Ep 63 | Tales from 20 Years of Being Glenn’s 'Work Wife' | Stu Burguiere | The Glenn Beck Podcast

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Welcome to the podcast.

Really excited about today's guest.

This is a guy who everybody knows, humble beginnings.

As a young boy, he lived through devastating hardship.

His father would beat him.

Years later, he would say, every time I got hit, every time someone said, you can't do this, I said, this is not going to be for much longer because I'm going to move out of here.

I'm going to be rich.

I'm going to be somebody.

And he is.

His father fought in the Battle of Stalingrad as a member of the Nazi Party.

In fact, that would trouble my guest deeply.

Growing up, he lived in the shadow of that and his brother, who was his father's favorite, who tragically died in a car accident while under the influence.

Died instantly.

These are the experiences that would shape him and lead him down a path of tremendous accomplishments and honors.

The first of which was his career as a professional bodybuilder.

Correction.

He was the bodybuilder.

At 20 years old, he won the title of Mr.

Universe.

He then went on to win Mr.

Olympia seven times.

Now that is astonishing accomplishment in and of itself.

But my guess today, that was only the beginning of his career.

He followed his dreams, became a Hollywood actor, and became a star, an icon, starring in such blockbusters as Terminator, Predator, Total Recall, even eked out a career in comedy movies, kindergarten cop, True Lies, and he literally played Conan the Barbarian.

Alongside with Bruce Willis, Demi Moore, Sylvester Stallone, he founded Planet Hollywood, to which this day, to this day, the locations at the Forum in Las Vegas, as well as Times Square and both Disney World and Disneyland, Paris, are some of the most popular spots.

Then he took a little break from acting, followed the path of Ronald Reagan.

He became the governor of California.

Do I need to go on?

This is, well, actually not my guest today, but because my guest today is normally the person that writes all that crap I just said, I just ripped that off from a website of Arnold Schwarzenegger because I didn't have a writer.

Because the guy that I do have has been my dear friend and co-host, an all-around amazing guy who's just gotten his own show.

My head writer, executive producer, Steve Bregier, otherwise known as Stu.

So,

Mr.

Stu Bregier,

which is not even your real name.

It is not.

We'll get into that in a minute.

I'm looking at your resume here.

You worked in a promotions department in 1997 for a radio station.

What did you do there?

Largely blew up balloons.

What balloons.

Then you were promoted to an intern.

So my first job was below the internship.

Below the internship, yes.

Then you moved on as a producer for three different talk shows, all hosted by the same guy.

Then you did a show in 1999,

Finney and Stew.

That was over by 2000.

Yeah, he tried to get me out of there as fast as possible.

Right.

Then you went to the Glenn Beck program,

where you were the co-host, EP, executive producer.

You've done The Fourth Hour.

You then was the host and the EP of

Patton Stew

then the wonderful world of stew and now stew does America

yes as I'm looking at your resume

I realize you're wildly underqualified for any job yes and it doesn't seem you can hold a job I can't hold a job and I can never work outside of this building.

I get that impression.

Yes.

No, that's fair.

Now, I was

a a relatively decent server at Chili's for a time.

I scheduled some furniture deliveries, did some spot welding assistant work.

But other than that, I really have no other qualifications in life.

How old were you when we met?

I was, let's see, 20.

20 years old.

Yeah.

And

what was your impression of me?

Because you got to me at the end of my radio career or my, you know, top 40 radio career,

where I wasn't,

I did not care about

anything.

No, you did not.

It's interesting because, you know, you as a national radio personality, because you had a really successful run at one point in your career,

but I only knew you, I mean, I grew up in Connecticut, so I knew you from your morning show at Casey 101, which is, you know, music station, the big station in my hometown, basically.

And I knew, you know, Glenn and Pat in the morning.

It was the big show.

I didn't know that, I mean, later on after Pat left,

while the show was, I thought, still very funny, you did not care all that much.

And this was like...

This was, and this is an important lesson, I think, for people coming up, not only in broadcasting, but any industry, is find someone who's very talented, but at the very valley of their career, like the worst possible time.

Because those people usually have good lessons, are talented,

but also you can kind of glom onto them when they're at their lowest.

And then you can convince them you were part of their success later on.

So did you, I mean,

because my recollection is we first really met

at a car dealership.

That's true.

I was working in the promotions department.

You're blowing up balloons.

I blew up the balloons for a gig you did at a Toyota dealership.

The attendance of that Toyota dealership gig was exactly zero.

No one came.

No one.

Uh, no one.

So it was like three hours long.

Oh, yeah.

And think of how awkward that is.

Yeah.

It's three hours.

Not a single shh.

I think we might have even had hot dogs.

We were giving

yeah,

I had to lay out a prize table.

Yeah.

Stickers, CDs, like all t-shirts.

No.

No.

I didn't collect them.

I don't think in my career, I don't think it had ever happened where we net, we didn't get one person.

Yes.

Except for that time.

And I don't know what that says about me.

Probably someone.

Well, I don't know if if I was promoting a meat stew.

No, definitely not.

You know, meat stew, the promotions monkey.

No.

That was not part of the

self or that.

But, you know, you were, it was a, it was, if I remember right, a rainy afternoon on the weekend.

And it's like, who's going to come out?

And, you know, it just wasn't one of those well-attended gigs.

So we were, you, you know, when you're really bored, you'll show interest in people.

And you were incredibly bored.

And it's also awkward, right?

Like, this dealership is paying you a lot of money to do these

ads.

and your ads were very successful, but this particular appearance was not good.

It's not good.

So, you know, it's awkward.

We're sitting around talking about radio and you kind of did the thing where you're like, well, what do you want to?

Like, where do you see yourself?

What is this here for you?

Now, this is not something I don't think you were truly interested in at this point.

It was more.

Actually, I think it wasn't at the beginning.

Yeah.

But a few sentences into your answer, I was, because I could tell you were smart.

Well, I mean,

not a lot of 20-year-olds, particularly at this moment, wanted to do talk radio.

And I did.

I love talk radio since I was a kid.

I mean, it started with really sports radio, and I listened to all sorts of New York sports radio, and then later on listened to

WIOD in Miami, which was like

Phil Hendry and Neil Rogers.

It was a legendary radio station.

And I kind of grew to really loving, you know, talking about issues, but in a way that was funny and entertaining.

And my belief was, and Imus as well, I would say Imus was definitely part of this because he was on the station I listened to all the time.

And they were able to make those, you know, boring healthcare policy conversations interesting, right?

Like you actually wanted to listen to them.

It was funny.

And that was something I thought was totally missing, particularly from the conservative side.

You know, I mean, there just wasn't a lot of it.

And you, you know, I had no idea, had any interest in this at all,

you know, were thinking in your head, you know, this is time for me to get out of the Britney Spears intro world and get some

from her, and legitimately, how you used to say it on the air

and get into something like that.

And, you know, you already had that at the entertainment part of it, which you were kind of well known for, but you hadn't really gone down those roads.

And,

you know, usually when interns come to a station like Casey 101, what they want is either to get on the air and talk up music or just get a bunch of free concert tickets and

hook up with radio groupies.

Not really my interest level, and no one would ever, you know, be interested in me for those reasons.

So, I mean, we kind of had a, we were both kind of on that same direction.

So, I don't think I've ever asked you this.

When you left,

because I was literally on the air going, oh, there's another super, super classic from her.

Yeah.

And I didn't care about the music.

I didn't, I just did whatever I want.

And I think at that time, because I had just sobered up, you never knew me drinking.

No.

I had just sobered up.

And

I think probably most people in the building thought I might be insane or just like,

just didn't care so much.

I would just

blow myself up.

Yeah, I mean, I think that...

It's not a problem.

I mean, I have no idea.

I don't know.

I don't know what the description.

No, I think people saw you as a,

around the building, I would say people saw you as a big personality,

but also a guy who was not always easy to get along with

because

you wanted to do things a certain way.

You were used to a big market.

We were in a smaller market.

You were used to these, like, you know, things to be done right in this big way.

And like, you know, at that time, like, we're in an era of consolidation where people are losing jobs and departments are shrinking.

And the fact that I even got balloons, I mean, anyone working in radio today, you're like, you had balloons?

Oh, my God.

Like, that would be huge.

Was I running the station at that time?

No, you had run the station mostly into the ground

for many years.

Although when you ran the station, I loved it.

You basically turned the big pop station in town into an alternative music station for like a year.

I was one of the only pop people that played Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots and all that stuff.

Yeah, and it was a cool, you know, I was never a big pop guy.

It was a cool station, though, when you were running it.

Although.

We still played Britney Spears, just a little less.

Yeah,

maybe a lot less.

So, you know, like there was always that thing.

I think, you know, it was weird for me, though, coming into it, because you had been there for a long time.

And, you know, for people who don't know, you had this big, you know, morning show career.

You went to Connecticut in, like, the middle of a big recession, kind of settled down here

in Connecticut.

And

we're at a stage in your career where you're kind of done with it,

where I think you had like, you know, there's a lot of stuff that had gone on over the years that I wasn't there for.

And you were always very nice to me.

I mean, you know, I like to make fun of you all the time.

No, you didn't at that point.

At that point, I didn't.

You didn't even say, because your real name is not Stu.

No.

Your wife calls you Stu.

Yes.

Pretty much everybody in my life now.

Without, with the exception of like

my mom.

Yeah.

Your mom does not.

She gets kind of upset.

A little.

Yeah.

I mean, a little upset.

I mean, you know,

she did name me.

Yeah.

And also my dad's name was Steve, which is my name.

So, you know, I do.

Would have been nice.

It would have been nice.

It was a nice, nice attribute until you stole it.

No, I didn't steal it.

The way I remember it is different the way you remember it.

So you tell me how it actually happened.

Well, I was working in promotions, hanging some balloons.

I was at a bar gig in New Haven, Connecticut.

