Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

July 7, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:03:18

Shannon Bream | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 58

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	It was the greatest blessing, just being vulnerable and honest with people about how much I was struggling.
	It made me realize, I hate being vulnerable.
	I want to be independent and do everything myself.
	I came out of the womb that way.
	But you gotta lean on other people sometimes.
	And if you don't give them the gift of being honest about how you're struggling, then they don't get the gift, I think, of helping you.
	Hey, hey, and welcome.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special.
	I'm excited to welcome Shannon Bream.
	She's the author of the brand new book, Finding the Bright Side.
	We'll get into that book and everything else you need to know about Shannon Bream in just one second.
	But first, hiring is challenging, which is why, you know, we end up with people who have to adjust the lights every single episode.
	But there's one place you can go where hiring is simple and fast and smart.
	It's a place where growing businesses connect to qualified candidates.
	That place, ziprecruiter.com slash benguest.
	ZipRecruiter sends your job to over 100 of the web's leading job boards.
	They don't just stop there.
	With their powerful matching technology, ZipRecruiter will actually scan thousands of resumes and find people with the right experience and then invite them to apply to your job.
	As applications come in, ZipRecruiter analyzes each one and then spotlights the top candidates so you're never gonna miss a great match.
	ZipRecruiter is so effective.
	Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate through the site within the very first day.
	Right now, my listeners can try ZipRecruiter for free at this exclusive web address.
	ZipRecruiter.com slash bengest.
	That's ZipRecruiter.com slash b-e-n-g-u-e-s-t.
	ZipRecruiter.com slash bengest.
	ZipRecruiter is indeed the smartest way to hire Everybody here at the office is on notice that if they do a terrible job, we're heading straight to ZipRecruiter.com slash BenGuest to replace them.
	You too can upgrade your employees or get new employees who are great.
	Go check them out at ZipRecruiter.com slash BenGuest.
	Well, Shannon, thanks so much for stopping by.
	I really appreciate it.
	It's great to be with you.
	So why don't we start with this.
	I'm not a person who is particularly known for finding the bright side.
	You obviously are somebody who's done that.
	How do you stay positive?
	I mean, you have a difficult job and you're covering the news every day.
	You're doing it late at night.
	It's a very fraught political cycle.
	So how do you stay positive all the time the way you seem to?
	You know, I try to keep perspective.
	Sometimes you have to compartmentalize things, and we do report on things that are really tough, especially if it's, you know, a situation with a loss of life.
	It could be natural disasters, you know, a terrorist attack, whatever it is.
	You have to do what you have to do in the moment, report these things.
	But for me, I try to separate that and have my real life where I have a little bit of perspective on the bigger picture.
	For me, my faith is at the center of everything, and that's really my compass and kind of where I have my foundation.
	And so for a lot of people, I think, I'm not sure where they put their roots and where they kind of find that stability, but that's it for me.
	So, one of the big controversies that's broken out in sort of the journalistic sphere is the objective journalist versus opinion journalist divide.
	Now, I'm very obviously an opinion journalist.
	I say what I think.
	It must be difficult for you because you are a fair and balanced objective journalist.
	That means you're trying to remove your views.
	How do you, number one, do that just as a human being?
	And number two, how much do you think it's possible to do that as a journalist?
	I think you have to make the effort 100% of the time if you're in, as I am, in the news division.
	And we go through our show every night when we're preparing it.
	We want to make sure that all sides are presented.
	Do we have guests that are opposing in views on any particular issue we're going to cover?
	We go through the copy very carefully and say, let's take out any adjectives that are over the top.
	It's always good to winnow those out.
	And just let the story speak for itself.
	Let the facts speak for themselves.
	We make sure that we give voices to all sides.
	It doesn't matter what I agree or disagree with.
	And I feel like I'm doing my job if, at the end of the day, my Twitter is split.
	I have some people on there who say, like, you're the worst.
	You are attacking our president.
	Why don't you respect him?
	And on the other side, the very same show, I have people who will say, obviously, you're taking all of your talking points straight from the White House.
	The president told you exactly what to say.
	And I think, well, if people don't know where I'm coming from personally, then I've done my job.
	Because, of course, all of us have our own opinions as human beings.
	But my goal every night in doing this show is that people don't know what my personal opinions are.
	We just give them the news.
	Our viewers are smart.
	They can figure things out for themselves.
	So we give them the information and leave it to them.
	So is it frustrating for you?
	You see a lot of politicians, particularly on the Democratic side of the aisle, now having this open debate about whether it's even appropriate to do things like appear on Fox News, whether to do these town hall events with the objective side of Fox News, people like Brett Baier.
	And then you have Senator Elizabeth Warren who goes on The View and says, well, Fox News is a hate machine and a propaganda machine.
	I'll never appear on there.
	And even their objective hosts are just providing cover for their non-objective hosts.
	What do you make of that critique of Fox?
	I expect it.
	I mean, it's something that if you work there for five minutes, you know you're going to have to deal with.
	I always encourage people, and sometimes I think I get a convert or two out there, who will say, oh, how could you work there?
	It's such a terrible place, especially as a woman.
	And, you know, they go through the whole litany of problems.
	And I say, Make me a deal.
	Will you watch our 11 o'clock show, or 6 o'clock with Brett, or 7 o'clock with Martha, any of our shows that are strictly news programs?
	Watch it for a week or two, and then see what you think.
	You don't have to watch the opinion-based shows, which we celebrate.
	They have their own fan base, and they spark really interesting conversations.
	But for the news division, I say, watch one of our shows that is straight down the middle, and then you tell me what you think.
	And I find that most of our critics have not spent any time doing that.
	So I think it's fair to ask them to recognize the difference, choose one of those news programs, and then you can judge for yourself.
	And I think if people do that, they might be pleasantly surprised.
	How much does the news division interact with the opinion division?
	Do you guys talk amongst yourselves?
	Are you guys friends?
	How does that work?
	We are all friends.
	I mean, my hallway, I've got Tucker, Laura, Brett, and myself.
	We're all in there.
	And Brett Hume is on our hallway, too.
	And we will pop in.
	We're all friends.
	We'll exchange ideas and talk about things and news of the day, of course.
	What are you going to do on your show?
	Who have you got on tonight?
	That kind of thing.
	But when it comes to putting our shows together, making editorial decisions, there's really no crossover at all.
	I mean, we're friendly with each other, but we have completely different production staffs.
	And the way that we tackle our shows, I think, is very different.
	So given sort of the politically fraught nature of the moment and the very strong opinions that people hold about President Trump, what do you think is the best way as an objective journalist to cover President Trump?
	It's been kind of fascinating.
	From the left, there's been a contention that if you treat anything that is pro-Trump with any level of seriousness, that you are somehow contributing to his fake news narrative or that you are somehow covering for him.
	On the right, there's this feeling that if you criticize President Trump at all, then you are being disloyal or that you are treating him As something terrible.
	What is the best way to cover President Trump?
	And how exactly do you separate the narrative from the news when you do this?
	I think that we stick to the facts.
	I think that's the most important thing.
	And if he has a good day, he makes a good decision, something's good with the economy.
	I mean, we just report it down the middle.
	And some people will see even that as taking a side.
	As you said, there's some people who say you shouldn't even treat him as a legitimate president.
	If you cover him in that way, in some way, you are legitimizing something that they feel is illegitimate.
	But I think, you know, he tweets.
	We don't cover every single tweet.
	But if they're newsworthy, we do.
	And sometimes he makes policy statements by tweet.
	We try to winnow through those.
	But again, if it's factual information, it's data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on unemployment, those kinds of things, that's what we traffic in, in the news side.
	That's what we do in our particular hour.
	And I find that so much of people's reaction is projection.
	Either they're pro-President Trump, they're anti-President Trump.
	And I think that their feelings factor into the way that they hear what we're saying.
	So we try to be very careful in the way that we present things, knowing that people are going to come at it from, you know, often very tribal places.
	And sometimes we have to remind ourselves more about their emotions, and things are so emotional and passionate on both sides right now.
	It's more about that than it is about what we're presenting.
	So what do you make of the critique that the Trump administration is somehow uniquely stonewalling?
	I mean, you're a journalist.
	The critique is that they are a threat to press freedom.
	You have Jim Acosta, and ladies, find you someone who loves you like Jim Acosta loves Jim Acosta.
	But you have Jim Acosta at CNN who actually puts out books about how victimized he is from an air-conditioned office in Washington, D.C.
	So as a journalist, what's your impression of how transparent the Trump administration is or is not?
