PBD Podcast Episode 243. In this episode, Patrick Bet-David is joined by Steven Crowder and Adam Sosnick. Protect and secure your retirement savings now with this complimentary precious metals guide. Go to http://goldco.com/pbd 855-594-2758. Steven Blake Crowder is an American-Canadian conservative political commentator, comedian, and media host.
0:00 - Start
6:09 - Steven Crowder on NEVER overcoming stage fright
10:34 - Steven Crowder speaks out after his feud with Daily Wire
24:54 - Steven Crowder speaks about his show after feud with Daily Wire
1:31:39Steven Crowder Weighs In On Trump vs. DeSantis Debate
1:42:49 - Steven Crowder Speaks Out On Being Banned From Youtube
1:57:04 - Steven Crowder Destroys Jon Stewart's Stance On Gun Control
2:06:57 - Steven Crowder Exposes Bill Maher
2:10:36 - Steven Crowder CRASHING Young Turks Podcast at SXSW
FaceTime or Ask Patrick any questions on https://minnect.com/
Check out Steven Crowder's: http://mugclubforever.com
Want to get clear on your next 5 business moves? https://valuetainment.com/academy/
Join the channel to get exclusive access to perks: https://bit.ly/3Q9rSQL
Download the podcasts on all your favorite platforms https://bit.ly/3sFAW4N
Text: PODCAST to 310.340.1132 to get added to the distribution list
Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller Your Next Five Moves (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
Why would you bet on Goliath when we got bet tape?
Value payment, giving values contagious.
This world of entrepreneurs, we can't know value to haters.
I'd be running, homie, look what I become.
I'm the one.
Oh, great.
That's a bad idea.
If you want to tell that story, I'll tell you in there.
So we are officially live.
Oh, we are?
People have been waiting for this moment for a while.
They're wondering what announcements are going to be made.
They're wondering what is going on.
The beginning of our interaction, me talking about y'all.
Let me just set the tone here before we get into it.
We got a special guest in the house.
You're here because you want to find out what this guy, his name is Steven Crowder.
You know who he is.
Number one conservative late night comedy show.
6 million subs, billions of views online.
He's loved and hated, which is why he does so well.
Not afraid of facing anybody.
Arguably one of the most talented guys out there.
Some would say the most talented voice on the conservative side.
I will say a couple things, you know, when I said Stephen's going to be on.
And I don't want you to get uncomfortable about this.
One guy said, be careful if you're talking to him.
He may record the conversation.
So I just want to know.
This is being recorded.
I had no idea we'd already started live.
Yeah, we're live.
You're so professional.
I come in your own suits.
It's like, I don't know.
Let's just go live.
It was live.
He was doing cocaine.
And I was like, what?
You missed it.
It's not me.
A minute ago.
A school teacher was doing cocaine a minute ago here.
And then the other part, here's the other part.
Here's it.
I've been in business for a long time.
And I was asking this from Rob.
I said, Rob, I got to ask this on the live because I talked about it on the video.
And maybe because there's levels to success, you got to make it to certain levels in success.
I said, Rob, what do I need to do to be able to predict a future family emergency, right?
To say a week ago and, hey, we have a family urgency that came up on Tuesday, which by the way, to be fair to you, Matt Walsh was supposed to be on Wednesday, and he also just had a family emergency when we announced you're going to be out.
So I don't know what's going on.
You have a family emergency.
Yeah.
But here's the part.
Here's the part to know.
So everybody.
You have a family emergency?
So Stephen and I, you and I got on a call with Greg, aka.
How dare you?
Gerald.
Gerald.
And with Paul Robinson.
Yes, screwing up.
We have different names.
It's basic bitch white guy names.
They're impossible.
It's like an old school name.
It's not even basic anymore.
You were professional enough to reach out.
We got on a call.
And when I got on the call, I had no idea what direction the call was going to go.
Ended up being an incredible call with you.
Obviously, I've seen you.
You know, whether anybody says anything about you, you're one of the best in the world in the conservative side.
Some would say you are the best in the world.
Well, thank you.
And the back and forth with Daily Wire for people that follow Daily Wire's content, everyone knows what Ben has done over the years.
Everyone knows what Candace has done.
Everyone knows what those guys have done.
Even Matt Walsh with What is a Woman documentary, which I thought it was, you know, he crushed what he's got going on.
And, you know, so everyone kind of got it and said, wait a minute, what is going on with these two guys?
And then boom, you were supposed to be on.
We had a great combo in.
Here we are with you.
Yeah.
Have some announcements to make today.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I appreciate it.
Yeah.
What happened was that was a whole thing.
You know, I don't really do a lot of press.
A lot of people don't sort of realize that.
Like, it's very, very rare.
Yeah.
If I want to say something, I'll say it on my show.
And I'm kind of reclusive, actually.
I'm actually surprisingly shy.
And so I just end up talking more when I'm around people.
Thanks.
He turns away.
With the way this started off, people are going to be like, what?
That's unprofessional.
He opened a can.
How dare he?
That's it with you in these cans.
So, yeah, so you don't do a lot of press.
I know, I don't do a lot of press just because I don't really like it so much.
Like, I'm a pretty private guy.
If you look at my social media, I'm never taking pictures of my food.
You know, I never take pictures of my family or my children.
I keep that close to the vest because I think that's a choice they have to make.
And I come at this from, you know, I came in as an actor and a stand-up comic and an entertainer first.
And then just after getting beat in the face by a leftist industry, being banned as a comedian from clubs and from colleges, just kind of started letting my freak flag fly back in 2009 when there really was, there were no conservatives on YouTube.
It didn't exist.
So yeah, as far as the announcements, we're pretty excited.
Well, I'm allowed to say that you're allowed to say certain things.
So yes.
So Mug Club is officially, which is my camera here.
All right.
If I had a can to open, I'd make it a little.
Wait, is that one or that one?
The one on the left.
The one on the left.
The one that has you.
The one on the right.
March 20th.
March 20th is when it's coming back.
Daily show.
LoderWithCredit.com slash Mug Club.
What we're doing is it's $10 less than it was before, and we're about doubling the content.
So we'll be doing a show on Friday.
We have some, I don't know which people we can announce, but we have.
We've got a few people.
We're still, as you know, working out all the details.
Yes.
So there's some stuff we still have to kind of finalize, but a lot of really exciting things.
Yeah.
And the reason for that, too, is, you know, we have tentative agreements with some people and then some concrete agreements with other people is signing equitable contracts that are transparent that hopefully set a new standard, you know, in this industry.
I mean, this is something I've been doing for a long time.
I know what a contract looks like.
I know what a term sheet looks like.
And in my opinion, we talked about this on the phone call.
Sure, you can make more short term if you kind of just scrape every dollar you can.
But long term, that doesn't really work.
The best business deal is one where everyone benefits, everyone is happy.
Because why, especially with talent?
Like, how often have you heard of people, whether it's Dave Chappelle or whether, you know, South Park in the episode with the Muhammad issues, you can't keep people who don't want to be there, you know?
So you have to frame it in a way where they're happy, where they benefit, and you benefit and people you want to work with.
So March 20th, March 20th, we're coming back.
We're coming like a bat out of hell.
Exciting.
Yeah.
It's always, you know, you always get nervous.
See, you don't seem that way.
He knows like I always get nervous before every single show.
I had horrible stage fright before I got up and would do stand-up.
I used to think it was less embarrassing when I would tell the stories and be like, before my dress for last audition, I went backstage and I threw up.
But the truth is I wouldn't throw up.
I would just, I would have explosive poops.
Yes.
But I felt it was more masculine to be like, I threw up.
I'm a voice.
I threw up.
I don't want to.
I'm like, I have a sensitive tummy.
So I need running to the battle.
I need some time.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
Not a good look.
Probably this guy after all that cocaine, right?
Yeah, get it moving.
It's hard for you to shed that.
But you still get nervous when you do shows?
Is that what you're saying?
Still, even a show like this, you're nervous, right?
And then when do the nerves go away?
Never.
So you're nervous right now.
Nervous right now.
Don't do what you typically do before a show right now, please.
Yeah, well, you know what it is?
I've always told this to Gerald and to everyone else who also works there, is every single time you do a show, I say, assume that that is a 100% new audience.
And you sort of learn this when you're coming up through stand-up because you'll be doing like six shows, you know, Thursday to Friday to Saturday two.
And you can do really, really well three, and then you bomb because you get a little overconfident.
That is a new group of people who are not familiar with.
You haven't built any momentum with them.
So I always want to make sure that people are getting their money's worth.
There's so much content out there.
And sometimes we work in an industry where, yeah, it's about investors or it's about advertising.
Those are all fine too.
But I think True North should always be the audience and what it is that they want and how you most benefit them.
And long term, if you do that, I think you'll end up doing well.
But, you know, I'm not really a business guy.
I'm not like you.
I always look when we were doing research here.
I always prepare.
This guy is like, he's like the monopoly guy.
What do you mean by that?
I don't just mean his house now.
Like this guy, this guy is like crazy wealthy.
Good for you.
He's done all right for us.
Yeah, he has done all that.
You want to say a few words for yourself?
But, you know, it's crazy that you're saying the nervous thing because Tyson also talked about that.
You know, some of the best athletes talked about that.
Yeah.
We're prior to it, and it is a quality of a great one.
It's not like, you know, some people are a little bit more calmer when they go in.
You know, you see, remember, like Fedora used to fight Pride.
You go and they're like, this guy looks like his bring it all the way down, and Kobe would go very ice-like, and that was his style.
But there are some that's the other way around.
Either way, you ended up, you know, having a lot of people.
Remember George St. Pierre when we had him here six months ago, he would get so nervous.
I was always afraid of my up on that.
But Steve, I'm going to stay in the platoon.
I've, you know, I've done two specials.
I've been on Kevin Hart's special.
I think if you don't have that, but some guys don't.
They don't have like zero.
I think you, I think that I think they're lying.
He's right.
Some don't have it.
No, they don't care.
Some people don't.
They don't care.
Some of those guys that don't get nervous for a big audience.
I don't know.
I've been around him.
I mean, a good example is like Chuck Liddell when he would fight.
John Halcombe was like, he said, he just doesn't get nervous.
He just doesn't get nervous.
But I've always been that way.
Do you get nervous ever?
Like, you see, you speak on massive stages.
You don't get nervous on podcasts.
I already know that.
But even when you go on stage, when you're speaking in front of big audiences, I don't know.
I don't know if I do at this phase.
I don't know if I do at this phase.
So that settles it.
I guess he's not a great.
No, Mr. Mediocre 100 millionaire over here.
But I would tell you, there are certain times you may, depending on what the climate is.
But I want to go back to your announcements.
So Mug Club is coming back.
That's exciting.
When we shared a video today, the tweet, all that stuff.
Everybody was like, when is it coming back?
March 20th.
Yeah.
So people are dying for that.
The fact that that's coming back, that's big news.
The question I want to ask from you is.
Can I specify one thing?
Because we had so many people who signed up at MugClubforever.com.
And I know that some people have signed up.
And so then we, you know, we had this contract up and so we left.
So we want to make sure they're not shortchanged.
So if you have signed up at mugclubforever.com, check your spam folder.
Tomorrow, you're going to get a code to pre-order and get a bunch of free time and free months to honor kind of what you left.
Do we have a link to put down there in chat in description so people can go to?
Is there a link to it or not?
MugclubForever.com.
Okay, let's put that in the chat and description and comment, Rob.
All three so they can get it.
And maybe every 30 minutes, just drop it in there so they can get it as well.
Like Ron Popil.
So let's go back to this.
Here's kind of what I want to do with the audience.
And some of the questions that maybe I have with the whole thing with Daily Wire and yourself.
And, you know, prior to going into some of the, we'll talk about issues.
We'll talk about current events.
We'll talk about some of that stuff.
But Daily Wire.
So the question that kept coming up, Stephen, was, you know, well, you know, whether it's Candace came out and said, you know, I wanted to find out what he had to say, or Ben Shapiro came out.
This is how a negotiation works.
If you don't like it, you go back and forth.
Let's go.
How many times did you guys go back and forth until it was like, okay, you know, you did a video, you didn't mention the company's name.
Everybody's trying to kind of guess who it is, but most people kind of knew it was Daily Wire that you were talking about.
And then they came out.
Jeremy went through the contract, you know, one by one by one.
And then you responded.
Then there's the recording.
Then there's this.
And then it was like, hey, Candace comes out, Jordan Peterson, tweet, delete, all this stuff that's going on, right?
But the question is, World's Vegas High School.
I get it.
But the question for me is, how many conversations did you guys have up until the point where it's like, we're not doing this?
Yeah.
So, I mean, and not to rehash all that stuff, because look, I think people now kind of know, like, you make your decision, and I love Jordan Peterson, like Andrew.
Like, I'm still friends with a lot of people over there.
The issue there was, there was never, look, the issue I always had was, and I said, take me off the table because it wasn't going to be a fit.
The issue was with other people.
The primary issue, you never heard me talk about money.
And I know as a business guy, there's probably like nails on a chalkboard, but it's, you know, you can't penalize people.
You can't put on 110% penalties on behalf of big tech, literally 110% penalties.
But primarily, if you have other kids who are coming up, like you can't punish conservative content creators on behalf of big tech saying, not only do you have to be there, you have to be monetized, which you know on YouTube, right?
That's a very different set of guidelines is basically don't say anything offensive ever.
All I can say is there was never anything that we went over that involved that being eliminated.
Like that was a sticking point.
Like, okay, get rid of that.
No, that doesn't happen.
And so we decided, okay, we're going to go on our way and do it.
Now we're focusing on what it is that we can do, what it is that we can change and bringing in other people.
So from the beginning of the conversation series until decision was made, is that like five weeks, two months, three months?
Is there like a months?
Okay, good.
So it's not like it was a because some people are thinking, hey, we're out of here.
We're done.
First offer.
I can't believe you're doing this.
I'm blasting you publicly.
Okay, so that's good to know.
That's between you and them.
You guys can, you know, that's a conversation between you and the people you were working with.
Sure.
Here's the other question I've got.
Yeah, the issue is when you don't see IDI, I'm like, look, take it off the, take me away.
The issue is a punishment on behalf of big tech.
Or the issue is like, you know, I've been demonetized for this long.
Yep.
That can be redlined and changed.
Wasn't.
So that's the issue.
It's like that was the issue as far as, okay, this isn't going to happen because of the big tech penalties.
And I understand it too, by the way.
Look, when you're in a war, and I mean that we are in an ideological war, we really are.
And we are at a potential tipping point in this country.
You need different kinds of people.
You need different battalions.
And I get it that some people want to work within the platforms in order to change the platforms.
Well, no one understands that more than me because I've been there since before there was monetization, actually.
My brother was one of the first YouTube partners, I think in 2007, 2008, whenever they started it.
But the issue is when the platform no longer allows you to speak truth.
I'm not looking to be removed from YouTube.
I've talked about that.
And the people who we've signed, we want nothing to do with whether they are on YouTube or not.
As far as I'm concerned, that's blood money.
And I don't mean it's blood money, but I mean, I don't want to have to influence someone to play ball with YouTube or Facebook or tell them not to if that's what they choose to do.
The issue is when you have a platform like YouTube, like Facebook that says, you know what, you can't say, for example, that there's myocarditis with young people, right?
Or there could be potential adverse effects of the mRNA injection with young people.
When they say you can't say that, we're going to suspend you.
You are now no longer able to speak truth.
So we'll use those platforms as long as they're available, provided that we're allowed to speak the truth.
But when we get to the point, and we've had these conversations where we're like, well, you want to quote the CDC on the flu desk today?
He's like, well, you still want it.
You want to be suspended for another two weeks?
Or, hey, do you want to have Kerry Lake, who's currently running for governor?
It's like, well, you know, we're going to be suspended and missed the election stream that night.
And we just decide to let the cards fall where they may.
It's reached that point, unfortunately.
Yeah, so that's so the, so the, okay, so I understand that.
So then the question would be the following.
Is it fair to say that, like, if you were to announce, if you were to say right now, who are the top, I don't know, five, six, seven conservative media companies out there, you got Fox, you got Daily Wire.
Who else would you put out there?
Would you put Blaze as one of them as an option?
I don't know.
I don't have access to their financials.
It's a question I couldn't answer.
So let's put aside the financials.
Let's say influence.
I guess let's just measure it by influence that you and I can see.
Who would you put as like Prague or you?
Prager you is a nice person.
Well, that's part of Daily Wire and they're part of Daily Wire now.
I'm talking more like CNN, MSNBC.
You know, you got whoever they have on the other side.
You're talking eyeballs.
You're talking views.
You're talking cloud.
Yeah, I'm talking about like, if I say who are the biggest podcasters today, not political at all.
Okay, you got Rogan.
You got, you know, Impulsive.
You got, you know, whoever, you know, call her that.
You know, all these things that you see, not necessarily political.
You can say these are the most influential ones, right?
Within the conservative side, who would you say are the top five most influential media companies today?
Box is on there.
Yeah, you name them.
I mean, if people consider them, you know, conservative, you'd have Fox on there.
You'd have Daily Wire on there.
You know, you'd probably have like a Red State Town Hall, Salem is a big one.
Okay.
Yeah.
Very familiar with them.
I don't know.
KRLA is with Salem, right?
KRLA's with Salem, KKLAs with Salem.
They have like Red State Town Hall, a lot of radio stations, so they're really big.
You know why I'm asking a question?
I'm asking a question because I don't know if there's enough of them.
That's what I'm asking.
I think, yeah, that's the point.
Yeah.
So if there isn't enough of them, so you guys, if I can get this, if I can get it right, you're planning on building a conservative media platform recruiting other talent to come in under your umbrella.
Yeah.
That's what you're trying to do.
Yeah, but it's a different approach.
Yeah.
And this is why it's different is I don't need to do it.
Right.
So this is, so for, and Ben, I've known for a very long time.
I think Ben is the best at what he does, certainly among them.
You'd have like Mark Levins up there.
Of course, at one point, like Rush Limbaugh.
But Ben didn't do that until Daily Wire happened.
Before he was working at other places like Bright Barton Truth World.
The issue is when all these companies do it the same the same way, right?
It's the same, it's people talking about news.
And that's fine.
But at a certain point, you have to ask if it's by design.
Now, here's the thing.
It's because these companies need people to do that in order to, and look, I can tell you this, when I was working at Fox News for like four and a half years, Change My Mind was something that was pitched to every major publisher.
I've talked about this.
It was pitched as a segment at Fox News.
And people said, that will never work.
I said, it will never work.
People want four or five minutes.
They want it snappy, right?
They want, you know, quadrant view.
One time, I think I was on with Lanny Davis or might have been Doug Schoen on Fox News.
