Best of the Program | Guests: Bill O’Reilly & Megyn Kelly | 4/25/23

40m
Pat Gray joins Glenn and Stu to discuss Tucker Carlson, President Biden’s re-election announcement video, and what the next election may look like. Bill O’Reilly joins to share what he believes happened behind the scenes that led to Fox News dropping Tucker Carlson. Journalist Megyn Kelly joins to discuss why she believes Tucker Carlson was ousted at Fox.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen and follow along

Transcript

Say hello to the next generation of Zendesk AI agents built to deliver resolutions for everyone.

Loved by over 10,000 companies, Zendesk AI agents easily deploy in minutes to resolve 30% of interactions instantly.

That's the Zendesk AI Effect.

Find out more at Zendesk.com.

Man, what a show.

What a week of shows, honestly, this week.

It's crazy.

Well, it's only Tuesday, so we went out.

It feels like we've done 12.

It does, doesn't it?

It does.

You know, we mentioned this briefly during the show, but I don't know if there's any place else you can get the sort of coverage on the Tucker Carlson situation from the inside than you got in hour two of this program today.

Yeah.

We had Bill O'Reilly.

He's got quite a bit of experience with this kind of stuff.

And Megan Kelly, and they, you know, they

disagree with each other on a lot of things, but they disagree with each other's analysis on what happened to Tucker Carlson.

I see the truth kind of a little bit from both of them, but we all have been at Fox, left Fox,

and

we feel for Tucker Carlson deeply.

By the way, they're saying that he's going to run for president.

No.

Not

a chance.

Not a chance.

So you get all your Tucker Carlson news.

Also,

if you'd like to dump Fox, I mean, I personally think Fox is over.

Wait until you hear Bill's analysis of this.

Fox is just over.

You can't dump your only guy, really, and expect to, you know, be that

flag bearer for a movement.

So many people said they were dumping Fox Nation.

You can do that

by going to blazetv.com/slash Glenn.

Use the promo code

dump Fox.

Try that.

And you'll save $20 off your annual subscription.

Brought to you by American Giant.

In the 1960s, 95% of the clothing in America made right here.

Now, 97% is made overseas.

Complete reversal.

Everything we have.

Now made by somebody else.

This is not sustainable.

I'd like to welcome American Giant back as a sponsor this year.

They began in 2012 when a clothing factory in North Carolina was going to shut down.

They worked with the factory to invest in new machinery and skill development.

Now it's 10 years later and today they make the best hoodie you'll ever own and a lot of other really high quality clothing with cotton that is grown here in America, milled in America, cut and sewn right here in America.

American Giant, bringing that giant of America back in all we do.

Buy American today.

American-giant.com.

American-giant.com/slash Glenn.

Use the slash Glenn, you will save.

American-giant.com/slash Glenn.

You're You're listening to

the best of the Glenbeck program.

Oh,

welcome to the Glenbeck program.

Author.

We're glad you're here.

Thank you so much for listening.

We were just joined by Pat Gray.

Hi, Pat.

Pat Gray.

Hi.

How are you?

Oh, man.

Yeah.

Glad you're here.

Big day, huh?

Yeah.

I'm giddy today.

Are you?

Yeah.

Yeah, me too.

Me too.

Me too.

I'm giddy, not only because they have silenced the most dangerous man to ever be on TV.

Thank heaven.

Yeah.

What a dangerous, dangerous man.

Dangerous man he was.

But I hesitate to even say his name.

He's so dangerous.

Me too.

Well, I will tell you this.

I learned from The Atlantic.

His replacement is going to be worse.

It's going to be worse than that.

Well, look what happened when they replaced Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck after they were both forced out.

Fired.

Fired.

fired, dragged in the streets, bloody.

Anybody else getting a little sick and tired of seeing that lie repeated even a decade later?

Yeah.

It really is.

I can't take it.

Anyway, so

glad they got that extremist out, but another extremist is coming.

You know,

one that's worse.

Tucker Carl.

Gotta be worse.

Something like if someone else wins the nomination, that person will be worse than Trump.

Yes.

No matter who it is.

No.

People don't know.

No, they've already said that.

Yeah, DeSantis.

He is worse.

Especially if if it's DeSantis, he's worse.

Yeah, yeah.