	I think, if anything, I would say that this administration, sometimes there are members of it who feel like they're too transparent, because he does say and think what he, you know, he puts it all out there, whether it's on Twitter, whether it's stopping to talk at these gaggles as he does so often when he comes to or from the White House.
	I mean, that's something we didn't always get with previous administrations.
	He will stop and take question after question, and I think in the beginning there were probably some people on the No, no, let's keep it moving.
	Just get on Marie One and let's go on this trip.
	He loves that.
	He loves to engage there.
	But I think his critics are going to say, yeah, he's been really nasty to the press.
	The fact that he points them out or calls them out when they're at these rallies, he always points to them in the back.
	It's something you see him consistently do.
	He knows it's a winning talking point for him with a crowd who's there.
	But as far as transparency is concerned, I think he's made himself in ways that are very unique to him, much more available to the press and to these questions than a lot of people have in the past.
	Because even if he's doing a joint presser with a foreign leader, he ends up taking all kinds of questions that I think sometimes people in his staff who are trying to manage him would like him to do less of that.
	But I think he's made himself pretty available.
	I think every White House is going to be criticized for not turning over more documents or having more press conferences because they are limited in that respect.
	We don't have a ton of press conferences and briefings from them that we've had more of those in the past.
	So I think he gives you a little bit more on the personal side.
	But I think on the more structured side of the way that this administration talks to people, certainly there are those in the press who wish it more of that.
	And one of the things that's been kind of fascinating is to watch the dynamic between President Trump and Fox News.
	So, he'll tweet things out where it's as though he has certain expectations that Fox News is going to cover him in a particular way.
	Again, making, I think, some of the same mistakes that people on the left make.
	Mistaking the opinion stuff, the Sean Hannity show, for your show, for example.
	Or the idea that if Fox News has a town hall with Pete Buttigieg, that this is somehow Fox News now supporting Pete Buttigieg when before they were just the Trump network.
	And that seems to have Created a false perception of Fox News among people right and left.
	So, in your mind, what do you think Fox News actually is?
	Because, obviously, it's a huge talking point for people on both sides of the aisle.
	What I think is interesting about Fox, and I always tell this story about my dad's birthday is the same day that Fox launched, and he loved that because he is, you know, he's a former law enforcement officer.
	He's passed away now.
	He was a former Marine.
	Everybody says, never a former, but I just mean that he's not in this earth anymore, to say oorah.
	But he felt like when Fox launched, it actually was a place that presented stories and viewpoints that he felt represented for the first time in a long time in the media.
	Not that they were taking his side, but at least that they told his part of the story or that they looked at stories that other people would overlook.
	The fact that it was being presented.
	So I think about a lot of people like my parents and people out there in America feel like, okay, this is a place that's at least going to treat our viewpoint like it's one worthy of conversation or being included.
	So I think Fox is unique in some of the stories that we pick and the way that we do things.
	There's definitely the opinion contingent, which is highly popular and has a very devoted fan base.
	But we do make a real effort to keep a dividing line between that and the news division.
	So I think in the news division, we do stories that you may not hear other places and we tackle stories in a different way.
	But our commitment is always to have both sides on.
	I don't think it's interesting to go on and have You know, any kind of conversation about a particular issue, whether it's abortion or taxation or whatever it is, and only have one side.
	I think it's a much more interesting conversation for people to make sure you have two or three sides, or however many you can fit into a broadcast, to have that conversation.
	Because to me, that's adding value.
	That's where our viewers can learn something new, maybe, or at least feel like, hmm, okay, I hadn't thought about that particular point.
	I'm willing to at least hear it.
	So, let's talk a little bit about your sort of backstory, so how you got where you are, because there's a lot of this in your book, Finding the Bright Side.
	So, if you go back all the way to the beginning, you grew up in a very Christian household that had very solid values.
	Obviously, you talk at the beginning of the book, first few chapters, about your mom and how she really impacted your life.
	I was hoping maybe you could talk a little bit about that.
	Yeah, I talk about, the chapter about her is called The Meanest Mom in the World, and people cringe sort of when I say that, but the truth is, she embraced that title.
	There was actually a yarn sale that she went to, which is the kind of thing we would have done growing up, that there was a plaque there called Meanest Mom in the World.
	She actually found it when the book came out and tweeted, and texted me a picture of it, because it does exist, and it's hilarious, because it talks about sort of like, I'm not your friend, we will be one day, but right now I'm here to keep you on a straight and narrow, and keep you out of trouble, my word goes, and that's it, kind of thing.
	She hung that up in the kitchen, and that really is how I grew up.
	I mean, I really was not allowed to listen to secular music.
	There was definitely no dancing and that kind of thing.
	There was a ton of love, though, and I understood the discipline because I was, from a young age, always asking, why?
	Why?
	Why don't we do it this way?
	My idea is better.
	And my parents allowed me to do that, but they tried to channel that energy in positive ways and kind of keep me on the straight and narrow.
	And, you know, the little things that I did here and there, they got me into trouble.
	always knew.
	They always found out.
	My mom was a teacher at the school I went to, K through 12.
	So it was hard to get away with really anything.
	And I joke about when the movie Footloose came out, I was in high school, was not allowed to see it because I was living in Footloose.
	Somebody got a VHS copy.
	People will have to Google that.
	And we watched it at someone's house in their VCR.
	And I remember I didn't tell my parents, like, I got to see Footloose because I was living it.
	So that's really how I grew up.
	And you really did lead an extraordinarily clean life.
	I mean, for somebody who's in sort of public life, this is considered taboo now.
	I mean, as a person who, you know, was religious also from youth, who is an outspoken virgin until marriage, as somebody who believes in those sort of social standards, it's unique to read a book where somebody talks about...
	All those same sorts of values.
	You went to Liberty University.
	You're somebody who took your faith seriously.
	You also talk about how, when you were in college, you originally started not at Liberty University.
	You took some classes over at Florida State.
	And you talk a little bit about maybe what that clash of values was like.
	It was interesting.
	I grew up in Tallahassee, so I had a full ride to Florida State academically, and it made sense to stay home and be in Florida and be close to my family and go to college basically for free.
	But my parents were very open.
	Listen, if you want to go to a place like Liberty where you're going to get an education, but you're also going to have people investing in your faith and allowing you to grow in that the whole time, we're open to that too, even though I knew financially it would be tougher for them for me to do that.
	So, I did take classes right out of high school at Florida State.
	It's a great university, but I realized that very first class that I had in psychology that there were going to be serious questions about my faith.
	We were asked to write about the most important thing in our lives, and I talked about my relationship with God, and I had a professor who wasn't Nasty about it, but was sort of patronizing, like, you'll get over that at some point.
	Like, this is not legit.
	And I remember thinking, I'm 17.
	I'm going off into the world.
	Is this what I want to do for the next four years?
	Or do I want to have another four years of kind of really rooting myself in my faith?
	And Liberty has very interesting classes that are required for everybody to take that are kind of apologetics classes and really questioning and digging into the doubts about your faith and learning the other side of the argument.
	And I thought, I think I'll do four more years of that before I get into the world that's going to constantly be questioning the most important thing in my life.
	One of the things that I found interesting in the book, and I found this is to be a common thread, you know, for a lot of the folks that I interview who are very successful, is that you were bullied and not treated great back when you were in high school.
	And now it's funny because whenever you see people who are super successful and they say, well, I was bullied back in high school, people tend to think, no, that's not right.
	Especially somebody like you, you were, you know, in the Miss, you're the winner of the Miss USA pageant.
	How were you bullied in high school?
	How's that even a possibility?
	What was it like to be bullied?
	How do you think that shaped you as a person?
	I will say I had a really great environment in that it was a high school where I had a lot of friends.
	I was always sort of on the fringe.
	I felt like I wasn't cool.
	I was sort of a nerd, partially because my mom was omnipresent at everything that I was ever trying to do, and giving out detentions and stuff to the cool kids in school, so there were times when it was hard to try to be cool at all.
	I was a voracious reader, so I had, you know, these thick glasses.
	I was one of those little kids.
	I'm not sure it was cute, but like second, third grade, wearing glasses.
	Always had a book in my hands.
	I was a bookworm.
	And I joke, but really I think the only reason I had any friends is because we had a pool.
	So people would want to come to our house, hang out at the pool.
	And I might have been in my room reading books, but they're there having a great time jumping around in the pool.
	So I just, and I still, I think, carry this, which I think is a good thing to feel like you're always sort of on the outside a little bit looking in.