And you and Vinnie Penn, who's a great guy, and he's one of our affiliates now,

you guys went to, I believe it was a Bon Jovi concert.

And he was a huge Bon Jovi fan.

I don't know if he still is, but he's like massive, like, you know, the biggest there is.

And he went.

He just found a picture of me at that with the long hair.

Really?

I have long hair.

Just, yeah, it's

me and I do remember the look.

I don't know if I'll remember the exact picture, but the look is seared into my brain, unfortunately.

But you had gone there and you were not drinking, but he was.

He did enough for both of you.

And he kind of showed up at the bar gig after this kind of meet and greet with Bon Jovi, where he was really excited and everything else.

So he comes and meets me.

It's like one of my first days on the job.

And he says, you know, he's relatively relatively friendly.

And he comes over and says, hey, what's your name?

And I say Steve.

And then he, you know, we have a short conversation.

He moves away.

Later on in the night, we kind of realize what he heard was not Steve, but st

and sort of assumed the rest of the name, which is not something you do as a human being in conversation, but thought he heard.

And so he just kind of filled in Stu, called me Stu once or twice.

I corrected him.

He had a laugh.

And then he just kept calling me Stu because he thought it was funny.

This is, you know, this is the world, right?

Yeah.

That we're living in.

We're morning radio.

Well, you, on the other hand, are Mr.

Oblivious, like at this point.

That was my.

And why is that not my nickname anymore?

That was my nickname at the time.

Yeah, Oblivio.

Oblivio.

I was

oblivio, and my superpower was to be oblivious to everything.

Everything.

All social cues, all personal things.

And that's kind of where you were at that point.

I think that was just a factor of you not caring.

Like over time, this changed in a big way where you started to care so much it was annoying.

But back then it was you just, you know,

you heard Stu.

And I think you just filled, you never thought really to follow up on it.

Well, if somebody's introduced to Stu and somebody is calling them Stu, you're not going to

be for months.

For months, yes.

Months.

I'm calling you Stu

for months.

To put it in perspective, okay, you're the big morning show host in town in my hometown.

I grew up listening to you.

Did it ever become uncomfortable to where you were like,

I'm now trapped?

Well,

there came a point in which, you know,

you try to just kind of brush it off and you laugh it off.

And I can tell, like, Vinny is joking about it still.

He knows what my name is.

Right.

So I kind of at times think maybe you're also just in on the joke and are just joking about it.

And it's part of the show.

And honestly, like, when you're a 20-year-old trying to get into radio, like, you'll let them light you on fire to get on the air.

Like, they're going to say your name, like, they're going to, you know, whatever.

They're going to shoot beanbags into your chest.

Fine, whatever.

Um, and so I kind of, you just go along with it, right?

To kind of move up the ladder or at least have some.

And did we ever shoot bean bags at you?

I mean, I've known, I've no, but I mean, I want to put the idea to, yeah, to nudist colonies.

I didn't put you on a billboard to

no, I never was on a billboard.

Never on a billboard.

No, no, no.

Never taped you to a billboard, to a side of a van.

That wasn't you.

That wasn't me.

There's someone whose family is suffering.

It was me.

But yeah, no, I mean, like, you had just not, you just weren't into it.

It was one time on the air when we were talking about getting trapped.

It was when we were on the air together.

And you made one of your hilarious jokes at the time.

And to give you a sense of how engaged that you were,

I believe someone called me Stu, and you said, what kind of name is Stu?

What did your mom come home and have Stu and decide to just name you after the menu?

I don't remember that.

That's not a joke.

I think it was like it would be something like that, but not that joke.

It was pretty much that joke.

No, it was not that joke.

It's like, you do know my name isn't Stu, right?

Like, because you made it in a way of like, he really thinks this is a good observation.

Like, there's a really funny story with how I became named Stu.

And it's like, well, I'm not named Stu.

You do know that, right?

And of course, you didn't.

You didn't say it that way.

You did not say, you do know that, because you hadn't said it to me

that I was calling you the wrong name for, I believe, four to six months.

Well, I, you were Stu.

Everyone still in your life calls you Stu.

And thank you for that.

Well, it's really you're the main problem.

It's not my fault.

It's your fault.

No, it's not.

It is your fault.

You are the one.

That's my name.

You should have corrected.

You disgrace the memory of my father.

How?

Really?

Yes.

Is that where you're going?

That's where I'm going.

Okay.

So

then, Steve, as if that's your real name,

What iteration of a talk show were you involved in?

Were you there at the beginning?

Yeah, because at the very beginning,

I always wanted to do talk.

And you talked about doing it.

And you had, like,

your role at the station, you had still had a lot of power, I would say, at the station.

You were able to do things.

And so you wanted to go and do a talk show.

And they were like, thrilled.

Here's the big morning guy.

And you've got to come over to WELI, which is the sister station, and do a talk show so you started out we started out with the the Glenn Beck program I think it was called just your name which was somewhat similar to what we wound up doing like that one was really your personality around news stories

and you're known now kind of as a guy who has to change the set every two to three weeks because you're bored of it back then it was changing the entire format of the show every two to three weeks because you were bored of it so we did that show for a little while then we went on to something called the impeachment of character.

That wasn't a show change.

That was.

That was a show change.

No, it was not a show change.

It was a show change.

No, it was.

It was a Queen Back program, and it was the Impeachment of Character because I was doing dramatic readings of the testimony.

Yes.

Which was hilarious.

Hilarious.

Probably should have been a segment on a show.

However, it was a separate show.

It was a completely different iteration.

Same time, same station, same time.

It was shorter, though, I believe.

It was like the first one was like a couple hours, then it was like an hour.

You were changing the stuff up a lot.

No, we we got we I think it was two hours then it was like 90 minutes and then the last show was like 45 right and that was called the journey Yeah, if you remember the journey, which was the softer side of Gluttonback.

The whole show was sort of inspirational stories from Glenn Beck.

And I, you know, it was a...

Which one was your favorite?

Well, what we wound up doing is taking all of those and kind of jamming it into one thing and be like, hey, put us national.

And that wound up actually working because that's, I think, one of the things that has been good about the show over the years and different from other shows and other hosts where you kind of do a little bit of everything.

So it was 19 when?

97?

98?

98 when we first started together?

When we first started.

And do you remember what I said to you and what you said back to me when we went into our first break 20 minutes into talk radio for the very first time?

I do remember this.

And

you said

that we you got out and you were very excited about the first break, which was very good.

And I was happy we just got through it.

Like we didn't know what the heck we were doing, basically.

And you said, we're going to replace Dr.

Laura.

Now, Dr.

Laura at the time is the number two, probably, biggest syndicated host in America, just behind Rush.

And we've done about 12 minutes.

12 minutes.

And 12 minutes on.

It was a good 12.

It was a good 12 minutes.

And if you project that, it's like Al Gore.

If you project the temperature rise forever, it was a hockey stick.

It was a hockey stick.

It was a hockey stick.

It was like nothing, and it went straight up for 12 minutes.

Now, this is where our memory of this situation diverges a little bit.

Because your recollection of this, what you've you've told on the air to my embarrassment many many times is that i looked at you as if you were crazy um and uh and uh i basically doubted that you could ever do such no no no you what my memory is is that you did look at me like a little crazy like we've had 12 minutes on the air yes and your goal as the producer was to get me to finish the show yes it was i okay i wasn't really looking for the long-term projections at that point My long-term projections was because we still have like four more breaks to do.

We had two minutes probably to reset for the next set.

Right.

And I took my headphones off and I said, we're going to replace Dr.

Laura.

And you said, what's to your recollection?

My recollection was, oh, yeah, okay.

So what do we have next?

And it wasn't a brush off as to whether I thought you were going to succeed.

I was there.

I believed in the show enough to basically dedicate my...

four minutes of my career.

Right, 12.

You had 12 minutes.

I had 12 minutes of my career into making this thing happen.

So I did, you know, I did believe in the show, though.

Yeah, I remember you saying, how about we finish the whole show?

How about that?

How about we

prove it for one program?

Let's do the rest of the show.

Yes.

And that I think was a sensible idea at the time.

But I do realize that after a while, that those moments are different than I took them, right?

Like it's like

you and your little pronouncements mean something

because they last for a long time.

And when you see it in your head, that's when those things wind up happening.

At the time, I just thought you were, you know, basically nuts.

Or just like incredibly egotistic and thought you were just going to take over the world in a few

in 12 minutes.

You have joked many times that,

and it's funny, and

I'll circle back to this towards the end.

But you have joked many times that

you never have ever finished any of the spaceships that you have started to build.

Explain that.

Well, there is a long-term thing, and I think, and I've talked about this to many, many people who've come into the company and have been frustrated by a similar dynamic.

Where Glenn has a lot of very big ideas, I explain.

And

they're a lot of times great ideas, but there is a limit about how many different great ideas you can do.

The only person I know who's doing things like this, like is Elon Musk, right?

Like, he's like, I want a flamethrower company, a car company, and a space company, all of them.

And you're like, well, most people, you just say, let's just pick one

and we'll try to do that.

And so

one of the things I think is your strength and has been one of the things that's made you successful is your ability to be super engaged in these big ideas.

And it's different than a lot of hosts.

Like, you know, a lot of times my temptation is to come in and just, I want to do a good show every day.

I want listeners to be able to enjoy the show and like it and then be able to go on with their day after learning something and enjoying their time.

And that's something, obviously, we try to do every day.

However, you always want to do these big, grandiose things.

You know, I want 500,000 people on the mall in Washington.

That's an insane idea.

It's also insane when you're trying to do six of those other things that are generally the same scale.

We're launching a network.

We're doing this.

We're doing this and we're doing this.

And there's never a shortage of Glenn Beck ideas.

Never.

There's always a new spaceship to build.

So what we would joke about is like, okay, in the backyard, there's about six or seven half-built spaceships that can't take off because we all went and tried to build one and then we all had to move on to the next one.