But like you're telling, if Nikki Haley wins this, she's worse, she's worse.

She's worse.

And he's worse than Hitler.

Yep.

I don't know where you go from Hitler.

I mean, Genghis Khan was worried about it.

You go to Trump.

They've already said Trump is worse than Hitler.

So now this person will be worse.

Worse than Trump, then.

Wow, that's weird.

It won't be said until the person wins.

No one is worse than Trump.

All right.

So anyway.

Really?

Yeah.

No one.

No one.

Not

Mao.

Not Mao.

Not Paul Pot, who killed, what, two-thirds of his country?

Ediamine?

Ediamine.

No.

Not Margaret.

Nope.

Wow.

Genghis Khan.

No.

Gengisko?

No.

No.

I mean, you talk about being in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis.

You're talking Donald Trump.

Wow, that is weird.

Okay, so the president did what all...

Anyone who is running for office, public office, you know, you could go the old-fashioned way of having a big rally and make a big announcement and have people, you know, screaming behind you.

And it's like, oh, you know, hoopla.

He went, I think, the much smarter way.

He just made a commercial and released it in the middle of the night.

Yeah, sure, counterintuitive a little bit, but that's what makes this guy genius.

Really?

That's one of the many things.

Many things that makes him genius.

So now let's continue on with

his announcement that was released in the middle of the night.

Here it is.

With Kamala, two of the most popular people on the planet.

They're hugging people, sniffing when I ran for president four years ago.

Yeah, I said we're in a battle for the soul of America.

Yes.

And we still are.

The question we're facing is whether in the years ahead we have more freedom or less freedom.

That is

more rights or fewer.

I know what I want the answer to be, and I think you do too.

He wants it less.

This is not a time to be complacent.

This is dumb.

That's why I'm running for re-election.

Because I know America.

Oh, he does.

He does.

He knows it.

He's working.

I know we're good and decent people.

Lunchback.

I know we're still a country that believes in honesty and respect and treating each other with dignity.

That we're a nation where we give hate no safe harbor.

We believe that everyone is equal, that everyone should be given a fair shot.

We do.

Even white people can't choose a nation.

Every generation of Americans have faced a moment when they have to defend democracy, stand up for our personal freedom, stand up for the right to vote and our civil rights.

And this is our moment.

Oh, there he is running.

He was ready.

He was running.

He was running.

I have energy, I swear.

This is great.

We got to call a lid at 9 a.m.

every day, but I have energy to run three or four steps.

No, it was 9.03 last week, wasn't it?

9.03.

He didn't wait 903.

He did.

He did.

Well, that's a hard work day.

It is.

He was probably working on this in the middle of the night.

Probably.

Okay, so

that's the special, special end.

Now, let me just

correct me if I'm wrong.

I think we're all clear on the Biden strategy.

Here it is.

Yesterday you read, he's not giving any press conferences.

The fewest press conferences of any president.

Okay?

Fewest press conferences.

So he's not out there.

He's putting a lid on things as Pat said at 9 o'clock in the morning.

President said 9.03.

I was only going to give him 9 o'clock, but Pat gave him 9.03.

903, which was the accurate.

It's pretty accurate.

Okay, yeah.

So here is the strategy, I think.

Silence everyone who is against you.

Make sure there's no one that can say anything against you.

Then no press conferences, no rallies.

Stay in your basement.

Silence your own voice so you can't screw it up.

And

hope Donald Trump wins the nomination.

And then you're done.

Worked for him last time.

Yeah, I think that is the same thing that he did last time.

And I think that's a strategy.

And the silencing thing is really a huge part of it, where it's not just silencing people like Tucker Carlson or opponents on social media, taking AM radios out of cars.

Yes.

They're trying to do that.

By the way, you should,

Congress is, do you have

the text?

You should let Congress know you've got to put AM radios in cars.

This is the way to silence talk show.

Well, think about this.

How long have we talked about this?

What would our country be without Fox News channel and talk radio?

Those two things are under direct attack right now.

Yep.

Right.

Fox News seems to be changing into something else that is not Fox News.

Yep.

And they are literally talking about seriously taking AM cars, radios out of new cars.

If you want to get involved with this, by the way, you can text AM to 52886 and tell Congress we need AM radio in cars.