	And I felt that way as a kid, and I certainly was not cool.
	There was a very cool girl who ended up being a great friend of mine who lived across the street from me.
	She was a little bit older, didn't have any of the rules that I had, and I thought she was super cool because she listened to all, you know, these hair bands, and they had cable at their house.
	I mean, all these things we never would have had.
	But I remember she used to make fun of me for just how sheltered she thought I was and uncool that I was.
	But I think it makes you get a little bit of a shell and almost a badge of, yeah, I don't have to cave into peer pressure.
	I joke in the book, I didn't have a ton of peers pressuring me to do anything, but I wasn't afraid to kind of be my own person and stand up and kind of be a little bit of an outsider.
	And I still kind of, on the inside, I think I'll always feel that way.
	So in a second, I'm going to ask you about how you got from doing stuff at Liberty University and going on trips to Brazil to do humanitarian aid to doing beauty pageants.
	I'm going to get to that in just one second.
	First, as summer sizzles, do you feel like you are cooking in your clothes, like roasting?
	If you can't handle the heat, it's probably because you need new underwear.
	And Tommy John has the perfect solution.
	Tommy John's innovative, cool cotton underwear for men and women.
	It's a summer must-have.
	It's like your own on-body air conditioner, which you need if you live out in California.
	Tommy John's cool cotton fabric features breathable, lightweight fibers that keep you 2 to 3 times cooler and dry 4 to 5 times faster than regular cotton.
	Tommy John men's and women's underwear sport a no wedgie guarantee.
	That totally would have helped me back in high school.
	All their underwear comes in a range of styles and fabrics that are suited to your entire summer wardrobe.
	The legs never ride up, the waistbands never roll down, their unique design ensures there's no pinching or bunching ever.
	Tommy John is so sure you're gonna love the fit and feel, it's all backed by their best pair you'll ever wear or it's free guarantee.
	That means if you don't love that first pair, you get a full refund.
	Tommy John, no adjustment needed.
	Hurry over to tommyjohn.com slash ben right now to get 20% off your first order.
	That is tommyjohn.com slash ben for 20% off.
	Tommyjohn.com slash ben.
	How do I know they're good?
	Because I'm wearing them right now.
	Tommyjohn.com slash ben.
	All right, so let's talk about your history in beauty pageanting.
	So this, I will admit, this is not a topic I know anything about.
	So maybe you can explain sort of the appeal of it.
	Like what got you into this in the first place?
	Yeah, when I was a little kid, I'd watch Miss America with my mom and my grandma, and I thought it was so glamorous.
	And I thought, how do these people have it so together?
	You know, these sparkly evening gowns, they look perfect.
	They know everything about solving world peace.
	They have all these great ideas.
	I just thought, these are like otherworldly beings.
	I think this is really exciting.
	And as I got older, I learned a lot more about the Miss America pageant, that it actually, most of the winnings that you would have are paid in scholarship, where you actually then, if you have scholarship money, you have to submit to them, you know, your tuition bills and that kind of thing.
	And it's very much pushed toward getting you to finish your education and get scholarship in the process.
	So for me, I had a guy who cut my hair.
	I talk about him in the book who was running one of these local pageants that fed into Miss America.
	And I'd done one before.
	It was disastrous because during the talent competition, I forgot my piano piece halfway through the total stage fright.
	I thought maybe this pageant thing isn't for me.
	But the guy who cut my hair is like, no, no, no, you should do this again.
	You should try it.
	And I went on to win this little local pageant.
	I go off to Miss Virginia still with this horrible stage fright about playing the piano.
	And it really deepened my prayer life, I say to people, because I was so terrified.
	I'm praying the whole time onto the stage, through the piece, you know, getting through it and just saying, like, God, I know that you've brought me here for a reason, and I have to depend on you in this terrifying situation.
	Which I think a lot of things in life, if they scare you, it's kind of a good idea to try it.
	And that's kind of how I viewed this whole thing.
	And a few months later, I was there in the finals of Miss America, never thinking as a 19-year-old I was going to go from almost falling off the stage with embarrassment and forgetting my piece to being in the finals of Miss America.
	It's like, unlike anything I ever did before, it enabled me to graduate from college with zero debt, which was a huge gift to my family because I come from a modest background.
	But it forced me to go out and travel on my own, speak, really dig into a lot of ideas.
	The very first question I got at Miss America was, there was a KKK rally in Georgia yesterday.
	Is that really what the First Amendment?
	you know, protects.
	And I thought, whoa, OK, we're going to have serious questions and serious discussion.
	And so it's a very thoughtful, engaging process.
	Not for everyone.
	Not everyone wants to walk on stage in a swimsuit and high heels.
	But that was actually the least of my worries.
	The whole rest of the process was much more terrifying to me than walking around in my swimsuit.
	There's been a lot of criticism of the pageant, specifically because of the sort of swimsuit aspect of it, from both sort of the feminist left and also from the social con right.
	People saying, well basically isn't that just skimpy attire?
	Is that appropriate?
	What's your take on whether these pageants should continue to include things like swimsuit competitions?
	I mean, to me, nobody is forcing you to do this.
	if you choose this way potentially to put yourself through school or to, you know, push yourself intellectually to really dig into these issues for a lot of the young women, that's the toughest part is doing the interview and having to dig into questions like the First Amendment or gun control or whatever it is.
	There are a lot of political questions in the pageant now.
	So I think that there are a lot of ways to look at how it pushes you.
	I mean, for me, the physical aspect of it was the least of it.
	It did encourage me to quit being a lazy college student and eating 24-7 and be much more disciplined in that part of my life.
	So it was disciplined across the board, not for everyone.
	I mean, for me, it was, you know, a great option.
	But I know a lot of the programs are trying to, and Miss America especially, are trying to modernize in that they're saying, if you do swimsuit, you could wear activewear if you want to.
	And we're not going to insist that everybody be a skeleton.
	I mean, it's about who you are and what your body is.
	And I think it's been healthy that there's been much more of an acceptance in advertising or the patents or whatever, that people are unique and they have different shape.
	And, you know, you could be positive about whoever you are.
	For me, it took me to a different level of discipline across the board that I needed as a college kid.
	Do you think that when it comes to pageanting that there are serious questions to be asked about objectification of women?
	People treating women simply as sort of pretty objects.
	Yes, there's all of this other aspect.
	There's playing music and people answering political questions.
	But the essence of it is it is a beauty contest.
	It is not just a piano playing contest.
	It isn't the Tchaikovsky competition in Russia.
	Thank goodness.
	I would not have done well with that.
	So what do you make of that particular critique?
	I get it.
	I mean, I completely get it.
	And I understand that we're having important conversations about the role of women and the role of equality and all of those kinds of things.
	So for me, if it's not for you, fantastic.
	I'm not going to play in the NFL.
	I mean, there are different options for different people.
	I say we don't take it away and say, this option is no longer going to be there.
	Because for some young women, it's a lot of fun.
	It's very helpful financially.
	And it's a good option for some people.
	But I get that some people will say, Listen, if you're walking out on the stage in a swimsuit, that's not great for women.
	But do you take that decision away then from women who say, no, for me, it's fun.
	I don't feel pressure and I enjoy doing it.
	I think in the 21st century, we can have all the options on the table.
	If it's not for you, don't do it.
	I mean, it is pretty interesting to see this sort of uniting between, as I say, the social right and sort of the feminist left on a lot of these issues.
	At the same time, there's this move that's been very bizarre in both media and advertising away from basic human standards of beauty, meaning the idea is that We're supposed to pretend that a beauty pageant is no longer a beauty pageant, that basically it is the Tchaikovsky competition and the only way for this stuff to survive is for us to move away from the very idea of a beauty pageant at all.
	It seems to me that if you're going to do a beauty pageant, it seems like beauty should probably be part of it.
	Yeah, and I think you see that now.
	There's a difference in Miss America and Miss USA.
	A lot of people, you know, you hear one and it sounds the same.
	They actually split years ago over an issue related to swimsuits.
	So Miss America is seen as the more academic.
	You have the scholarship fund.
	Miss USA does not apologize.
	I mean, they do swimsuit, evening gown, and an interview portion.
	They're all equal, and they don't shy away from it.
	And for a lot of young women who are aspiring models, actresses, the woman who just won Miss USA is a lawyer.
	I mean, she's actually been through school, educated, and is a practicing lawyer.
	So I think it's an avenue for different people to choose what they want to pursue.