And, you know, it's tough because it's,

you know, a big part of my job and my career has been trying to execute your vision, like what you want to do, what you think is the most important, what you think is the big idea that can move the show to the next area or change the country or whatever it is.

And at times, I feel like we have these great ideas.

We get halfway down those roads, and then you're like, I've got a new big idea, dump that one, we're going this way.

And so that takes a lot of getting used to.

I mean, it was, you know, it was really frustrating at times at the beginning.

And I've talked to you a little bit about this before, but like, you know, we would write speeches and work our asses off to make a great speech at a huge venue that was a big moment in your career.

And we'd work on it together.

We'd write the thing together.

You'd have this awesome speech that had a beginning, a middle, an end.

It had stories.

It had points.

It had facts.

All these great things, jokes.

It was amazing.

It was

interesting.

People would have liked it.

But they don't know that because you would walk up to the podium and you'd see like some guy wearing a shirt that reminded you of a story from your childhood and then it would go that direction.

And what sucks about it is that speech would be really good.

So I couldn't go afterwards and say, what did you do?

You blew that one because you didn't.

It was great.

It was a great speech.

And you're usually really good at those things.

But it can get frustrating.

You can see that from the other side of that, where you work your ass off to try to make something good, and then it just winds up in the trash afterwards.

So that takes some getting used to.

And after a while, I sort of realized that part of your process is having that

backup that you know is there and good.

And when you feel confident enough and secure enough in knowing that there's something good you could go to if you wanted to, it seems to free up.

your ability to just connect on another level.

So after a while, I don't know if this is me just justifying how meaningless my career has been, but eventually I got to the point where I thought that was really an important role.

So did you, it was, did you ever think to yourself,

I mean, first, how long did it take you before you stopped being pissed?

And

did you ever think to yourself, I'm just not going to do that.

I'm just not going to write it.

I'm not going to spend, I'll just write gibberish.

Right.

Yeah, I mean, there's a,

I think when it first started, I was just happy to be involved in it.

You know, and after a while, you know, you were like, well, I really feel like we did some really good stuff that wasn't used, and it would get disappointing that it wouldn't get used.

Sometimes we'd be able to reuse it in other places or whatever, but it would get frustrating.

And I don't think there was ever, like, I always felt that like,

you know, you were paying me a salary.

Like, it was my job to just do the best thing that I could do, whether you use it or not.

But still, that can be creatively frustrating.

And it wasn't until I kind of understood, I I think the dynamic of you and the way you work at your best, right?

Like my, you know, I used to talk about this to interns that would come in because when I started with you, I wasn't, you know, I was legitimately an intern.

And like half of my job, if you know Glenn, probably three quarters of the job, was to go to like Dunkin' Donuts and get egg sandwiches, right?

Like, I mean, that was really like where you started.

And people would come in.

And a lot of times over the years, and I think this has been a big change in radio and probably television as well.

It's like, people don't want to do that stuff anymore.

Like that stuff's below you.

Yo, I went to college.

Now I've studied X, Y, and Z.

I'm not going to go get an egg sandwich.

And like our philosophy around here has always been like, everybody's job is everybody's job.

Like if you can help out, like if you're getting egg sandwiches one day, you're getting egg sandwiches.

And over time, the way I

thought about all of these things was, you know, my job is to make the show better.

It's to put you in a position where you can, you can do your best work.

And so sometimes, I know this now because I'm hosting a lot more and doing all these other things.

Like sometimes an egg sandwich is key to that, right?

Like, sometimes I need a freaking soda, and I need it right now, and it's going to make me very happy to do a much better show.

And that seems silly, but I think the same thing happens with when it comes to, you know, building the rocket ship halfway.

Like, we don't know the rocket ship is going to go halfway, and then you're going to come up with a better idea later on.

Like, that's that might have been the big idea.

If you didn't really push those things all the way to their end, you wouldn't know where they go.

You wouldn't know that 500,000 people could be gathered in Washington, D.C.

if you didn't go down those roads.

And they don't always work.

But I mean, I think in a way, it's like it's looking at it almost like an inventor or,

you know,

you go back and you look at, you know, how many times did Einstein fail?

And not that I'm comparing you to Einstein by any means.

That's what America heard.

Like, that's what you do.

That's the process, right?

You try all these things.

A lot of them wind up not working.

A lot of them wind up, you look back later and you're like, God, that seemed like a good idea.

But in reality, it kind of sucked.

But that's okay.

As long as you really, you know, if you're getting value out of what I was doing, I was happy.

And, you know, that like as long as I was able to do some of my own creativity and jump into that world, I mean, it is rewarding.

It's just like you have to understand the rules that you're working under.

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So you,

the

head of the company now is Tyler.

And

he has,

he said to me after one of our last specials, which took

three weeks to write,

and he said he

called you about four minutes before airtime.

Do you know this?

And or maybe texted you and he said, how are you doing?

And you said, Glenn just kind of threw out the script.

Yes, I do remember.

And

I'm not sure how we're going to get there.

But we've pulled a thousand rabbits out of the hat.

No,

no cause to worry another rabbit isn't on the way.

Do you remember that?

I do.

Was it this socialism special?

Oh, it was on the

it was the first impeachment special on Ukraine.

Yeah, that's right.

Very complex chalkboard.

Very complex.

And that was a great example of what we're talking about.

Because, you know, not, I mean, you know, people worked a lot.

on that a lot of late nights a lot of i mean the guy who wrote that um had been here every night until, you know, 11 o'clock at night.

And you obviously had outlined all the vision and where you wanted to go.

But like, the actual like execution of a show like that is insanity.

I mean, there's so many moving parts, so many things.

And, you know, we're trying to do it with, you know, you've always, I think, been a proponent of a sort of a small, tight-knit staff where people are like really good at what they do.

They can do a lot of different things.

And they don't mind working their butts off to get there.

And that's kind of the situation here now to this day.

And so, you know, Jason, who put a lot of his heart and soul into that, had gone through this and it was supposed to be executed a certain way.

I believe I sat in 20, 30 meetings in which you agreed to do it this way.

And then, of course, five minutes before the show, more than that, a little bit, maybe an hour before the show actually starts, you decide, no, I'm going to throw this out.

I don't want to do this this way.

I'm just going to go up to the board and improv this.

I'm going to do this.

And like, you know, the human instinct in a moment like that is like, wait a minute, you have to protect what what you've done.

Like,

I've worked my butt off on this.

We had this plan this way.

We don't have fact checks ready for whatever you're going to blurt out in an improv hour of stuff.

And, you know, you and Jason looked at each other.

I thought at one point you were going to get into a fist fight.

And that was not going to work out well for you because he was like special forces.

So you were going to get your aspect.

But, you know,

that is a perfect example of that moment where, and Jason totally understands this, and so does everybody, I think, like that led to you being able to, once you got all of that internalized, it helps you come out and explain it in a way that can explain a massively complicated story like Ukraine to the average person.

I mean, you know,

it's somewhat of your superpower, right?

Like, you're able to kind of take that stuff and break that down in an interesting way where most people just want to, you know, hang themselves listening to it.

And that whole process of everything being written and everything being lined out on the chalkboard and all of those elements lined up in order is all part of the thing that gets you to the show that was one of the biggest specials we ever did.

It's hard to understand, and I think, like, I've at some point you just need to stop trying to understand it.

You try to put yourself in the position to do your best work, put yourself in the position where you can do your best work,

and then you know, you go and you do it.

And if it fails, it's totally your fault, and we had nothing to do with it.

Well,

it would have been, it would have been, it would have been.

What's the biggest fight we've ever had?

God.

I mean, there haven't been many.

I can only think of two.

I can think of two.

What are biggest fights ever?

I mean, like, you know, when I decided to not go to Florida, there was a...

I think you were disappointed.

Yeah.

I wouldn't consider that a fight.

I don't remember it being a fight.

But I mean, it was, you know, we...

You remember how it happened?

We were in the car.

You were were in the car.

I remember being in the car with you.

Because we were, you know, basically,

we had planned this whole thing.

We had made, done the whole show, built the whole shows.

All three of them.

All the tapes, yeah.

But we did shows on WABC and New York.

I mean, we had a lot of big things going.

Pulled in into the Rush Limbaugh studio.

Remember that first time?

You did a show on the golden EIB microphone.

You know, it was a lot.

It was a lot, and it happened fast.

And you were able to get, you know, a syndicate or an actual show.

And

we had several stations we were choosing for from at the time and wound up choosing Tampa, 970 WFLA, a station we loved, a city I loved eventually.

But at the time, I was in Connecticut.

It was my hometown station and you were leaving and they offered me the slot to kind of come in and do the show.

And I was, you know, it's like I'm 20,

21, 22 years old.

Like I'm doing the morning show on my hometown station where all the, you know, all my high school friends that are like coming back from college because I'm me, and they would, you know, you know, I'm doing a show.

And it was, it was cool.

And I, you know, it was a good opportunity, and it helped me learn a lot of things.

But, you know, I always felt like we did our best work together, you know?

And that was one of the things that eventually convinced me to kind of come back down there because I just felt like that was, you know, where you're able to do, we were able to do a lot of special things, I think, through that.

period.

And I mean, it died, obviously, a long time ago.

But, you know, I mean, at that time, it was good.

And, but

I didn't think of that as a fight by any means.

It was more like, you know, I think it would have been fun to do together, and we eventually did do it.

Yeah.

Fights, I don't know.

If you're thinking of fights, what are you thinking?

Do you have examples?

There's only two in my mind.

I was right in both of them, by the way.

You were.

You really were.

Really?

You really were.

The first one is when your wife, because most people don't know, your wife is famous too.

She was with,

what was his name?

Peter Strzok, I think.

No.

She's not famous for that.

No, that's a different Lisa Page.

Her name is Lisa Page.

It is spelled differently.

She's a radio host.