They had this in this quadrant view.
And I was always getting in trouble.
I'd always get called into the second floor.
Shocking.
We're in the same room.
And they have us on these like these quadrant views.
I'm like, well, why is he doing?
I'm right.
I'm right there.
Here I am.
And so at the end of the segment, I think it was Lanny Davis.
I was like, hey, Lanny, high five.
And I reached into his quadrant.
And they were like, you know, you can't do that because people like it to seem really international.
I was like, I don't really know if that's what people necessarily want.
And so I said, you know what?
I'm going to go out and do a comedy show, which they said conservatives don't really like comedy this way at that point in time.
They said, you can't do a, what, you're going to sit down with random people to have conversations for an hour unedited, two hours?
I said, yeah.
I remember when I pitched it as a book, although at that point the term social justice warrior didn't exist or triggered.
So the term I used was American idiot because Green Day was big at this point in time.
And I separated between them and sort of the modern leftist.
And they said, no, no, the only thing we can sell the conservatives is the doomsday books.
And it's not a bad book, but the Obama Blueprint was a really big book at that time.
They said, do you have anything like this?
And I said, well, that's not me.
So I don't need to do, like, we can do Muckleman and do our show, right?
Matter of fact, we'd be more profitable just doing that.
But providing a platform for people who aren't looking to make it big in the conservative space, but particularly people you'll see with the people who we sign and the names of someone who's done comedy, you're Adam and you're sorry, I almost said Adam.
People who can be who they are and reach a different group of people.
Like there's a reason too, like the conservative demographic is, it's quite literally dying off, unfortunately.
And it's very lucrative to sell them certain kinds of messaging, certain kinds of content.
I don't mean immoral, but when people are precluded from reaching them, there are a lot of people out there like me, like Jill, like our audience.
The average viewer is a 20-something, 30-year-old, college-educated male.
They're not tuning into Fox News.
They're not tuning into a lot of AM radio, but they are tuning into what we do because it's a comedy show.
And I don't mean a comedian who does a show, and you know this, right?
Like a lot of comedians, they'll host podcasts.
It's not a comedy show.
Exactly.
This is an entertainment show.
And the reason we had to go and do it on our own was it's never going to work.
And then every time you sit at that side of the table, whether it's Fox, whoever it is, they go, can we change it so that you can fit into the box this way?
Because that's our box.
And we want to do the opposite.
And we don't have to do it.
We can say, what's your box?
What is it that you are?
Let's give you the opportunity to let your freak flag fly.
So I want to go on this.
I want to go a little bit more on this, but I want to quickly, the question I want to ask you in a minute here is, you're right, you don't have to do it, but you are a voice.
You do have a massive following.
And there is a niche.
There is an emptiness that we need somebody to do it.
Great if you're going to do it.
And what's the structure going to be different?
And then you made a comment about Fox.
You said some would call Fox a conservative.
Some would take that as a dick, but I want to come back to this here in a second.
So when I said I mean, let me just do a quick today's sponsor, today's sponsor, today's sponsor is Goldco.
Okay, let me tell you why Goldco.
I've been in the financial industry for nearly 22 years now, and I've been able to invest into a lot of different things: stock sponsors, mutual funds, real estate, all this stuff.
We have no idea what's going to be happening with the economy, inflation, interest rates.
When it comes down to a small percentage of your money to hedge against inflation and crisis taking place, gold may be a good investment for you.
We looked at Goldco, we looked at a lot of different folks.
We talked to people that work with these guys.
We like what they have to do.
I myself like to do business with companies like this.
If you want to get into the gold investment yourself, give these guys a call.
They're a six-time Inc. 5000 winner, 2022 company of the year with thousands of five-star reviews.
And I've helped people like you and me place over a billion dollars in gold and silver.
Vietnam of yours could get up to $10,000 in free silver and a free one-ounce silver Ronald Reagan coin with a qualified order.
Call them 855-594-2758, 855-594-2758, or go to goldco.com forward slash pbd goldco.com forward slash pbd rob.
Let's put the link below.
So let me go back.
That's a lot of free silver.
Are you serious?
Yeah, giving it up.
Jesus.
You want some of that?
I would love some of that.
I love some of that.
I'm a Persian who loves gold.
Is that a surprise?
You never have a white ball.
I bet in your house you have like those lions that are like fountains, right?
That kind of stuff.
You know what?
I don't.
You don't.
I married a white girl from Texas.
My kids are like half and half.
Because white girls from Texas don't love status symbols.
No, no, no.
They don't like lions like that.
There are some places, though, in Texas.
You're right.
Highland Park, I've been to those places where you see lions, but they're white.
They're white.
They're not gold lines.
And they're still in the middle of the middle.
Middle East are gold lines.
White are, you know, white lines in Highland Park.
By the way, the first time I moved to Dallas and I'm in Highland Park.
We're having dinner at one of the restaurants there.
And the lady says, you know, Dallas is one of the most vain cities in the world.
Yes.
So he says, you want to do any kind of surgery, augmentation, this, Botox, this may be the number one city for doing any kind of cosmetic surgery.
Dallas?
That's Dallas from specifically Highland Park, by the way.
Yeah.
You end up leaving there looking like Jennifer Coolidge.
That's a MILF right there, buddy.
Well, I don't know.
We're using that term loosely.
Don't be disrespectful.
Loosely.
Just like the skin.
Don't forget to do the neck if you're doing your stiffler's mom.
Respect.
Yes.
Yeah.
By the way, I was friends with.
Oh, come on.
That's not.
You're bringing it up to the audience.
I look like it.
That's not.
No, Pull her up from White Lotus, and you'll get a really good view of what she looks like now.
So let's go back to it.
So, Stephen, what's so the question is: one, you don't need to do it, but you're choosing to do it.
So if you're recruiting talent and you now know what Daily Wire's contract is, because you've gone directly with them, you now know what Fox's contract is.
You now know what Blake's contract is.
You kind of got experience of the top guys in a marketplace, how they do.
So that kind of gives you an edge to say, we don't want to do it this way.
We don't want to do it that way.
Here's what we're going to do.
So my open-ended question for you will be the following.
Assume a lot of people that love your stuff are watching this and their talent.
They may want to come and run with you.
Okay.
And they may want to say, okay, Steven, let's come run with you.
Here's what we want to do.
What are some things a talent is going to get from teaming up with you that they may not get at other places?
Well, here's the deal.
And he's obviously, so Gerald has.
I've seen several conversations on this recently.
Yes, with Tim.
I need to be closer to the microphone.
Yeah, no, no, no.
Get in there like it's lean in.
Yeah.
But I will say this: you know, having experience with, okay, with stand-up, it's a perfect example.
When you're doing stand-up, right, when you start out, you're starting doing whatever it was.
Like when I was you're middling, you know, doing, I mean, sorry, when you're on the road, you're being paid.
You're getting a few hundred dollars to middle to right to feature.
And then if you're a headliner, you know, you might get $1,500 for the whole weekend.
And then you reach a certain point where you're doing these venues, they give you a minimum guarantee.
Okay.
So this is not reinventing the wheel.
The minimum guarantee doesn't matter if your aunt, your uncle, and your dad show up, right?
Or you say, you know what?
Lower that guarantee and I'll take a higher percentage of the gate.
So when I do live shows, I say, like, give me basically the closest you can to no guarantee and the highest percentage of the gate.
That's all it is.
It's a sliding scale.
You always need to have upside to be incentive, incentivized, and especially when they're content creators.
You always need to have some ownership and autonomy in the realm of comedy.
Or some people want more of a guarantee.
So this side is more of an employee.
This side is basically you're doing a revenue split.
And depending what it is that you want or need, if it's production, if it's editing, if it's social media, that changes the percentage.
You can bet on yourself, get a higher percentage of the gate.
Or we also have options where there's a higher minimum guarantee.
It's not reinventing it.
This is how it works in the entertainment industry.
The only place it doesn't work that way is in, you know, that I've experienced is in the right-wing media sphere.
It's very bizarre.
It's an anomaly.
Wow.
So it's interesting what you're saying.
If I'm reading this correctly, I've ran an insurance company now for, you know, 13 years, going on 14 years.
And I've been in the insurance industry for 20 years.
I start off with Morgan Stanley.
Morgan Stanley gave me a salary plus commission.
I made the least money with Morgan Stanley, Dean Wooder because they gave me a salary.
So my commission was like this.
Then I went to trans.
Trans gave me a commission like this with zero salary.
I love how he says trans gave me this.
Yeah.
Someone's transferred to Trans America.
Somebody's going to put that.
Shut up.
Somebody's going to came over.
Trans America.
WFG.
You set me up.
Oh, you mentioned the comments earlier about Kobe, right?
He's like, Kobe, you know, he would be ice cold.
I'm like, did he just say that?
Yeah.
This transition.
You have to have a degree to understand that last joke he just gave.
But there's levels to this.
This guy's a little too brilliant for.
I don't think you need a degree to understand what assuming room temperature means.
Yeah.
All right, go ahead.
So here, going back to the question.
So Trans America, to be exact.
Don't do it again.
Oh, you like that, buddy?
This is it.
Is this what you want me to do right here?
You're too professional.
In L.A. That's a horrible thing.
In LA, this would be a gang.
Just so you know, in LA, this is a gank.
So they pay commission.
Then we go, we start our own company.
And same thing.
It's commission-based.
Here's how it works.
Go at your thing.
The upside is big.
You can make tens of millions.
But at the same time, you got to do the work.
You got to go out there.
You got to do this.
You got to do that.
Right.
This attracts a certain set of talents where your skill set as an operator has to be being a kink maker.
Okay.
Where a person like a Daily Wire or a Fox, their model isn't necessarily to be a kingmaker.
They attract kings.
Meaning, Daily Wire didn't build Jordan Peterson.
Jordan Peterson is a kink.
They recruited a kink that went and joined Daily Wire, right?
Fox News didn't build Beck, didn't build you, didn't build Tucker, didn't build O'Reilly, didn't build a lot of these guys.
Now, some may say.
Well, they certainly didn't build me.
I will say I had great people at Fox, but I was constantly like, you can't say that.
I'm like, what?
Could you put on a jacket?
I'm like, wow, I don't know.
It's just, they kept wanting me to change.
And it just wasn't the right thing.
I'm 21.
But that's the point, though.
So is your plan to kind of whoever comes and joins you and runs with you guys that you're going to share with them the tricks to the game that worked for you.
So it's almost like, and I don't know if you follow basketball or sports or not, where the Golden State Warriors were like, yeah, we're not going to go put a super team together.
Bring this guy, bring that guy.
Let's draft.
Let's bring in Steph Curry.
Let's bring in Clay.
Let's bring in Draymond.
Let's build these guys up and boom, let's win four championships.
Is your plan to recruit more greenies?
Are you guys also willing to pay the five, $10 million to recruit some big names?
Well, I would say actually, for example, with Daily Wire or even like the Blaze.
Jordan Peterson's an exception.
He really is an exception.
It was very recent that they brought in someone like him because, yeah, he is a king.
He's unbelievably talented and has an unbelievable audience.
I mean, if you go back to Fox News, right, you're going back a while, like Sean Hannity after 9-11.
I think he was out of Atlanta, then he became nationally syndicated.
They brought him in.
Bill Reilly was inside edition.
Beck before that had a huge radio show, and he was on, I think it was HLN.
So what they would do is bring in people who were kind of that middle tier, and then they were more of a platform to kind of be a springboard.
But what you see with a lot of them is when they leave Fox, their podcasts don't really work that well, right?
Because this isn't just sort of a passive viewership.
Yeah.
I mean, there are some folks.
That's hard.
Listen.
Well, because you don't have people telling you, hey, this is who you want to watch.
People are tuning into you because you're interested, not because you have, you know, a giant crane cam and a crotch camera with a C-food desk.
Did you shave your legs, Stephen?
Did you do this?
Fix your hair, do the makeup.
I just went the way God made me.
One of the things, if the audience is watching this, I was very impressed to see he came with a makeup girl that did his makeup for 45 minutes before Twitter.
It was very impressive.
You know, the hair, somebody was fixing your hair in the background.
He thought the syringes were for black hair.
It was just botulism.
So going back to that, I had a couple guys here.
I'm talking to, anyway, some of the guys from Fox News.
And they said to me, let me tell you, this is Murdoch, but let me tell you the magic behind Roger Rails.
I said, what's that?
He was a kinkmaker.
Okay.
I said, tell me more.
He says he knew how to get somebody to poke him here, push him here, challenge him here, show him this, take this angle, think about doing this, think about showing the place.
He was a kinkmaker.
So you know how to do that.
Yeah.
Is your game plan to go from being a talent to want to be a kinkmaker?
Long term, here's the thing.
Long term, right?
You know what I'm asking?
Yeah, long term, there's no bench.
So I said this a long time ago where I would love to retire.
And I don't mean necessarily be like less P. Diddy, like more suggest, like Danklin Vanilla Ice Outside of a Balcony, you know, where if I want to move scratches, you want to be combat there.
Death Row.
I saw a guy today walking with a death row records like shirt.
Yeah.
I want to say, hey, death row.
But then I don't really know the city that well.
He could be like, shut up, shoot me.
I have no idea.
But you could have that.
You are the whitest guy who's a friend of mine.
If he's in Liberty City, yes.
Not here.
So, yeah, so I would love to retire and eventually produce content more, but there really can be no next show like mine, you know, Ladder with Crowder, unless there's an environment where it can exist.
And if you have to be in an environment where you have to play ball with these, you know, these big tech effectively, I mean, you could say Tripopoly, really.
You're really talking about three companies.
It can't happen.
It can't happen.
There cannot be a show.
I mean, Gerald and I talk about this all the time.
I can't imagine what our show would look like if we had to be advertiser friendly, let alone never be suspended on YouTube.
Like we just decided to forego the money.
And by the way, I don't really care so much about the revenue on YouTube.
We've talked about this, but once we were demonetized, you know, that was the Vox adpocalypse, they stopped counting our subscribers.
So the number would be about 12 to 15 million subscribers in the main channel.
And what we had was for years I was monetized, the channel, and we were gaining between 120 to 250,000 subscribers every single month.
I think our lowest month in that period was 80, and our highest might have been close to like 300.
Then we were in a month.
And every month was over 100 something thousand.
The average was 130, something like that.
Then we were demonetized.
The Vox adpocalypse because they couldn't remove us because we didn't violate any policies.
You see Susan Wojitsky, who was talking at the Recode conferencing, like, sorry, it's not really hate speech, but we'll create a new rule of borderline content.
So the second we're demonetized, boom, we were down to 10,000 at most 30,000 subscribers a month because you can't find us in browse.
If you search my name and the title of the video, you'll find something else.
Someone screwed up at Google YouTube and accidentally remonetized us.
Was it for like four months?
Three or four months.
Three or four months.
We're like, what?
Boom.
130 to 200,000 average per month again.
Wow.
Demonetized down to 10 or 30.
And here's the reason why is because it's right.
It's a finances game.
Of course, YouTube wants to migrate people toward advertiser content.
And then, of course, they want you to play ball and say, by the way, you need to be advertiser friendly.
Don't talk about the trans thing.
Don't talk about the election.
Don't talk about the vaccines.
And then when you have conservatives saying, hey, you know what?
We want to make sure we keep making this revenue from YouTube.
Think about that.
When people say, and I used to be a libertarian, you know, until I grew out of it, and I would still be considered more libertarian than most conservatives.
But it's not a free, it's not about a private company doing what they want when these people enjoy benefits, both as far as policy, as far as taxes, from the government, Section 230, right?
When they're protected, they use the law when it's convenient, and then they violate the law when it's not convenient.
And they use that to engineer the kind of content, not only that you see, but that is on there.
So, yeah, we kind of just said, okay, well, we'll decide.
Like rather than 12, 15 million, but not being able to discuss anything, we'll have to build it the hard way.
It is a very, very difficult slog.
That's what bothered me was the lack of access to new people, right?
If you have a storefront that's always boarded up, it's really hard to generate new customers.
And it's the same thing.
It's hard to generate new viewers.
The viewership that we have on the show is almost 100% from people who bookmark it and check it every day.
Wow.
So the suggestions for you is not that high?
I think it was less than 2%.
Suggestions is less than 2%.
Browse, search suggested.
They were in single digits, all of them.
Holy shit.
They probably suggest people watch something else other than our show.
By the way, you know what is that?
You know what is that?
Well, that's going to be the thumbnail.
With that, I mean, come on, who's not watching?
But by the way, so going back to that, I bet if you were to show the data on what happened with dates, that would be an interesting thing to learn.
We could probably, hey, someone watch it.
We could probably send them to you right now.
If you have your guy, reach out.
We could send you at least a before and after.
I would love to see that data to just show it.
If you can, I don't know who in your communication with, if you want to send them a.
I think you had an email earlier setting up some of the tech stuff those guys might.
Gerald, do you have your phone with you?
Yeah, I do.
They can text it to me too if I can.
If you can text it to me, I can get it up on the screen.
Fantastic.
So let me go to the next question, which is all within the same topic.
So there's a difference when I went from being an employee to a salesperson.
It sucked because I had a warm salary.
Now I don't.
Oh, my God.
It was so annoying.
Okay.
Then you go from salesperson, you learn how to close.
Then you become a sales leader.
You're teaching other people how to learn how to sell.
Let me tell you, it's very annoying.
Very annoying.
You have to have the pace.
How do you not understand?
Use this script.
If I can do this, they couldn't do it.
So you got to be patient because it takes a long time.
So then I went from being a sales leader to CEO.
I sucked as a CEO.
So I go away.
I'm like, I have to find out what it is.
Being a business owner is different than a CEO, right?
So for you, do you really, as a talent, like I used to sit there and watch a lot of the guys I was in business with who were very, very good.
These people I respected until today, I respect for what they built.
Why did they never go start their own companies?
And I would ask them, you're very good.
Why didn't you go start your own company, deal with compliance, deal with all that stuff?
Why don't you just, why don't you stay put?
He says, I don't want that life.
So talent, think about O'Reilly.
Think about Hannity.
Think about Tucker.
Think about, you know, I can give you a bunch of these names.
Think about on the other side, Cuomo, Tamper, Maddow, Cooper.
Think about all of these guys.
Why did they never go and say, I want to start my own company?
And then let's go on the podcast side because you may say, what's the difference reading a teleprompter?
And today, you see their eyes going like this the entire time.
Okay, he's reading the teleprompter.
Okay.
A lot of people.
This is hard.
What you do is very hard to keep people's attention.
100,000 people's attention.
You did one for 16 hours.
I don't know what it is.
16 hours, yeah.
16 hour life.
That's ridiculous.
