BillOReilly.com Premium Members, welcome to the No Spin News Wednesday August 22nd 2018. Take your country back. 

Got a lot to talk about today. We've got a good guest, Dinesh D'Souza is going to come up in a little while to talk about the Trump situation and George Soros trying to take over social media. Very disturbing situation, not going to hear that anywhere else. 

OK, I said yesterday that was going to be chaos on cable news last night, that certainly happened. In fact at one point my cable went out and I said Thank you God and I really didn't watch that much of it, I couldn't, I couldn't. I was just, it was the usual suspects saying the usual dopey stuff. I thought on CNN they were going to wheel out a guillotine, you know a little, uh, so they convicted him and the president all that stuff. But there are some very interesting questions that need to be answered. So today President Trump gives an interview to Fox and Friends and he said look I didn't know that my attorney Michael Cohen paid off two women who wanted money during the campaign alleging they had sex with me. I didn't know that Cohen did that. All right. That's what Donald Trump is saying on national television. Do I know differently? I do not. Do you? No. Does CNN? No.

Michael Cohen wants a better deal with the feds because he's been charged with all kinds of stuff basically dodging taxes and things like that almost paralleled to Manafort but there is a campaign finance violation in there. That's the murky part about all this. So Donald Trump's exposure to legal hell lies in a very narrow area. Whether or not donated money to his campaign found its way to these two women who were extorting Trump, that's it. It's a very simple thing. Now to me there's got to be a paper trail, right? So the feds raid Cohen's office, they take all the documents, Cohen taped a lot of stuff, whatever. There has got to be a record of how that money left a bank and got into the hands of these women, there had to be a record. I would assume the FBI has that record now, the Justice Department has it, as I said yesterday, Trump is the head of the Justice Department, he's gotta be knowing what they have. OK. So there's got to be a record of it. Where did it come from? All right, Michael Cohen came from him, was it Michael Cohen's personal bank account? His law firms bank account? Was it a Trump campaign bank account? That's the key. 

Now in the indictment there wasn't any mention of Donald Trump. Not at all. It was that Cohen committed some campaign finance violations. But we don't exactly know what, we don't know what. And so it's hard to go beyond that. 

As far as the Manafort thing, yeah, a long time ago he committed fraud and he didn't pay his taxes so they got him on eight counts of that going to go to prison. Donald Trump will probably pardon him from Trump's tweets today is what I read into it. Manafort goes on trial again, another round of charges against him. I mean this guy's life is ruined. Now do I feel sorry for Paul Manafort? I do not, at that level, with that much money not to pay taxes to hide the money overseas, you get caught you go to jail. That's just the way it is. If Trump pardons Manafort, you know people are going to scream, will I scream? I might. I don't think Manafort deserves a pardon. But let's see what happens there. 

So I told you so you going to use it and answer your questions to set the program up today, then we want to get to Dinesh. So these are all the message boards and we encourage you guys to use those, although you can e-mail me anything Bill@BillOReilly.com.

So Richard asks, "Bill regarding Cohen what could happen to President Trump if he did violate campaign law in some way. I thought it was just punishable by a fine?" 

Depends what it is. All right so John Edwards remember, he ran for vice president got caught up with a sex scandal himself, was charged with using financial public money that he was overseeing to pay off his mistress, got acquitted. Jury acquitted him, hard to convict on something like that. But if it is shown, demonstrated by hard evidence that President Trump ordered campaign funds to pay off these women that's going to be tough for him to survive that, going to be tough. But again, he says he did not do that. 

Eric.

"How can Cohen to reveal anything about Mr. Trump, being as he was Trump's personal lawyer, wouldn't anything they have ever discussed be protected?" 

Not if there's a crime involved, once there is a crime involved, an attorney client privilege goes out the window. You're a lawyer or you're a client and you commit a crime and you're charged with a crime. That privilege is no longer valid. Actually, the only thing that is valid, just as an aside is the husband wife testimony, that you can't force, that is it when there is a crime involved. 

Mary. 

"Was or was not Cohen's payment of money to Stormy Daniels and the other woman, in fact some kind of violation of campaign finance law, when no campaign funds were used to make the payment?" 

You don't know that yet, Mary. You don't know that yet. 

"Cohen can plead guilty to anything but that doesn't mean a law was broken." 