We do desperately.

Again, it's text AM to 52886.

It's worth your time to do that.

They've got a period here of

a chance to keep AM radio in cars.

This is extraordinarily important, especially this is the way they've been wanting to get rid of talk radio.

They've been wanting to get rid of it since the 1980s.

They finally have an opportunity that doesn't look like it's political.

It absolutely is political, period.

It's political.

The AM radio

interferes with the electric circuitry of the EV vehicle.

Yeah.

Is that what it is?

And that could shut down your car.

It's a lot like if you have your cell phone on.

How many times have you crashed in a plane when your cell phone's?

Oh, man, I forgot to turn mine off when you're going to turn it off or put it in an airplane.

horrible fiery plane crash yeah over and over and over and over you see it

same thing will happen with a

radios and evs oh

gosh

they don't want to they just have to for our own safety wow okay yeah okay so that's so we got that going for us we should also note part of the silencing strategy is silencing his opponents in the democratic primary none of them are going to get debates i mean again marion williams he's already said

that they're not doing debates they're not going to do debates i mean maybe if Gavin Newsom or somebody who is

more of a threat came in, they would do a debate.

Who knows?

But likely you will get no debates.

And you will get very few words from the actual president.

He will do very, very little and try to avoid the spotlight because every time he talks, he's a literal embarrassment to all of the country.

So this is the strategy.

Hide in your basement and hope.

And the reason, again, Donald Trump, who, by the way,

they had the same strategy in 2016, didn't work out all that well for them.

But the idea is everyone's made up their mind on Donald Trump.

And there's a good chunk of the country that doesn't like him, as we all know.

And the media will be there to reinforce every one of those themes.

And they will go down this road with

a built-in 47%

voting for them just out of default.

And all they have to do is pick off a few people.

They have to have violence from the right.

They have to have it.

It's the only thing because things will get so bad in the next 18 months.

I really believe

we are just an event away, just an event away

from collapse.

And they're not going to introduce this currency right away.

They're just going to let inflation just eat us alive.

I was talking to Tim Kennedy yesterday, did a podcast.

It'll be out on Thursday.

And Tim and I were talking and he said this this inflation nobody knows he said in a year from now

you know when your eggs are nine bucks it's going to be a problem and he he's watching what's going on he's seeing that the dollar is losing its value overnight it's losing value already the price is what tripled

yes oh yeah yeah i mean it's out of control out of control already and england is going through this You know, just the regular British breakfast, which I think has blood pudding in it.

So, I mean, it's, you know, you could pass on that one.

But I just read an article today.

The average English breakfast is off the charts.

I mean, if you look at

the price of just breakfast over in England, it's almost a straight line up.

That just ravages a country.

Yeah.

And unless they have riots in the streets, that's all anybody's going to be talking about.

Oh, and the gas prices are skyrocketing again, too.

And nobody's really talking about that very much.

So what is the possible plan?

And also, may I just say, when he says there's no such thing as someone else's child

as he did yesterday, I think that's a problem.

Let me play this.

Cut one up.

I could put a teacher's creed into words when she said there's no such thing as someone else's child.

No such thing as someone else's child.

Our nation's children are all our children.

No, no, that's not true.

That's not true.

That's the opposite of true, though.

Yes, so

it has true sentence sort of to the truth.

Okay.

All right.

Okay.

Yeah, sure.

Not true.

Not true at all.

And if

you look at where we've been and the things we called crazy back then,

In fact, this was said before.

This happened to be said in 2013.

And America went wild when it was a talk show host on MSNBC.

Listen.

We have never invested as much in public education as we should have because we've always had kind of a private notion of children.

Your kid is yours and totally your responsibility.

We haven't had a very collective notion of these are our children.

So part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.

Once it's everybody's responsibility and not just the households, then we start making better investments.

That is exactly what the president means when he says, you know, it's our collective children.

That's exactly what he means.

Now, when he said it,

have we moved so far since 2013 that we no longer care about that statement?

that's the way it happens but this is of course why the strategy is to keep him in his basement and exactly speak because he says things like this this is reminiscent of what was his face reminiscent of gen just khan and also reminiscent of the guy in virginia mauliff who ran and got on stage and said hey actually you shouldn't have any input at how your kids are taught that's the thing you're not supposed to say right he keeps saying the things you're not supposed to say you're supposed to do those things as a good progressive you're not supposed to admit them in public

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program, and we really want to thank you for listening.