	Miss USA makes no bones about the fact that this is a beauty pageant, this is a competition, but we also have women here who are doctors and lawyers, and if that's what they choose to do, good for them.
	Yeah, I mean, when I was at Harvard Law, one of my friends there was actually a former Miss America winner, Erica Harreld, who ended up running for Congress in Illinois.
	There are an enormous number of qualified women who actually compete in this sort of stuff and are really academically brilliant.
	So speaking of that, you ended up moving on into law, so how did you decide that that was the direction that you wanted to move?
	Well, I was always fascinated by politics and I, you know, it's all intertwined with this idea of our laws and how they come to be and how we decide to navigate our society.
	My dad had always said to me when I was in school, you're going to law school or med school, you're going to pick one.
	I don't want to hear anything about any guys or anything else until you tell me they might as well have been.
	They were sort of like, you pick one of those.
	Listen, med school was not ever going to happen for me for numerous reasons, but law school had no math, and I thought that would be a good option for me.
	I wasn't sure what I would do with it.
	I was very hesitant.
	I thought I want to go into law school.
	I think it'll be a basis for a lot of potential things.
	I don't know if I'll practice, which I did briefly.
	But I had an opportunity to go back home to Florida State in Tallahassee and to go to school basically again for free, get a law degree and then figure out what I was going to do.
	But even before I was out of school, I knew this is not going to be the traditional practice of law isn't what I was going to do the rest of my life.
	And so you ended up moving into TV.
	There are tons of people who actually obviously want to be in TV.
	And I'm sure the question they're all asking is, how do I do this?
	What is the pathway to getting into TV?
	I'm sure there are enormous number of people who want a job just like yours or your job.
	Yeah, one day.
	So how did you get into TV?
	I am honest with people.
	I mean, I went to the bottom of the rung and started there.
	I mean, I wanted to go do an internship.
	I wanted to volunteer at one of the local stations in Tampa where I was practicing law in Florida.
	They said, you can only come in as an intern.
	And I said, OK, well, how do I do that?
	It's got to be for college credit.
	I started calling all of the local universities and schools, like, hey, can I take this credit through you so I can go intern at this?
	Nope, you have to come back here, get your mass comm degree when you get into your third or fourth level of classes, then we'll approve this internship credit.
	And then you can do it.
	And I thought, that's not realistic for me right now.
	So I just kept going.
	No, no, no, no, no.
	I finally get to University of South Florida.
	I get to the dean of the communications school.
	This is a time when faxes are still happening.
	I mean, I'm faxing my transcripts from law school, from college to say, look, I'm a serious person.
	I want to do this.
	Will you help me?
	He was the first person who said, OK, you're driving me crazy because I think if you just wear people down, that's half of it.
	He said, stop faxing me and sending me all this stuff.
	I'll do this for you.
	You have to do a news writing class because you know nothing about that.
	We'll do that.
	But then I'll also approve the credits for you to go intern at night at the station.
	So I did that, and I didn't tell my law firm, and I would go nights and weekends, overnights, whatever I had to do to just go intern there.
	I would go out with photographers, reporters.
	I would work the desk, answer the phone, make coffee.
	I mean, I started at the bottom.
	I was running everybody's errands while practicing law during the day.
	But I loved it.
	I loved being in the newsroom, and I thought, You know, I need to stick with this and figure out what to do here.
	So a few months into it, when the internship was wrapping up, I went to the boss there and said, I'm going to quit my law firm.
	And he's like, uh, no one here has offered you a job.
	I'm like, technicality.
	I feel like this is what I'm going to do.
	So I'm just going to, you know, move down this path.
	And within a few weeks there, they had this overnight position open up 2 a.m.
	to 11 a.m.
	And I took it, and it was, you know, a major salary cut.
	The hours were terrible.
	I felt like I never saw my friends.
	My husband would tell you I was tired all the time, but so happy.
	And so I started at the bottom, and I just, any little job they would let me take on, I learned TV production from being there and doing it.
	I was working the prompter.
	A producer quit, I started producing.
	I mean, it was just one thing after another, and just learning on the job, which is a, you know, sink or swim kind of situation, but it was a great experience.
	Yeah, I mean, that's a very familiar story.
	I finished law school.
	I worked at a law firm for 10 months.
	I hated it.
	I despised it.
	I was about to get married.
	We had just gotten a mortgage on a condo.
	And my wife looked at me and said, you should quit.
	So I quit, and I took a job for one third the pay doing production behind the scenes.
	And that's how everybody starts.
	I mean, it's still good to go to law school.
	I mean, I definitely recommend.
	Folks should continue.
	It teaches you a certain way of thinking that's very useful.
	But don't stick with something that you hate just because there's money behind it.
	Life is too short.
	Yeah, and I had to tell myself, even within the news business, there have been times I've taken promotions or different jobs that were tied to a financial bump.
	And I thought, I knew that wasn't right for me, but I did it for the wrong reasons.
	So I do think you have to follow your passion and what you're going to be excited to get up every day and do.
	So how did you get from local news all the way to Fox News being a national broadcaster?
	Well, I do like to include the story about getting fired from my very first TV job, because the guy who put me on TV left the station.
	The new guy who came in, everybody was freaked out.
	And they said, you don't understand.
	When a new person comes in, they clean house.
	And I'm like, I'm making no money and I'm doing 10 jobs here and loving it.
	I have a great attitude.
	Like, I'm safe.
	No, you're not safe.
	When I got called in and the head of HR was sitting there, I literally for a second thought, they're promoting me.
	No, the head of HR is sitting there.
	That's not happening.
	And the guy said to me, you're the worst person I've ever seen on TV.
	You will never make it in this business.
	I don't know why anyone put you on television.
	It was humiliating.
	And I cried.
	I literally went into a soundproof at a bay and cried.
	It was so humiliated.
	It took months and months and months for me to get anyone to return my calls.
	I applied for jobs all over the country.
	Eventually, I landed at a wonderful station in Charlotte, North Carolina.
	Worked there three years, then went to D.C.
	to work for the NBC affiliate.
	While I was there, Fox had exploded, and I was sending my work there.
	Couldn't get an interview.
	Nobody cared because they get a thousand resumes a day.
	And so, my husband, who handles professional speakers, had booked Brit Hume for an event.
	It was a breakfast event.
	And he said, you need to come with me tomorrow morning.
	He'll be there.
	Maybe we can talk to him.
	I'd worked the late news the night before.
	I did not want to do it.
	I got up that morning, had a huge zit on my face.
	Like, this is not a good first impression.
	I don't want to go.
	My husband convinces me to go.
	So we get there.
	Britt's waiting backstage in the green room.
	So he's sort of a captive audience.
	The program's running behind.
	A little ways into that, my husband says, you may not know Britt.
	If you recognize my wife, she is a local anchor here in D.C.
	And Britt's like, oh, very nice.
	What would you like to do long term?
	And this was my moment of truth.
	And I just said, I want to come work for you at Fox.
	And he was like, that's nice.
	It was sort of like a light blow off.
	He's like, people say that to me all the time.
	I'm not sure they understand exactly what we do or how it's done.
	But send your stuff over.
	Maybe I can give you some advice, some career advice.
	I'm a little embarrassed.
	I leave the room, sort of take a walk.
	The guys are there talking.
	While I'm gone, he says to Sheldon, my husband, do you think that or does she like politics?
	What does she like to cover?
	And he said, well, when she was in law school, she worked in the Florida Speaker's office.
	And he said, law school?
	Did she finish?
	My husband's like, yeah, she graduated with honors.
	Britt says to him, do you think she would want to cover the Supreme Court for Fox News?
	And my husband's sort of like, I won't speak for her, but I think that would probably be a yes.
	So I come back in the room five, ten minutes later, and Britt literally says to me, when can you start?
	And I'm like, I don't know what just happened here for the past five, ten minutes, but I should be paying my husband the agency fee that we're paying to my agent.
	And from there, it was, you know, there were several months in there where I was still under contract with NBC, where I'm trying to work things out to get to Fox.
	Didn't think it was going to happen numerous times.
	It looked like it wouldn't come together.
	And I had to sort of let go of the process.
	And eventually, when my contract was up with NBC, I went over to Fox, thanks to Brit Hume, and I've been there ever since.
	So I want to ask you about the Supreme Court beat, what that was like in just one second.
	But first, with the ever-increasing number of car makes and models, it's now impossible to stock all the parts you need in a traditional chain storefront.
	Why endure often pointless or seemingly intimidating questioning like, is your Odyssey an LX or an EX?