That's true. It's true. But he chose to plead guilty to this campaign violation thing whatever it may be. Now we got to find out what it is. 

Edward. 

"Mark Levin was on Hannity and said that hush money was paid from private funds and therefore no campaign finance laws were broken. Is that true?" 

I don't know, I don't know how Mark Levin knows, I'd like to see proof of that. That would put the hysteria down a lot, if that were the case. But I don't know how Levin knows that.

Stephen. 

"The media's already saying if Trump authorized Cohen to pay the women, he thereby alters the outcome of the election by silencing them. And this is a violation of campaign laws." 

That's ridiculous. If you have a personal legal problem and Donald Trump was not elected official when he was running for president and you choose to settle it with a financial payment, that's your choice. You're not violating alleges just because you run for office doesn't mean you have a special set of laws. So if you choose to settle and everybody understands why that would happen, I mean you're locked in a tight race and here come two women going we're going to besmirch your reputation if you don't pay us money. You want to get rid of them. Right? So everybody understands why that happened. You don't want that to go through that because that could tilt the election. But there's not a special set of laws. All right. For somebody who uses their own private money when they're running for office. They have to obey the campaign finance laws, that is what they have to do. 

Pat. 

"Bill please explain how this is about campaign finance? Trump did give Cohen money; how can they tie it to the campaign? I thought he used his own money to fund the campaign." 

Largely he did but there was campaign money involved. So that's why it's about whether he ordered Cohen to take campaign donations from people like you, Pat and pay the women. Now, I have seen zero evidence of that and again the President denies it. And we live in a country where he is supposed to be innocent until proven guilty and the indictment doesn't say anything about that, doesn't mention Mr. Trump. Now Cohen is making all kinds of noise, Lanny Davis running around, all right, noise is noise. You know let's see what you got but I'm not going to say anymore because is speculation is speculation. 

So Cohen is out on bail, five hundred thousand. He's going to be sentenced, I guess in November. Will there be more to come on this? I think so. I think there will be more to come but God knows what it will be.

President Trump tweeted about Manafort which is why I believe he may pardon him, quote, "I feel very badly for Paul Manafort and his wonderful family. Justice took a 12-year-old tax case among other things applied tremendous pressure on him. And unlike Michael Cohen he refused to break make up stories in order to get a deal. Such respect for a brave man!" 

That looks like a pardon set up to me. Manafort faces 80 years in prison, convicted on eight counts and then he has a second set of charges in D.C. which will begin next week. 

Let's bring in the aformentioned Dinesh D'Souza from Houston, Dinesh has a movie out, Death of a Nation, and a book of the same title, "Death of a Nation: Plantation Politics and the Making of the Democratic Party". So you're a busy guy. I've not seen the movie yet, but I understand it's provocative as most of your work is. First of all, when you heard the news about Michael Cohen, what was the first thing that popped into your mind? 

"Well it's difficult for me, Bill not to see these cases through the prism of my own campaign finance case. I have a sort of personal experience in this matter because I exceeded the campaign finance law a few years ago. Mine was well-meaning, I was trying to help a college friend of mine running for the Senate in New York and the government came out to meet with the full force of its power. Now, multiple FBI agents and so on. Now, I think that when you go through this yourself you begin to see that the civics book view of justice that we learn in school and college is not in fact the real world. That in fact you're in a circumstance where even if you are innocent you are pressured to plead guilty. You're faced with options in which you are facing a choice of going with the bad in order to avoid the worse. The government threatens you with things that are purely fictitious violations, Dinesh we'll get you a mail fraud. I'm like mail fraud? They're like because you put the check in the mail. We will get you a bank fraud, I'm like bank fraud? They're like yeah because you took your money out of the bank. 

“So these are charges that are redundant descriptions of what I did but layered on and separated. And then you realize while I'm facing all these years in prison I won't be able to speak to my family, my life will be destroyed. So I better take the deal. Now this is the essential background to understand what's happening here. So you know what Cohen did, what Manafort did, I can't say but what I do know is that if they weren't associated with Trump, think of it, if Manafort was not the chairman of the Trump campaign would he be facing this situation now? No. Therefore it follows that they weren't chasing the violation, they were chasing Manafort and they were chasing Manafort because of his proximity to Trump. Now see that's not justice because the truth of it is, if identify, I believe virtually any American and you sic the IRS on them, you sic the cops on them, you start looking at their bank records, you're going to find something. So that is not the way justice is supposed to work, it's supposed to move from the reported violation to the investigation rather than targeting the man first and then going after him."

