Video News Clips: In Their Own Words

‘The Man Has Nothing’: Bill O’Reilly Goes Ballistic On John Bolton

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Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly on Monday expressed outrage at former National Security Adviser John Bolton for casting aspersions on President Donald Trump’s upcoming Aug. 15 meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Bolton said on “The Source with Kaitlan Collins” in part that Alaska was an ideal location for Putin to meet, arguing “the initial setup” of the meeting “is a great victory for” the Russian president. O’Reilly, on “On Balance with Leland Vittert,” said Bolton’s criticism was unproductive and accused him of having no desire for peace between Russia and Ukraine. (RELATED: Trump Set To Meet With Putin With Peace Deadline Looming)

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“The man has nothing. Not one thing. If it were up to him, this will continue ad infinitum, with women and children getting slaughtered. He has no solution … He’s all rhetoric, he’s all hat, no cattle, as they say in Texas,” O’Reilly said. “And he hates Trump’s guts — he hates him. He doesn’t want him to succeed. He’d rather have death and destruction — in Ukraine — than for Donald Trump to succeed. Is a traitor? Maybe.”

NewsNation host Leland Vittert protested O’Reilly’s insinuation about Bolton potentially being “a traitor,” suggesting there was only “a reasonable disagreement about how to deal with Putin”  — but O’Reilly doubled down.

“There’s no disagreement. He has nothing. There’s no two sides: all he does is’ Trump’s an idiot, Trump’s wrong.’ He doesn’t have a solution,” O’Reilly said. “He never puts forth that. Come on, let’s be honest here.”

Vittert defended Bolton, saying he also criticized former President Joe Biden and “has a world view.”

“What’s the world view? Let everybody die? Drop a nuclear weapon?” O’Reilly asked. “Is that the world view? How irresponsible is this?”

The host urged O’Reilly to “be fair,” but he continued to harshly rebuke Bolton.

“This guy is irresponsible,” O’Reilly said. “He’s subverting something that might be successful because he hates Trump.”

“All Bolton does is want to corrode the process. It just— it makes me so angry because people are dying,” he added. “This is not a game.”

Bolton has been an outspoken Trump critic. Trump asserted on Twitter in September 2019 that he had asked Bolton for his resignation because he “disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions, as did others in the Administration.”

The president told the Daily Caller in June 2020 about a series of conversations he had with Bolton that made him realize he was a “dumb maniac who wants to go to war with any anybody that can breathe.”

Trump in June 2019 reportedly halted a missile strike he had ordered against Iran in response to the downing of a U.S. Navy drone by an Iranian surface-to-air missile. The decision to halt the strike reportedly went against Bolton’s preference.

Since Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, he has consistently called for peace between Ukraine and Russia and pledged to bring an end to the war. Putin reportedly asserted he would end the war if Ukraine gave up vast swaths of its territory in the eastern part of the nation, European and Ukrainian officials told The Wall Street Journal on Friday.

The war is believed to have claimed hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides since it commenced in 2022.