She's a radio host.

She's a radio show.

She's a national radio show

and famous in her own right.

And

she was going to go up and work with radio legend,

John Lander.

In Boston.

And we were just at the place.

Where I knew, I was saying it all the time.

It's coming.

It's coming.

It's coming.

It's coming.

And it was.

It was.

I mean, we had gone from 18th place to first place in the ratings in Tampa.

Wow, with a side trip to 18th.

We went 18th to 23rd.

23rd.

Then you went up to 18th.

Yeah.

Yes.

I agreed with you, right?

We were in a.

And I didn't think you did.

And I was mad because you had just come back

and getting you onto FLA was, if I remember right, not easy.

Was it?

You mean getting you, meeting you to come down?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

No, it was, it was, I mean, it was a, it was a fun job to do at my hometown.

So I didn't, but I mean, I knew I wanted to leave.

No, no, no.

I'm saying when you left KC 101 to come join me in Florida after I had already done six months or whatever and you were like, okay, this is not good.

And I want to come back.

I wanted you back.

But if I remember right, it wasn't easy.

It wasn't easy.

No, I mean, it was a lot of moving parts.

I was currently, I guess,

not engaged, but pretty serious

with her.

And then you guys got married, and then she got this great job for her.

Yeah.

And all I see was you saying, I might leave.

I'm leaving you again.

There I am, departing again.

That bastard.

Well, look, I think, you know, as much as I like you and respect you.

No, no, no, no, no.

It was also, you know, a question of...

It was important to me to be able to take my wife's dreams seriously, even though I did very much not want to go.

You know, she got a very good offer.

At the time, it was considerably

more money than I was making and considerably higher profile job.

We were still, we weren't even national show by any means at that point.

So it was...

Did you believe at that time?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

I was, look, I, you know, as much as we make fun of each other on this, I mean, I really believed this show was something special.

I had listened to a lot of really good talk radio.

I had listened to a lot of really good personalities over the years.

I mean, I came in through, you know, I listened to the number one market in America.

It's where I grew up listening to that station.

I listened to, I mean, that station in Miami is a legendary talk radio station.

IOD.

And they did things differently.

And I knew there was something special about what we were doing.

It was just a matter of like, I, I, you can't be dismissive of your spouse or spouse to be and their dreams as well.

And it was something we had to take seriously.

So the other argument that we had that you were absolutely right on, and

I think I've said this to you since,

was

the day

that

it was happening at the time of Fox, which I don't think people can understand the pressure that we were under.

Insane.

You know, people are, you know, they're doing drugs and killing themselves at Saturday Night Live.

We literally laughed at Saturday Night Live, and nobody laughs at Saturday Night Live anymore.

But we had you were the writer,

Dan was writing,

Pat was writing,

and we would meet in the morning and have to churn out an hour television show, all monologue.

And nobody had ever done it.

Remember when we tried to hire a producer from NBC and they said, you'll never keep this pace.

It'll never, you can't do it.

And that was 20 minutes of the show being a monologue.

And

I was getting beat up from everyone.

And

it was before it got to be crazy, crazy.

There was something that came up in the news about the damn birth certificate.

And it wasn't even about the birth certificate.

It was about freedom of speech.

Yeah.

Right.

And

you were like, you're going to get killed.

And I'm like,

why can't a human being question?

And it became, we, that was the only real fight I think we ever had, but we weren't fighting the same thing.

We were fighting calmly, rationally,

don't even touch them.

And I was fighting, I'll touch whatever the hell I want to touch.

Oh, yeah.

And I do remember that.

It was a fun morning.

And it, you know, it's very true.

You weren't a believer in the theory by any means, but you were frustrated at the fact that, you know, it was one of these things that anyone who said anything about it was just being shut down and destroyed.

And, you know, I think it wasn't something you had looked into seriously, right?

It was just on the fringes of conspiracy.

And you were just voicing, I think.

I can't question.

Exactly.

Why can't someone say, I mean, because, and had we gotten in trouble yet for

what was the conspiracy that we debunked and then it became our conspiracy somehow or another?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, gosh,

which we did a huge special on debunking it.

Debunking.

It was because, like, that was at the beginning.

Now it seems totally rational to do things like that because, you know, the conspiracy stuff bubbles under online and blows up to real things that people believe, huge chunks of the population.

And we took that seriously from the very beginning, which is why we did that.

We paid attention to the internet.

Yeah, very early, obviously.

But yeah, that particular thing, and I think this is an interesting thing to highlight

something that has always been a reason why

we've worked well together and that like it's, you know, it's been, it's something that I've liked doing is because you were never someone who just wanted

what you were saying spouted back to you.

Because that's dull.

That's not why I got into this.

You know, I, I want to be able to say what I want to say.

And, you know, and you want to work with someone who actually wants to hear pushback.

And I can't tell you how many times have we done this?

And it's happened both ways, certainly, but like where you think X is correct and we go over and talk about it.

And at the end, we kind of realize thinking maybe Y is correct.

Or at least, at the very least, you'll consider

what I'm bringing to the table and maybe dismiss it or whatever.

But that's an important part of that.

And it keeps me sane, I know, because if every time I came in here, I was afraid to bring up a different

point or something that disagreed with you because you were going to blow up on me.

Well, I wouldn't want to work in that environment, right?

And that one I do remember being like, it was just one of those intense days.

Those days at Fox were freaking crazy.

Everything.

Can you believe we did it?

No, I'm looking back at it.

I mean, there's so many big,

huge

things

that we have done together.

And

it's, there's so many of them, so close that you're like,

I don't even know.

I don't even know.

Sometimes people bring up, do you remember when you did X, Y, and Z and this person in the White House reacted and this happened?

No, that wasn't a big deal at the time.

What?

I don't really remember it.

And then you go back and you watch a monologue and you're like, oh my gosh, yeah, I remember that now.

It was just another week at that point.

And that's why it was, you know.

It was important to have that dynamic where you can be honest with each other.

You can argue those points out and come out with where you stand and then go out and do the show every day.

But it was never something where we were trying to balance

all of these factors.

It was like trying to figure out, okay, this is what our principles are.

We don't have time to think about

whether we should be doing this or not, right?

Like you just got to go out in there and do it because, and you got to make sure you just stay consistent with what you believe.

Because at the end of the day, if you do that, you can always defend it.

You always know where you are.

As long as you're consistent with those principles, you can always at least explain to the audience, this is what I was thinking.

This is why I was thinking of it.

This is why I was thinking it.

And that's,

I think, one of the things that's made the show really good.

And it goes back to the beginning of it when, you know, things, we've talked about Terry Shaivo before, you know, woman who was in the vegetative state, and you initially came out and said, yeah, let her die, no big deal.

Flippantly on a Friday afternoon, and you got a call from somebody who said, Hey, are you,

I've been listening to you.

You're pro-life.

Thought of this.

Thought about this.

Have you actually taken any time to think about it?

And you took that seriously, spent the weekend thinking about it, and realized you believed you were on the wrong side of it.

And like the typical talk radio thing to do is to come out on the the other side and say, either ignore it completely, that you even were on the other side, brush it off and say, well, you know, never make a big deal about it, or just move on to other stories and not cover that one anymore.

And what you decided to do was

just stand up and say, I was wrong.

I talked to a caller, made me think about it.

I've changed my opinion on it.

Here's why I was wrong.

Do people want that anymore?

I don't know.

In my pessimistic moments, I think, no.

I have to be honest with you about that.

And it's one of the things that, you know.

So, one thing we've prided ourselves on.

You know, the 2008 collapse, when did we start talking about that?

Oh, God.

If it wasn't 2006, it was very early 2007.

I think it was even earlier.

Maybe.

I mean, because it was when everything was raging, you know, like the economy is going fantastically well.

Everything looks like it's hot.

You know, everything's going to be.

You're a stat person.

You and I make such a good balance, I think, because

you are calm, rational,

highly intelligent,

and you like statistics.

So you're almost at times C3PO.

Our chances of survival, sir, I just want to point out are 26.35%.

Yeah, right.

And it's a good balance.

Once

maybe five years into it, we started, I started trusting you, you started trusting me in our areas of expertise.

Like, mine is fly by the seat of the pants, trust me, I got it.

Never tell me the odds.

Yeah, never tell me the odds.

And you are the,

I don't think we can fit through that space.

And here's why.

And

we always prided ourselves.

I mean, remember how much heat we took for

the crash?

Oh, yeah.

I mean, and that was that was one.

I mean, you think about today.

I mean, George W.

Bush was a very popular guy among Republicans.

It's kind of easy to forget that now.

But at the time, he was highly supported.

No one said critical things about the guy on talk radio, and you were.

You were critical of him in many ways.

And even when it wasn't about him, there was all of these people, callers, program directors, tons of people around the country that would say, you're talking down the economy.

You're hurting the Republicans.

And, you know, you just didn't care.

And as a stat person, that must have driven you crazy for part of it.

Yeah, because especially at the beginning, because there really wasn't a lot of evidence of it showing up.

It really wasn't until the last year, maybe.

Maybe.

Maybe.

Maybe.

I mean, the weakness started in probably 2007 to be slightly visible, but still had historical echoes of periods we had seen before and then seen recovery on.

We didn't, you know, the 2008 thing

didn't seem obvious to a lot of people who were really smart and not just like dumb liberals that we didn't know, you know, were annoying us on MSNBC, but like smart conservatives who were looking at this and saying, like, no, this is okay for X, Y, and Z.

So, yeah, I mean, at the beginning, I remember telling you, like, it did not seem like the right place to go

and that it could, you know, it was damaging us with

listeners at times and with big term directors.

I mean, it really.

We lost money big time.

We lost affiliates.

We lost a lot of money.

And that is.

And that must have seemed crazy to you.

Yes, though, I will say it's also part of the thing I always liked about the show.

To me, there was always an acceptable amount of risk for standing up for what you think is right.