	And wait while the counterman orders the parts on his computer, choosing the only brand his warehouse happens to carry.
	This seems like a bad deal, especially because you have computers with access to rockauto.com at home and in your pocket.
	RockAuto.com is a family business, serving auto parts customers online for 20 years.
	Go to RockAuto.com to shop for auto and body parts from hundreds of manufacturers.
	They have everything from engine control modules and brake parts to tail lamps, motor oil, even new carpet.
	Whether it's for your classic or daily driver, get everything you need in a few easy clicks delivered directly to your door.
	The RockAuto.com catalog is unique.
	It is super easy to navigate.
	Quickly see all the parts available for your vehicle.
	Choose the brands, specifications, and prices you prefer.
	Best of all, prices at RockAuto.com are always reliably low.
	And the same for professionals and do-it-yourselfers.
	Amazing selection.
	Reliably low prices.
	All the parts your car will ever need.
	Go to RockAuto.com.
	Go to RockAuto.com right now.
	See all the parts available for your car or truck.
	Write Shapiro in their How Did You Hear About Us box so they know we sent you because that's how you heard about them.
	Right, Shapiro?
	In that How Did You Hear About Us box at rockauto.com.
	So, let's talk about what it was like to cover the Supreme Court.
	Obviously, the Supreme Court has become an incredible hot button, certainly over the course of my lifetime.
	I really think it's been exacerbated really since Roe versus Wade, but even in the last 15 or 20 years, it seems to have become the number one issue on a lot of people's radar.
	Many people attribute President Trump's victory to the fact that there was an open Supreme Court seat and that was Scalia's seat.
	So, what was it like to cover the Supreme Court?
	How political was it at the time?
	When I first got started, I realized how much I had to learn.
	The very first giant case I covered over there was dealing with Guantanamo Bay, the rights of various prisoners there.
	It had been back and forth through the federal court system numerous times, and I just tried to read the record and get ready for covering it there at the Supreme Court.
	I was like, whoa, this is a whole different level of reporting.
	It's a tough beat to cover because there are almost zero leaks over there.
	I mean, anyone who's clerking there, they're not going to blow up their entire legal career giving you information.
	It's not like Congress where people are like, Here, I've got stuff I want you to talk about that I want to leave to you.
	It's completely the opposite.
	But I loved it because it was an intellectual challenge for me.
	I was getting to use that law background doing it.
	I just knew I had a lot of work to do to get up to speed over there.
	So it was a little overwhelming in the beginning.
	It's a very austere place, and they don't mess around over there.
	But I've really enjoyed getting to know the various justices as much as you can, really trying to figure out how their brains work, how you think they're going to vote.
	Um, and really interpreting the oral arguments because there are a lot of them that lay booby traps on both sides and they want to play devil's advocates.
	You don't know how they're going to vote.
	Um, so yeah, I mean it has become highly political, which I don't think is what the founders ever intended for the judicial branch at all.
	I think it's morphed into something that's probably away from the original intentions.
	But covering the confirmation hearings, I should say battles over the last several years, I've never seen anything like what happened with the Kavanaugh situation.
	I mean, I've covered, that's probably my fifth one.
	There was nothing ever like that before.
	And I think even just, you know, you think about to, you know, Justice Kennedy, who was, you know, such a, at the end, you know, the swing vote, he hated that term.
	He was confirmed 97 to nothing.
	I mean, those days are gone.
	I can't imagine us doing that.
	Years ago, they would confirm by voice vote.
	Now, it's a totally different process, and I think the whole thing has been so politicized.
	I think it's a little bit off the rails.
	What did you think of how the Kavanaugh hearings broke down?
	I mean, obviously, that was probably the biggest hot-button issue of the last five to ten years in American politics, maybe even surpassing the 2016 election itself.
	How do you think that ended up playing out?
	Yeah, I mean, I truly have never seen anything like that, because it was there in the room, and it became apparent within 10 seconds of then-chairman Grassley starting the hearing, it was not going to be a normal hearing at all, whether it was from the dais, from the various members, or the audience and the seats for the public.
	We literally from our vantage point that we're at as we're broadcasting sort of in skyboxes overlooking the area we could look down and we'd see each group that they brought in and you could immediately we'd started playing sort of bingo on the protesters like that one's gonna pop up that one's gonna pop up it was and I mean the first day it was so jarring because it happens so often by day three we were sort of like There's another protester.
	Capitol Police, very good with informing people.
	If you do this, here's what's going to happen.
	Quickly taking them out and moving on with the hearings.
	But then when we started to get the fallout from the letter that came in with Senator Feinstein revealing it, all of that that played out over the next few weeks, it just got so vitriolic.
	There were times that people did not feel safe.
	I'm talking about senators trying to get to the floor to vote.
	You saw it happen.
	I mean, regardless of what side they were on, there were a lot of people who were very upset.
	I've never seen people that emotional about anything I've covered.
	That's certainly the most emotional topic or story that I've seen where people just were relentless about it.
	I mean, it has become really blood sport and it must be difficult for you.
	I mean, you're a woman at Fox News, which means that You're going to be shellacked by the media for having the temerity to be a woman at Fox News.
	What is that like?
	I mean, now that it seems like every issue is being broken down into a certain sort of sexual politics, where women are expected to be on one side and men are expected to be on another.
	And Kavanaugh is an example of this, where it must have been that if you were a woman and you thought that there were holes in Christine Blasey Ford's story, then you were being disloyal to women.
	Even if you objectively covered that, you were being disloyal to women.
	How did you deal with that?
	Well, it's tricky because as a woman who's had a few Me Too moments myself in my life, my legal career and beyond, but also being a lawyer, I thought, we've got to be really careful about this because I'm 100% in favor, as every American I think should be, in the idea of due process.
	No one in this country should be accused without the opportunity to defend themselves and to have some due process.
	This was different because it's not a court proceeding.
	You know, people would say it's the most glorified job interview in the world.
	So I definitely had very serious concerns about due process, but as a woman who has been through some of these things, I thought, we need to hear from this person, and we need to allow senators to make informed decisions about who she is and where she's coming from.
	But as we started to get in that second and third and fourth tier of people who are now sending in anonymous letters, that he and his friend had sexually assaulted them multiple times in a car, but I can't name myself, the guy who got in trouble for sending in a false report about something, Um, saying that a woman was on a boat with Kavanaugh and she called him for help.
	I mean, it just got to be preposterous.
	We're like, now we're losing sight of the core story, the person who is willing to come here under oath and tell her story, his side of the story, as we're now, you know, Michael Avenatti gets into it.
	We have the Julie Swetnick's.
	I mean, it turned into such a circus that I think people lost the ability to be objective about a lot of it because it became completely political and not about the substance of what was being discussed.
	So I want to ask you about some of those Me Too experiences.
	So obviously this has become a hot button issue again in the country.
	It seems like this has really ratcheted up since 2012 when Mitt Romney, the most anodyne human being ever to walk the earth, was supposedly waging a war on women and then that was revived obviously during 2016 when President Trump, who was not anodyne, was running for President of the United States and Hillary Clinton sort of revived that.
	So you've been in the TV industry, which is not Well, I mean, there's some, you know, there's the funny subtle stuff that is not a sexual assault, but it makes you very aware of some gender stereotypes and things.
	I can remember as a young attorney that I was conducting a deposition and the person came in that day with their lawyer.
	I met them out front and they said, tell Mr. Breen that I'm here and please get me some coffee.
	And I'm like, It's Mrs. Bream, and I'll see about getting you some coffee.
	I mean, there's just those subtle things.
	And probably most of that had to do with the fact that I was so young and baby-faced as a new attorney, like, I'm going to be the one deposing you today.
	There were times that we would show up for a deposition for something else, and there's somebody there that maybe we were representing the company that they worked for, and they were being accused of sexual harassment.
	The way that they treated me when I walked in the door, I thought, might be true.
	You might want to settle this case.
	I mean, there's just that stuff that happens, like, yikes, this may not be your best character witness here.
	Um, but there were, you know, there were times over the years where I've been put in situations that were uncomfortable.
	There were discussions about my body or about being more sexual or being more sexy on TV.
	I mean, those conversations are uncomfortable and you have to navigate them carefully as a woman.
	I'd been a sexual harassment attorney when I was sitting in those conversations and I'm thinking, okay, there are lines I'm not going to cross.
	How close am I to that line?
	Because my career does matter to me.
	I think there's a way to, as a woman, navigate this carefully, to respectfully use comedy or humor to get myself out of this situation, not offending the person who is now making a decision about my career, but also maintaining my own dignity.