All right. So Cohen, was in your position in the sense that they found, they being the Justice Department and the FBI, in his records some kind of misuse of campaign funds that would have to be the case. Now I read every news dispatch, I still don't know what the misuse was, I guess it had to do with the payments to the women. That's what every, pops up every time but I'm not entirely sure that that's all it is. So you're saying that Cohen had to do what he did and turn on Trump in that way? 

"No, I'm saying that if you're facing Mueller and an absolute battery of attorneys with virtually unlimited resources at their disposal that they are able to bludgeon you into submission." 

Sure, and then you got it you got to assume that's what they did to Cohen. And here's the downside of that on the CBS Evening News last night Dinesh, I don't know whether you saw this or not. There was a very interesting Q and A. 

Roll the tape on it. 

"Paula, the plea with Cohen does not require him to cooperate with a special counsel. Talk about that a little bit." 

"Part of the reason for that is that the special counsel does not consider Cohen to be a reliable witness. There is concern if they were to accept some information from him as part of a plea deal, if he ever got on the stand he could be easily discredited." 

Wow. So Mueller didn't want anything to do with Cohen, because he doesn't believe him. 

"That's interesting of itself. The other thing that I think the other thing that's interesting here is that you know there are innumerable cases of campaign finance violations recently, for example Rosie O'Donnell pleaded, said publicly I exceeded the campaign finance limit on five separate occasions. She's a repeat offender. And in theory there are five U.S. attorneys who could bring a case against Rosie. But there's no discussion of case, because there's no corruption involved. But clearly Rosie wasn't trying to buy a political office or get a tax break for her business she was just carried away and she did what she thought was right." 

I mean it's a low level beef, but obviously with President Trump the feds and it's crazy because he controls the Justice Department, President Trump does. But the feds are, it's almost like they're stalking him. You know. 

"I don't think he does. I think that's the one statement you made I disagree with because I think that and in fact I think this is Trump's colossal mistake, his colossal mistake is not firing. Comey the the day that he took office and establishing people in the Justice Department that actually reported to him."

But now there are. Now there are, I mean Sessions reports to Trump and Sessions didn't recuse himself from Michael Cohen's case. So it's so bizarre this whole thing. So what it comes down to is this. This is how simple it is. Did the president of the United States order his personal attorney to pay two women during the campaign to keep quiet about affairs? Did he do that using campaign finance money? That's it. Yes or no. Trump goes on and says, no I didn't know it, I didn't know about it. Cohen did it on his own, there was no campaign finance, I didn't know anything about it. And then goes Cohen, oh yes, he did, he told me to do it. So how are the American people suppose to fairly process this, it is impossible we can't. 

"They can't, and also difficult for me to get my head around this because let's think about it this way, if Trump is the primary funder of his own campaign, not the sole funder but the primary funder, if most of that money is his money that he put into the campaign and if not money was then used for by Cohen, I don't know what the status of that is? You probably know better than I do." 

There was money available to Donald Trump from other sources donated money, there was. But how... 

"Yes, but how would we establish that he used that money?" 

It would be almost insane for a person running for president to use campaign money to do something like this. But remember Duncan Hunter, the congressman Republican congressman in California, has just been indicted because he used campaign dollars to take trips with his family, on all kinds of personal stuff. So you can't use that money for other personal stuff. Now all the other CNN, MSNBC all is, well maybe this, maybe that, it's all garbage. It comes out to the fact that the president would have to actively know his campaign finance money was being used to shut two women up? That's it. 

"Remember that both in the case of Hillary and then earlier with Obama there were substantial I mean, large campaign finance violations, I'm not saying they were identical, they were different. So in all these cases we also have to apply a certain proportionality across the board because as you know there's a lot of suspicion that these, this outrage is being very selectively applied." 

And it has although, the Obama administration was fined almost 400,000 dollars for various campaign finance violations, that happens but not like this though of it's hush money that that's a bigger story. OK. 