Even in, like, you know, and this has happened.

a million times throughout the show where the right thing to say for the show as far as generating revenue and and and getting listeners for the next quarter is one thing and we were saying the other thing and my belief uh the entire time from the very beginning even before we started the show together was that's the person i want to listen to the person i want to listen to is the person who knows it's going to cost them money and is going to say it anyway because that's when you know they really mean it and they're sticking by it no matter what and and also who will admit when they really believe something and now now they believe the other thing?

And here's how I got there.

That's an interesting person to me, right?

I don't.

And there used to be a value to that.

Yeah.

And I think there may be a value to that still, but I don't think anybody believes that somebody actually does that.

Yeah.

Now it's, you only said this for this reason.

You only switched because of this reason.

What people don't know is you're a super genius, colossal failure somehow or another

that has planned all of this stuff out.

So there's no

there's only downside.

Right.

No,

I think that's probably true.

And that has changed in me over the years in that I think my belief was always like you take those short-term hits because long-term your audience is going to know.

They're going to know they can trust you in those tough moments.

And

I think there's an argument to be made that it's taken a while with some of these things, but that's happened here.

I mean, I think like, you know, like, you know, you were obviously,

we both were not big fans of Donald Trump during the primary.

But like, doesn't that give you a lot more credibility on your stance with him in Ukraine now?

No, because they'll say, I'm only doing it.

I don't know if you read this.

It was in, it was, I got a Google alert.

I'm still failing.

You are.

Congratulations.

I'm still failing.

Congratulations.

This is an awful big room to be failing.

Yeah, I know, but I'm still failing.

So

see, to me, like, if I'm a listener and I hear you be very critical of Donald Trump over the entire time as we're in the primary, and then as he's president, you say, okay, well, you know what?

These things he's doing right, and I was wrong on those things, and here's why I was wrong, and here's why I think what he's doing is really working.

Like, that's the ultimate credibility to me.

Someone who is willing to say, you know what, I blew it last time.

I mean, I think I understand.

all of your sort of arguments on them and I had, you know, most of them, if not all of them, myself.

But, you know, both of us have said, like, I think, you know, he's actually done a great job with judges.

I didn't think that was going to happen at all.

I mean, to be honest with you, I thought he might name not only his sister, but like, you know, like people who are on the apprentice for Supreme Court justices.

I would have totally bought that at this time.

And he's gone the totally opposite way.

But like, someone who can actually say, yes, not run from what they used to say, say exactly what I used to say.

Here's why it changed.

Here's the difference of that, gives you credibility on those things.

You know, there are some hosts that go out there and have said every single thing Donald Trump has done since he walked into the public eye was the best thing that anyone has ever done.

Why would you listen to that person when there's a divisive or questionable issue about something like Ukraine?

When that's breaking, why would you listen to the person who, no matter what, has told you the same thing about this person every single time?

I want someone who's thinking about these things individually, who's actually going through their thought process.

Those are really the only ones you tell your friends about.

Yeah.

No, you only tell your friends now about people who are like, no, no, no, I know you hate this person because you think this,

even they are saying X, Y, and Z.

Exactly.

And that

is lost now.

And, you know,

I don't know.

I mean, I think you could make a lot of the sort of standard arguments on things like social media and our attention span and news cycles and all of those things.

But like it.

There's an argument to be made now that the better long-term philosophy is just saying whatever is best at this moment.

And I'm not going to do that.

I don't care if it works or not.

I mean, I just don't want, I want no part of it.

But I think you can make the argument that financially that's the better way to go now.

So we've had this argument, not argument, we've had this discussion over and over because we both feel the same way.

I don't want to do the shuttle.

I mean, it's not worth it.

That's why I got into this.

It's just not worth it.

It'll be empty and ugly and awful, and I don't want to be a part of it.

But how do you do your job as an executive producer

when one of your biggest job is to save me from myself, honestly.

It really is.

Wouldn't you say?

Yeah, no, I think a lot of times.

You and I have such a pattern together now.

I can look at you.

You don't have to make a face.

I can look at you and I know

he is not sure this is accurate.

Don't play too hard on this.

Or don't go any further than that.

And I'm usually right.

You know, we know each other so well.

When I start opening my mouth, you're usually right.

Before I say anything, if I have a look on my face, you're just like, oh, dear God.

We could detect those things at this point.

And so

how do you make that decision now in your role as executive producer?

My job is to expand.

and to protect.

How do I do that when not only am I not willing to do that, but the host doesn't want to do that?

Yeah,

that is a tough thing to figure out.

I think politicians face the same thing, right?

Someone who's a strict constitutionalist is going to get a

kickback to his district that all of his voters want.

And he knows he has to win the next election or he's not going to be able to...

to

do any good, right?

How many times have we heard that argument behind the scenes from people in Washington?

Like, look, look, of course, I agree with you on that Constitution, but we got to get this done because I'm going to get thrown out of office and then there's going to be no one there to protect the Constitution anymore.

You know, part of the reason why I went into this and not politics is because I don't want to have to make those calculations.

I think the things that we can do is always be consistent in what we actually believe and never

change that for success or money.

However, what you can do, and I think we've done over the years, is to look at those issues and say,

number one,

how can I present this in a way that is actually, number one, most effective?

At times, I think we've lost sight of that in that, look, we believe we were righteous in a particular point and

may have been even wrong on the issue, but may have also been right on it, but we're not presenting it in a way that was most likely to win someone over to the argument.

My arrogance.

Yeah,

we all have it.

I mean, you know, I mean, I think at some level, and I don't think it's, it's, I don't think it's an arrogance.

Well, partially it's an arrogance thing.

It is.

We think we know.

We thought we knew

when it comes to

Donald Trump.

And this is not your call.

It's mine.

I thought I knew for sure what he was going to do and how it was going to play out.

And some of it, if

you'd be better because you keep the record.

I think I said it would end in impeachment in his first term.

Yeah, I think you did say that.

Which is, you know, I mean,

for the reason that it happened is

totally different than I thought.

Right.

So I was right in some ways,

absolutely wrong in other ways.

Yeah.

And I think like a part of this is like being able to

communicate these things that are true and not being afraid of them.

You know, we talked about, you know, for example, Donald Trump's spending record is atrocious.

It's atrocious.

And we can sit here and say that he's the greatest president and has never done anything wrong.

Well, the way we do that is by ignoring a thing we held as a fundamental principle before this, which is ignoring the idea that spending is a really big problem and our debt is a huge problem.

And that can't be set aside.

We still have to talk about that.

But I think, you know, because, especially because so much of the conservative media does not hit you with it, it's shocking to people.

I mean,

we don't sound a lot of times like other shows do.

And if you think about the average listener who's listening to talk radio all day, they might hear six shows in a row that are saying something very similar, and that seventh show is us.

And so if we go in there and just try to berate them with our points, number one, it shows that we have not learned any lesson about the problems with certainty, right?

You still have to

understand that, you know, you might be wrong on certain things.

And you might not be wrong about something, but you may be wrong on how to handle it because you're not listening to the people they're coming from it at a completely different place

we were coming from intellectually here's what this is what this is going to mean this is the kind of chaos that's coming our way

they were coming it from it at

you don't know what my life is like anymore right I'm really struggling and and everything is on fire and you mr.

Beck have a voice but I don't have a voice.

This guy will speak for me.

That's huge.

I think we're seeing that play out not just, you know,

talk show is one thing, but like, you know, this sort of internal debate among conservatives between, you know, common good conservatism and rights-based conservatism, where these two things are kind of going at each other right now.

And a lot of really good smart people are looking at this and saying common good conservatism is the way to go.

Like that we should have policies implemented by the federal government that will further the goals of conservatism generally.

And that should be the, we should be focusing on that as the ends and not worry as much about the process, whether it comes through the government or whether it comes through the churches or whatever.

The bottom line is our goal is to

do something for the common good.

Where I see that is really as an example of collectivism with, I guess, a small C.

But where I think the rights are the end.

I mean, rights-based conservatism is the way that I am.

However, like

realizing that it's not just like some, you know, some person who's not even giving conservatism a fair shake.

It's not those people making those arguments.

When they're people who are smart and that you respect on a lot of different issues, it's number one, interesting to listen to them and actually consider their viewpoint and think about what they're saying and how it meshes with your philosophy.

And number two,

there's a way of explaining it to people who are with you on 85%, 90% of the stuff.

If you can explain it that way in an entertaining way and not berate them, right?

Like that is going to be a much more successful thing for your business and for the success of your argument.

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Has there ever been a time in the last 20 years

that you have been

physically afraid?

Not just of losing your job.

I mean, we

like I can remember going on,

if you go, if you watch some of the footage back of the Washington, D.C.

rally,

I remember, you know, we had tons of threats going into that in really serious ways.

And, you know, we were, again, working on, you know, working on the speech together, which you wound up throwing out and then doing a completely different one.

And

I remember, you know, we're driving up to this event and there's security everywhere.

I mean, it was, it was serious.

It was diapers.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

And I remember walking out on the stage with you because I was like basically carrying the speech.

Like you're walking out of the stage, you're waving to everybody and like, you know, the footage in the very background, there I am, like, carrying a book

and putting it on the podium.

And I remember thinking, like, there was a chance at that point, it felt legitimately possible that someone could just take a shot at you the second you walked down on that stage to the point of like they, you know, we're talking bulletproof vests and all these things.

Now, of course, I didn't have one on, um, so apparently no one cared if I got shot, which is something I think when you think about your life, something to consider.

But like, I remember in that moment in particular, that those times in particular were really rough because we were at the point where like you would do a monologue and someone would be fired from the White House.

Like, this is not, it was not like a, you know, and it wasn't even your intent.

You weren't trying to get people fired.

But as soon as people were alerted to the things you were talking about, you know, the nation would, was rising up and calling, you know, making thousands of phone calls.

