Long-time Republican political strategist Bill O’Reilly explained to Capital Tonight that the new One Nation Movement which he co-founded with other well-known right-of-center politicos (including Mike Madrid, co-founder of the Lincoln Project, and political strategist Susan Del Percio, a political analyst for MSNBC and former special adviser to Governor Andrew Cuomo) was a reaction to the grip that former President Donald Trump has on the Republican Party. 

“We were really concerned about some core topics in America that could really pull the country apart,” O’Reilly explained. “The first being confidence in the voting system. People need to believe the voting system.”

The second topic is the environment. 

“Republicans have been late on that. Conservatives have been late on that. Conservatives at one point were the great conservationists of America. You can go back to Teddy Roosevelt and many many others, like George Pataki. It helped him win the election in ’94,” O’Reilly said.

The third core issue One Nation Movement is focused on is the ballooning federal debt.

“The national debt, we are approaching $30 trillion," O'Reilly said. "We are currently at about $28.5 now, and that’s on our children’s credit card. We believe the Republicans have abandoned fiscal conservatism and we want to push that as well."

In the same way only Richard Nixon could go to China, the founders of the One Nation Movement realize that conservatives will only hear this message from fellow travelers.

“We thought it was important to come from the conservative side, from the right-of-center,” O’Reilly told Capital Tonight. 

When asked how One Nation Movement would be reaching out to those Republicans still firmly entrenched in MAGA world, O’Reilly said One Nation would do it with facts.

“You do it with facts, and you have to be out there using every medium at your disposal. But you’ve got to get the facts out there,” he said. “What’s happened in the Republican Party is that being loyal to Trump has become the litmus test for everybody. So, as he’s spewing his nonsense, and he has his acolytes doing the same thing, rank-and-file Republicans are afraid to stand up and say something.”

“Here we are a group of rank-and-file Republicans who are going to step up and say something and lay the facts out there the best way we can,” O’Reilly continued. “It’s an effort certainly worth undertaking.”