So do you really, as a creative, want to go into dealing with talent and telling them and giving them tips on how to build and manage other people?
I'm not going to tell them what to do.
That's the thing.
I'm not going to tell them.
And here's the thing.
That's different.
Yeah, it is different.
Well, that's also why he's CEO.
Yeah.
Now, it's been a company.
I've been running a company for a very long time.
You have 20-something employees.
That's why I've owned Ladder's Company.
Are you co-CEO?
Is it going to be co-CEO model like Ben Shapiro and Jeremy, where Ben is the talent and Jeremy's more like the day-to-day CEO?
I don't know what their inner workings are.
Well, based on what I've heard, I don't either, by the way.
Just so you know, a lot of people.
They had money, guys.
You know, we don't have that.
That's the difference.
We don't have, like, that's one thing, too.
We've never taken a dime of seed money.
We've always made it back literally within the first quarter.
Explain why that's important.
The fact that what is the difference if they do, because some people may say, well, you know, I know you're saying something, Steven, but the fact that Ben and Jeremy and those guys have money from those oil guys that I think it's like the fracking guys that got the three and a half billion dollars and they're funding it.
What is the no, there's nothing, there's nothing wrong with it.
Well, I should say this.
We do have technically seed money.
It's you.
It's Mug Club.
Right.
We're not funded by a foreign caliphate like the Young Turks, you know, in some way.
And I'm partially joking.
We don't have oil barren money.
We have people.
That's it.
We don't have a lot of sponsors either.
And by the way, 100% of the sponsors wanted to come because we always make sure that they get more value than they pay for.
You know this in this industry, right?
There's a lot of paying for views and downloads that don't really happen.
So for us, we go to them and the way we've structured contracts is, okay, if you don't like what we do, because we don't do libraries, we do these really weird commercials sometimes that get a little, get a little off the beam.
We say, if you don't like it, just don't, just don't pay for it.
And then like, we don't need to do this.
We think you're going to like it.
100% of the time they do.
But you have to coach those people creatively, right?
It used to be, for example, Gerald remembers this.
I would be yelling on the phone with billionaires.
I'd be like, no, you don't know what you're talking about.
Where I had people come in when I had, I think, half a million subscribers.
They said, you know, free is the enemy of premium.
Because at that point, we had built a lot of subscribers.
I said, well, you don't understand.
It's free.
It's an advertising venue.
It reaches people.
And rather than tricking people into paying, you provide value added.
And people will pay because they want to support you.
Sometimes people go, well, hold on a second.
I'm paying.
And basically, the show is out there for free.
And all these sponsors are on here, whether it's four, five, 10, you know, and they go, usually it used to be at one point in time, we would pay so it would be ad-free.
They go, what am I paying for?
We've always tried to make it really, really clear and provide value added.
Now, as far as with content, with talent, I'm not going to tell them what to do at all.
Like they can do what they want because these are people who I believe provide value added.
And if it doesn't work, then they can go on their merry way and take their subscribers with them.
There's no exclusivity.
It's completely unique in this industry.
There's nobody out there in the conservative space that is doing something like that.
And essentially, we just kind of got thrown into this a little bit, looking at all the contracts, going, gosh, is everybody really doing stuff like this that just really doesn't value the creator?
It doesn't value the audience the way that we think you should.
And then saying, we can probably do something better.
And really the better is just giving people the opportunity to be creators.
The opportunity he was never given in some of those previous roles.
Like, hey, we want you to fit this mold for us.
We want you to do it this way.
Telling creators, like, look, you've already started to kind of have some success.
That's great.
That's fantastic.
Why don't you come and add more value to our viewers and bring your viewers with you?
Add more value to them as well.
Right.
So it's just a different model where we don't have to, and go back to your question on the money.
If it's your money versus somebody else's money, that's different, right?
You put a different work ethic behind every dollar that you have that is on the line versus somebody's.
It doesn't mean you don't value it, but also there's different interest in it.
They're going to be able to dictate a little bit more what happens if you have other people's money.
I have investors in my other business.
I have a wine business.
And of course, those guys want to see a return.
And if things aren't going the way that they should go, and maybe I've made all the calls, they're going to say, hey, you need to make different calls or we need a different you in that role.
Plus, they're usually drunk.
Well, that's why I chose wine business.
It's hard to be mad in the wine business.
Everyone's very happy.
No, but that's also why Gerald, you know, when we were looking at this, I was, because for the longest time, right, I'd get to this point.
Well, you know, with like contracts, we have a certain period you're allowed to renegotiate.
And often contracts are framed in that's a very short period of time.
And then I'd be under the gun where I still have always owned everything, but I'd be like, oh, this isn't really something that I want to do or I don't want to do it this way.
Where Gerald said, hey, look, what if you were to do this and suggested something similar to what we're doing?
And I turned to him and I said, Gerald, you know I can't do that.
And he said, unless I go full time.
Because he knows that I can't manage the sales and also do a show every day, which, you know, for every hour people see, it's four hours of prep just for me.
I mean, we have to be right on the research.
We make all of our research publicly available, every single reference.
It's like a bibliography and we post it every single day.
And then we also, you know, we have to do these sketches.
We have to, you know, we have punch up, we have Photoshops, we have guests.
It's more of a television show than a radio show online.
It's really kind of the only one in that vein.
And that takes a lot of work.
And one thing I will say is you said that you weren't a good, did you say not a good CEO or not a good sales trainer?
I was not in 2014.
Okay.
2013.
I was not a good CEO yet.
So here's the thing.
The one thing I will say, the only thing that I'm really decent with in business is, you know, the old Wayne Gretzky quote, he was mentioning basketball, the Canadian meme.
I'm like, let's go to hockey.
No one knows.
100%.
Yes, 100%.
No, no, no, not that one.
Where he said, don't go where the puck is, go where the puck's going to be.
I've always been pretty good at understanding where the puck is going to be.
Beyond that, I have always had a problem and a struggle with managing people who aren't like me.
And you're probably this way, right, as a self-starter.
Sometimes like the people I've just, we've worked with for forever, like the retention rate is insane with some of these people are people who you go, hey, I need to get this done.
They go, great.
And they find a way to do it.
I'm results oriented.
There are some people who need to be managed more.
And then they'll get upset if they feel like they're being micromanaged.
The people who I've worked with really well are people who are self-I don't necessarily know how to manage people who aren't similar to me.
I'm a creative type.
Gerald's good at that.
And that's where we're at the point now.
He's been working part-time.
He's been on the show.
We were just talking about how, because he has a great radio voice.
He used to come up and talk about theology and Christian apologetics.
And then he would be in that second chair.
And he's always run a business.
And we've always wanted to make sure that we could maintain a friendship.
But then it got to a point where it's undeniable where he would see me kind of getting just buried.
Like, I just don't have time to do all of this.
There's no way to do it.
And I think you kind of alluded to it.
A lot of people think, oh, guys, you guys have been off for, what, 10 weeks or something like that right now?
We've been shooting nonstop.
Shooting like crazy, writing, like all these different ideas.
Like all of that takes an incredible amount of time.
And to run a business on top of that and to kind of handle, I mean, the fires that you have to put out in this industry, especially when you have a target on your back like he does, it's just, it drains you.
And so we had to build some infrastructure up with personnel and just making sure we had people in the right places, made some new hires, got the team expanded because creators not only want a good contract, right?
They want to keep their subscribers.
They want to know who they are.
Like, God forbid, you have to, you get to know who the people that are paying you money are when you work for some of these people.
They wanted to have the ability to not have to deal with all the back end, like editing and all the other promotional stuff.
And people saying, can you just help me with monetization?
Like, I know how to create good content, but I don't know all of these different things.
It's kind of like dentists.
You can go get a loan from a bank right now being a dentist, fresh out of dental school.
They'll give you money left and right.
And then everybody, the financial services people are right behind the dentist when they go in because they know they know their craft.
They don't know how to run a business, right?
And make money.
That's what a lot of these creators are doing.
They know how to write, but they just don't know how to run the business.
By the way, dentists don't die.
You know, a lot of when I'm.
They're notorious for it.
I knew a girl, she had just graduated.
She had just gotten, I was like, you're never going to get a loan.
And she goes, oh, yeah, the bank was ready to give me like $150.
I was, what?
I'm trying to start my business.
And I'm like, I've got a model that's proven over seven years.
Most doctors have no clue what to do with money.
They're clueless with money.
You go to the house, they're making $600,000 a year.
You think they have everything on?
No.
Nothing.
And the reason is because everybody thinks they know it all because their name is what?
Doctor.
So the challenge is, you're a great content creator, but it's different managing talent.
So, and you said he would be doing some of the stuff.
If they're wired like you, it is what it is.
But here's a question.
So what's the vision of the company?
If you were to say our vision is to dot, dot, dot, what would the vision of the company be?
Well, I would say it's not my vision.
That's the thing.
It is the vision of we, in this industry, you know, you always owe somebody, right?
So my first job ever, I don't really talk a lot about me or my kind of history on the show, but a lot of people know this was this kid's show, Arthur, on PBS, an Aardvark, and he has like a pet dog.
His best friend's a bunny.
You were the voice at 12, right?
Or something like that.
12.
Yeah, it was a voice of the brain who was a bear, black bear.
I had to do the Kwanzaa song for Christmas, the Christmas special.
Drugs clearly involved in this idea.
And that was the first thing I ever did.
I'd been doing like extra work before that.
Started doing stand-up in my mid-teens, which took me kind of full.
Yeah, there you go.
I was so bad, too, at the Kwanzaa rap because I was embarrassed.
I was 12 years old and I looked up Kwanzaa.
They're like, I had to go on there and say, you know, and what's his name?
Karenga, the Kwanza founder.
And I turned to the vocal director.
I said, do you mean Ron Everett?
I was 12.
I said, do you mean Ron Everett, the guy who beat women with soldering irons and poured bleach in their mouths and is a wanted sex offender in law?
Like, we're putting this alongside Christmas and Hanukkah.
You're saying this at 12.
12.
Oh, so you knew you were going to be the cyber.
I was fired at 13.
Happy of our people knew I was going.
Exactly.
Talking about Kwanzaa here, the face of Kwanzaa.
Exactly.
Yeah, exactly.
See, now I'd have to apologize.
That'd be Black Bear Facebook.
You're Black Bear Face.
Black Bear Face.
Oh, my God.
But to be fair, it was also really bad where they had me do like four or five rap verses.
And it was so bad.
I was so embarrassed that they just added in background singers.
Hey, come together now.
I'm like, they're missing four of my verses.
Oh, my God.
That's so funny.
So that's what I, you know, I started with doing that.
And I'm trying to go back to your question now.
I've gotten off on the vision.
So you always owe somebody.
Yeah.
And the same thing, right?
Even when you start out and like when you're doing stand-up, it's kind of the beauty of stand-up comedy is you get to see these microcosms, right?
Like I'm sure you've had hell gigs where you have these, like I had one guy one time try to pay me in Coke.
Have you ever had that?
I've had that and I've had the guy go, hey, man, I don't got all the money.
We had to drive to the projects for him to sell drugs.
Yeah.
Get money.
Yeah, exactly.
Okay.
Yeah, exactly.
And I said, no, no, I don't do drugs.
Yeah.
He said, well, you'll sell it, make more money.
I said, no, I don't do drugs.
Like, who do I, do you want me to make the call right now to the authorities?
So you experience these things because you owe, right?
And then you owe somebody in the industry or you have to do somebody a favor.
We do owe.
We owe entirely Mug Club.
And that's why we have this massive paying subscribership because they are investing their dollar.
Really, it's this simple.
They think we're fighting for them.
They think most conservatives are fighting for them.
And they're disenchanted.
And they feel like there aren't people who represent their viewpoint.
You know, I've been in this industry for a long time, both on the sort of secular, the entertainment side, and then the conservative side.
But I didn't grow up.
Like we didn't have Fox News in Canada.
We really didn't have AM radio.
Occasionally, I could pirate like Rush Limbaugh, I think like Dennis Prager from Plattsburgh, New York, when I would be in Montreal.
But I did grow up watching Letterman, right?
I did grow up watching Conan.
John Stossel was a big influence where I found out I was conservative before I even knew what that was when he would do Give Me a Break on TGIF.
Madam on the show multiple times.
Oh, I love how he always, when he gets a little personickety and he like talks to you like you're 12, like, you say that, but you're investing in gold.
He spoke like that to me for two hours.
Oh, did so?
Oh, God.
So, Adam, you say this, but really, you're here on a podcast.
But he was brilliant.
He's really a sharp guy.
For sure.
So that was my influence.
And I sat around and I would go, well, there's nothing there for me.
There isn't for me.
When you look at that point, you have every single late night show.
You have every single comedy show, an entertainment show.
Every single one was left.
And no one on the right was really actively trying it.
And they were actively telling you that it wouldn't work.
At some point, you owe.
So I sat out and I just said, I'm going to do what it is that I would like to watch, where people told me there weren't enough people out there like me.
And then that ended up being the audience.
And then eventually Mug Club.
And those are the people we owe.
So the vision is you are investing in us to entertain and to fight for you.
Well, that's what we're able to do without the shackles that a lot of other people come with.
So there's not really a there's not really a okay.
So you know Daily Wire is going to be watching this tonight.
And I know you can't say yes or no, but they're watching this.
Okay.
And they're watching to size you up.
They're watching to see if you guys are going to be able to compete with them or not.
The world of competition is very brutal.
And you know that.
I don't need to tell you any of that.
They're watching it.
And by the way, whether they're going to say they watch it or not, you know, sometimes you're like, oh, did you watch it now?
No, no.
So a true competitor, which they are, they'll be watching this.
Now, here's a question.
If the vision is like that, so it's not like you guys are here saying we're going to build one of the largest media companies and be able to do XYZ and fight the fight against the, you know, the woke, the establishment, what they're doing.
We're going to do our part and we're going to build a company that's going to be able to go out there and fight for the average conservative in America for the values and principles that we have.
And by doing so, we're going to be able to build a multi-billion dollar company to do movies, documentaries, shows.
That's not the vision.
That's not what you're selling.
Or is that?
No, that's not.
But here's the big difference.
So for example, you can bring in someone who's, let's say, is immensely talented, like a world-class stand-up comedian, some people who we're working with.
You can bring them in and say, by the way, or a documentary filmmaker who, yeah, we have some people.
So different people who we and we'll be making, probably tomorrow there might be some announcements as far as you know.
You have tentative agreements and no official agreements, but there'll be at least twice the content starting March 20th.
Okay.
And eventually it'll be triple.
It'll be quadruple.
As long as no one has to compromise what it is they believe.
But we don't bring in, for example, a world-class stand-up comedian and say, you need to do a daily show that you don't want to do, and then a documentary.
We say, hey, you're looking to do a special.
Let us give you a tailwind.
Let us be the wind under your sales for that special.
You're a comedian.
Be the best comedian you can be.
We're not trying to fit them into a box.
And then if a documentary filmmaker comes in and says, hey, I want to make this film that's going to cost X hundred thousand or X million dollars to produce it.
We don't go, okay, you can do that, but you have to do ABC XYZ for us to fund that.
We say, okay, great.
Be the best documentary filmmaker that you can be.
The issue is there really is no platform out there where people can be exactly who they are without certain strings attached that may not be, by the way, with any malicious intent, but it ends up having the same net result where it becomes very, very homogenous.
You and I both know this.
On the conservative, like there's a reason it's really easy for the left to say, look, they're boring.
It's a bunch of, well, Tucker Carlson, like on CNN and Crossfire days with a bow tie.
It's a Tucker Carlson lookalike convention, right?
This is your conservative movement where it all looks and sounds the same.
Everyone on the left.
I mean, here's the best, most effective attack that someone on the left can do.
And we'll get this sometimes.
We'll be on the show.
And like you just mentioned, Anderson Cooper or sometimes like Chris Cuomo, where you just run the clip and that's it.
The setup is its own punchline because it's so bad, it doesn't require commentary.
That happens a lot from people on the right, where if you're maybe some people go, I really like what they're saying.
So they don't realize how it comes across maybe to someone who's just looking for the content side of it.
And you'll see the left often, they'll just run something and go, all right, there you go.
And they'll move on.
You think so?
Not all the time, but sometimes, yeah.
Yeah, because, okay, so what.
There's a reason they put together reels, hit reels for us like Fox.
Listen, I'm not an owner on Fox.
I don't know shares.
I look at, you know, I watch what Russell Brand did yesterday, two days, three days ago on what do you call it, Bill Maher.
And he called out that MSNBC person and he was stuck.
He's a bam, Well, you tell me, you know, you keep calling out the Fox news, but how about you guys?
What have you done?
Look at yourself.
He says, tell me one thing that we've done.
He says, you're serious?
You already talked about Joe Rogue?
And it was so embarrassing.
I'm assuming you saw this.
Yeah, actually, I don't know if I can, I think I'll, because I'm in Florida, be doing a show tomorrow.
Oh, fantastic.
And then like Lex Friedman, like I said, I'm doing press for a couple of weeks right before we.
Phenomenal.
Yeah, so himself, when he comes, so then even Bill Maher was almost uncomfortable, like, oh, okay, like, let's slow down.
Well, no, no, it's really also Fox.
Meaning, there was a moment where the left could do that with the right, but some are saying Fox could come up right now and say, listen, we are the Ken Kongs today.
Number one comedy, Greg Gutfield, is doubling Kemmel and Fallon combined.
Okay, so that's data.
They'll say that.
They'll say Tucker is, what, 2.6, 2.7 million, and number two is what?
They'll say, out of the top 20 shows, we have the look at the bottom down limit where he's at.
These things you've heard, I've heard.
We see the data, and it's very easy for them to take the shot the way they do, right?
Like Joe Rogan, oh, you want to talk as much crap as you want to talk about, Joe Rogan?
11 million an episode.
That one, you know, data that came out with the podcast.
I don't know if you remember, this was like a year ago, maybe nine months ago when it came out.
Everybody was silenced.
Hey, here's how much you're getting.
So Fox could throw their weight around and say, yeah, you guys can say whatever you want.
We are still kicking everyone's ass, Gutfield, Tucker, this, that.
They can push their weight around.
The only thing I'm asking from you is...
I hope they do.
Yeah, no, I hope they do.
And I hope they start supporting real conservative causes and candidates.
And a lot of people see Fox News as Republican, not so much.
I'm not a Fox News Republican.
I'm a traditional conservative.
What's the difference?
Well, the difference, for example, would be if you look at the way they treated certain candidates.
I mean, for example, if you look at what happened with Carrie Lake and the loaded questions that they would ask, the same thing where if you look at the way they would treat Donald Trump, the same thing if you look when I was there and Mitt Romney, it was kind of a coronation.