	And sometimes it's a really thin line to walk.
	Yeah.
	How do you decide where exactly that line ought to be?
	We've spoken with a bunch of women on the show before and asked the same sort of question.
	Women who... Carly Fiorina was sitting in this chair a few weeks ago and she was talking about some of her experiences in the business world with this sort of sexism.
	And I asked her, so how do you deal with the person across from you?
	Do you seek to diffuse?
	Do you seek to elevate?
	At what point do you say, okay, well, I can't work here anymore.
	How do you draw those lines?
	Yeah, and that's so frustrating to me as a woman, because you feel like you shouldn't have to make that decision.
	I mean, you shouldn't be put in that place.
	But also, if you're being realistic about some conditions, and I think, listen, in the last five years or so, that's wildly changed, that companies are having extreme makeovers with the way that they handle HR, giving women a place to report, and so I think there's been such a disinfectant of sunlight, which is fantastic for all women, and men get harassed too.
	I mean, we have to be honest, I've seen those cases, plenty of them, in my career as well.
	Um, so I think that the more we can decide personally where we're going to draw a line.
	For me, it was, you know, I talk about Roger Ailes in the book and the fact that he was a dichotomy like everybody.
	He was incredibly generous to people who were in trouble or ill or had emergencies in their life.
	He was a TV genius, but there was the side of him too, that for me, I had to deal with some really uncomfortable conversations and I kept going back and having those conversations because it was part of a regular part of my career to meet with him and to advocate for myself, to take on new assignments and do things.
	But there came a point to me where I felt like there was a moment where he said, let's talk about you having a show.
	And I thought, fantastic.
	I talk about in the book how I put together this folder of all of my ideas.
	It was very mapped out and specific.
	And I went in there to talk to him.
	I had the folder.
	He immediately kind of tossed the folder aside where I realized we're not going to have a conversation about the show.
	That's drawing me back into another one of these uncomfortable conversations with him.
	And I said, It may jettison my career, but at this point, I have to draw the line here and say I'm not going to have these uncomfortable meetings with him anymore.
	And so for the last two years, he was at Fox.
	I never saw him again in person.
	And I thought, I can live with that because for me, it's gone to my my breaking point, which is no more of this.
	And I love my job as a Supreme Court correspondent.
	If that's the last thing I do at Fox, I will have been blessed.
	And I love it.
	And I left it there.
	And I never saw him again after that last meeting, where for me, that was the line in the sand.
	I don't mean to get gossipy, but I think I'd be remiss if I didn't ask what those uncomfortable conversations were like, or what exactly the content of those was.
	Well, he would talk about the need to be more sexy on TV.
	The conversation he would use is, people need to think if they went on a date with you, it'd be a good time.
	Because right now, that's not the vibe I'm getting from you.
	I'm kind of getting like church lady vibe, which is me.
	I kind of give off a church lady vibe, and I'm okay with that.
	And I think he understood the medium of television and he knew what audiences wanted in a way that sometimes you had to think, okay, as a journalist, am I okay with this?
	Yes, I can dress differently than when I was a lawyer and I wore a black suit to court every day.
	So, okay, that's the step I can take.
	I need to dress more colorfully.
	I need to be more imaginative about that.
	But if I have to try to do the news in a way that's also me flirting with the audience, no, that's not okay with me.
	You can have a wink and a nod about a funny topic or story here and there, but I didn't want to come across as provocative or somebody who was trying to be sexually alluring while delivering the news.
	That just wasn't something that works for me as a combination.
	It's been really fascinating to watch everybody trying to navigate the new lines.
	As a social conservative and somebody who is very strict on these matters myself, I'm pretty comfortable as a social conservative with a lot of the new lines that are being drawn.
	At the same time, one of the things that I see is that there's almost a virtue that is attached to claiming for some people that they've been victimized more than they've been victimized.
	The other week I was with my wife and we were at Disneyland with my kids.
	We're walking down the street and there was this big fat homeless guy sitting on the side of the street and he's wearing a beanie with a marijuana symbol on it.
	And I figure, okay, well this guy probably is not, you know, vice president at Chase Manhattan Bank.
	And we're walking by and he turns to my wife, who's an attractive woman, and as she walks by he goes, oh girl, don't do that.
	And my wife turns to me and she goes, still got it.
	I mean, I agree with you.
	I had a guy on the metro in DC offer to pay my rent.
	So I was like, I haven't heard that one before, but does that apply to mortgages?
	Because I'm never going to be offended.
	And I will get emails from people, even friends or people that I don't know, who will say like, I love that dress you had on tonight.
	You look really great.
	Am I getting in trouble for saying that?
	I'm not one of those people who cares about that.
	Yeah, I would like to think at almost 50 that people think I look sort of cute, so I'm fine with that.
	And if somebody walking down the street is, you know, salacious is another thing, but to get an admiring glance or something like that, I don't know what woman, well no, some women will be offended by that.
	I'm not one of them.
	I mean, sure, if it crosses the line into something super sexual, not okay.
	But for me, that even I have male friends that have to worry about whether they can say that something looks nice or how I feel, you know, I'm hoping that the pendulum will equalize somewhere where people can feel comfortable saying nice things to a friend or a woman that's in their life that they are an acquaintance with and not feeling like they have to be hypersensitive.
	Good for your wife.
	So you have obviously a very demanding career.
	You also have a family.
	How do you balance the needs of that?
	I mean, you're doing a show at 11 p.m.
	on the East Coast.
	That's really rough.
	My wife has bad hours because she's a doctor, but eventually that will end and she'll finish residency and she'll choose her own hours.
	How have you been able to balance those demands?
	Well, I'm a night owl, so that for me works really well.
	I was, for about a year, doing the morning show with Bill Hemmer, who I adore, in New York.
	That meant I was up at 4.30, which, those are not my hours.
	A.M.?
	4.30 P.M., sure.
	So, when they came to me and said, we really want you to launch this nighttime news show at 11, I thought, I'm awake then.
	That's great for me.
	So, it works really well for me, just, you know, biologically.
	And I also have a husband that I've been married for, we've been married for almost 24 years.
	And so he's been through everything with me, the doing the law and hating it every day of my life, getting up, as I'm sure your wife saw with you, going to do it, getting fired, moving around the country.
	I mean, I couldn't have done any of this without him.
	And so we don't have kids.
	And I talk about that in the book because I get asked that question a lot.
	So I explain it in the book.
	Um, but the two of us, you know, we kind of try to be each other's biggest cheerleaders and biggest supporters.
	We disagree and have arguments like everybody does, but we try to remember we're on the same team.
	And so that means that sometimes when I have crazy hours and I travel, he comes with me when he can or he makes sure that our house does not completely implode in disaster when I'm not there, you know.
	He's a guy who's great at all things that I'm not good at, which are cooking, grocery shopping, laundry.
	I can put it in there and get it started, but we're very much a team, and I don't think I could have done any of this without him.
	How did you meet?
	We met in school at Liberty University undergrad.
	We had friends who were constantly trying to put us together.
	We were always dating other people.
	Not that I dated anyone before him, but hypothetically.
	Um, but, um, we had friends kept trying to put us together, and so finally our senior year, we were at this homecoming sort of football game, my parents were there, he was there, my friend who really was instrumental in putting us together came to me and she's like, you are meeting him today!
	So she dragged him over to me, I think, and I was with my family, and I joke about it.
	I love my mom and stepdad.
	My stepfather is very unique.
	His name is Jasper.
	And so when my husband, I met him that day formally, and we had friends in common, but to really meet him, I'm standing there with my stepdad, who is a unique character, and I'm thinking, he's already met my very interesting stepdad on day one of this not even being on a date yet.
	And so I thought, if he can make it through that gauntlet on this very first meeting, There might be something to it.
	Now, we were still dating other people at that time, so nothing came of it.
	But our final semester in school, we were both single and available.
	And I, at that point, had determined, I'm leaving.
	I know I'm going home to law school.
	I'm tired of having my heart broken by the last guy that I dated.
	I'm just going to date like a guy.
	And I'm not going to get emotionally attached, maybe a nice dinner out, something like that.
	That's it.
	And he played baseball, and a lot of the players on the team kind of had this player reputation for not being the most wholesome guys in the world.
	A couple of them rightfully earned.
	But what I found on our first date with him is that it wasn't accurate for him.
	And he turned out to be this guy of deep faith, wonderful family background, very family-oriented.
	And I kind of knew very early on, like, this guy is marriage material.