Mr.

Bill O'Reilly, how are you, sir?

Hey, how you doing, Beck?

Good.

You know, I was talking to you, and I couldn't remember if you said this on the air or if you told me this off the air, but this is kind of what you said would happen

if they settled or lost the Dominion case.

You said you thought there would be a lot of house cleaning

at Fox just because of the monetary damage.

Do you think that's what happened to Tucker Carlson?

No.

It was a look to the future.

So, you know, it's a shame that we live in a country where the reporting is so lazy, sloppy, and dishonest because of agenda.

That's number one.

And, you know, I appreciate you having me on the program.

I appreciate your listeners

actually trying to figure out what's going on

because it's important.

You know,

the Fox News channel led to Donald Trump being elected president.

That's a pretty

strong historical situation.

Donald Trump would not have been president if not for the Fox News channel.

Agree.

So now that's gone.

I mean, Trump doesn't have that.

He doesn't have that advantage in this upcoming election.

So that's the big story here other than the personalities.

Now shoot me the questions you want to know about what happened and I will tell you what I know which is most of it.

Okay, so then tell me the story of what happened.

Well

the company itself

is in turmoil

not

because of the Dominion settlement.

They can well afford the $800 million because of people like you and me, which made them countless dollars in the past.

So you got a $4 million war chest.

It was the future lawsuits that led to Mr.

Carlson's demise.

And he didn't even know it, by the way.

He had no clue.

So yesterday at this time, 24 hours ago, the Tucker Carlson producers were in their morning meeting setting the lineup for Monday night.

So all this bull about they made the decision on Thursday, last Thursday, or Friday.

It's all a bunch of crap.

Okay, and I

made it that they might have made that decision.

No, they didn't, Beck.

Wow.

There's only one guy who can make that decision.

Yeah, Rupert.

That's it.

Yeah.

Nobody else had anything to do with this decision other than to tell him.

Agree.

Yeah, you should get rid of Carlson.

Carlson didn't have a lot of allies because nobody does.

There's no Tammy Wynette in television news standing by your man.

No.

Okay?

No lawyers.

If the seas get choppy, you drown.

And they'll help you drown.

They'll throw you overboard.

So anyway, the reason that Rupert Murdoch made the decision was because his lawyers,

Fox News lawyers, are saying,

We got a lawsuit by this producer

who came in and taped everything.

So what does that tell you?

It tells you she came in with

perhaps a plan.

All right.

Not unusual in these days.

I'll tell you what, it's unbelievable what's happening in corporate America.

But they have a lawsuit already filed in New York City.

Apparently they have tapes that the lawyer for the woman says, you know, we might put them out there.

And those tapes do not make the Carlson broadcast look good.

Number one.

Number two, 60 Minutes Sunday night.

Who's there?

Ray Epps.

Hey, Ray.

Ray looking at the camera going, hey, Tucker Carlson ruined my life to wrap up my family.

It's a lawsuit.

What do you think is going to happen now, Bec?

Lawsuit.

You bet.

You bet.

Big one.

Then you have SmartMatic.

You've already gone over that.

The other voting machine company, which really isn't that big a concern because they only had one county, L.A.

County, that they did business with in the last election.

So they'll get paid off, and it's not a big deal.

But then they have the shareholders, the people that bought Fox News stock, that company's stock, and they're getting hammered, and they're going to sue

people inside Fox News.

That means board members, that means the Murdochs, that means all of those people for

fraud.

And that's going to be massive.

It's interesting to me that BlackRock just increased by, by, I think, 14%

their holdings of News Corp, but they did it back in February.

Yeah, I don't know if that's a good play now.

I'm not sure.

And so

all of this is kept from the American public.

They don't understand the political implication, which this hurts the Trump campaign, big tongue.

All right.

And

the business equation that was made, and that caused the removal of Tucker Carlson.

It was, as they say in the Godfather, it's business, not personal, sonny.

Okay?

So, Bill,

how is this hurting the

Trump campaign just because you think that this will really hurt Fox in ratings?

No,

because in 16,

and I was there, I did the first interview with Trump after he announced he was running for president.