The same thing if you look at some of the topics that they'll cover, whether it's covering the gender bender that's going on with bathrooms, like a lot of the time.
I know that I would tune into it and it doesn't represent what it is that I believe.
Or certainly, I should say, not the entirety of it.
And a lot of conservatives feel that way.
Certainly a lot of conservatives after the election.
There's one thing to say, like, look, the lawsuits were terrible.
And of course they were.
Like, we were on there reading the amicus briefs.
It's another thing to say, anyone who thinks that there was an issue going on with the election is crazy.
And I'm not, by the way, not everyone is the same there.
Like, Tucker is very different from someone like a Greg Gutfeld, who's very different from, I don't necessarily know all the other people.
Laura Ingram.
Kennedy.
Yeah.
Everyone has different points of it.
Judge Janine.
Judge Janine.
I had done her show quite a bit on the weekend.
She's actually, she's a lot of fun.
She was a lot of fun to hang out with.
She carries a stick.
When she goes out, she's not afraid to.
But here's the thing.
I don't see it as competition because our viewership isn't 74.
It's not a 74-year-old.
And I'm not just saying that as a slate.
That is the median viewership.
It might be 76 now.
It's not that high, though.
It's in 70s.
I know it's in the 60s.
It's in the 70s.
It's that high?
It's in the 70s.
Let's call it 65.
Sure.
28.
18 years old.
80s, 28 years old.
And not that we don't target young people.
To give you an idea, this is conservative.
That's kind of what you were saying about I see where the puck is going, not where it is now.
Well, it's not where the puck is going.
It's just, it's who I am.
And so I'm able to speak to that group of people.
The issue is I think you need to reach all of them.
The problem is it was never profitable to reach younger people.
And that's why the median demo just got older and older and older and older.
Because it's a lot harder to get a bunch of 20 and 30 year olds to tune in.
It's much, much more difficult than to have the current conservative base tune in.
So it's not the same thing.
And by the way, I hope they reach those people.
Look, the baby boomer generation, too, they were in conservative generations of all time.
I'm just, I'm the only one saying there isn't only one way to skin a cat because I've had to do it and been told that it would never work.
And that's what hopefully we can provide for other people out there who feel the same way.
There are a lot of people in the industry.
And March 20th, you know, people are going to see somebody.
They're looking forward to it.
And people have been begging for you to come back for four months.
You'll probably have a much younger demo than Fox News.
We do.
By the way, what time did you do your show?
Is it 11 o'clock that you do your show?
Is it when you would?
Was it 11 a.m.?
It's 10 a.m. Eastern, right?
10 a.m. East.
10 a.m. Eastern.
10 a.m. Eastern.
Okay.
I know that because we're 9 to 11 is our show.
And I'm always like, oh, Steven Crowder.
No, no, it's great.
I didn't mean to siphon off here.
But the point is, the point is, that's the amount of influence you've developed.
Now, for us, you know, we're in the space, we have a message, our audience shows up.
Maybe your audience is slightly different than yours.
They come because they follow business and we follow business stories.
Yeah, it's not necessarily the same thing.
So it's not.
I don't see you as competition any more than I see Fox News or what other people like Daily Wire's competition.
But where I'm going with this on the Fox part of what you're saying is, okay, so here's a different question for you.
As somebody that is in talks with a lot of people right now, we're going to be signing some talent and we want to bring them on board to Valutainment.
We're going to be doing that because that's part of what we want to do.
We have a vision where Valutame wants to go.
What could Daily Wire had really done anything to have kept you?
Meaning, you know, some relationships don't work out.
Yeah.
And you're kind of like, dude, like, I really don't want this relationship to work out.
And we're very good to not make a relationship.
You're dating a girl.
You're like, I'm going to have a lot of fun with you.
We're never going to be married and we're never going to have kids.
So let me create a problem.
Hey, Brutal, let me tell you.
You know, you can say, oh, my God, I can't believe you said it.
You know what I was thinking about the other day?
And I was thinking about, I was having a fantasy about going and doing this.
I would never could.
Oh, this is why I don't think it's going to work out.
It's not you.
It's me.
And I'll boom.
And you follow.
How much is that?
I'm a fantasy that involves a parrot, tube, a lipstick, three sticks of butter.
Yeah, transition.
It's what we call the litmus desk.
I got four sticks of butter in my world.
But were you really open to the idea, Gohan, Daily Wire, or not?
Yeah.
Yeah, as a matter of fact, you were really.
And by the way, it wasn't just them, just to be clear.
There have been a lot of suitors.
Sure, of course.
Let me just, yeah, so we were doing the Nashville show, right?
You were doing stand-up.
About the Ryman, which is the Ryan, the Colonel Doc.
And the whole thing there was like, you know, we had some of the guys were there from Daily Wire.
We knew they were going to be there.
And we're like, you know, there's just a lot of stress and a lot of pressure.
Like, I really want to perform well because this.
After the election stream on Rumble that week just went crazy.
And so he was very much in the mode of like, I really want to perform well.
I want to show these guys what kind of stuff we can do in the live space as well doing stand-up and not just on the show, right?
So the answer to that question is yes.
Like there wasn't nervousness because he was like, I just don't like these guys and I don't want to do anything with them ever.
It was like, I really want something to be possibly to be able to work out.
But he said it many, many, many times.
There was just something in there that we specifically gone into it that just is a non-starter.
All the other terms, all the other stuff you get to, right, in negotiations.
That was the thing that I didn't like.
I was like, of course you negotiate.
Yes.
But if there's something in there that basically says in this term sheet that you're going to do something that it just is antithetical to who we are, then no, we can't get past that.
Like that's just something that's never going to work.
So that's why he said, look, just take me out of this.
Let's just talk about the movement.
He's talked about a bench.
That's part of the vision of what we're doing.
How is there another Steven Crowder in this current age?
Will Fox News step up and go into a newer media category and try to reach a younger audience and swing the big stick that they have to do something for the conservative movement?
It's bigger than that, bigger than that, right?
Will they stand up and do that?
And so when we're looking at it, we're like, well, we don't want to just do this and then kind of write off into the sunset.
We want other people to be able to come up and do this as well.
Because there needs to be more than just Fox News.
There needs to be more options for conservatives about it.
So you guys do want to build something as big as Fox News, if not bigger.
Not as big as Fox News.
Like I've talked about with YouTube is, look, I will build, we will build something that will be as big as it grows to be, provided that we can believe in what it is that we're building.
In other words, if it comes to a point where I go, okay, but we got to start silencing ourselves and discussing these issues because look at the 10, 15 million we've foregone on YouTube.
The minute I find myself making this, I'm done.
Can I ask you a question on the money then?
Yeah.
You know what they say?
Everyone has a price.
Yeah.
50 million.
I'm not going to be able to do it.
50 million.
Okay.
Well, I think that was.
No, that was my price.
Yeah, exactly.
One night.
You never heard me talk about the money.
$12.5 million in a contract that would go six for an entire production company with 110% penalties at minimum.
45%, actually, 65% of which would have been enacted immediately, like could have been red lined and eliminated.
Okay.
We have 25, 30 employees.
We have millions of dollars that we have to pay just in equipment costs and insurance costs, right?
The costs for us are in the few million dollars per year just to operate the show.
And you know, doing this, that sounds probably about right.
So take a look at the fact that.
I would put a bigger number with the work that you do.
Some of those things.
It's a pretty substantial number.
You actually act.
You do skits.
You do, it's not like production costs.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We had to bring in an entire one and a half metric ton of sand to do a saving private Ryan thing.
Six scene, by the way.
We have to have lawyers on Retainer like crazy because some of the shit we do is horrendous.
Sorry, can I send you a bunch of things?
Yeah, you just do it every year.
You just did.
I apologize.
Let's do it.
Like sometimes we look back and we go like, ooh.
Did we do that?
But you said that whether it's 50 million, you said even if it was a billion, that you're ideologically opposed to what was going on with big tech, censorship, everything like that.
There's no future to believe in if, if we do the bidding of big tech.
And by the way.
So no amount of money.
This is a hill you will die.
There would be nothing more predictable than me.
There would be nothing more profitable than me, for example, leaving, getting a bunch of people to sign up for Mug Club right now.
Just the people, by the way, who've already entered in their email at Mug Club forever.
There would be no way to make more money than for me to say, sign up, do it for two years, not produce any other shows, pocket the money and walk.
Or to have done that before.
That would be the money play.
The money play certainly wouldn't be bleeding money to bring in talent, right, to try and produce content.
We don't need to do it.
What we're really, and this is a challenge we run into, is there are very few people who we can bring in who would be, for example, like an exposure benefit for us, but we don't really care.
We know that we can be an exposure benefit for them.
And there are a lot of good people out there who've had the door slammed in their face.
And yeah, I know some of them who've had the door slammed in their face at Fox News at some of these other places because there are very specific instances of them not playing ball that they shouldn't have to play.
I'm not talking about anything really pernicious.
I'm talking about like, hey, don't discuss these issues.
Hey, you know, don't be so rough around the edges.
Some people need to be, and that's okay.
Only one side is saying we don't need to do it one way.
So we'll be as successful as it is based on people saying what it is they believe and not compromising it.
But it's just a different starting goal, right?
I use this analogy with pastors.
Like, your job as a pastor is not to grow your church.
Your job as a pastor is to faithfully convey the word of God to whoever shows up and let God take care of the growth.
It's just the focus is slightly different, right?
So we're saying, look, our goal is not to grow a company and become a behemoth like Fox News or anybody else that's out there.
Our goal is to make sure that there's a pathway for creators and that the audience is always the number one, the only person that we have to perform for.
That's the audience.
That's that Jew.
And if that into your church, I want you to get me to convert.
There you go.
Well, we can talk about this.
I went to ministry school.
And your goal could be if you're Joel Osteen stuffing money in the wall.
You got to put it somewhere and you need insulation.
So, guys, so obviously the left has a chokehold on, think about it.
When you named the top five conservative, we were having problems coming up with three.
They have a chokehold, and it takes like, thank God, little moments like Elon, who's, I don't really know where he's political, but he buys Twitter or seeing files or seeing the lives or seeing all this shit with the leak lab leak.
Do you guys, do you think, Steve, like that the tides are shifting and people like you, like, well, Pat's doing what you guys are doing?
Do you think it's there's light at the end of the 12th?
There's the other side, the other voice?
Yeah, you know, it's a good question.
There's definitely been a shift.
So actually, I wanted to go back to something, and this kind of ties in that Patrick said.
He said niche.
I don't have the numbers, but I remember a breaking bad.
I think it was about 14 million, maybe 12 million people tuned into the finale.
And when they did some focus groups, I believe it was like 80%.
It was a significant majority were Republican.
Take the highest viewership ever on Fox News.
It's still about a third of that.
So when people say, oh, what you do is more niche, no, no.
I think even like we don't really talk about our numbers a whole lot.
They're reflected in that, right?
With no seed money.
It's not niche to have an entertainment show that people will tune into, whether they're conservative or not.
I would say it's more niche to just do rah-rah talking points.
Because if you look, there's a huge, think of how many people vote Republican.
And you're talking about like these huge numbers, right?
Fox News, like Tucker, is like 2.0 million, 3 million is a huge peak.
And that's what the Nielsen rating, right?
Where the viewership is for seconds, right?
You're lucky if it's a couple of minutes.
I think that's more niche than, for example, every single comedy late night show, all of Comedy Central, ABC, NBC, but it's entertainment.
It's very different.
So going to what you're talking about, I will say this, I've noticed a shift.
When I was obviously in the entertainment industry, and then particularly in the stand-up community, like in Montreal, there were no people who were even right-wing or libertarian.
I mean, people would get furious.
I was, I didn't even know I was conservative, but I would go up and I would make a joke that I remember one time I got in a lot of trouble because it was a joke about Muhammad, which, you know.
Yeah, people get touchy about it.
I don't know why it's next thing you know, somebody's blowing up a microphone.
So I would get in trouble back then and no one understood that there was an issue with that.
Everyone, it was like a comedy witch hunt.
Remember when George Bush was president?
Everyone would come out and he sucks.
Isn't he an idiot?
Isn't he a moron?
And it's fine.
But I was going, there's no one else at that point in time.
That's changed a lot.
As a matter of fact, now or when you go to comedy clubs and not just people like Rogan, but you see at least a lot of people understand the idea of free speech.
You still get sort of the indie alt comics who say, like, it's not cancel culture, it's accountability culture.
But really, we had to take a lot of bullets early on doing that because there was nobody in the industry doing it.
And I think now for some people, it's a little late.
They've woken up and realized it.
I mean, think Joe Rogan has done a lot to help with that, obviously.
You're talking about his numbers.
It's unbelievable.
You see someone like Russell Brand, like, I'll be doing a show tomorrow.
I hope it goes well because I used to lay into that guy hard because he loved socialists.
He was a communist and he had this.
I don't know communists, but back then, he would do this thing called the Trues News.
Oh, the news that you're not hearing anywhere else.
And he would talk about it.
And then he would constantly go into Fox News.
And here you would think that I'm anti-Fox News.
My issue was I felt compelled to back then say, well, hold on a second.
What about ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC?
And he wasn't talking about it back then.
And I was the only conservative on YouTube.
And so I would dress up like him and do an impression of him and make fun of him.
And by the way, not mean spirited.
Like I understand, the guy's immensely talented.
Right.
But I don't think he liked it.
Of course not.
And now you see him transition.
I don't know where he lines up politically on every single issue, but I do know that he understands the threat we're facing.
He's super necessary.
His voice is not a very good thing.
He's unbelievably necessary.
That's a transition, though.
Back then it was him with the entire industry and me kind of in this corner.
And now it's at least split.
It's almost like a schism in the church.
A couple other questions before we transition.
I want to go into some current events.
I think the audience wants to hear some current events.
There's a bunch of conversations going on here with people talking.
So let's say, and I'm asking this selfishly, okay?
And it's just you and I talking with Gerald.
Okay.
If I wanted to- I don't like where this is going.
It's just you and I alone in a room.
Candlelight.
Turn off the lights.
Lock doors.
No.
Sponsor that KY.
If I wanted to, if I wanted to sign a guy like you, okay?
And during that time while you were talking to Daily Wire, and we sat down and I was one of the guys on the table, where would I win to be able to attract a player like you?
I can tell you one thing.
There would have to be at least 1% upside.
That's it?
At least one.
I mean, that's just where you.
If the sticking point is 0%, it's like how about 50% past a certain point of net profit.
It's like 0%, right?
When you're talking about 0% upside, 0% upside, 0% upside.
If you started with 1%, you'd be ahead of the game.
Okay, so that's so what you're saying is, hey, I come in, I light this up.
I don't want you to guarantee me 12 and a half years, two years, and another, you know, up to six years, whatever, et cetera, et cetera.
We're going to just tell me, if I light it up, I can make 20.
I can make 30.
I can make 40.
That's what I'm, that's your biggest thing.
If you could do that.
Yeah.
That's just a starting point.
It's at least one.
It is a sticking point.
And the big thing is, if you also didn't say, by the way, you have to start changing your show so you're monetized on YouTube.
I don't think that's it.
That would be the issue.
You know what's going on?
If you didn't do that, you would be ahead.
Yeah, but most of the game.
If I'm signing a guy like you up, you're doing Rumble and you're doing YouTube, right?
And you're not really active on, but you are active on Rumble and you're very active on YouTube, what you've built over the years.
The goal would be to develop an OTT monthly subscribership that's going to build value.
And the more dollars you brought there, the math is so easy to structure for a guy like you.
Why would that be so complicated?
Do you understand what I'm asking you?
I realize if I surfing, if I set it up right now, I think I do realize.
He said on the table.
He didn't say at the table.
Turn off the lights.
I do not consent.
He's hollering in the moonlight like a siren.
I'm drawn to him like Yogi Bear.
No, but I mean, so that's what you would think, right?
And so seeing these offers come in and literally, and I'm not going to tell you about specifics, but three, four offers come in and boom, boom, boom, cookie cutter, cookie cutter.
And I'm like, do you have you even seen the show?
Like, we're not some startup company coming out where we're going to do five live reads.
I'm sorry.
If that's your thing, that's fine.
That's just not us.
That's not what we do.
I don't even know.
So why would you try to make us fit in that box?
If you didn't say we're going to, you know, 110% penalties on behalf of YouTube, on behalf of Facebook, on behalf of Spotify, and on behalf of iTunes and Apple, all this.
Sorry, that's right.
It's not iTunes anymore.
I just showed how old I am.
Remember back when it used to be iTunes?
Apple music.
All right.
That and any percentage of upside, especially if let's say you had access to the numbers of Mug Club subscribers and you knew you'd be making far more than your initial offer.
Anyway, you'd be way ahead of the game.
But that was a complete sticking.
And not just, just to be clear, it's never been about Daily Wire.
It really is about the industry and how it operates.
And I know what these term sheets, I know what contracts should look like because I've been on the secular side of it since I was 12 years old.
I mean, I was having to be tutored on set.
Yeah.
But, okay, so let's go a little bit deeper with that.
So if that was the case and I said, look, I don't care if you get a strike.
I don't care if you do this.
I don't care if you get any, I don't care if you get demonetized on YouTube.
Yeah, that's a part of the revenue that's coming in.
If you're bringing XY's amount of subscribers to OTT, that's what's going to be the measuring of your success.
You drive the hell out of this?
$5 million for every XYZ amount of subscribers you bring in.
Hey, Pat, I got this many active.
Cut them and check for another $5 million.
So every time it's like million, million, million, million.
Hey, we did this one.
Second year.
You made 20, made 22 million this year.
Great.
I hope you make 40 next year.
There is a way to structure the math to do that.
I don't think that's like.
Well, not to be advertiser dependent, too.
Like there's some role that advertisers play.
We love the partnerships that we have.
We're very, very picky about it.
We don't just do ads the same way people do.
We actually do these really funny commercials that get tons of plays on clips channels on YouTube.
But it basically makes it.
And Elon even said this.
He's like, you got to go away from the advertising.
He's talking about Twitter.
Exactly.
They play a role, but you can't depend on it because then they dictate the fact that he's doing that.
Because the whole $750 million, one of them had dropped.
I was like, what are we going to do with this if we lose this?
Well, if you do, you kind of have to answer to them.
The other day I was watching Fox and I saw an ad on Fox.
Was it a G. Gordon Liddy?
No, no, it was an HIV.
It was a self-libricated catheter.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I'm Bale Devane.
Some of the ads I saw, I'm like, interesting.
You're now okay with this ad and you're doing that.
You did the show with Trends like nine months ago.
I don't know if you remember.
Yes, I do.
Okay.
But if you go to OTT model to drive and the multiple there is based on how many paid subscribers and your job is to create constant creative content shows to say you're only going to get this on the OTT and that's how you get compensated.