Let's go to George Soros. Now, I have reports here that this man through a variety of media sites Media Matters, these kinds of far left kooks. He gives them money through his Open Society Foundation other foundations, Soros funnels the money in, OK. To the tune of 40 billion. No, no, forty million dollars. And so Media Matters for example goes to Facebook and Google and tries to get conservatives off like you, try to get your book, your movie publicity about it, interviews with you, out. And that's what these far left people are doing and Soros is paying for it. Are you aware of that? 

"Well I've read about it and I certainly know that Soros has been hiding some of these Antifa groups that are beating up speakers on campus. This is very consistent with that picture. I mean we're living in a surreal time, Bill when honestly if John Stuart Mill that great apostle of liberty, were to show up to speak on the Berkeley campus tomorrow Antifa would be there to beat him up. So this is liberalism that is actually acting in the most illiberal way. Same with Soros, I mean to get this kind of digital censorship where essentially a live human being who has established a social media following is converted into a non-person, you have to go back to Aldous Huxley or George Orwell on the serial novels to find this kind of craziness going on." 

Yeah and Media Matters had access to the highest levels of Facebook and Google and apparently, they you know went in there and threatened them or said you better get these people off, you know it was what happened to me. I mean within an instant when I was accused of something we had people in front of Fox News with signs and we knew they were paid people were paid. And that's where the Soros money goes and sources hey I don't write them a check directly my foundation gives this organization and they can do what they want with the money you know it's a circle but it's the same snake, all right it's the same pithon, squeezing. 

"I have a sort of a Nazi word, a German word for this is was what the Germans called a recently in shooting the movie, I was in Munich, I was in Nuremberg and I began to wonder why the Germans drape the swastika flag on their balconies, why they did the Heil Hitler salute all the time, I'm thinking Hitler wasn't there, so who are you actually saluting? And then I realize that what they're doing is they're signaling their humble conformity to state doctrine. They're basically saying I'm not a troublemaker, I will sycophantically submit to whatever the state asks me to do."

Right. 

"So this kind of effort to enforce cultural conformity in its own way, it's with us today, it's called political correctness and our digital Mogul is a part of it." 

It's also called Fascism and the George Soros of the world who want, they do not want any dissent to their far left view of the world and if you do dissent and if you are not on their side they'll come after you and I know that firsthand. 

Now last question you have a big bestseller Death of a Nation, what is the headline for the book, to convince people to go buy it? 

"The headline for the book is that while the left routinely accuses Trump and the right of being racist and fascist in reality, the Democratic Party has consistently been the party of racism. It's the party of racism today. It runs the black ghettos, the Latino barrios, the Native American reservations keeps those people in dependency and poverty and similarly, with fascism who's acting in a fascist way today? Who's beating up speakers on campus? Who's using the weapons of the state against political adversaries? It's not Trump, it's not the right. All of that stuff is coming from the left." 

All right. The book is Death of a Nation and the movie is called that as well. Dinesh, thanks for taking the time today, we really appreciate it. Thank you. 

The big story in Iowa Mollie Tibbetts, a young 20-year-old girl found dead. University of Iowa student killed by an illegal immigrant from Mexico named Christian Rivera, 24 years old. Now again this is just so, it's like you're on a merry go round. OK. This man should not have been in the country, we cannot find any involvement with the law he had, an e-verify, which means he had phony documents, all right. But he wasn't as far as we know arrested and deported, he was here for about seven years. He worked in some kind of farm concern. 

Anyway, I turned on the TV last night and there was Geraldo and I knew exactly what Geraldo was going to say and he didn't let me down. The first things out of his mouth was, not all illegal aliens are bad. You may remember, I had that notorious shootout with Geraldo Rivera, who is a friend of mine, about look you've got to come to grips with the fact that we have a problem in the United States where there are violent illegal aliens here and they are killing people here. That doesn't mean all illegal aliens are violent or killing people. Everybody knows that. For you to continue to say that and then fail to do anything about this open border policy where these people can be deported eight times and come back in again. That wasn't the case on Rivera but it was in the Kate Steinle situation and we almost got Kate's Law passed.

President Trump would be very wise, very wise to recommit to Kate's law right now when people are talking about the Mollie Tibbetts story. It's not the same thing. Kate's Law is if you're a felon, convicted felon and you're deported from the United States and you come back, you get a mandatory 10-year prison sentence, just for coming back. Now, they'll never do 10, five is probably what we'll get. I'll take the five. It should be ten. It should be ten in the federal pen. OK. Now is the time for the president to get a sponsor in the House and in the Senate to resubmit the bill and get it passed while you have control of both houses and this would take away from the constant scandal mongering and get into policy that your supporters want, Mr. President, do it! 