	This is a serious thing.
	I'm going off to law school.
	What do I do?
	And I think when you fall in love with somebody, you really can't help that.
	He says he went home that night after our first date and told his roommates we were going to get married.
	He didn't tell me that for a little while, but I think that I knew right away it was something different, too.
	Yeah, that is every story that I hear is basically the guy knows almost immediately and then at least this is what it was with my wife as well.
	I knew like right away that I was going to marry my wife and then it took her a little while longer.
	But you got to the same place.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Every so often I'll look at her and I'll say, Yeah, that's right.
	Eventually it came around.
	You won her over.
	Yeah, exactly.
	I mean, we have two kids now, so it's too late.
	It's working.
	She can't get out.
	We're at 11 years in July, so she cannot get out.
	Congrats.
	So, you opened your book talking about this health crisis that you had with your site and how your faith helped get you through it.
	I was wondering if you could tell that story.
	Yeah, I've been struggling for a long time with a genetic eye condition that I have, and I didn't know.
	I mean, it took me almost two years to actually get diagnosed.
	What I knew was I'd started waking up in the middle of the night with excruciating pain that, I mean, literally makes me jump out of bed.
	I mean, it was as if somebody were stabbing my eye.
	It seemed so strange when it first started happening because it was very infrequent, became more and more frequent.
	My first original eye doctor was like, I can't help you, but I think we need to get you to a specialist to figure this out.
	I went to that next specialist, spent a few months with him.
	It got to the point where it was nearly every night.
	So I dreaded going to sleep because I knew for whatever reason this was happening overnight.
	So I'm exhausted.
	I'm now living in chronic pain, double vision a lot, migraines, everything that was triggered by what was happening with my eyes.
	Trying to hide it from everybody and do my job because I had no words for it.
	I had no diagnosis.
	So, after a couple of visits to this specialist, I went back to him and I was really just barely holding it together at this point.
	I'm like 18 months into not sleeping, chronic pain, and he says to me, you know what, I just think you're really emotional.
	And I thought, yeah, I am.
	Because my world is like, I'm barely holding it together at this point.
	I left there and felt so discouraged that he couldn't help me and that it was sort of suggested that I was nuts, that for a long time I didn't go back to the doctor.
	So I'm living in this constant cycle of excruciating pain, chronic sleep deprivation, and that gets you to a really bad place because I'm now almost two years into it.
	Start searching online, which I say don't do for a health condition, because you'll find out you have like 17 seconds to live, and that's it.
	It's all over.
	So, I was just trying to find people with similar symptoms so I could get an answer, and I would stumble into these message boards and chat boards where other people would say, yeah, I've been turned away from the emergency room 10 times, nobody can tell me, no one can help me, and they, you know, would talk about ending their lives.
	And I thought, that actually sounds like a huge relief.
	I'd gotten to the point where I was into my 40s then, and I thought, I can't make it another 40 years like this.
	I can't make it 40 seconds some days.
	I'm barely able to keep it together.
	And I thought, that just sounds like such a relief.
	Like, if I could just go to sleep and not wake up.
	And I really started to think it through a little bit.
	What would it do to my family?
	What would it do to the people that I loved?
	And that sort of shocked me a little bit too, logically and intellectually, knowing that's not the choice you want to make.
	But it was in such a bad state emotionally.
	And I think when you're physically exhausted too, it exacerbates everything.
	And I went to my husband and said, listen, I'm really at the lowest point.
	And he was the only one who had any clue what was happening.
	And he said, we're going to find you a doctor.
	We're going to start from scratch.
	We're going to do this.
	And I remember praying so many times, Lord, if you're not going to heal me, please just send me to the right person who can help me.
	Because sometimes God has a different plan than we do.
	And I thought, maybe not healing me.
	That's not part of it.
	So I worked to find another doctor.
	Within a couple of days, I found this fantastic cornea specialist in D.C.
	And I called, and I said, keep it together.
	Don't act crazy.
	Don't cry on this phone call.
	And the lady said to me, can you hold on?
	She came back and said, we've got a cancellation for tomorrow.
	Can you make it?
	And I said, just one more night, God.
	I'm just praying.
	Get me through this night.
	Let this guy help me tomorrow.
	I get there, and his assistant, who does the initial assessment, does all the write-up.
	He walks in having read that, and he's like, I know what you have.
	And it really, for the first time in two years, I felt like this little sprout of hope.
	Like, somebody finally is going to help me.
	He says, let me look at your eyes, but I'm almost 100% sure.
	He goes through and he's like, yep, this is what you have.
	It's a genetic condition.
	As we go through the appointment, he eventually says to me, just so you know, there's no cure.
	And I completely lost it.
	I don't remember even checking out.
	I remember running back to my car.
	I was filling in for Brett Baer that night on the 6 o'clock show.
	I had to get back.
	And I remember getting in the car and just sobbing and sobbing and sobbing and saying, like, God, why?
	Like, I can't continue living like this.
	And I really just thought, I'm going to just drive my car off a bridge.
	I mean, I can't function this way anymore.
	And I was praying and crying, and I remember, I say to people, I don't feel like I've audibly heard the voice of God, but I remember feeling in my spirit Him saying, I will be with you.
	Not, I'm going to heal you, I'm going to take this away, life's going to be perfect, but I'm going to walk through this with you.
	And it was such a calming thing because it felt like I heard from Him.
	And I drove back to work, got through that day.
	Eventually went back to the doctor and he said, I don't want you to miss what I'm saying.
	I can't heal you.
	There's no cure for this, but we can manage it.
	And eventually years later, what that meant was having the surgery that I put off and put off and put off.
	And the prognosis was, I'm going to work on your corneas, do this thing, but while I'm there, I'm going to correct your vision as well.
	It's the same time I'm launching this new 11 o'clock show for Fox.
	And I'm like, great.
	I have a couple of weeks off camera.
	He says, within a couple of weeks, most patients have their vision better than it's ever been.
	It's going to be great.
	I quickly realized, first of all, it was an excruciating pain for the recovery.
	It's just part of it.
	But I couldn't see.
	I mean, I could see blobs.
	I couldn't drive.
	I couldn't read my phone.
	I couldn't read my computer.
	I couldn't recognize people's faces.
	I completely shut down and kind of went into a shell because I thought, I can't even say hi to people in the hall because they're blobs walking by.
	I don't know who this is.
	So I talk about in the book, during that I had been booked to speak at a conference, a Christian conference, and I wanted to cancel because I thought, this is ridiculous.
	I can't even, I don't, how am I going to get there?
	I can't see.
	And so I went to my husband looking for affirmation of wanting to cancel this thing, but I didn't get that from him.
	And he said, Nope, I think you should go.
	I think you should be honest.
	These are people of faith.
	And they're going to want to hear this and be supportive of you." And he was right.
	Just navigating the airport I talk about in the book, I mean, I couldn't see.
	I'm asking people to help me to get from gate to gate, and I'm just really emotional about not being able to see.
	I go on the stage to speak.
	I can't see.
	They're like, hey, just look at the clock in the back.
	You need to wrap up at this time.
	And I'm like, I can't see the clock in the back.
	I can't see people's face in the audience.
	My mom met me there to be my seeing-eye human for the weekend to get me through this thing, and I just leveled with people.
	I was honest in that speech, like, hey, I'm not here to make fun of myself and be funny like I usually am.
	Like, I'm struggling, but I'm hoping that you all will understand this, and I'm relying on God because I know there's purpose in this.
	It makes you more empathetic when you go through things like that, and He's teaching me something, so I get this moment that I'm in.
	When it was over, People lined up down the aisles just to hug me, to pray with me, to cry with me, to tell me about their own struggles and say like, hey, I'm in a terrible place too.
	And it was a greatest blessing just being vulnerable and honest with people about how much I was struggling.
	And I hadn't looked at it that way, but it made me realize I hate being vulnerable.
	I want to be independent and do everything myself.
	I came out of the womb that way.
	But you got to lean on other people sometimes.
	And if you don't give them the gift of being honest about how you're struggling, then they don't get the gift, I think, of helping you.
	I think that's one of the most beautiful things about the book, Finding the Bright Side, is that you actually do talk about this sort of stuff, because if you happen to be a strong person, it seems like you seem like a congenitally happy person, a person who just, by nature, every time I've met you, you've been upbeat, that people think, therefore, that you haven't suffered, that you don't have to struggle with these things.