Well, for example, like some of the people who we're talking with right now, like some of them, we know they're not going to be generating a bunch of paying subscribers.
And they also don't necessarily generate like YouTube revenue.
Some of these people have a history of background, like really large, you know, main network shows where they've been a part of comedy shows or they have these comedy specials.
And so when we bring them in, we say, okay, what is it that you want to do?
What is it you bring to the table?
And then you find that intersect and you see where you can work together.
We know not everyone is going to have the paying subscribership that we have.
But here's the thing.
We've always focused on trying to add value.
That's why we've reduced the price by $10, which people would say is absolutely crazy while adding content because we've made the numbers work from our end.
We want our viewers, and particularly the people who we know felt like they were left out in the cold who paid and like, well, I signed up here and you're leaving after four months.
They're going to get a bunch of time free.
True North is the audience, what they want and how you serve them.
And when you start with that, you will then look at the people who you are working with, talent or producer, and say, how do you serve the audience?
Not how do you serve a corporate overlord?
Not that there's anything wrong with corporations.
Not how do you serve these people on the second floor who you, but how do you serve the audience?
And the beauty with the audience is it's more than half of America.
It's more than half of the United States of America.
And that is not reflected.
When we talk about these numbers, look, that's not two, that's not 3 million.
Certainly not at 45 seconds to a minute and a half a pop.
These people are basically, they're out there and there's nothing for them.
And I was one of those guys.
Yeah.
You know, the way you're describing it when I say, so Fox is Republican, I'm more conservative.
Okay, Daily Wire is this and, you know, those guys are this or those guys are this.
The way I'm seeing it is, you know, on the conservative side, Republican side, it's like different denominations of Christianity.
You got Presbyterian, seven-day, LDS, Catholic, you know, pick them, right?
Whatever you may be.
You're pretty much following the same commandments.
You may be off 90%.
Your prophet is a different person.
Your NIV is the Bible you follow.
You follow Book of Moroney or you follow this.
But the structure of what you believe in more or less is the same.
The challenge then becomes if there's a massive infighting where you are fighting for the same cause, but it's going up against each other, that could be problematic because then the cause of wanting to inject or sell the values and principles that you believe in, now it's kind of confused because Daily Wire, what do we have?
Are these guys supposed to be enemies?
Are those guys supposed to be enemies?
So that's the only challenge where some viewers would have.
But to say...
No, I understand that.
By the way, I do believe you bring an audience to Daily Wire that they don't have.
I do believe that.
I do believe that Jordan Peterson brings an audience that they don't have.
I do believe Prakrit brings a different audience that they may not have.
I do believe Candace brings a different audience.
And definitely Shapiro is the guy that brings a different audience.
So it's not like the people that already listen to Daily Wire, all of them subscribe to you.
There's a different audience that can hear.
There's a huge difference.
And I think it's also important to note, like, this is the first time there's ever been, from me, any kind of infighting.
People have asked about, we don't even talk about the numbers on our show.
I don't talk about it because I just feel dirty.
I want the content to speak for itself.
It's very, very rare.
There are a lot of things that have happened behind the scenes for years that we just don't talk about in dealing with this industry.
It is the one and sole time.
And that's because you have, and I know Joe was about to jump in.
You have state borders and you have national borders.
So for example, when you talk about Christianity, yeah, there are state borders.
That's maybe you're Presbyterian or maybe you're Methodist.
But then you do have national borders, right?
And that's where you would say you have Catholic and you have Protestant.
That would be considered, I'm sure we share a lot of the same values, but certainly let's just go on the Protestant side.
If you get into that territory where you say, okay, yeah, I'm a Protestant, I'm a Bible-believing, you know, I'm a born-again Christian, but I don't believe hell exists.
That's a national border.
We no longer share the same faith because Jesus came to save us from the fires of hell.
Now you are in a different religion.
And so, if our entire reason for being, at least us, is to fight big tech and fight this Leviathan that we have seen for so long, you know, where we have talked about always, right?
It's been flipping the bird to the mainstream, not just media, but entertainment industrial complex and big tech.
Well, we can't compromise that because now we're beyond national borders and everyone else also would espouse those same values and people think they're fighting.
You have a sponsorship to do as well.
No, I don't.
Because Jail is about to say not at all.
No, instead of looking at it as infighting, because you're right, the church a lot of times can be its own worst enemy.
Look at it as hopefully ironing sharp, iron, sharpening iron, right?
So we're trying to sharpen the movement and push it forward in the right direction.
And we never picked a fight with Daily Wire.
And we haven't talked about this when we have a massive platform to be able to do so for a while.
It wasn't picking a fight.
We picked a fight, though.
But there's nothing wrong with it.
But you do kind of pick a fight.
Sort of, right?
So think about what we did in that first video.
Yeah.
We said these are the terms in the industry and these just cannot work this way.
We're going to go and do something different.
That's it.
That's what we did.
Now, if people are going to suppose, okay, this is the Daily Wire, and we didn't come out with personal attacks or anything like that.
I'm not saying that they did.
I'm just saying that wasn't like infighting.
That's not me saying like, I'm a Protestant, you're a Catholic, and you guys are completely off base.
I can't believe it.
You can't go have fellowship with these guys because they believe if you don't do the sacraments, you're not saved.
How can you possibly believe that?
That's not what happened, right?
Our goal was to say, hey, for us to survive, for this thing to be real and not just talking into a camera and hopefully making some money, we have to do better.
We have to do better as a movement.
Otherwise, we will go away.
Eventually, it will just end.
Look, you guys have a choice.
People out there have a choice, right?
You have a choice.
Do you want a movement that includes people who are not beholden to big tech, who do not punish their creators on behalf of big tech, who do not say you have to be monetized?
By the way, we will have content creators who are monetized on YouTube.
That's the thing.
Some people have come to us and said, well, we want to.
I go, great.
Do it how you want to do it.
But we have some people who come in and say, I really want to be less dependent on YouTube.
And that gets me more excited.
Do you want a movement that exclusively is beholden to cocktail parties with big tech or also allow some room for some rebels with a cause, flipping the bird, being a little bit rougher around the edges?
Do you want all of these things?
It depends what the vision is, though, right?
If the vision, like my division.
I'm not talking about a company, though.
I'm talking about a movement at that point.
Totally get it.
But again, individually, you have a vision.
Collectively, we have a vision, right?
My vision individually may be different than the vision of the company.
Those are two different things.
Let me, as a talent, forget about me being a company guy.
Assuming I was just a YouTuber.
I have a vision with what I want to do with the show, right?
The vision for me, the problem is to talk to people who disagree with me, not to talk to people who agree with me.
That's mine.
So for me, if the vision is to convert and persuade, I mean, cost of discipleship is the first book you read when you become a gay.
Christian 101.
Did you say when you become a gay?
No, Chris.
You read the first book, which is cost of discipleship and you read Mir Christianity.
Sure.
Those are two of the books you read.
And one of the, the whole reason why we're doing this, PBD, is to go out there and, you know, decide.
Okay.
So if our job is to do that and it's door knocking and it's talking to them, we kind of got to be places where people who disagree with us are.
So for example, I completely agree.
Yeah.
So if you go only on Rumble, like Chris is, we had Chris at the house.
You and I were with him till I don't know what, by the way, the conversation we had with Chris, I said, Chris, make a public offer to Joe Rogan.
That's the whole time when people were worried about Spotify being.
I said, make a public offer.
The next day, he made a public offer.
It was a great move for him.
Yeah.
But what I'm saying is, I said, if you're going to really do what you're, if your vision is to sell the company and be a billionaire, great.
You got a niche.
Go get all the conservatives and do what you want to do.
But if your vision is to truly make an impact and persuade and convert, you got to mix it up.
You got to take a different approach.
That's why I think YouTube is a place where somebody thinks about how many people, but I think here's the thing.
Here's the thing, because this is what's also like, where would you be without YouTube?
Look, I was there before anyone at Daily Wire or Blaze or Fox.
When I was at Fox News, I would upload, I maybe at this point had 100,000 subscribers, maybe, maybe 80,000 subscribers.
And I remember saying, Hey, can I upload some of my hits?
Like, I would appear on Red Eye or Hannity or Janine.
I said, Can I upload these to my YouTube channel?
Because, you know, my people on YouTube, there's no way to reach them.
It's not like social media back then.
They didn't have community posts.
I would say, so the only way I can reach them is if I let them know through my YouTube video.
They said, sure.
Then legal took them down because they said, we think this YouTube thing is a fad.
So no one understands that better than I do in reaching new people.
And I would never willingly just go, let's say, to Rumble or a right-wing echo chamber.
But this is something that we have designed from the ground up where we've said, look, the free content is available.
We will reach as many people as humanly possible, provided we do not have to forbid ourselves from speaking the truth.
And we're able to do that without being beholden financially.
This is the model.
This is why we've been so fortunate.
We're not beholden financially to big tech because of Mud Club, because of subscribers.
So if we are ever taken off of YouTube, it's because they decide that we have to go.
Not because we decide.
No, no, but that's fine.
That's all good.
And by the way, you know, for people that are watching this, one of the all-time most famous memes is you.
If you want to pull up, if you just type in Steven Crowder meme, I think that's used where?
Everywhere.
Everybody uses that meme, and they probably don't even know what this means.
This meme is literally used by people from the left, right, middle.
It doesn't matter.
It says to change my mind, right?
So that's the part.
Can I ask your question to bring up my favorite one?
Tell me.
Okay, type in Change My Mind meme.
I think it's Stevie Wonder.
Oh, God.
Change my mind.
Have you seen it?
No, I think I know.
I just have an idea.
So basically, just let me set it up for people.
If the meme is, is it there?
Is it top left?
Top left.
Get out of here.
I knew what that was going to be.
So I'm giving away.
Someone did that.
And I was keeping myself laughing.
Oh, my God.
But to me, this takes guts.
Like when you were saying, I get nervous, a lot of people would be scared, shitless, sitting there going to universities that you go, you got a lot of audacity, you got a lot of courage.
You're very necessary.
Try doing it on 6th Street South by Southwest.
It's not just on university.
To do that, that's the ultimate in this world to face that.
So kudos to you for doing that.
Anyways, look, I asked you a lot of different questions.
I appreciate you for being a sport and taking it.
You know, some of the stuff was probably, you know, just so people know, you guys had no clue what we were going to ask you.
No.
I didn't know you were starting live.
Yeah.
I was looking at that sign.
Hey, hey, it says live on air.
You're very nice to me.
That live on air.
Yeah, that's the point.
Hey, that's why he's rich because he saves money.
We're not paying for it.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
He's nice.
He got a lot of good qualities, but that's a dick move.
Put a live on air neon sign.
Of course, everyone in this chair is looking for directly.
Listen, Rob just sent me a text saying, I forgot one of the sponsors.
My apologies.
We have to do that at the one-hour mark.
Our next sponsor is KY Jelly.
I bet it's going to be Landa Lakes Butter.
That's a good idea.
Five gallon bucket size.
Oh, my God.
Steve, and Pat, just really fast.
And I know the smoke has kind of cleared.
Have you guys had any conversations with Jeremy or Ben or any of these guys?
Have you spoiled them?
I've had a lot of, I would say this, like, so Ben and I have known, like, I've always said we've been friendly for a very long time.
You've heard me say that.
Awesome.
I really wish that we, you know, very different.
Like, it's not like Jeremy and I ever had that kind of a relationship.
Jordan Peterson, yes.
Andrew Clavin, yes.
And there are a lot of people who work there behind the scenes who are fantastic people who absolutely, and it's one thing to have disagreements on a vision for a company.
But yeah, I've had a lot of conversations with people there behind the scenes.
So, but no, as far as business dealings, you know, no.
And there would be nothing better, for example, than to do, let's say you started, let's say you were talking about figuratively, you start a network.
There'd be nothing better than to say, hey, how about this?
How about there's a cross-promo link where someone who's in Mug Club gets a discount for your network and they get a discount for our network?
Sure, we get less money per subscriber, but you hit a critical mass point and you're not going to have people using it to steal content.
I would do that with any conservative network out there.
The issue is none of them would do it with any, not just me, any other conservative.
You won't see people do that because it's a this measuring contract.
I got you.
I got you.
I was a sponsor to go.
Very much.
KY.
Okay.
No, we literally just did our sponsor with KY.
That was just a quick shout out we had for them.
Okay.
Is that actually what it was?
No.
Oh, Julian joking.
I can't trust you.
I was a liar.
I was a sponsor.
I don't know what to do with this.
All right.
Did you read DeSantis' book?
No.
Okay.
I could have lied, right?
That's one of those things where all these ghosts lie like you.
Cover to cover.
I wrote a paper on it.
He wrote a book?
Did you?
Did you read it?
Of course.
Did you watch CPAC?
Did you watch CPAC and Trump's speech?
Are you following any of that stuff?
What's going on?
Yeah, you know, it's funny.
It's funny you mentioned CPAC.
I MC'd the main ballroom at CPAC for like hours and a day.
11 years ago or 12 years.
I did it four years in a row.
Or no wait, I did it.
I did it three years, then skipped a year because I got horrible food poisoning, did it another year.
And I got called into the second floor at Fox the Brass, actually.
Every time I would do CPAC, I'd get in trouble for something.
Oh, great.
And like one time I went out when Keith Oberman was fired.
literally went out in full-on Keith Olbermann makeup as a DJ, giving around my business cards, and I was introducing...
Did you say Keith Olbermann?
Keith Olbermann.
Keith Oberman.
I went out and I was like, isn't he like super funny?
No, super loud.
He's got loud, not a little at all.
Yeah.
Gentle.
Yes.
Super hard.
And then one time I got called in because they had a joke about someone said that I'd made a joke about raping Ashley Judd, which wasn't true at all.
I made a comment about her saying that purchasing Apple products is akin to raping the earth.
But I would constantly have to get brought in and they would say, well, you can't even comment on that because it's a third rail.
And I would do a joke.
So I was like, you know what?
I don't want to do it anymore.
Oh, there you go.
That's an old one.
But I actually, at CPAC, went out as Keith Oberman on the main stage selling Maybelline.
And then I got in trouble with Maybelline.
Are you serious?
But when you get called up into the principal's office at Fox on the second floor, walk me through what happens.
They're like, all right, Steven, this is it.
It's the fourth time this week.
Yes.
What did they say to you?
They'd just be like, they would just, here's a thing I will say too.
There were some great people there, but they wouldn't ever tell me what I could not say.
They would just encourage me with things that would do well with the audience.
You know, they would ask me to do things like put on a suit, right?
Put on a tie.
You know, one, this is actually one.
So as a comedian, right, for the Phyllis Diller quote, I didn't learn comedy when I learned how to write.
I learned comedy when I learned how to edit.
Exactly.
Right.
It's whittle it down, whittle it down, whittle it down.
And so I would go and I had a debate segment with Alicia Menendez, Senator Bob Menendez's daughter, every Sunday for a long time.
And as opposed to, you know, the goal on cable news is to run the clock out, use up as much time saying, basically repeating the same point so that your opponent doesn't have time to speak.
Coming from a stand-up background and coming from, you know, at that point, you know, even the only sports I've ever done are, you know, combat sport, like jiu-jitsu and stuff, not at a high level.
But again, in my head, it's basically comedy and something like jiu-jitsu or judo, where you kind of, okay, brevity is the soul of wit.
I would be really, really short.
So like one point, I think she said, oh, no, this was Alan Combs, I think, who was a super sweet guy.
So like, oh, well, you know, Stephen, where did you go to school when I was making a point?
Where did you go to school?
Where's your degree?
And rather than just going, oh, no, I just said, never made it out of grade school.
What's your point?
Yeah.
And then gave him two minutes.
Oh, well, I didn't mean, you know, there are a lot of people who are smart who, you know, maybe don't go to school.
And then I get called and I go, well, you know what the thing is when you do that, when you just, when you just answer in like five-word sentences, it throws off the flow for other people.
I'm like, that's the point.
But that's the point.
I'm killing them and giving them the ball because they've said nothing.
So that was one where I was sitting there going like, I'm just not going to run up the clock and just spew a bunch of stuff to sound ultimately trying to sound articulate.
I'd sound inarticulate.
But that was one where I was like, this may not be the right, you know.
But it doesn't sound like they're critiquing anything.
They're kind of giving, it's almost like you've seen the movie Knocked Up when they're like, when the girl's character comes in, they're like, we're not saying you need to lose weight.
Just kind of tighten it up.
There was one.
They paired me up with a producer to do a comedy show.
They wanted to be like, well, maybe there's something to this.
And the guy was a super sweet guy.
Super old.
I mean, like in his 80s.
And he would like ask me the question, like, what do you think of Steve Allen?
You know, that kind of thing.
And or Mike Douglas, you know.
And I remember basically kind of pitching what it is that we do now.
And they wanted to have a monkey on the show, like on the set.
A real monkey.
A real monkey.
Which I was like, I mean, all right.
But like, I don't feel like you're hearing the rest of me, like, what about this monkey?
It'll be great.
What if we, can we get a roller skating monkey?
And I just remember being like, okay, we're just, we're, we're on two different wavelengths.
And that's why what we talk was like, all I'm saying is you need to have multiple wavelengths, not just one.
Because it's always one on our side of the, on our side of the spectrum, unfortunately.
And it makes makes a lot of people out there feel disenchanted.
I mean, do you have any idea how lonely I felt when you'd sit there and they go, well, conservatives don't want something like Change My Mind.
I'm like, I think I do.
Well, conservatives don't watch comedy.
Like, I kind of think I do.
Like, ah, you know, conservative doesn't work.
Conservatives don't want books that aren't doomsday theories.
I'm like, I kind of want like productive solutions and ways to move forward.
And you go, well, I want to go out and create this show, but is there anyone out there like me?
Like, is the only way to create content in this movement for a 70-plus-year-old demo that's straight-laced and red meat?
And there's nothing wrong with that, but it's really scary when you say, okay, can it only be that?
So there was a big step out in faith at one point.
I said, I took, this is the story of the show.
I took it.
It was on radio for three hours.
And I didn't want to do a radio show, but they said, hey, Bill Bennett takes off.
He has a fill-in host on Fridays.
So it's a morning drive six to nine.
I said, well, okay, that's a prime slot on radio, and it's once a week for three hours.
That's great.
And the people who are syndicating the show said, yeah, technically with our contract, we can do it.
So I said, okay, I'm going to be based out of a station in Detroit and don't pay me anything.
Do a rev split.
But, and at this point, I didn't have a show, my own show.
I said, but let me own the rights to do podcasts, which they thought that's a fad, you know, a lot of people.
And then it started getting syndicated to more and more markets.