And then there was op-eds and there was follow-ups and documentaries and all these things.

And then people were just like leaving their jobs.

I mean, you know, Van Jones is obviously maybe the best well-known example.

And a lot of conservatives have looked at it from our perspective, right?

Where, you know, here's this guy.

He's basically a communist in the White House, and we should have known this.

And it shows who Obama was.

And all that stuff, I think, was true.

But on the other hand, think of it from Van Jones' perspective, right?

Here's a guy who is,

even in his own words, a radical activist, right?

A guy who is a proponent for communism.

And he is able to take that world and he says himself, I got rid of the radical means to get the radical ends.

He's able to finagle himself into the boardroom of every major company in the United States talking about green initiatives.

He rises from this, you know, nobody to the White House, this incredible,

you know, skyrocketing career path.

And he's making a difference in the ways he wants to make a difference.

And then just some guy, some talk show host says, you know, brings out a couple of things that I said a long time ago.

And now all of a sudden I have to resign.

These people were, you know, Van Jones has gone on to be

a big

cable news guy and all these other things.

But

there are people in those movements who did not take kindly to you bringing these things up.

They were able to

change the way America looked at itself, fundamentally, fundamentally transform America.

The things

that we experienced at both CNN and Fox,

that I don't think, I think both of us went into both of those thinking

there's not some cabal it's not like that you know it's just they have a different point of view

what was the biggest thing you learned first from cnn

well you know it was interesting that we even got hired there i mean i remember thinking there was no chance that was going to actually happen yeah um and they put us on and i was you know they were

I bought a house, if I'm not mistaken, before they made the offer.

Yes, I believe that's true.

We were happy about that, by the way.

That was really exciting for us.

That's the way every move happens.

Glenn makes, goes and buys a house before we lock it in.

And then we're like, oh, well, now I guess we have to go.

I mean, he owns a home there.

Yeah, I mean, it was, because there was some conflict internally, I think, at that point, as to whether a cable news show was the right thing.

You know, I mean, the show was doing really well on radio.

We were growing quickly.

You were pretty well known.

And I remember thinking, like, gosh, really?

Like, cable news?

Like, we're going to go on there and do this thing that everybody, you know, that's what you're supposed to do.

We all hated it.

Yeah, none of us really liked the idea.

And I think, I think, you know, looking back in retrospect incorrectly, because it was, it was a way to, it really did change the level of your profile.

But we changed it.

Yeah, no, because we did something different.

And we knew we were going to do something different and we weren't going to do it unless we could.

I didn't want to go in there and do the same old blah, blah, blah, talking heads type of thing.

So when we went into CNN, I mean, I remember doing

things

that were,

it helped shape my understanding of the media in a way I don't know that like the audience necessarily always connects with.

And that like we would do things on the air that were really basic knowledge for the average talk radio listener.

You know, things that were like, okay, remember this quote from this guy, and you'd bring that up in passing.

And especially when we first started, we would get hit from standards and practices, which is like the branch of CNN.

This is interesting to me.

Most people

may not even know this or believe this, but I was on the floor and sometimes it would take us two or three hours to cut an hour-long show.

You should be able to cut an hour-long show in about 50 minutes.

It sometimes took us three hours to cut.

And I was never privy to the stalls.

I would just be told,

break down in the computer, you know, break down in the control room.

This is happening.

This is happening.

Don't worry, we'll catch it but you were actually in the control room with standards and practices along with all the others yeah my staff

that worked for mercury that was the smartest thing we did uh that

were having to have these battles yeah and they would be like on really basic things like we you know because on talk radio like

there there's a these certain things will become part of the conversation and everyone sort of understands them you don't need to explain them every single time and we'd make points and they would push back on them.

And I'm like, do you not know this?

Do you not know this person said this?

And that really, that enlightened me into the way the media actually works because

a lot of times they don't know it.

You know, a lot of times they will, they're under the,

they are so in their bubble and have convinced themselves that they are the only source of valid information.

So when these things don't break through to them, they never happened.

And a lot of times we'd be able to, to be fair, we'd be able to talk them into it.

We'd say, like, wait a minute, let me show you this.

And we'd have to go back to them.

It wasn't like.

I don't remember times where we had to change

scripts or anything like that.

It was just always, they stopped us almost every word, every line.

Particularly at the beginning, because they didn't know whether to trust you.

I mean, if you remember, we had people like Christian Amenpour going to board meetings and basically

global broadcast to board meetings and trashing you in front of the company.

Because how can we be considered a credible news source when we got this guy hired?

We were in that world.

And, you know, I mean, but we got to the point where we were doing specials on global warming and they wouldn't even find anything wrong.

And we got, you know, I think it made us better broadcast.

I totally agree.

Because, I mean, by the time we went to Fox, we were so buttoned up.

Yeah.

We didn't need to be.

And we needed to be.

Yeah.

Again.

We were dead.

We make a mistake over at Fox.

We would have been dead.

Yeah.

God has a plan, right?

I mean, because

it was really annoying for a while at CNN for those reasons because you know when you're on talk radio it's a conversation and it's not a scripted news broadcast and it's opinion and it's opinion and it is become I excuse the expression diarrhea of the mouth yeah right you're trying to fill three hours and you know usually you have stuff to say sometimes you're kind of like you're entertaining a new idea for the first time and especially with somebody like me who thinks out loud yeah thinks out loud and that's how we used to always explain it we're thinking out loud i think going to cnn because they were so strict on every little thing, at least when it came to the conservative side, like, I mean, you know, I don't know how they are.

You know, we see a lot of mistakes they're making today.

I don't know if things have changed over there.

It seems like it.

But when we were there, you know, and a lot of times it was with good intent.

The people who think we were making mistakes, they were trying to protect us sometimes.

Sometimes they thought we were just totally nuts.

Whenever we'd say anything positive about Israel,

we would have it, they would come down really hard.

And they would always push back from, you know, this other side, and and we'd have to explain it.

But it helped us understand that nothing was going to get through unless we were buttoned up.

And the same thing, I think, happened with them in which they at first saw you as this sort of like rogue guy who's in there just spouting nonsense.

And after the third, fourth, fifth, five hundredth, six hundredth, seven hundredth time, we had to come back to the table and say, this is what it's based on.

And you might not agree with the analysis that he's making, but this is factually based and here's why.

Eventually they became to the point where they would trust you a lot more.

And and only the hardest special we ever did though was the first special on

what was happening in the Islamic world.

What was that called?

Do you remember?

Expose the extremist agenda.

Maybe.

And it beat Bill O'Reilly.

That was huge.

It was a huge thing.

It did not happen on CNN headline news.

Right.

And had never

been done.

Anything like it had never been done.

It was before the internet was really powerful.

And so a lot of this stuff had never been seen.

And that, I think, is the hardest we ever had to fight for anything on any platform.

Aaron Trevor Burrus, if there was one single issue that was really difficult,

particularly at CNN, it was the Israel,

Palestinian, Islamic extremism, that whole side of it.

You know, and you think of CNN as really an international organization.

They see themselves not as an American news source, but as an international news source.

And, you know, taking in what Al Jazeera was pitching at the time was important to them, apparently.

And so we got in a lot of fights, particularly with the international desk, on who was right and who was wrong.

And they really, you know, my impression of all of that was they really did just believe Israel was wrong and evil, and they were doing terrible things.

And so that was always the lens they saw everybody.

As long as you don't have to go through the rigors

that we had to go through,

it's easy to just live there.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Exactly.

Everybody around you is like, oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, you think about the average person who's going to work at CNN, who, you know, goes to some left-leaning college and learns all of these points as if they're fact from professors.

I got to challenge it when they get in there.

And that's, you know, I think that's changed, honestly, in the media today, where when we were there, I think it was more of that, where it was just sort of ingrained in the world.

Like it was in

the works.

It had already gummed up the works.

Everything, you know, it was like

you had a glass glass of punch and then you pour it out and you try to pour a glass of milk in there.

It's still going to taste a little bit like punch.

No matter what happens, it was always going to be flavored that way.

It does seem like there's been a change at a lot of these organizations from we're left-leaning and trying to tell the truth, but we're definitely leaning left and you notice it to today, which seems like really straight out left-wing advocacy because they believe this one's just too important.

No, we had people who, we've worked with several people who are left, left-wing, and

they were honest.

Yeah.

And when they found out that their side was wrong, they were like, holy cow, wait, what?

Yeah.

You know?

But they held our feet to the fire, but they were honest.

I don't know if that happens, right?

I don't know if it does.

So,

do you remember when I filled in for Larry King?

Were you in the control room?

Because they were saying to me in my ear as they were counting me down,

his producers just said, Please,

please stick to the script.

And I remember saying, as they were about at the count of four, I said, not going to happen.

That was amazing because, I mean, Larry King at the time was

the guy.

They wanted to get, I guess, some more eyes on you at that time.

Or they felt like they didn't need to be at any,

like the homeless guy, they had you in a picture.

They were going to show up.

I don't know.

And they put you on and like putting you into that world.

Again, it's that clash of cultures, right?

Where the typical person who listens to Larry King every night never hears your opinion, never hears a conservative articulate an opinion well, right?

All they hear are people spouting the same opinions in the same order over and over and over again.

So that was jarring, I'm sure, to a lot of people, as it was jarring just internally in the CNN culture.

People weren't used to hearing people like you.

When they heard people like you, it was because of the craziest thing you said in an 18-month period.

You, speaking of that, and then I want to come back to the no script thing.

Um,

you have always

you are like my

work wife.

Um, well, Tanya, thank you.

Tanya

sometimes is more mad than I am when people come after me.

Yeah.

And

there have been times where you have

been mad

and

have said, you've looked at me and said, I'm answering it.

I'm answering it.

I'm like, don't, it's not a big deal.

Don't, no, got to answer it.