In 1916, the Fox News channel was very favorable to Donald Trump, and the ratings skyrocketed.

And he had access to almost every program to say what he wanted.

I gave him the hardest time,

but

basically, the whole operation was pro-Trump and anti-Hillary.

Now, the operation doesn't want Trump to be president.

All right?

And

their viewership

already on the decline and pretty seriously in the 25 to 54 range, as we discussed last time I was on the program.

Yeah.

Is going to be a free fall.

An absolute free fall.

They don't have anybody to put in at 8 o'clock.

So that's the most key slot.

There isn't one program.

on Fox News channel that's growing in the ratings.

Not one.

They have no bench.

And most importantly, everyone who works there is frightened.

So you do the math, Beck.

What do you think of...

I've heard a lot of people are canceling Fox Nation because he was a big part of that.

Did documentaries, et cetera, et cetera.

How do you think their online is going to do?

Well, all I can tell you is that last night,

billorilly.com picked up 400 new premium members.

Yeah.

Yeah, we're seeing an increase as well.

I think people are canceling Fox Nation

and canceling Fox.

I think there's going to be real turmoil.

What do you think Tucker does?

He's going to make a fortune.

Do you think he has a non-compete in play?

And if so, it doesn't even matter.

Nobody's going to hire him in the corporate media.

No, I know that.

He's got nowhere to go there.

His non-compete would include anything electronic.

You can't do electronic?

No.

You absolutely can't do it.

All you can do is direct competitor non-competes.

So, what he'll do

is form his own agency, like you have with the Blaze and I have with BillO'Reilly.com.

He'll do a Rogan-esque

podcast.

Yeah.

And he'll make a bloody bloody fortune.

Yeah, he will.

He will.

Do you think he'll have the same impact that he had at Fox?

Well, look,

this is what people don't understand.

Again,

the impact that television news has is maybe 60% less than it was

when I left six years ago.

It's my rhythmic.

It's six, almost to the week, six years that I left.

because

the balkanization of the news, driven by social media and the availability that people can watch whenever they want on their devices, has lessened the impact that the cables and the network news used to have.

So, yeah, he's not going to be seen on a channel every night.

But I could argue that in my operation, since I left Fox News, I've had four number one best-selling books,

tens of millions of dollars in revenue from my television operation.

I've got 300 radio stations carrying my daily commentary.

So you tell me.

Yeah, I will tell you that our footprint now is bigger than it was

when we were at Fox.

And we're having our best year ever

right now.

And it's just different because people are

there, is no one gathering place, and that's the thing with cable news the way it was before.

There was one gathering place, and you would see those on in bars and everything else.

There isn't that now, and

that's the only one, but nobody's paying attention to it because it's boring.

Look, the reason that you succeed is that you're not boring back.

It's not because of your good looks, that's ridiculous.

Yeah, I don't know.

okay.

And but you put on a program that people tune in to listen to on the radio because they don't know what you're going to say, you don't know where you're going to go.

Carlson had that same appeal.

So, many, most

television news presentations you turn on the show, you know exactly what you're going to get because you get it every night.

With Carlson, his talent

was that he would come after

situations in a different way.

Now, if I had produced his program, I would have required more discipline and not,

because he got himself into trouble on a number of occasions when he didn't have to.

Okay, you just had to do a little bit more reporting and backup stuff a little bit more.

But that's just not important.

He alienated the

corporate media.

They got

just like they got me.

I don't know about your circumstance, but surely over the years

you've had a lot of people

brought to you.

Oh, yeah.

And that's the bottom line on it.

Again, these media corporations, whether it's Fox or CBS, NBC, they have no loyalty to anyone but the bank teller.

Okay?

That's it.

No matter how loyal you are, no matter how much money you made them, no matter what the circumstances, if they feel your reliability,

it's

avalanche time for you.

The best of the Glenbeck program.

Welcome to the one and only Megan Kelly.

from the Megan Kelly Show.

She does on XM Sirius right after this program on the Triumph channel, 111.

She also has her YouTube channel that you can watch her show every day, the Megan Kelly Show, on YouTube.

Welcome, Megan.

How are you?

Hi there.

I'm great.

How you doing?

I'm good.