	The fact that you are willing to openly struggle with these things, I think, is a good reminder to folks that just because somebody is happy doesn't mean that they're not struggling to be happy, or that if you have struggles, you can't be happy.
	Yeah, and that's what I hope people will be encouraged in it because everybody, if you haven't been there, you'll be there.
	A sudden death of someone you love, a terrible health diagnosis, losing your job, financial trouble, just struggles in relationships, whatever it is, we're all going to be in a valley at some point.
	And because people do think I'm so happy all the time, I thought it was important to tell some really tough stories in the book and say, I've been in that valley.
	There are ways to work through it.
	You will come out the other side.
	Life doesn't always go as we plan.
	There's plenty of pain in the process, but I think there's purpose in it.
	I'm way more empathetic to people now living with chronic pain or mental health issues because I've been there.
	I think it makes you look at people differently, like you have no idea what's going on with them.
	I remember at one point being on a treadmill and running and thinking like, yeah, I could burst into tears at any moment with all these things I'm struggling with.
	The person next to me has no idea.
	What if that person feels the same way?
	The person who cut me off in traffic, which I hate.
	I'm a little crazy behind the wheel myself.
	But who knows what they're rushing off to do?
	I mean, we have to give each other a little bit more leeway and a little bit more respect and love because everybody's struggling with something.
	So let's get back to you covering stories and journalism.
	So you talked about the difficulties of covering the Kavanaugh hearings.
	What was the hardest story you had to cover?
	And what hardest for you personally?
	I think sometimes where you've been at the site of devastation.
	I mean, I've covered tornadoes and, you know, storms, Superstorm Sandy, things like that, where you see people who utterly feel like they've lost everything or they're just looking around themselves and their life, at least the physical part of their life, seems to be in shambles.
	I mean, that's, Really difficult.
	I had a story one time when I was a local reporter in D.C.
	about a woman who had been out walking, an older woman, and she had been, there was a hit and run, and police were searching for this person.
	She had been killed in that accident.
	And as a reporter, you know, you have to go to the family and go knock on the door.
	I got there, and it became quickly apparent to me as I started talking to her husband, he did not know yet.
	And we were the first ones to arrive on the scene.
	His kids weren't even there yet.
	And those moments make you stop and think about humanity and just how precious life is and how people, we can report on these stories every day.
	People's lives are being devastated by the things that we report on, whether it's a shooting or anything else, a natural disaster.
	So I think things that force you back to the humanity of the people that you're covering so they aren't just another story that you read in the prompter, but you're actually seeing them and seeing the devastation to them.
	I think as a reporter, those are the hardest things to show up and see people in enormous grief.
	It's interesting being in sort of the political business and covering the news.
	Every so often I sit around wondering, am I really just sort of in the gossip business?
	Because it seems like a lot of what we do these days is just covering whatever gossip is happening without really thinking about how it impacts people's lives.
	What gets you up in the morning to do what you do for a living when it seems like half the stuff that we have to cover is just minutia or errata of the day?
	I'm super curious.
	You probably are too.
	You strike me as that kind of person where I want to know what's the real story behind the story.
	So I feel like every day we're going to have, we know what guests we have on, we know certain things that we're covering.
	I want to get people off their talking points and find out what's really going on.
	So much of DC is political theater.
	I think the best example of that was a few weeks ago when Speaker Pelosi and Attorney General Barr were at this event and behind the scenes they see each other and he jokes to her about whether she's brought her handcuffs, like she's going to throw them in the jail over at the Capitol.
	And she makes a joke back, well, the sergeant at arms is here, so if I need to arrest anyone, I can.
	That's a typical D.C.
	thing.
	People will be at these events or cocktail parties, and they're fine.
	But the minute you put them in front of a camera, there's a partisan agenda, and that people have to be mad at each other, where, truthfully, they're very chummy, a lot of them, and when they see each other socially, it's fine.
	So I think knowing that a lot of this is for show, it's for the rest of us, and kind of digging to see what's really behind it, what the real policy is, what the real motivations are, because there's always a secret motivation behind a lot of these stories and the reasons that people introduce a bill or vote for a bill or don't vote for a bill.
	So to me, what gets me up is digging to find the story behind the actual headline to see what's really going on.
	They've covered politicians forever, so do you think that they are more or less honest than they are portrayed in the media?
	Oh, I think that's tough.
	You know, my dad used to always joke, like, lawyers are the worst rated people, I think, behind dentists, as far as, like, how the public feels about them.
	And then there's journalists.
	So he's like, really, you're leaving law and now becoming a journalist?
	People feel this way about politicians.
	I think that what's so funny is you always see the approval rating for Congress is, like, 18 percent or something like that.
	But when you ask people about their member, it's way higher.
	So I think they're frustrated with the institution and see that it's paralyzed and doesn't get a lot done.
	But when you talk to them about the person that represents them, a lot of times they're like, well, that's different.
	My person is different.
	And I think we've talked about this.
	A lot of politicians away from the camera are great people that you'd want to hang out and go to lunch with them or hang out with their families.
	But I think something happens sometimes in front of the cameras.
	They feel an obligation to have a certain talking point or to be a certain way.
	I do think there are good people on both sides of the aisle who generally are driven by their faith, their own moral compass.
	Um, that they genuinely believe in and that they want to make a difference in a positive way, I think that's the minority.
	And I think a lot of other people are on the Hill for a lot of other reasons, or they go there with good intentions, but they get caught up in the whole thing.
	I mean, I'm personally a fan of the idea of discussing term limits.
	I think America should have that conversation.
	Um, it would require amending the constitution, which is not easily done.
	Um, you know, so I don't know.
	I think a lot of people get there and they get enamored of the whole thing and it's, Since we're both members of the media, how do you think the media climate has contributed to this?
	So if it used to be, I've said forever that people say, well if you were president what would you do?
	I'd say basically make it so that, I thought Rick Perry's line was the best, make it so that Washington D.C.
	is irrelevant to your life.
	So you don't care who's the president, you don't care who's in Congress because they're not bothering you all the time.
	But the media, because we cover this stuff incessantly because we're on top of it all the time, how much are we magnifying the conflict and making the conflict worse as opposed to helping to get people behind the news that they're seeing?
	Yeah, I think sometimes we have to be very careful not to take the bait because I think both sides will put it out there and there's histrionics about this or that and you get the press releases or the releases from the congressional offices or the tweets that are like, this is the end of the world.
	And you're like, no, it's not.
	You guys have voted on this before.
	You know, this is not the end of the world.
	So I think we try to, like I say, when I go through a script and I see too many adjectives, I want to take those out.
	Like, I don't want to be so descriptive and hyperbolic about things.
	I think that we have a responsibility to present things.
	And sometimes if a story has been super overhyped, we're like, you know what, we're not doing a full guest segment on that.
	We're going to read it and tell people about it in the story, but we're not devoting five or 10 minutes to it because it's not something that rises to the level of that in reality.
	And I think it's up to us to parse the difference.
	So, since now you've been covering a very polarized period in American history, are you optimistic or pessimistic for where the country is going?
	I'm always optimistic, you know me.
	I'm very Pollyanna, people will say at times.
	So, I mean, there's a great book out a few years ago called Implosion by Joel Rosenberg, and it was very interesting because he talks about times where a country has seemed irreparably fractured.
	You think about the Civil War.
	And other periods and it was it was very good book for me to go back and read when things seem so crazy right now to say like our country has been in horribly divided places before and we have found ways he says mostly through religious revival but we found ways to come back to our humanity and to each other and you don't want a tragedy to have to be the way the country comes back together but there have been examples through history where we've been in a much worse place I mean someone caning someone to death on the Senate floor essentially I mean it has been crazier as bad as it may seem now and we've come back from that we have reunited many times
	And I think, I'll always think that there is good ahead.
	So I do have one final question for you.
	I want to ask you, if you can give three pieces of advice to young up-and-comers who want to get into journalism, want to get into covering politics, what those would be?
	But if you actually want to hear Shannon Bream's answer, you have to be a Daily Wire subscriber.
	To subscribe, head on over to dailywire.com.
	Click subscribe, you can hear the end of our conversation there.
	Well, Shannon Bream, thanks so much for stopping by.
	I really appreciate it.
	Your book is Finding the Bright Side.
	Folks, you should go pick it up right now.
	Thank you for your time.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Great to be with you.
	Thank you.
	Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
	Associate producer, Mathis Glover.
	Edited by Donovan Fowler.
	Audio is mixed by Mike Coromino.
	Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.
	Title graphics by Cynthia Angulo.
	The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is a Daily Wire production.

▲