Gallup Poll. What's America's number one problem? Here it is dissatisfaction with government, poor leadership. 21 percent say it's the biggest problem in America. Immigration, illegal aliens, 16 percent, race relations/racism 7, unifying the country 6, lack of respect for each other, 5. That's a big one, lack of respect for each other. Health care, 5 So folks are fed up again with leadership here in America. That is the biggest problem according to this poll. 

More mail. 

Bill Nelson. Prosser, Washington. 

"With Cohen selling Trump out to save himself, do you think he is giving the president's enemies the smoking gun they've been looking for to turn in, to run him into the ground, take back the House and Senate?" 

I don't know yet, depends how the president handles it. If he concentrates on policies that Americans want, he could get by this unless he did something illegal, he didn't do anything illegal than he can get by it. 

Brandon Thadideau. Port Neches, Texas. 

I hope I said your last name right, Brandon.

"I'm under the impression that a sitting president can only be impeached for crimes committed while in office that all other cases will postponed until the president is out of office."

Murky, murky getting into office on an illegality would be impeachable, so it's murky. 

Don O'Brein. Montgomery, New York. 

"Why did Muller hand off Cohen's case and keep Manafort's?" 

Because the special prosecutor believes that Manafort may know something about Russian collusion and is trying to squeeze the man to tell what he knows. Cohen doesn't know know much about anything. Plus, as you heard, Mueller apparently doesn't trust Cohen, he thinks is a witness.

Florence Levine. Brooklyn, New York. 

"I'm concerned about Antifa, Black Lives Matter and other groups like that. My husband and I are wondering how these people have so much time to go and protest so often?" 

They're paid. These are hard core groups that are paid and these anarchist, they don't work, they don't, they're not in the system. They just go around cause trouble and smoke pot or whatever they do in their spare time."

Judy Ranken. The Villages, Florida. 

"I have a question and you are the only one to tell me the truth."

OK. Judy I will. 

"I want to be an informed voter but it's hard to know where to go to find the truth. I would like to know Ron DeSantis' voting record on tax cuts and immigration reform? I have conflicting reports.

Call his office or e-mail his office. Say hey, how did Mr. DeSantis vote on these issues. If they don't reply to you, Judy don't vote for him. If they do reply, they've got to tell you how he voted. Always go to the source. If you ever go to Congress or senator's office and you don't get a reply, never vote for them again. 

Shelley Kline. Grinnell, Iowa. 

"Bill you worked hard to get Kate's Law passed, I live in rural Iowa where an illegal immigrant has been charged with murdering Mollie Tibbetts, she was a beautiful soul, worked with my son." 

I'm so sorry, Shelley. 

"When do you think the illegals will be addressed by Congress?" 

President Trump's got to push it hard. 

Jessica Lily. West Palm Beach, Florida. 

"My brother Patrick is being deployed in Afghanistan. He's a military doctor, I couldn't be more proud. My question is how much longer you think we'll be over there?" 

I think there will be a U.S. presence there least another five years you know country's primitive, chaotic, Taliban still there, ISIS is there. It is policing, we're basically policing the country now. 

OK I have a column on loyalty that invokes Michael Cohen and also marriage. The column is just written, posted and I think you'll enjoy it very much. I'd like you to download it and send it around. I want you to do the one on one program, try to get a person that you like and respect to be a BillOReilly.com Premium Member like you. I mean that is very important today. If we do anything on this program that you feel is not fair or inaccurate, tell me right away, you get me on the message boards like that, or you get Bill@BillOReilly.com or if you're Concierge Member and that thing is exploding, like crazy. I'll answer you directly. You know I've been giving a lot of advice to children, Concierge Member's children and grandchildren and schools and things like that, I like that. I'll help you out if I can help you out about how to handle situations. Check out Concierge Membership.

All right. 

Word of the day do not be meretricious. Wow! Use that word next time you go out to lunch with your pals and somebody says something dopey, you say hey, please don't be meretricious while I'm eating my cheeseburger. 

Thanks for watching us today, wild week. We'll be back tomorrow. See you then.