So I just talked to Bill O'Reilly, and his take on Tucker Carlson was

that

this is because of the threats of lawsuits.

For instance, Ray Epps was on 60 Minutes on Sunday.

It's not only just to destroy voices, but but this gravely hurts the Trump campaign as well.

What is your opinion on what happened with Tucker Carlson?

Well, Bill and I have had our disagreements, but he's brilliant.

However, this is another disagreement.

I don't think that Fox would be scared by that Ray X lawsuit at all.

And I also think all the reporting that they got scared by this Abby Grossberg's lawsuit, a disgruntled, fired, former, low-level producer for Tucker, and at one point Maria scared them even a little.

She's got tapes.

Okay, who does she have tapes of?

People on his staff saying things.

Tucker was never in the office.

Tucker works from his home,

either in Maine or down in Florida.

I guarantee you, Tucker's never had more than one conversation with Abby Grisberg.

So she's not going to have Tucker Carlson on tape.

And even if she did, Glenn,

Fox does not fire people over random, nasty comments to a low-level producer.

It's certainly not their number one star.

That doesn't make sense.

Now,

Tucker is very controversial.

Tucker's in the news every week for yet another thing.

It is possible Rupert reached the end of his tether for Tucker, and there are reports that there may be some emails in connection with the Dominion lawsuit that we haven't seen

that they have in which Tucker lambasts people like Rupert.

I also find it hard to believe that would lead him to fire Tucker because Rupert's been around the block.

He's a tough guy.

He doesn't offend easily.

Correct.

But it is true that if they think you're getting too big for your britches over there,

they're not shy about sending you a message.

So at the end of the day, do you think that's it?

I don't know.

I don't know.

It's weird.

Look, they do have to worry about shareholder lawsuits, which are coming in now in the wake of Dominion, you know, and it's not entirely Rupert's shop shop anymore.

You know, he does have a board he has to answer to.

I also think that if they have any desire to sell Fox News, and there's been rumblings about that, especially once Rupert is gone,

they're going to want it to be, quote, more mainstream.

And getting rid of Tucker would be a good step.

Getting rid of Dan Bungino would be another step.

Maria Barda-Romo might be another one, though I'm told Rupert absolutely loves her.

So it's probably not an accident she didn't go, even though they just paid out $800 million in connection with some of the things she said.

So I don't know.

But that makes sense to me, but I'm told by people who are in a position to know, no sale pending, no seller in the tires at the moment.

Now, there is something else going on.

They're going into negotiation for their cable news contracts.

I think that might play a role.

You know, that always comes up, but it takes a lot for these cable providers to tell somebody like Fox, we're not going to carry you because of the controversial man at eight.

I mean, you saw, like, when that happened to OAN, it was a big deal.

And that was because the whole channel is controversial.

But one guy, I just don't believe it.

Tucker's too much of a draw with the audience.

And it would have to be a uniform position by, you know, DirecTV and Time Warner Cable and all of these people, which it wouldn't be.

Fox is too much of a money moneymaker for the cable providers, too.

I don't know what happened, but I do believe there's no way it happened without personal sign-off by Rupert.

So you left at the height of your career

to go to NBC.

I left arguably at the height

to start the blaze, which was crazy insane.

Tucker is gone now, but I don't think he's going to get a mainstream cable network or show, and I don't think he would want it.

But now there's endless opportunities for him to make gobs of money if that's what he's looking to do and to have a real impact, just not with any corporation, right?

Yes.

He'll be financially even better off once he goes on his own.

I mean, I have no doubt of that.

If he's smart, Tucker will do a subscription show where he never has to worry about advertiser boycotts again.

You know, you always have to worry about lawsuits.

You have to say factual, but there's insurance for that and so on.

But I think he'd probably do a subscription service.

And if he goes directly from Fox, he'll be well positioned to just crush it.

I don't think...

he'll wind up signing up with a larger media ecosystem, whether it's the Blaze or the Daily Wire.

I just think

if he does it, he'll do it on his own

just knowing Tucker but look there are certain trade-offs you know having and you and I are in the unique position of having worked you know at the very very top of this cable company and then gone off on our own for sure your influence wanes in some ways you know I mean I don't know that Tucker is gonna have Ron DeSantis personally crafting his Ukraine policy to please Tucker if he's a digital show right right

You know, there's something about the Fox powerhouse that makes a lot of these politicians bend the knee, and Tucker in particular in that role.