Any of those pop to your head, the one that pops to my head that still bothers me today deeply

and nothing can be done because the individual is no longer with us is the Bright Bart Shirley Sherrod

craziness.

Gosh, that was a throwback.

Yeah,

that was a weird one because a lot of these fights were, because I could think of you getting in a fight with

someone like, I think it was Farid Zakaria, maybe, about, you said about 10% of Islam have terrorist or terrorist sympathies.

And you got just lit up by the media over that.

And I just remember going through and just proving it with poll after poll.

45% in many regions, much, much higher than that.

And, you know, going by the dictionary definition of the word terrorism, we like, I remember spending hours and hours just lighting that up.

And you were completely, you know, you're completely right on that.

I mean, I remember going back and forth with

Obama's spiritual advisor,

God, what was his name?

About leaving your church and

social justice.

Social justice, right?

And going through, and I had to write something for the Washington Post about one of their sites about

what social justice was.

Where did it it come from?

Here's the actual history of it.

Why aren't they telling you that?

And those things were like, some of them blew up into massive controversies to the point where we were constantly, you hear about them all the time from not only listeners and everything else, but like

companies and

getting inquiries from media organizations.

And that stuff was like, it became in the Fox era a real big part of our job pushing back against that stuff.

It wound up being...

you know, fighting back to make sure that people, they didn't successfully paint you as this lunatic, right, just saying crazy things all the time, because that's what they wanted to do.

That was their out.

This was their sort of

a well-worn path where they would be able to kind of take a conservative who is rising, get rid of them so you never have to hear him again.

You can always easily dismiss what they're saying because they're a conspiracy theorist or a lunatic or whatever.

And that became a big part of what we had to do, particularly in that period.

The Shirley Sherrod thing was a weird one because, and we still hear about that occasionally from people who well,

it is the separation from a lot of people.

I mean, originally with me and Ben Shapiro, I mean, this is a long time ago.

Me and Ben Shapiro,

Dana Lash, I mean, people that were working there at the time.

It was a really big deal.

It was a very big deal.

And they hated me at first until we sat down and we talked.

Yeah, yeah.

But Andrew and I never had that opportunity.

No, no.

I mean, Andrew was obviously a, you know, a huge personality, right?

And he did a lot of things that, you know, were pretty remarkable.

And so, and we had a good relationship with him.

He had broken a couple of his big stories on the show.

He had,

you know, some of those big, like the James O'Keefe stuff that was happening at the time, at the very beginning of that.

You know, we were tied into that, and he was coming on the show, and some of the people he was with were coming on the show.

So we had a good relationship with him and found the stuff that he had been doing to be

pretty trustworthy.

Like it was, it all seemed to be, I mean, we all, you know,

if I remember right, because of our experience at CNN, we knew if we didn't have everything buttoned up ourselves, we were in trouble.

Yeah.

And so the trouble was

Andrew had done all of this work on Acorn, and we were on Acorn, but he had the goods to crack it open.

And he had called me, I don't remember even when and he said I remember I was on a boat might have been July 4th I was in the New York harbor on a boat and he called me and he said

I have this stuff and it's explosive and I said

can you get it to me and he said yeah do you want it Monday and I said yeah if it is what you say it is yes and I asked at that time I need the unedited tape.

You remember this?

And so he said, I'll get it to you.

Then he had one, then he had another one, then he had a third one.

And by the time we got to the fourth one, I still hadn't had the unedited tape.

And

you and everybody else breathing down my neck going, and Joel Cheatwood saying, we got to have the unedited tape.

I believe him, but if we don't have the unedited tape, we don't know what's real.

Right.

And

so then we got the tape of Shirley Sherrod, and I believed it.

Yeah, so that one, I don't remember us being tied into it beforehand.

Maybe we were.

No, it was in the, but it was in the morning, the morning that it was

over.

The morning that, you know, by 5 o'clock,

it had collapsed.

Yeah.

So it was post-it on his site, and we had just found his stuff to be generally reliable.

And we didn't have the full report.

And we kind of hit it briefly, I think at the end of an hour as kind of a throw-in, like this Obama official said something.

I think we hit it it harder than that because I remember going into Joel's office and saying, is this real?

And he says, it looks like it.

I'm on the phone with the people

that know the videotape, know the full videotape, know the speech.

And he's like, I think so.

And I think I said, join us at five.

We'll have a lot on this.

And I thought we were going to fall with Breitbart at that time.

Yeah.

And,

you know, we, once we got to the break, I just remember, I I remember going off the air, and this is the time Pat and I are doing what was at the time called the fourth hour, where we would do an hour after the show.

And I remember just thinking about it and just listening to the tape, and it just seemed weird.

It just seemed like they're

obviously wrong.

It seemed out of context, like we were missing context on it.

And so we went on, I remember going on the fourth hour and saying, like, I think there's something, like, I want to know what's after this.

And we eventually were able to track down what she said after it.

And at this point, I don't even remember what it was, but it was something basically like

she really really wasn't saying the thing that was insinuated in the headlines and it was kind of I you know probably our mistake to even mention it you know without that but at the time we had never seen an issue with a Breit Part story or anything like that so we kind of assumed that it would be reported if it wasn't in complete context

and

we got off and I remember questioning that on the fourth hour which is not broadcast to the nation it was just broadcast to subscribers and the white house fired Shirley Sherrod yeah that's right.

And so you were like, okay,

obviously it's not going to be really bad.

And I remember about halfway, Pat and I were talking about it and we were questioning it.

And then you came in on the fourth hour and started saying, like, yeah, this doesn't seem right.

And we kept tracking it down.

Eventually got to the point where we realized, okay, the context is wrong here.

She really didn't say that.

And it was kind of the opposite.

It was like, I can't remember.

She was explaining a story, like someone else's opinion or something.

I don't even remember exactly what it was.

But I do remember thinking to myself, like, immediately we get off the air, we kind kind of go through that process of trying to understand the story, kind of come on the side of, like, well, it's not as stated.

But we never were like critical of Breitbart over it because, you know, Breitbart was like, you know, he was kind of a big, you know, he was a conservative, like a big name in the conservative circles.

We had a relationship with him.

We had no real reason to believe it was anything intentional or anything like that.

It just seemed like it might have been a mistake.

If my recollection is right, he thought we set him up or something like that.

Yeah.

And I remember the only reason we did go on the air and we hit it hard that she should not have been fired and this story was wrong

because

that's who, that's what we've always believed in.

Right.

If we say something or if we don't want to take scalps to count scalps,

we want it to be right.

Yeah.

And I think

there was, you know, look, it was probably a very intense time for them.

Yeah.

And so you saw us maybe as dog piloting.

Right.

That's probably true.

And like, you know,

I do remember, though,

you know, the reason why we even mentioned it is because we actually thought he was credible.

Like, it was actually, I always thought it was a strange way that got spun by,

you know, some people in sort of the conservative media who didn't like us

that

you were out there trying to take down Breitbart.

Like, it really was the opposite of that.

I mean, you know, I know eventually it wound up kind of blowing up into a thing, and you guys never really did

make up on that one.

But I've always found that to be a strange sort of story because, you know, look,

the bottom line is, and it's almost part of that sort of extreme sort of partisanship thing, teams and tribes that we're in now, and that like a lot of people looked at that as whether we were right or wrong,

we shouldn't be critical of our own side.

And it's like, well, we were, I didn't even look at that as us being critical of them for like, you know, I didn't think the story was presented correctly at that time, but like, whatever.

Like, you know, think about it now.

There's, you know, there's a million stories that come out every day, and a lot of them are presented incorrectly.

It wasn't, it's, you know, it's not that big of a deal.

You go back, you look at it, you correct what you got wrong, you say what you got right.

I mean, it's not that big of a deal.

But people look at it as this weird, like, loyalty thing.

It's like, you know, it's like you're at the meme and you're with your girlfriend and you're turning around checking out the girl behind her and she's horrified.

It's like, whether it's the context or the content is right, people look at it as this like lack of loyalty.

And it's like, to me, like, I, you know, you can't get sucked into that when it comes to parties, right?

You have to only do it when it comes to the truth.

And I think it makes you more credible when you say, hey, our side blew it on this one.

But we were right on these other 25 things.

You're going to look at those two.

Let me ask you, let me just, I'm just going to go through these because we're going to run out of time.

Let me just, if you have any thoughts on these, otherwise just say pass.

Deterioration of the Fox News relationship in 2009.

We never got to also what you learned from Fox, what you took away, because you were not, it was the opposite of CNN.

You were not allowed in any of the meeting most my staff was not allowed in the big meetings that i had so i was going in and you guys were waiting like good god what's going to happen now yes yes it was a different we were we did most of the show outside of we did not go to their building um it was separate the one thing i would think that one thing i that gets people get wrong all the time is that you were uh they wanted you back they offered you a contract to continue to do the show um we should look in our files see if we have that i know interesting Yeah, we wanted to leave.

We felt it was the right time to leave, sort of.

We really struggled on that.

I questioned that one a lot just because

I thought one more contract was probably the right move for a long time.

Because

two more years.

It probably would have.

Because we were on the blaze, it was on the bleeding edge.

I thought we were too early with the technology for enough people to be able to come over and just get their internet TV from the internet.

People, it was buffering, and our audience didn't know what the heck it was.

What do you mean, I got to buy what?

And a Roku and sign up for what?

It was way too early.

It was so early.

So I felt like, you know, but I think that the

relationship had deteriorated in a way that it probably wasn't plausible.

But I always was hoping we could get a couple more years there before we did something like this.

And you probably would have been right.

I think what I'm getting from this podcast is I should listen to you because

you probably would have been right.

That's what I did the whole time.

I just saw the

opportunity at the blaze.

I just, you know, I'm really bad at timing.

Yeah, you were ahead of, I mean, look, you were ahead of the game now.

That's the even cables collapsing, you know, all that's really happening.

And that's what I was saying at the time.

Oh, yeah.