This is where you're.
This would have been 2013, 2014.
Something like that.
Sounds about right now.
That's, you know, post-fuck.
Where before that, I just had been a contributor to Fox News.
I'd been, you know, on stand-up and acting.
But at this point, I said, okay, I'm going to create the show that I want.
And what happened, and the reason we ended up doing so many bizarre sketches is AM Radio has 16 minutes of ad space.
But the problem is when you're streaming it on YouTube, which at that point no conservative was doing, like they don't want to hear about Ypsilanti Chevrolet.
So I would just go, dating advice with Bill Cosby.
We'd create a stinger in and out.
And I'm like, Michael Jackson Redux.
And every single song was about like six-year-old boys like, ah, we're going to do the first recipient of a penile implant.
And I would do 16 minutes of sketches times three.
We just found all this stuff, by the way, in a drug.
We just found it.
We didn't even realize we had.
No, there were 600 old commercials on AM Radio.
You've never launched this?
Never.
Never.
No.
We reused some of them.
Like Perry Maths, the character that we would do for fake.
We got in trouble with the FCC.
You know, that ah, ah!
And we would do fake warnings.
We were like, we have a, you know, at that point, like, we have a Lena Dunham warning.
And it'd just be some fat joke, right?
But then they say, hey, you know, like, this is a legal, like these specific sounds like signifying.
This is highly illegal.
What?
I was like, well, okay, I'll stop that.
But then they realized it was only online.
And they realized that at that point, people were listening to it on audio, like as a podcast.
Like, so they don't, okay, at this point, they don't think it's an emergency.
So fine.
But we were getting into trouble all the time.
And at that point in time, I remember it was before we launched Mug Club.
were like, well, you know what?
We only had like 12,000 people who would tune in because it was a radio once a week, three hours.
Like, I don't know if it's going to work, but let's, and then 12,000 became 50,000 and that became a couple hundred thousand and that became into the millions.
But we just found these.
It was over 600 audio commercials that we only ever ran once.
Yeah.
A lot of them for maybe 12,000 people aside from the radio art.
That's crazy.
Like 200 sketches and opens and like all these things.
We've just got all this content sitting there that we're like, that's a lot of good stuff for Muck Club to participate.
Yeah.
They want to see some of this stuff.
Again, put the link below if you want to learn more about it.
Muck Club forever.
LaddersCard.com slash Muck Club.
Both links below for them to have a Robert.
If you can do that as a reminder, go on 20.
So DeSantis Trump.
Curious to know where you're at with this.
Okay.
DeSantis Trump were you're seeing why are you left?
Because this question right now is the third rail in the Republican Party.
Let's touch on it.
No, no, I'm fine with you.
So CPAC is funny to me because 60% to 20%, right?
CPAC, whatever that.
What were the numbers that you saw yesterday?
Yeah, it was something that wasn't even close.
Yeah, 62%.
It's 2%.
It's a CPAC thing.
It's a C-PAC.
But that's within CPAC.
Right, right.
It's fully within CPAC, right?
Which is now called TPAC for Trump.
So where are you with this?
Where are you with?
Here's the thing.
I like qualities from both camps.
I know this is going to sound like, but I'm certainly not a fence sitter.
The truth is, I've never been in the business of endorsing candidates.
Obviously, once it gets to a general, people know where I line up.
But I'll have people all the time asking me, like, hey, can you endorse this camera?
I'm like, I don't think you really know what it is that I do.
As a matter of fact, even with guests, we'll have people tune out if we have a guest on because people want to hear kind of what we're saying about a topic unless it's a real needle mover.
We've had that with who you would.
What an interesting thing you just said.
Which I feel I hate because it's like, I want, hey, pay attention to this person.
People like this is boring because we just came from, you know, me being waterboarded or having Midget, Jesus, and Santa wrestle in jail, whatever the hell it is.
I would vote for any of these people in a national election, of course.
Like, I would, I really hope it's just not a super bloody primary.
People ask me what I like about Donald Trump.
I like the fact that he went off and did it on his own.
I like the fact that he's an outsider.
I don't like the fact that sometimes he, what it is with Donald Trump is even if he thinks he might be wrong, let's assume and that's a big if, he would never admit it.
So he has to dig in his heels.
So something like with the vaccine, you know, was an issue.
And then really you saw with the audience when he was encouraging younger people.
That was something that I had a real problem with.
But I like him a lot.
And I think he certainly has been probably the most effective president in my lifetime.
Ron DeSantis, I like that he has really been consistent as a governor.
He's done great things for Florida.
Again, I don't live here, but everything that we've read and covered, he seems to be a man who's been remarkably consistent.
What I don't like is, yeah, that he's not a super wealthy guy.
And so you are always concerned if, to use the term, the establishment wants him because they feel like they can get their hooks.
Right?
You always, oh, I'm not saying he does, but that's the concern.
So there are qualities that I like with both of them.
I really hope it's not as childish, although you know it.
From a comedy standard, it's gold.
Think about Steve.
He's active.
Ron DeSantis.
Go to the focus group.
Get Frank Lets with your Snickers and Toupe.
Let's see what's best.
Yeah.
And see, we talked about calling Meepo.
We talked about it.
I'm not going to call him Meepo.
On a past podcast.
It's like Trump is, dude, think about it.
A lot of the stuff that he was telling everybody about, about the virus, he was right.
About the rush, about everything.
So it's like he has not fucking chip on his shoulder, bro.
He has anger.
And now, I mean, Ron is just in his way.
But, bro, we talked about this last week when I was like, I would much rather me personally go back three years ago when just the only thing that was being hurt was people's feelings, not the country.
Like, I'm telling you right now, shit isn't messed up right now.
Oh, of course.
Well, but the choice now is between Trump and Biden.
That's that comparison.
Right now, what we're saying is like, if you have Donald Trump in the office, or if you have Ron DeSantis, or maybe some third person that we don't really know about as much yet, you're going to have a much better situation than you do right now, exactly.
So it's going to be fantastic.
I think the issue with Trump or any other campaign, like we've got to get out of the messiah worship kind of mentality in politics in general.
No one is coming to save you because nobody is perfect.
We're all human beings.
We're all flawed.
Donald Trump was incredibly effective.
Highly effective.
Hilarious as well.
The stuff that he did was like, what do you think I would have?
Yeah.
Shocking.
Like, how many times is that at?
Yeah, exactly.
When he's like, I heard people say this and he could just interject whatever he wanted to say about somebody but couldn't actually.
Were you lying about something in that debate stream?
I don't think so at that point.
I just remember sitting like, did he just say his dad killed JFK?
What the hell did he just say about Ted Cruz?
Yeah, about Senator Cruz.
We should want the very best candidate possible to be the Republican nominee.
That's what we should want.
We don't need a bloodied candidate that's just been completely destroyed.
And then here come the Democrats again with somebody who's going to kill the country.
Look, we've got to have bigger goals than just getting our guy into office.
Yeah, you got to be the right person.
You disagree with Trump when he says, I alone can fix it.
Is that what you're saying?
Because you're saying that you don't want to.
I would disagree with anybody who says I alone can fix it.
I don't think anybody alone can fix this because Donald Trump was in the office for really three years, right?
No, but he was in there for three years.
Then he had to deal with the pandemic.
He was making a lot of positive changes.
Jean-Jean said somebody else will have to carry the torch.
He's got a window of eight years and then the establishment will come roaring back, right?
The machine will come back.
You've got to be able to hand the torch off to the next guy and keep it going for the next eight years.
Not one person can do this.
If DeSantis does get elected, let's just go hypothetical here.
Do you think that it would be a negative that he is quote unquote establishment?
I don't think he's establishment.
My concern is that he could end up owing the establishment.
That's my point.
The same thing that makes Donald Trump impossible to work with is the same reason it makes him almost establishment proof to some degree.
He had a lot of people in his cabinet who you would consider sort of swamp creatures, right?
But as far as them being able to tell him and be like, go screw yourselves, I know better, right?
He doesn't care.
So I'm not saying DeSantis is.
It's a concern that he would be more prone to being influenced by it, which it could be completely ill-founded.
And I'm not super concerned about it.
I'm just trying to express concerns with both of them.
I don't like the quote, you know, the old quote, whatever kills you makes you stronger.
Doesn't I mean, what happens if you end up being like a quad amputee?
Like, no, a quadriplegic.
None of that is true.
What if your killer says mentally stronger?
Aside from Trump, doesn't every candidate kind of have to owe somebody some money?
Yeah.
Like, how many billionaire candidates have there been?
That's why I always find, yeah, exactly.
It was Bloomberg, which I loved him spending a ton of his own money and losing.
Yeah, that was fantastic.
Remember, he got mad because we had a guy dressed as Bloomberg come in where he was like, he was doing, like, he was dancing.
Remember, he did some bra with him?
Yeah.
We said it, and then someone came and said, did somebody say Bloomberg?
And he finished, like, he started doing the worm and like put down a cardboard box.
And that guy is so humorless, his people got mad.
Like, we really didn't like the depiction of him.
I was like, yeah, you can go screw yourself.
As a comedian, you must have loved Trump's whole thing.
Like, now Mike wants to bring a platform on stage.
A stool.
Oh, now he's asking for it.
It's like, and he never asked for it.
Listen, I'm hearing you.
And you nailed it.
I miss the funny, like the funny thing.
Oh, I know.
It was a lot of fun.
Because now it's just, okay, I would get on Twitter and be like, what did he say today?
Yeah, because now it's just, okay, Biden fell down the stairs and he has no idea where he is or what he's saying.
He's shaking hands there.
That's funny, but Trump was just volatile and he would just say, dude, the best is when he would go off teleprompter.
Because you know, when he's reading, and he's reading, but then when he's just like, when he's talking shit, he's going right at you.
Yeah.
And I just loved it.
I did a series actually, which I think is why Trump has never been on the show.
I think it was offended.
It was a Trump talk series in 2015.
Trump got offended?
No way.
Yeah, but I was like, and it was just a series of like Trump on China, Trump on the border, and what invariably he would come back to say.
And now, other people have kind of noticed it.
Like, the theme was he would say, Look, Chad is a cripple.
And I would never say that.
That's what so many people tell me.
I would never say that.
They say, oh, it's a hole of crap.
And I say, you stop saying that.
They say, that's what it is.
I say, okay.
Right.
That's what he would do.
And we would do this like back then.
And now everyone kind of talks about it.
But it is true.
Like when he wants that culpable deniability, it's like people say that.
The same thing is that you're not going to be able to do meatball run right now.
Yeah.
Right.
I'll never say meatball run.
People are saying meatball run.
Right.
And I would never do that.
I would never do it.
Other people.
I can't suck for other people.
It's just like what Chris Rock just did with the Will Smith.
He's like, everybody called him a bitch.
This person called him a bitch.
He's a bitch.
I never called him a bitch.
He said it like a 10,000 times.
It was hilarious.
But this is back, obviously, pre-like when we had.
That was me and my dad.
You?
Yeah.
Me and my dad.
You and your dad.
Yeah, we have a better Trump thing now.
So when we play the audio?
Oh, gosh.
I hate college.
Because 2015, 20?
That's a while ago.
Yeah.
I would never try and do anything that could be.
Oh, you've got way better.
Well, my voice was shot.
Not because I just did Bernie.
But Bernie Polk.
They're coming across the border.
They're raping.
They're killing.
And frankly, truthfully, we have an obesity epidemic.
We've got a problem here.
Yeah, it's kind of Joan Riversy back then.
But no, my Bernie was always Gilbert.
Why, start talking about social enemy.
Shut up, bitch!
What's up with you, capital pieces of shit?
And it was just people like, why does he sound like Gilbert Godfrey?
Because it's funnier.
It's hilarious.
I just enjoy it more.
Yeah, it makes me laugh.
And now that collapse.
Oh, that was a parody of the scene from Misery.
What is Post hosting this program on Thursday?
Hold your feet.
I won't be talking about it.
I don't know who's the early replacement.
That's just beautiful.
What the fuck?
That's like one that was buried in the show.
But we have some that have millions of plays where we, you know, because our audience, no one was paying attention to Bernie Sanders.
This is a good example when we talk about sort of the establishment, people in conservative media.
They're all talking about Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton.
I remember saying, look, Hillary Clinton's a coronation.
Bernie Sanders is the movement candidate.
And we would actually see a lot of people.
We have so much data, right?
When you have billions and billions of plays, not only just on YouTube, but then billions on all these other platforms, you can sort of cross-reference and go, okay, we can actually see a significant amount of Bernie Sanders people would come over to Donald Trump just because of the anti-establishment sentiment.
Sort of Russell Brand a little bit, right?
Where he was a self-avowed socialist.
And I don't know what he would, how he would describe himself now, but he sees the threat of big tech.
Like he certainly would be one of those guys who would have been a Bernie supporter who now sees the problem.
Whereas this was always our audience.
Same with Rogan, by the way.
A big time.
Yeah, but that's that going back to a point you made earlier.
That's why that's what Russell said.
That's why Rumble exists.
I mean, think about you were talking about the people that are on Rumble right now.
Ask yourself why.
What did Rumble set out to do that was different?
They said, look, we want people to actually be able to speak freely on this platform.
And they're creating something that's a little bit different over there.
And he came out and said the reason they exist is because YouTube had started to kind of give everybody the innovative.
You couldn't say anything.
You basically were just choked out if you were anything close to being conservative.
Right.
And so these guys have come on and said, okay, well, we're going to let everybody come over here.
The first people to jump ship are going to be the conservatives.
But watch, if those guys are successful, they will continue to get more people.
Like you said, they have to diversify, right?
Everybody starts out with cat videos first.
All right, Patrick.
We can't all start it up.
It can't always be gold.
Isn't that telling, though?
You're right.
All it is, it's open to everyone.
Yeah.
Right?
It's open to everyone.
And liberals say, I won't do that.
I want it closed to half.
Right?
That's the thing.
You think Rumble is saying you can't come here if you're liberal?
Of course not.
Well, but they've got a guy like Russell Brand, and they've got a guy like Joe Rogan saying it.
So the movement that we were talking about earlier, like you're starting to see this tipping point.
Maybe it was your question.
We're starting to see people that are going there saying, hey, you're right.
He's investing a lot of money into different people.
By the way, what are you noticing the AdSense on the way their platform is rumbled against YouTube comparing the two?
I don't know because I haven't, it would be unfair for me to say because I've been demonetized for so long on YouTube.
So I don't really know what the industry is like there.
Not only am I not allowed to be monetized on YouTube, I'm not allowed to run ads through AdSense.
So to give you an advantage.
Other people can run the exact same ads.
The exact same ad.
You can.
We've done A-B testing on this.
We've done A-B testing.
Where we try and run an ad, like, let's just say it's a clip, right?
Where you run it as a pre-roll or something.
Say, no, absolutely not.
And then we've had other people with AdSense accounts who run it and it gets accepted.
So it's not content-based.
It's us-based.
Peak to peak.
If you were to say, you know, when I used to get a million views, I would make $7,800 on YouTube.
I'm just making some number up.
When I get a million views on Rumble, I make XYZ.
Have you put those two together your numbers?
I'm assuming you've done that to see how they match up advertising.
So that would be more of a Gerald question again because the rates changed so dramatically that YouTube at peak was very different.
Like, I think I've been a partner since 2008.
And I was even around with the MCNs, like, I don't know if you remember, like, makers and students and stuff like that.
Of course.
So the rates would change dramatically.
So it's almost like you don't really have a comparison.
I will say the numbers have been, I think, actually better on a pound for pound basis.
But we often don't really seek to monetize the videos because we'd rather people feel like they don't have to watch that and get the show and subscribe.
So you don't even monetize on Rumble right now.
You're not turning it on.
I think it's on for some of them, but we don't spend such a small portion of our revenue.
It's a special model, right?
That's not really how our model works.
We forewent a couple million dollars a year from YouTube when we said, okay, keep it if you want to demonetize us because it was, you know, the carrot was dangled or just don't talk about these things.
We said, nope, keep us demonetized.
Just don't remove our channel and we'll find a way.
Naive question.
If you're not making any money on YouTube and Rumble isn't a money maker for you, is it all the Mug Club?
Oh, all the sponsors.
And because the viewership is so large that one sponsorship spot is worth four or five on another show.
KY is one of the doors for Astroglide.
It's a non-competing.
So Steven, so people in the Mug Club, where are they, like on March 20th?
Yeah.
Correct?
That you guys are coming back on.
Where you guys are launching on your website mainly?
So the members?
Yeah, it's not entirely finalized.
But here's the thing.
We are launching LauterosCrowder at LauterosClouder.com slash Mug Club.
We're still finalizing exactly who is going to do the back end.
We're pretty close.
Gotcha.
But regardless, people will be able to go there, watch the free show like we always have, and then continue to watch the premium show and the additional content.
This is on the website, right?
On the website, $89.
For the whole year.
Yeah.
But actually, and if you are on Mud Clubforever.com where you subscribe, we're going to send you a code where you actually get a good few extra free months because of the situation.
Yeah, and that's something too, again, because it's like nothing breaks my heart more than people saying, hey, you know, I didn't get a mug or, hey, you know, I subscribe at this point in time when it's like, you know, at some point, right, you end a contract.
At some point, you have to.
You're like, but I hate that you paid and you only got half a year.
But since we can't access their personal information, like we can't know.
So it's like, you have to reach out to us and we'll send you this code.
It'll largely be on our system where we do right by you and give you some extra few months for free.
That's fantastic.
Well, that's when I was wishing that I hadn't taken the CEO job was when we were getting to the end of the contract and we had no idea who our subscribers were.
Right.
And we've talked about this and it was just like, okay, how do we go and build this?
We have no way of getting in touch with you guys.
We have a master email list, but that's every single person who's ever signed up for the newsletter through the website or through that number's got to be in a million.
It's a lot of people, right?
But that's the thing.
It's not specific.
And so if you send it a lot of it, maybe it goes to junk mail because you're sending ads to them potentially and in previous partnerships.
And it's like, man, that's just a feeling of like, we've got to be able to capture these people.
And so that's where Mug Club is.
Oh, so you brought up, I don't know if that was going out to the audience, but yeah, that's the number of three months pre-demonetization, right?
We again 30,000.
Zoom in a little bit.
Go ahead.
So three months, 430,000 was that average from February pre-demonetization.
And that's with just the main channel that doesn't include Crowder Bits, about 62 million plays, which is what we were getting an average in a month between 50 and 70 million.
And of course, that number went down because you don't get browsers.
50 to 70 million views per month.
Yeah.
Okay.
Wow.
But an average of over 100,000 new subscribers every month.
Every month.
And then if you go to demonetization, so even we were demonetized, all right?
We still had about 58 million.