However, it's also the case that, you know,

who's more influential, Ben Shapiro or Wolf Blitzer?

Right.

Like, we go down the list.

There are your voice, Ben Shapiro's, Joe Rogan.

A lot of these voices in the digital space are much more relevant than 95% of the cable news anchors.

So, Tucker will have

a bit of an influence drop in that way, but he will no longer have to do Fox's bidding.

He will be able to cover whatever story he wants in whatever way he wants.

And believe me, though the outside world might not know it, there were constraints put on him by Fox News, and there were things that he wanted to say that he couldn't because you're not allowed to shoot inside the tent.

And he can be free now to just say whatever he wants as soon as he gets out of his non-compete.

I will tell you that while it doesn't seem like your influence is as big,

something has happened

to

me on influence in the last six months.

I was at a store before Easter, a grocery store, and my wife said, oh, we forgot this.

Can you go back and get it?

I had to come back to

the checkout counter and I said, I couldn't get it.

I was stopped too many times.

And my kids have said, Dad, what's going on with you?

Because

I'm being stopped so much now,

thank God in a positive way because I live in Texas.

But

you just don't recognize the influence because it's not in one place.

Does that make sense?

Yes, well, I'll tell you the other thing.

Ben Shapiro said this to me when I was trying to decide what my next move would be after NBC.

And he said, you know, which is true, cable news is a dinosaur.

It's dying.

And only very, very old people are watching it.

And he said, if somebody stops me on the street who's over the age of 50 and says, oh, I love your work, I always know they know me from Fox News.

And anybody under that age, I know they know me from my podcast.

And I think that's true.

I mean, the digital space is for tomorrow.

It's much more forward-looking.

Cable news has still got, you know, some loyal viewers for sure.

But

not to sound like I'm 200, but the kids today are watching digital shows, YouTube, and podcasts.

That's how how they get their news.

They don't sit in front of the television 8 o'clock at night anymore.

That's why the advertising demo is dropping precipitously for all of these anchors.

And so I do think for our ecosphere, where you and I now are, it's great that Tucker's leaving Fox because he'll be another powerful voice, probably,

in our space.

And it's one less reason to tune into this stilted, let's face it, boring, predetermined way of programming the news that has to please Paul Ryan and Rupert Murdoch and Suzanne Scott.

Why do we have to please them?

Why can't we just deliver the news the way we want?

Well, you and I now can, and Tucker's about to be there too.

Yeah.

Megan, one last question.

On Donald Trump, Bill said this really hurts the Trump campaign because Fox was so important the first time around.

I agree with him.

I don't think it's any accident that clearly the Murdochs have turned on Trump.

I mean, just read the journal and the post if you have any doubt.

Right.

And Tucker was an important voice for, I think Tucker loves the Trump fans.

I don't think Tucker loves Trump.

You know, I believe that behind the scenes text where he was looking forward to not having to cover him every night.

Right.

But I think Tucker loves the Trump fans.

And

they know that at Fox.

They don't have a more powerful voice who gets them than than Tucker.

And I don't think it's any accident they got rid of Bongino and now

Tucker's going.

There's not another person at Fox who gets the MAGA core the way Tucker does and always has, by the way, always has.

Megan, thanks a lot.

We'll look forward to your show here in just a minute.

If you are listening to us on XM Serious, the Triumph channel, 111, she follows this program and she's always great.

You can also get her wherever you get your podcasts or you can watch it on her YouTube.

This podcast is supported by Progressive, a leader in RV Insurance.

RVs are for sharing adventures with family, friends, and even your pets.

So if you bring your cats and dogs along for the ride, you'll want Progressive RV Insurance.

They protect your cats and dogs like family by offering up to $1,000 in optional coverage for vet bills in case of an RV accident, making it a great companion for the responsible pet owner who loves to travel.

See Progressive's other benefits and more when you quote RV Insurance at progressive.com today.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates, pet injuries, and additional coverage and and subject to policy terms.

Channel.

Thanks so much, Megan.

Appreciate it.

Great to talk to you, Clan.

You bet.

Bye-bye.

No, no, no, no.