It's all going to burn to the ground.

And you were right, but it was pretty early.

The tough times at the Blaze.

It was tough.

Yeah, you know, some of that really sucked.

I have to tell you,

thank you for being my friend.

And thank you for being

so loyal to me.

And

not

not so loyal that you wouldn't tell me the truth or you wouldn't you were

but I never ever had to doubt about you and Pat and it was hard because we the knives were out for us

yeah all around well thank you for that and the same as well you know it was that was really hard I mean for a lot of reasons I mean you know

we had it grew really fast and you know it's always bad we went from 50 employees to 300 in like six months.

Really fast on a lot of, you know, like a lot of really understandable decisions.

And, you know, and like we had a lot of people were here that were, you know, are no longer here.

And I love a lot of them.

You know, I mean, to this day.

And so it was really hard to have people leave.

It was, you know, a lot of that stuff really sucked, to be honest about it.

You know, because unlike...

You know, you could certainly, I've been to, worked at plenty of places where you, people leave and they come and you're like, eh, you know, whatever.

But this is, you know, this was something we all built sort of together.

So to see like a lot of the

big names and faces from the past leave

really sucked and was really hard for a long time.

I mean, you know, look, as we always say with the economy, right?

Like people go and they find other things that they do and they're happier now, I'm sure, for it.

I'm thrilled at how, I mean, look at how much success.

So much.

Success has come from those people who

were really nobodies when they joined us.

I'm not saying we built them, but gave them their chance to grow into themselves.

And it's amazing.

Oh, yeah.

How many people are like, well, they used to be with the Blaze.

Yeah.

They were with the Blaze.

And they were the...

On-air, off-air.

I mean, we've seen this all over the place.

And that's one of the best things that's come out of that.

It just, you know, at times it sucked to go through.

I'll tell you that.

The Warner Brothers

pilot that's never been.

I don't think that.

Do they?

Do they?

I don't think so.

Warner Brothers came to us.

Big name at Warner Brothers came to us and said, want you to do a pilot,

an Ellen-style pilot.

Yeah, which is funny because, I mean, of course, that's a big part of your personality, too, that people like to overlook because you like lower taxes and things like that.

But yeah, we did a pilot for Warner Brothers.

That was going to be a daytime.

For sure.

I mean, they were like, this thing's going to sell like Gangbuster.

Yeah.

And it was really, I mean, it was really good.

Like, it was, it came out great and would have been an interesting addition to that landscape because there would be nothing like it.

But it never really got over the hump of, you know, Glenn Beck said this thing in 2003.

You know, it never really got there.

So understand that.

Really, I'm shocked that the animated pilot

written by one of the best writers.

He's produces stuff all the time.

Were you in that meeting?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

A guy who,

every show he works on, you know its name.

Like it was one of the biggest guys.

And, you know, like we got to pretty serious discussions about it.

And the fact of, like, think of like a, almost almost like a family guy with Glenn Beck as Peter Griffin yeah and that would have been my next door neighbor was going to be Bob Saggett yeah I wasn't yeah there's a couple of names that were in that role I remember Bob Sagett being one of them that would have been an amazing show

and you know it's another one of those things that I don't know I mean like it could that have been a really I mean that would have been really funny because you know you unlike a lot of hosts and a lot of people in media like you are willing to get the crap beat out of you especially if it's going to make people laugh oh it's funny yeah I mean it's like you I'll I'll be a punching bag all day long for funny.

Whenever we do like a museum here or we have doing these appearances where we're meeting a lot of listeners, a lot of them are like, you say, I mean, you're tough on Glenn sometimes.

And I'm like, he loves it.

We get off the air and Glenn is the one encouraging me to go further.

And that's been one of the things that's been really fun about that.

You know that, you sense it.

Jeffy is the same way, right?

Like Jeffy knows that him getting beat up is

a good thing.

At least that's how I sleep at night.

But it's true.

Like if you can get yourself in that mindset, and it's happened to me, it's happened to Pat, we all get in that place where you're the guy that day that's getting, you know, getting the foot onto your breast.

I've always loved the fact that we could be in one break punching me real hard

and triangulating one person.

And then the next, very next break, it all of a sudden just goes, and wait a minute, I'm on the receiver.

How did that happen?

How did that happen?

Sometimes in the middle of a conversation.

I want to ask you

made a little, you know, I started with your

resume, which is a joke, and you'll never work in this business again.

Although I've had an offer from 7-Eleven that I am.

Right, I know.

Writer, producer, performer, analyst.

What would you add to the list of what you think you're good at?

I think you're the you're by far the best radio writer, maybe one of the best

writers in the country.

Most people don't know that.

Producer.

You don't like confrontation, but you are one of the, I think you are, I know you are the best radio producer in the country.

Performer.

And yeah, we'll see.

And an analyst, you are.

There's just nobody better because you live

stats.

I do.

Yeah.

What would you add to that list?

And how would you prioritize that list?

What are you first?

That's a great question.

I don't know.

I mean,

I think all of those things, and this goes to not only writing, but producing and

even the comedy stuff, comes from analysis.

Right.

Like the analyst thing is something where I think you're always looking at taking a situation, trying to break it down into its fundamental elements, and then you can rebuild it in whatever way you want.

And that comes to, you can build it into a joke, you can build it into a point, you can, you know, it's understanding, you know, like

understanding the relationships between people when you're when you're, you know, producing a show, you're, you know, having to manage a bunch of different people with a bunch of different personalities.

And you have to understand how to kind of make those personalities work.

Sometimes you do have to be tough on them.

Sometimes you have to be understanding and move them in a different way.

I think a lot of that comes back to that same fundamental thing.

And I think it's a,

you know, we did that thing with the Jonathan Haidt thing.

Remember that?

And we went through and we read the book and we interviewed him and, you know, and he breaks down the mind and the ways that people think.

And that is, I would always come out when they had those little things.

They always come out on that analysis sort of side.

Because, you know, this is something that goes back to when I enter a room,

I'm taking it in.

I'm I'm trying to understand the dynamics that are going on.

What is this, you know, where, you know, where does this person think?

What's the right place

to be or the best way to make this point?

And I think that that is, we all do that at some level.

But I think that's kind of the way I approach those issues.

And I, you know, with this new show, I think it's going to be a big part of it, right?

Like, you know, one of the things I think we do really well is taking a, you know, a complicated story and trying to break that down so that everybody can kind of take it in easily and understand it and

win their arguments on Facebook and when they're at their offices.

And

that is, I think, like

taking those issues, breaking them down, explaining exactly

not only that they're lying, but how they're lying, why they're lying this way, who they're trying to move by using this type of terminology.

How do we fight back against that with people who might not understand the basics that we all think we get?

They might come at it from a completely different perspective.

How do you move those people?

All those things I think are important.

And if you don't sit there and really understand the landscape you're going up against or the place, the room that you're in, you're not going to be able to do that well.

But being C-3PO, you know the chances of survival, especially doing that logically, doing it with real stats, having it really backed up.

Yeah.

I mean, it's one of the reasons why most people don't know.

They're surprised now, which is kind of sad, on how

when meeting me, how funny,

you know, I am or my family and they don't expect that.

And it's because I've intentionally, because it's not worth the price of admission.

However, it is worth the price to be able to affect

people

because

you can do it.

But you're going to also be on YouTube with a large audience now on YouTube.

You ready for the

you ready for it to be you?

I mean, one of the joys of working with you all this time is that I got to watch you take all the arrows.

And then that was, it's, it's actually,

you said to me once, I don't want to ever be you.

No, I don't.

I don't.

For me,

people think it's, oh, I'd love to do that.

That's great.

That's, you know, you make so much money.

No, you, you do,

but you pay a very high price.

Yeah, well, you do if you succeed.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, but that's, that was at the end of a very long road for us, you know.

You know, I think that is, that is

daunting in some ways, you know, I mean, because I've seen it happen to you, and I don't, I don't want to be.

Oh, yeah.

God, the stuff that Crowder goes through is

insanity.

Part of it is like, you know, you don't get into, you don't go into the circus to walk on the tightrope to stay a foot off the ground, right?

So like, you know, you want to be able to take on those challenges.

Why, one of the reasons I'm here, I mean, like, you know, we've been doing this together for a very long time.

But like, that is, I think, part of it, you know?

And part of it is, I think, you have to look at

making sure that, you know, you are able to be consistent with who you are

while not being, you know, flippant and ridiculous.

Like, it's easy to score points saying certain things that, you know, with your own audience that like that are maybe not so buttoned up, or maybe they're the taking what you have and going a little further than what you have.

And you know, you've seen a lot of voices, I think, in conservative media and certainly on the left who have just basically made their careers on being the person on Twitter who says the most explosive thing.

And I've always felt one of the reasons the show has worked for a long time is we've never treated our audience as if they want to read the weekly world news, right?

We've treated them as they wanted, that they're intelligent and they want to actually know.

They actually believe at the end of the day, even if it comes up

as part of the argument that doesn't back up where they are, they still want to know.

And if they have, if you have a relationship with them where, as you've done over the years, be honest with them about the things that you care about, be honest about where you are, you're able to say

to the audience, look, you might not agree with me here, but I think because of our relationship, you'll take what I'm saying seriously.

And, you know, worst comes to worst, you're going to have an entertaining time listening to it.

You might totally disagree at the end of the day, but at least you're going to understand it.

And that's on us as well to do the same thing with the audience as you kind of talked about earlier.

We had to take where they're coming from seriously as well.

Stew Does America.

Now on YouTube and The Blaze.

And I've seen you, White, walk the tightrope before.

And I've never seen you fall, but it's an honor to be your unused safety net on this venture.

Well, thank you.

It's going to be great.

And I plan

a devastating fall from grace for ratings if the show's not working about six months in.

I'm willing to provide those.

Okay, good.

Because you're good at them.

Yeah.

I've been doing it forever.

Thank you, Stu.