So the numbers didn't quite take because it took a while to get us out of the browse and search.
46,000.
So almost to the letter, a tenth every single time.
They remonetize us again, accidentally.
Someone got fired.
Wait, wait, wait.
This is in 90 days you got how many subs?
46,000.
Versus 430?
Yep.
Yeah.
That's crazy.
Immediately.
And then we have another.
Did your show stop?
Did you change any of the schedule?
No, that's the thing.
Nothing.
Basically, they just turn you off or turn you on.
Turn you off.
And then we have another one.
They're just doing that where again remonetized.
Right.
And then this was, oh, so we were remonetized for two months.
213.
Or sorry, or three months there.
So 213.
And again, it took a little while to get, but again, 62 million plays.
And then demonetized again, and it went down to 23,000.
And this is just YouTube.
This is just YouTube.
Now, you've seen what's happened, obviously, with someone like Andrew Tate, right?
Where you see Meta steps in, and then Google, YouTube, bing, Oh, we got that one.
And then it's Uber.
Is Uber account?
Oh, there's Uber got canceled out.
Oh, then Airbnb.
We've been banned from Airbnb.
Oh, really?
Well, there's a reason.
Do you want another reason?
I want, by the way, I want to know funny stuff.
This is your show.
I feel like, okay, do you remember in Seattle?
Remember Chaz?
Yeah, of course.
Okay, Chop.
Yeah, you talked about that on the show.
Yeah, so what happened is, and do you remember Raz Simone?
He was like the warlord.
They were handing out Philippine slides.
He was the guy.
Yeah, he was the leader.
Then we did some research on him, and we found out that Raz Simone actually had an Airbnb and got all these grants from the government.
So what we did was we sent our producers down to Chaz.
We rented out his Airbnb and declared it New Chaz.
Oh my God.
And spray painted New Chaz and all this stuff.
You did and we actually handed out party flyers.
His ice maker.
Come join New Chaz.
Oh my.
And he found it.
And actually our guys got chased out.
So this whole live stream was come to New Chaz, which was Airbnb.
And then the socialist gun.
That's the one that's the beginning, you'll see it because they had to leave.
Yeah, the socialist gun club showed up and chased them out with guns there in Chaz.
Oh, my God.
Well, and he found it.
So mid-show, he actually tweeted us, I think, is how we found him.
He was on Instagram where he's like, you guys are big funny.
Yeah, he actually had a good sense of humor about it.
But then he got us banned from Airbnb.
Oh, shit.
So this is his, yeah, this is Raz Simone's Airbnb.
Yeah, Raz Simone.
And so you can see why they wouldn't want us on there.
Yeah, no.
We didn't actually spray paint, by the way.
We just did a really good Photoshop.
Good.
And we know because he showed up.
He was like, dude, don't.
He's like, guys, don't worry.
It was Photoshop.
He was fake.
All right, that was good.
Because the whole idea was it's really easy to say, this is our autonomous zone when you're vandalizing other people's crap.
So we just said, let's go to your Airbnb.
That's brilliant.
And yeah, so we were permanently banned from that.
I think we had a couple accounts banned from Uber.
Anything else?
I know you're obviously very against big tech.
Anything with Meta, Instagram, TikTok, stuff?
Well, yeah, we've been suspended.
So that's how my half Asian lawyer, Bill Richmond, was then.
He's only half Asian.
He's only half 100%.
That's how you know he's.
If he's half Jew, then he's killing us.
Yeah, exactly.
It's like the yin-yang of fantastic.
Why won't get one?
But he met me through, was it Engadget or Gizmodo?
I always get it wrong.
I think it's Gizmodo.
So it was like this article that went out, and we were doing millions and millions of reads on the website.
Just latticecutter.com was like, it's just a news site as well.
And what happened is all of a sudden it just got throttled and we just couldn't generate any type of traffic anymore.
And we even A-B tested it on other pages and noticed, oh, if we run it on someone else's page, it does well.
We run it on our page, it doesn't get any clicks.
And so then an article was released from Gizmodo or what did I say?
I don't know.
Gizmodo.
I know it sounds better.
It was the code baked in where there was a leak from an insider saying, like, yeah, it was the Ted Cruz for president, the Chris Kyle Foundation, Breitbart, and me.
One of these things is not like the other, right?
But because pound for pound, it was all organic traffic.
We didn't have nearly the budget.
And so then I call my friend who was a groom, he was a good friend of mine, and he was a Harvard law grad.
He's like, that's not really the law I do, but here's this guy who might, this guy named Bill Richmond, half Asian lawyer.
And then I talk with him and he thinks like, yeah, this is another conservative, right?
There are these wannabe martyrs.
We're like, I'm being suspended or whatever it is.
It's like, well, that's because he threatened to kill someone's dog.
You know, whatever.
Yeah, not all of them.
I'm saying sometimes.
So he goes, okay, I'll call you.
And then he calls me back.
He goes, wow.
Yeah, it actually looks like there's code in there.
And there's actually quotes from the insider.
And they actually, there were screenshots of them removing us from organic trending.
So we couldn't trend on Facebook, couldn't trend on Instagram, YouTube.
We've run into it.
And keep in mind, nothing we do is that crazy.
Sure, some of the jokes are crazy, but it's PG-13.
You know what I mean?
It really is for the, like, you're talking about guys who are pro-Second Amendment, pro-First Amendment, pro, yeah, pro-life, you know, conservative Christians who maybe every now and then the joke ruffles some feathers a little bit too much.
But we've had run-ins with all of them.
That's why you're talking about millions of dollars just in legal fees because we had to bake it into our business model.
But I think if you're not pushing that envelope, like just scratching and trying to put, then it's not fun.
Like, you know what I mean?
It's just boring.
That's part of the fun of the problem.
And not doing it just to be vulgar or just be like, oh, look what they're doing.
I think the funniest ones are when you're like, oh, shit, where it's funny and you make them think and you're like, oh, shit, he's kind of right.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, mostly what we're doing is poking fun at these things that are just so patently absurd.
And we're like, this can't be real life.
And so we'll just kind of lean into it.
And they're like, well, it is real life.
And so now you show any traffic to your website.
Yeah, let me tell you what we just did, which is kind of interesting.
We had a, we're recruiting comedians right now.
So about two months ago, three months ago, we made an ad for comedians to apply.
So we got 120 people that applied.
That went down to 100 people.
A bunch of them are a bunch of open micers or people.
Steve, I'm not even joking about this.
I was on the list.
I'm sorry.
So I'm not going to cut you off.
And we wanted, you know, resume this and videos.
One guy's like literally in his underwear naked with a gun and he just goes, fuck with me.
Like, I'm funny.
And I'm like, what are you talking about?
So I got a bunch of crap.
We did get 100%.
He got a five-year contract with the time.
For different came and, you know, so it went from 120 to 50 to 11 people were here this week and they're trying out for a couple days.
They were here creating shooting sketches.
Oh, by the way, these are guys that not all stand-ups are great sketch and vice versa.
They can't act, exactly.
So they're at our comedy club and our cigar line.
So they're kind of working together and they're doing their own thing.
Oh, yeah.
You'll see it here in a minute.
So they're doing what they're doing.
I'm watching these guys.
I'm like, okay, I want to go talk to them.
11:30, I'm sitting there talking to these guys.
So tell me, what are you thinking about?
He's, you know, this is like one of the best times ever to make fun of the president that we have.
Biden's an easy one, but no one's doing it.
We like to do this.
Trump was good for comedy.
Biden's good for comedy, but people are afraid to touch it.
And you see what's going on right now.
And, you know, so I think there's a very major need for entertainment in that side.
You know, sometimes the right gets criticism for not being good comedians.
They're not funny.
You're not good at making comedy.
It's too or even movies.
Hey, do we need to watch another fireproof where the acting is like, can you really make some movies?
I don't know if you saw Jesus Revolution was number three movie in the country if you were following it or not.
So are you going to be making the money?
There's a massive, massive opportunity, massive opportunity today.
Well, it's also because they don't understand it.
So like when I talk about comedians, again, nothing is like official, but the people can see, for example, I'm not letting the cat out of the bag on my show.
It's like, okay, you know, Jim Brewer, Nick DePaula, Brian, like it's a murderer, Jim Norton, right?
You have Dave Landau.
It's a murderer's row of people that we have all the time where they come on and they'll often say like, oh, this kind of, this feels like filling that gap that was, you know, a tough crowd with Colin Quinn.
I mean, even we've had comedians who we disagree with entirely on the show on a regular basis.
It really is.
Like, it's tough because the problem is you'll get a lot of people who say, hey, I'm conservative.
So my friends say I'm funny.
You know, that's very different from like, to me, Nick DiPaolo is the funniest stand-up who's ever lived, just in my personal opinion.
So when I sat down with him and he is exactly what you expect, like he was wearing, you wear these sometimes, like the kind of plaid pattern suit.
And my dad, my dad dresses like you.
He's a snappy dresser.
He was actually at Dean Witter and E.F. in finance.
Didn't even graduate college.
He just tested off the charts, got a corner office, kind of like bullshit his way in.
Not lying, just like, yeah, I can do this.
When's his birthday?
When's his birthday?
60.
No, what month?
Oh, 1960.
Oh, what month?
Hold on a second, February.
Yeah.
No, no, no.
Sorry, April.
My mom's February.
I'm sorry, my mom.
I'm sad.
Sorry.
I'm sad.
I'm sorry.
Should we be apologizing to Nick?
Shit about your mom.
So Nick walks in.
And my dad, we're like a soft kind of play.
And he doesn't look down from his phone.
And my dad goes, hey, you know, because he's like, he was a booker for the show.
We used to have a booker from, well, from these big shows at NBC.
And they're like, no one will do your show.
They're terrified back in the day because it was controversial, but not the number.
So my dad goes, hey, you know, my son just can't, like, you're his favorite comedian ever.
I'm so glad to have you here.
And all he is, he looks up from his phone.
Can I swear?
One time?
Yes, of course.
Okay.
There's no way to do Nick DePaulo without it.
And he just looks up and goes, the fuck do you look like the mayor of Amity?
And my dad is just laughing his ass off because he's just, but he's actually a super, I don't want to say sweet guy, but like a good guy who you can work with and trust.
But he's so funny.
Another senseless killing is my favorite album.
But like Jim Brewer, you know, it's unbelievable who we've had in the show.
What does he do right now?
What is he doing?
Stand-up.
Yeah, he does his show too.
Yeah, he does a show online.
But he's one of the best.
You know, when people talk about boxing, they say, if you want to teach someone how to box properly, you show them Joe Lewis.
Exactly.
Because it's the basics.
It's done right.
There's no wasted movies.
If you want someone to learn how to do stand-up, I always show him Nick DiPaulo.
Wow.
And I would say him and Patrice Onil because they went down.
Oh, they had a show together on the shorties watching shorty?
Nope.
They were like really, really, really cool.
But before we wrap up, you said something because getting a text message here, food is ready.
They're cooking.
They're waiting for us to go there, which is kind of.
But did you see Jon Stewart today with the whole, not today, three days ago, the Second Amendment?
But I have my thoughts on this.
What was your reaction on the way he handled?
It's like eight minutes.
Here's the thing.
Jon Stewart is really good.
And for example, like I can look at this objectively.
When Jon Stewart was on with, back then it was Tucker and was it Chris Crossfire?
Crossfire.
And then he was on with Bill O'Reilly.
Look, I agree with obviously Tucker Moore.
I would agree with Bill O'Reilly more.
It was a masterclass.
I remember Jon Stewart answering with Bill Reynolds.
He's like, okay, but Stewart, you do this and you say, and, you know, people do trust you as news.
And he said, that may be, but I don't know if you know.
The lead-in to our show is puppets making crank calls.
Yeah, exactly.
And it just completely disarms him.
It's like a masterclass.
But in this, here's the problem.
He's brilliant.
And this is the beauty of someone who's really adept with comedy.
He sells to the audience that he knows what he's talking about.
I watch it right away and go, bang, bing, bing, because I've been off there.
It's like I've been champing at the bitch.
It's like, oh my God.
Where he quotes is like, so leading, what is the leading cause of death with kids?
You know, it's not drag shows.
We've done a whole segment on that.
You know, that number is completely fake, right?
Where they said the leading cause of death with kids is firearms.
That includes kids 19 years old.
And when you eliminate that stat of 16 to 19, it's not even close.
When you eliminate the stat of 14 to 19, and it's all intergang related, when people say, hey, this is the leading cause of children, right?
As a parent, and this is the disservice the media does.
As a parent, you want to know, oh, is there a danger in my bathtub?
Should I not throw a toaster in there when my twins are learning how to play with a rubber duck?
That's probably a bad idea.
Not going, okay, hold on a second.
How do we save kids?
Don't join a gang at 17 years old in Memphis.
That's the stat that he throws out, but he's so smooth and collected and so much experience in dealing with adversity.
And I don't know how he edits it, to be fair.
No, and I did see editing, though, Steve.
I could see it cutting because the guy speaker.
Who's the guy?
He's a congressman in Oklahoma.
This guy was you're talking about this is a heavyweight versus a lightweight right here.
Exactly.
When I saw the answers and kind of he just kind of fumbled through his response, I was just like, gosh, there's like five things that you can say in response to this.
Like, do you hate women, Jon Stewart?
Because people use their gun to defend themselves over a million times a year.
And most of those are probably going to be women that need to be able to have a force equalizer.
Do you hate women?
Why do you hate women?
Right.
Like, there's an easy way to say, this isn't as simple as you're making it seem.
Yeah.
I just had an argument this.
That's why we were slightly late with a Canadian at the hotel pool.
I was like, Joe, like, this is, you met me.
He's like, we're going to be late.
Like, people say, what is it?
Like, I'm this way.
I'm a little more quiet sometimes off air because I just kind of get tired.
But I was with the Canadian.
He was sitting there talking.
He was bitching about all these stops that he had to make and checkpoints where they would stop you on the road because he was going out to Moncton and you, or maybe he was going to somewhere.
I don't know if he was going to PEI or Moncton, New Brunswick.
And he was talking about this.
I'm thinking, oh, this is a guy who gets it, right?
Like Johnny Boy, who's out there, a friend of mine from, I've known him since I was 12 in Canada.
And then all of a sudden, I realize he starts talking about Parkland and how America hasn't done anything.
And I said, well, hold on a second.
What should they do?
And he goes, well, you know, in Canada, if you had our laws, I said, you just had a man go to prison for 10 to 20 to life for defending his house when two men broke into his house with guns.
One was roughing up his wife, likely going to rape her, and he shot this home intruder.
And he's the one who's doing time.
And the prime minister came out and said, you do not have Prime Minister Blackface.
By the way, I did like 15 years.
I love that.
You're coming over.
We've done Blackface many times on the show, as Justin Trudeau.
It's the ongoing sketch.
And he said, oh, I don't know about that.
I said, yes, you know about that.
Your prime minister said you don't have the right.
You do not have the right to defend yourself with a firearm.
That to me, like Gandhi said, is a far greater act of evil in robbing a nation of arms.
I said, by the way, you also don't have freedom of speech in Canada.
I went through my friend Mike Ward, who had to go all the way up to a Supreme Court for a joke and a human rights tribunal.
It is a subjugated, conquered people in Canada, and they don't even know it.
And that's the rest of the world outside of the United States.
And they don't even know.
They just accept it wholesale.
So anyways, well, your question, I wanted to hear what you had to say about John Stewart.
I think he's brilliant, but I don't like what he did here.
It was dishonest.
Yeah.
And very clever.
But here's the part, though.
I mean, okay, say John's Booker team.
Let's go to who John's Bookers are, Booker, that they booked.
Yeah, yeah.
Guests, people have hooked.
Do you mean to tell me you didn't have 90 other people to get under that are bigger heavyweights than bring in him on?
Of course they did.
I don't understand.
You mean to tell me you couldn't have brought in a Ben?
You couldn't have brought in a president of the NFL.
That's by design.
How many design?
Well, but to me, that because let me tell you, I watched it.
It's got 11-something million views.
How many views does it show?
11.2 million.
No, I'm sorry.
It's now at 12.5 million views.
What is the number you see there?
Do you see a number?
Well, that's just Twitter.
No, no, that's not the right number.
It's got 11.5 million views.
This thing crushed it.
It went viral.
There's no question about it.
With a tailwind, by the way, from YouTube and Big Tech, that's a problem.
Yeah.
But if you watched it, he handled himself so well.
He says, so more guns equals more safety, right?
Then why is the number going up?
Well, you can't really.
And the guy tried to make the argument of it just, he was not a good debater to represent this.
He goes, he leaned in and he goes, when?
When will it be?
When?
Yeah, exactly.
Right?
But nobody was there.
He had a million guns.
Well, exactly.
It's like, how many?
It's like nobody was prepared to counter and say, well, actually, the stats that you're quoting aren't accurate.
We've talked about that, right?
The take out suicides, take out gang violence, and you're looking at very low numbers, relatively speaking.
He wasn't ready with any of that stuff.
And of course, this guy was picked.
Well, he's a paper tiger.
You know, I had to run in.
So one of my, who, by the way, I'm still friends with, a manager had to drop me back then.
I don't want to say his name because unfortunately he has to be in the closet, but he was the guy who managed it, he was conservative.
And he had Jon Stewart's people reach out to him and say, Do you have anyone else out there that like this Stephen Craig?
But we don't do conservative pundits.
But do you have someone like him?
In other words, they were saying, We like that he's young because if they'd seen me from a comedy, maybe a reel was sent.
I said, We like all these things, but we don't do conservatives.
So if you have anyone like him who doesn't believe as he believes, we'd love to have them.
Wow.
And then when I released that, that was like a long time ago, like talked about it.
Of course, they called my manager.
I just talked about it.
They called my manager, like, this guy can't be talking about what we're doing behind the scenes.
You know, we're never going to have any of your clients again.
And I just remember kind of speaking about it off the cuff, but that happened.
Like, they keep people away by design.
Stephen, what's the difference to you between Jon Stewart and Bill Maher?
Not much.
And here's the thing: Bill Maher now, I think, is going to a part.
I don't know.
And I would always say never question motivation.
But, you know, I did go through a pre-screen with Bill Maher's person.
And I'm not saying that, you know, I would be the smartest person on the panel, far from it.
But certainly, if you look at some of the people who are on there, like, I definitely would hold my own.
And I remember the pre-screen process with Bill Maher.
She said, what do you want to talk about?
And I was, because I'm thinking Bill Maher's, you know, a comedian.
You know, by that, he often like throws up his hands like, okay, and like, just like left.
But I remember saying, like, well, I did just, you know, I did just read the hashtag OscarSoWhite and just go to see the new live-action Beauty and the Beast film where in 1740s France I saw Mary J. Blige be royalty fold into a bookcase.
