Bill O’Reilly offered Republican lawmakers a stiff warning: don’t get cute and try to move away from President Donald Trump heading into the 2026 midterms — because if you do, you’ll get “slaughtered” at the ballot box.

O’Reilly shared his view on NewsNation on Monday night.

“If you think that you can cut loose the most charismatic, populist president of the last 50 years, you’re crazy. You can’t,” O’Reilly said. “And if you try, you’re going to get slaughtered.”

His answer came a moment after host Leland Vittert asked if there was “room for Republicans to move away from Trump.”

O’Reilly replied with a flat “No,” before letting out a little laugh.

“That’s the answer to that question, no,” O’Reilly continued. “He’s the ship and you’re either gonna sail with it or go down with it.”

Vittert asked him the question after playing a clip of Karl Rove giving his advice to GOP lawmakers on Fox News last Sunday. Rove argued Republicans need to make their case to the American people why they’re better than Democrats, rather that just leaning on their ties to Trump.

“Most important of all, they’ve gotta show they have another act. Not just ‘Vote for me because of what I’ve done.’ But ‘vote for me because of what I want to do. Here is the agenda I’m going to work hard for in my next term,’” Rove said. “And that agenda has to come from them — it can’t be given from the leadership, can’t come from the president. It has to come from them.”

When Vittert asked O’Reilly if he felt Rove was “wrong,” the former Fox News star said Rove was not telling Republicans to shun Trump.

“What Rove is talking about is that he wants the individual people running for office in November to be better campaigners, to connect with the voters in an emotional way,” O’Reilly said. “And of course that would be best for the Republican Party if that were to happen.”

But ditching Trump would not wise, he added.

Their analysis comes as the Dems enjoy a fairly cushy lead in most polls; the one major outlier is Harvard’s latest poll showing the two parties tied heading into November.

Watch above via NewsNation.

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