yeah.
00:38:58.760 So it's a separate issue that this guy is probably a bad dude.
00:39:02.160 It's even a separate issue, maybe that he should be deported.
00:39:05.760 Right.
00:39:06.100 But that this process just didn't go the way that it was supposed to.
00:39:10.400 He's also been, you know.
00:39:12.400 Eventually, I'm pretty confident this man will be deported.
00:39:15.740 Right.
00:39:16.860 OK.
00:39:17.820 But you've got to do it under what the Constitution says, due process.
00:39:23.760 Can't you say, I'm not going to do due process on him.
00:39:27.320 If he's MS-13, if the Justice Department can approve that, then he's gone because Trump
00:39:32.540 wrote an executive order saying, if you're a member of MS-13, you're a terrorist.
00:39:37.580 Bang.
00:39:38.020 You don't have due process.
00:39:39.380 We can kill you under that Bush Anti-Terrorism Act after 9-11.
00:39:46.140 What is your thought?
00:39:47.200 I know you mentioned tariffs.
00:39:48.140 When do you think the tariff stuff is going to calm down?
00:39:52.180 I know we all hope that he is successful.
00:39:54.080 You said his legacy rides on that.
00:39:56.560 I mean, I guess, do you think it's going to calm down?
00:39:58.500 And if so, when?
00:40:00.860 Well, Trump's done a fabulous job.
00:40:02.880 If you read my book, Killing the Killers, dismantling worldwide terrorism.
00:40:07.780 The most effective president by far in doing so.
00:40:10.300 He wiped out ISIS.
00:40:13.840 He got Soleimani, the chief terrorist of the Iranian operation.
00:40:18.660 I mean, Trump is a tough guy on a terror front.
00:40:20.940 And I remember a conversation I had with him after he lost the election in 20 about,
00:40:29.240 why didn't you designate the drug cartels as terrorists back then?
00:40:34.000 And he had a couple of reasons, but I said, if you get another crack at it, you got to
00:40:38.400 make them terrorists.
00:40:39.480 And he absolutely did that in his executive order so that we can send the U.S. military
00:40:44.780 after those cartel people.
00:40:46.420 And we may.
00:40:47.960 Because the smuggling of drugs into the USA is not abated.
00:40:51.900 And it's a huge problem.
00:40:53.980 OK, my final questions for you have nothing to do with politics or the news.
00:40:57.720 If I can ask you some career questions, maybe a life question for anyone listening out there.
00:41:04.640 Is there any point in your career, one or two, that you can look back on and you could
00:41:08.820 say, gosh, I wish I would have handled that differently.
00:41:11.540 And if someone were in that position now, here's what I would tell them.
00:41:16.600 Sure.
00:41:17.080 I have millions of things.
00:41:18.040 I've been in the media business for 50 years.
00:41:20.340 In fact, on my TV broadcast, No Spin News, we did a segment on, there's only two other
00:41:27.120 TV journalists with longer tenures on a national level and me, Britt Hume and Leslie Stahl.
00:41:33.860 So I've been around forever, 50 years.
00:41:37.200 I've made tons of mistakes in my career.
00:41:40.520 But they were mistakes, not malicious.
00:41:43.120 They were just mistakes because that's what people are fallible.
00:41:46.200 But I would say, anybody, look, the most important thing in your life is to get paid for what
00:41:51.620 you like to do.
00:41:53.260 If you can figure out a way that people will pay you for doing something that you like to
00:42:00.320 do, you'll have a happy life.
00:42:02.760 And you've got to do the personal side, too.
00:42:04.540 But that takes care of the vocational side.
00:42:06.560 That's number one.
00:42:08.020 And number two, you've got to work your butt off.
00:42:10.500 I mean, I outworked everybody.
00:42:12.640 And you've got to take yourself in good shape physically and mentally.
00:42:16.200 And you've got to be honest.
00:42:18.640 I mean, I can't tell you how many people I know, they just take the money and they do
00:42:24.580 what they're told to do.
00:42:25.880 And I never did that.
00:42:27.320 Not one time in 50 years.
00:42:29.580 So that would be my advice.
00:42:31.600 That's really good.
00:42:32.380 Well, thank you so much, Bill O'Reilly.
00:42:34.080 I really appreciate you taking the time to come on.
00:42:36.720 And I know that you said that you've got your new book, Confronting Evil, coming out.
00:42:39.860 When does that come out?
00:42:41.780 September 9th.
00:42:42.740 And I have to dispel a rumor.
00:42:45.560 Glenn Beck is not in the book.
00:42:47.240 He didn't make the cut.
00:42:48.640 Oh, OK.
00:42:49.380 I won't tell him.
00:42:50.360 He'll have to read it for himself before he figures that out.
00:42:52.960 I think he was worried about it.
00:42:55.820 Well, thank you so much.
00:42:57.260 I really appreciate you taking the time to come on.
00:42:59.000 Thank you.
00:43:16.580 Thank you.