So I don't know at what point, like, is what point we start saying, hey, you know, we're given some roles that don't even make sense.
She goes, so with everything that's going on, you want to talk about Disney?
I said, no.
I think when you're talking about Oscar So White and in 1740 slavery, right?
When in that era, they would have been slaves now making black, which, of course, by the way, just to be clear, slavery bad.
Okay, all right, slavery bad.
Not supporting, but I was saying it's hilarious that at that point in time, it's so historically inaccurate.
You're creating roles for black actors at that point that would never even be possible.
And she said, well, what do you think about Russia?
Russia Gate.
And I said, what do you mean?
She said, what?
I said, what was there?
And I said this.
I said, is there something new?
Yeah.
She said, because I mean, do you mean it was like, I don't know.
Like, I haven't checked the news in the last 12 hours, but so has there's been something that's broken, like evidence?
Lay breaking?
She goes, no, she goes, no, but I mean, the whole situation.
I said, well, okay, do you want to talk about Fusion GPS?
Do you want to talk about the Steel Dossier?
Because all this is something that was basically paid OPO research and we know it's completely fabricated and it's bullshit.
I said, so you condemn me for talking about a cultural issue at large that we know is a sham, but you want to discuss a sham.
And then when I hear Bill Maher going out saying, I told him to stop talking about Russia, it's like, that's what your booker was doing.
Yeah.
So I hope that his transition is real.
I really do.
I think he's probably been beaten up by the left a little bit.
But then he comes out and still says that Biden's doing a great job and he's going to vote for Biden.
I'm going, well, how do you come to that conclusion?
I don't understand the disconnect.
Yeah.
Unless you have to say it.
Well, it's the same thing with Jon Stewart where he's like, it's on the say, it's the Wuhan Institute of Reality for the COVID.
I'm just like, yes, of course.
These are the same people that you trust.
And now you say you still trust.
Why?
Why do you still trust them?
Yeah, I think you're right.
They had those little moments of like, God, like the real, the real soul wants to come up.
But then, like you said, they're owned by somebody, bro.
They're surrounded by people who wouldn't allow them to say certain things.
Oh, for sure.
And I mean, he is, at one point, he took a, one time, like, he took a pot shot at me and just like some random podcaster or something.
I was like, okay, I don't care.
But he's done jokes from our show.
My mom.
Bill Maher has?
Verbatim.
Oh, wow.
Verbatim.
And we know that it's been on his radar because his booker reached out.
And so, like, you know, it's just this happens a lot.
And I don't mean like kind of, you know, sort of veering into the same topics.
I really, I would love to see him come out.
But when he says, hey, look, this is a problem with the ultra woke.
And they're like, okay, fine.
Then he says, Joe Biden's done a really good job as president.
And I would vote for him.
Is that really a net benefit?
Because you've gotten people to listen to you.
And then you've taken them to the end game of this is what you should do politically.
And I go, oh, God.
So I don't know, but the Jon Stewart thing, the guy is really funny.
He's very talented.
And that can trick people into him sounding like he's right.
A lot of what he said there was factually inaccurate, which tells me he doesn't even do basic research because it just takes one link deeper into the study.
Either that's a good cut, either that is a terrible opposition representing Second Amendment, or, you know, he just did a masterclass on asking questions to put the pressure on the guest.
And there's an art in doing that as well.
And he's very, very good at doing that part.
So anyways, yeah, I was just curious to know what you were going to say about Bill Maher versus Jon Stewart.
Obviously, the last two years, you've seen what's been happening with Bill Maher.
Bill Maher is now like conservators all Bill Maher and he's doing such a great job and he's doing this.
He's doing all that.
That's because they're clamoring, right?
Think about that for a second.
They're going, oh, Bill Maher says something even remotely conservative.
Like, someone on the entertainment because they're used to nothing but talking.
Well, it's also very easy of them to say, you know, I haven't changed.
They've changed.
That's his resounding narrative.
Which is actually true.
No, I think it's complete horseshit.
You believe that?
I think it's complete horseshit.
Because again, you're talking about in 2004, or when it was 2006, right?
Being banned.
I remember being banned from, I think it was Marianopolis or Concordia, like getting into trouble, getting booed, having to be like escorted out of universities, having shows canceled because of things that were politically incorrect back then.
And at that point in time, all the comedians said, oh, this is just, you're just making a big deal.
Up until not too long ago, Bill Maher was hitting those same talking points.
So I do think that they left.
I don't think the left left then.
I do think that both the right have become more left and the left has become increasingly left.
But if you look at the things that Bill Maher espoused not too long ago, it was left.
It was left.
It was significantly left from everything from, like, I think now, unfortunately, you have people revisiting the gay marriage topic.
You know why?
Because you have people going, hold on a second.
We can't put kids on puberty blockers.
Like, that's a bridge too far.
But they're going, so everyone has a line.
Now people realize everyone has a line.
And they're going, did the line have to be back there?
I mean, I can't tell you how many people who used to be liberal have said, you know what?
I just don't know where we stop this.
And now kids are being taken away from their parents to throw out on puberty blockers.
And I remember with Dave Rubin, you know, who's a friend and he does my show and I'd done a show quite a few times.
And he was very surprised back in the day where he would say, you know, like, I didn't leave the left left me, Stephen, you know, that kind of thing.
And he said, like, I know like you're more, you're more libertarian, like you support same-sex marriage.
I said, no, I don't.
He goes, he was surprised because when I see him, I give him a big hug.
You know, I see him.
I have a lot of love for the guy.
And I think a lot of people think that if you have an issue politically with the blurring of gender lines, it means you hate people.
And I said, no, no, here's the deal.
And I don't think it's a fair comparison to interracial marriage because I think that fundamentally black and white people as parents are interchangeable if they want to be present in their children's lives.
In other words, I do not think that a black woman is incapable of providing to a child whom she loves what a white woman can as a mother.
I said, but I don't think that two dads can provide what a mother and a father can.
And I don't think that two moms can provide what a mother and a father can.
I don't think that men and women are interchangeable as parents, as we could argue people of different races.
And I think you're not going to like where this ends up because to say they're interchangeable is to say that the gender issue, that the gender lines don't exist.
And that's not a gay thing.
That's going into a whole new territory.
And we're talking about that maybe in 2016, 2015, 2017.
With Rubin?
With Rubin.
He was surprised.
And he was surprised.
But he said, okay.
And I said, now, look, and you have to understand why marriage laws exist.
I wish the government wasn't in the marriage business at all.
But the reason why was because before federal government, before state government, they wanted self-governance and they realized a nuclear family was the most important way to do that.
That's why you have tax incentives.
That's why you have the government recognizing mom and dad.
And that's not the same with two dads, two moms.
I think you should have civil unions, all of the same rights.
But I said, this is a slippery slope.
And I think that saying men and women are fundamentally interchangeable will tug at that fabric of society.
And I don't know who's pushing for that when we should all be agreeing on the civil union.
Where do those conversations end with Rubin?
When you're leaving, you do the hug and everything goes on.
He's a super sweet guy.
You're not going to find the guy sweeter than Dave Rubin.
Yeah, he's awesome.
But I think they're surprised because they think you have to be like a Westboro Baptist church person if you go, well, there are issues with the same-sex marriage thing.
And the beauty is that you can have your opinion.
That's what people always think.
Like, he's right.
No, you could have your opinion.
You have your opinion.
You stick by it.
That's what it is.
Did you and Jenk ever do anything together or no?
Oh, God.
Well, I showed up.
Technically, technically, I crashed on a South by Southwest panel of Jenk Uyghur as Jenk Uyghur.
Yeah, yeah.
So I showed up and I was like, I'm the real Jank Uyghur.
And the reason I did this impression is because they would pick on me when I was this tiny YouTube channel.
And then once I grew big enough, I was like, well, let's do a debate, you know, because they would pick on me.
They said, no, and all of a sudden I was like, Voldemort.
They wouldn't acknowledge my name.
So I started, what I would do is I would do these young Turks parodies where I would do impressions of them.
And then I would actually run them back then as ads before Young Turks videos.
And they got really pissed.
Oh, he's watching you.
You ask him?
Yeah.
It's the most embarrassed I've ever been in my life, but I just felt like I had to do it.
Is that him right there?
That's why.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You gained a ton of weight for the smaller audio.
Look how uncomfortable he is.
Is that okay?
So this, okay, okay.
This is not about you.
Okay.
This isn't what he does.
Look at the brush.
You know what I'm bullshit?
I mean, he basically, he basically does.
He makes money.
If he makes money, he watches, right?
This is when 2017 Pause it, pause it I love that you cry.
It's a total dick.
But again, he picked on me.
By the way, they had it in the wrong place.
So we had him in the wrong place.
I went to the wrong Marriott.
He's dressed in full check outfit.
He comes out and there's like no ballroom B or whatever.
When I walked past Bill Nye, I was in the wrong courtyard.
I had to get him to this golf court golf cart.
Yeah, look, there's nobody even in there.
I know.
I know.
That is so funny.
I didn't want to do it.
I felt compelled to do it.
Well, your nerves must be.
We married.
I don't lie.
I've never been so nervous in my life.
Oh, my God.
So you guys have never done anything together.
Never.
Other than that.
No.
Would you or you wouldn't?
Would you talk to him?
Would you have a conversation with him?
Well, then there's a big difference between saying I disagree and like calling me a Nazi, you know, saying he's a garbage and he's a horrible person and also like misrepresenting.
You know, what a big thing is they had, they misstephen calls women, you know, lying whores and he's sexist.
And they even break this rule.
Whenever we tell a joke on air, like, Joe, what do I always say?
If we tell a joke that we know is going to get some heat, always make sure that there's, I say, like, 30 seconds before 30 seconds, the people have context.
Yeah, yeah.
Because people will go and they'll afford you that, right?
They'll look at the context, say it was a joke.
And I think this was a joke with Christine Blasey Ford, remember, which we now all know is fake.
Yes, 100%.
And the joke in one of the monologues was something like, you know, of course, Christine Blasey Ford authorities are investigating and they're trying to make sense of it.
I don't remember exactly the setup, right, verbatim, but the story which she, the account that she gave to the Washington Times, which was different from the account that she gave to her therapist, which was different from the account that she provided to the authorities.
Of course, they are still open to the possibility that she's a lying whore.
That's still the table.
And they said, like, Stephen calls women lying whores.
There we go, right there.
Just her.
No, no, no, just a woman.
Exactly.
In a specific instance, okay?
And so when they do that, like, you know, they're being dishonest.
Big time.
And, but yeah, I would, but I was sitting there like, and I still think it's a funny joke.
I think it's hilarious.
But you know what's crazy too?
But look at the power of people just reading that that didn't know what you said.
You're automatically that guy.
Yeah, it was the police.
Yeah, by the way, here's what's crazy.
The reason why I asked that.
We had Jank here, I don't know, six months ago.
What was the time?
10 months ago, eight months ago.
I think it's about, no, I think it's about a year, March.
Really?
Yeah, March or 19th.
It wasn't that long.
And I got to tell you, it's very interesting.
I had no idea what to expect when he came in.
I didn't know what direction it was going to go.
We had a very good conversation together, and he made his argument.
You know, I made mine.
I asked the questions.
You know, he went back.
Obviously, you know politically where he lies.
Yeah.
And then we had Kyle Kolinski on four months ago, five months ago.
Two months ago.
Two months ago.
Great conversation.
We had this David Pacman on, young guy, fiery, energized, and very good.
And then who else have we had on?
We had a bunch of these guys on just to kind of see because we had plenty of liberals on, by the way, on the show.
They wouldn't do it for a long time.
I understand that.
Yeah, I totally understand.
We had Roland Martin here.
Yeah, we had Roland Martin here, and it was fireworks.
It was crazy.
We had Neil deGrasse Tyson, but that wasn't even like a, I just asked a question about COVID, and that went a whole different direction with the conversation of COVID.
He believes it.
But you know what it is?
Like, again, who's your customer?
Who are you doing it for?
To me, it's two things.
One, do you like doing it?
I do.
I like talking to people and seeing where it goes.
Two, who's the customer?
The viewer listening and saying, you know what, Pat, you were wrong there.
Okay, let me go do a little more research.
And you know what?
That argument, he has a better argument than you.
Okay, cool.
Or you know what?
I don't know.
I don't know if I agree with Kyle or Pac-Man.
Great.
Make up your mind.
And then my argument, your argument gets better.
The audience is winning.
You know, we're building that relationship to say, okay, dude, in these three places, we're way off.
Because I asked a question from David Pacman, who would consider himself, well, I don't know politically where he would put himself.
Taxes.
How much taxes are too much taxes?
Right.
And you go, I don't know, 30%.
And we were kind of on the same page when it came down to taxes.
The most you pay, 30%.
Okay.
I was like, man, flat tax is a little bit better for me.
I had the conversation with Jerry Springer, and Jerry Springer's like, I'm like, Jerry, how much taxes would you be willing to pay?
I don't know what kind of a question this is.
I said, that's the question to me politically.
Here's your budget.
Go spend it and stay tight and stop asking me for more if you don't know how to spend the money that I gave you.
That's now $32 trillion.
I don't know.
I pay 90% in taxes.
I said, you would pay 90% taxes.
We talk like you pay 90% taxes.
I'm like, if you're saying you pay 90% taxes, why did you move your show from where it was to Connecticut?
You're saving the taxes.
You did this.
Why did you do that?
Why haven't you done it already?
The IRS will take your check.
And by the way, you know what's the last question I ask Jerry?
I asked Jerry.
Don't think about the Jerry today that's worth 50.
Think about the Jerry that was making 50K a year coming up.
Would you be okay paying that taxes?
I mean, the perspective is you're taking that fire away from the younger guy.
And then that's when the conversation was like, I can't believe you're saying this.
I just enjoy having a conversation with opposition.
I think opposition brings leaks in our argument, strengthens your argument, and then audience gets to the point of the market.
That's where the change of mind came from was because you couldn't get people on the left to really come on the show a whole lot.
And it's not a debate, though.
It was always designed to be the Socratic method.
Like when we do debates, we do debates on the show.
I even debate right-wing people, like Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, John Stoss, all of them.
There's this character, Skylar Turton, that's called Devil's Advocate.
And I always tell them, like, don't think you're talking to Steven Crowder.
Like, just no, it's not going to be like, I'm a liberal.
I'm stupid.
Which a lot of conservatives do this caricature of people on the left.
Yeah, exactly.
I'm going to present the strongest arguments possible.
And sometimes they've been tripped up.
And there's some funny stuff.
Like we always, every time they're talking, like I throw them off, I'll be smoking a bigger vape.
Is that a segment?
Yeah.
Devil's advocate.
Yeah.
And we ended up with problems because then conservatives were like, oh, this one's pretty tough.
Because it's like, again, I'm like sharpening the arguments because it's for the audience for them to be.
And it was great.
Did they ever use clips against you?
Like, did the left use clips saying this is what Crowder said?
Or no?
No, no, no.
Okay.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
I'm dressed up in an alpha with tattoo guys.
I was in a coexistence too.
And I'm very granola.
Tribal bands.
And I always have a bigger and bigger vape mod.
But so, but that, but all, you know what my prep was?
My prep for that was the mere image of change my mind.
So I would go, let me, because I always go claim truth, claim truth, what I most, what I anticipate to be the most likely claims.
And change my mind is not a debate.
It's meant to be the Socratic method to encourage people to ask why.
And the irony is that a lot of people end up changing their minds.
But when we do that, we'll sit down for three, four hours.
And it's just anyone who comes down.
We'll have professors come down.
Sometimes we've had reporters and people from television sit down.
It's not just students, but that is exhausting.
Yeah.
Our biggest goal is not to tell people what to think.
It's to teach people how to think.
Like go through this process and make sure that you're not making the mistake of being able to point these things out like some of these guys we just talked about, Bill Maher and those guys, and still making the mistake of thinking that's the party to trust.
Because there's something that's broken in the way that you think about these things critically and go, oh my gosh, I don't trust them for this, this, or this, but I still am going to vote for them.
Like, wait a minute, how did you get back over here?
Yeah.
Right.
So it's not just change my mind.
It's, hey, we're quoting to you people on the left.
All of our sources.
Like if any of our researchers, people come to us with a source from Fox News, we throw it out immediately.
Not because we don't like Fox, but because it's like, yeah, we understand the talking point.
We want to know what they are saying so that we can tell our audience, here's what they're saying.
Here's why it's wrong.
Think through this process.
Go to our website.
Don't believe me.
Go to the website.
Click on the link.
See what the article says.
We're not making it up.
And we always try and go, if it's like, if it's a study, we'll actually link to the study that's there on the actual media.
Or if it's like a new poll, we'll link directly to Rasmus Center.
The only time we'll ever use a conservative source is if it's an exclusively conservative story that they have as coupon.
So most sources are leftists, like New York Times, Washington Post, and we provide 30 to 60 every single day when we do the shows.
Yeah.
Every day.
Respect.
I genuinely think that you really like just never met you before.
I've seen your stuff.
I know what's happening.
But just from talking with both of you, when it comes to fans, I could tell that you guys really give a shit about what you're doing, what you're saying.
And that I think resonates.
And that's why you guys have such a following that is going to follow you and stay with you guys and stay loyal.
Well, once again, appreciate you for coming out.
This was fantastic.
Congratulations to you guys.
March 20th.
Yes.
20th.
20th.
March 20th.
Yeah, March 20th.
It's the same, same bad times.
Legends today and Eastern $10.
Put the link below again.
March 20th.
Steven Crowder back with a lot of specials.
The last 90 days, they've not been sitting around.
They've been producing stuff.
You know, I know the world's excited for you guys to be doing that.
And then also at the same time, we are doing our next live podcast, the weekend of the UFC in Miami, which is the fight's the 8th, Saturday, April 7th at night.
First time we're doing a podcast, Friday night, 7 to 9.
And we will be having tickets go for sale probably sometime this week.
Last time it sold out, I think like three hours.
And the moment we send a text out, it's not going to be public announcement.
It's purely sells out.
Once you send a text, if you do want to be on the list of the last podcast, we had 200 people in the house.
Some guys went into the cigar lounge afterwards.
We had a great time together.
This one's going to be 7 to 9.
So probably people are going to stay at the club till late night.
Drinks, all that other stuff.
So text award podcast to 310-340-1132.
Once again, text award podcast, 310-340-1132 to be part of that list.
The moment we announce tickets, you'll be the first to get the text to purchase a ticket so we can see you April 7th, Friday, 7-9 at the studio with VT, with myself and our crew.
Having said that, once again, link to podcast show with Stephen Cummack will be below to get signed up for that.
