Hey, guys. It's Vivek Ramaswama here, inviting you to listen to my podcast, Truth. We just relaunched it after the campaign, and we are already writing up the podcast charts. Here's why. I think that hard, in-depth conversations about the tough issues is the only way we're going to get this country back. Because make no mistake, we are currently in a war for the future of America, and you cannot win a war unless you're willing to speak the truth. If you want standard conservative talking points, this podcast is not for you. But if you want to go deeper and hear the conversations you're not going to find anywhere else, the conversations that will challenge you, that will challenge me, then subscribe to Truth with Vivek Ramaswami on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. I promise you, you're going to cover terrain that you're not going to hear elsewhere.

Welcome to the Tucker Carlson podcast, where every story is an honest story, and not one of them has been massaged or influenced or censored by a corporate gatekeeper. We've made a lot of these. You could find all of it and a lot of exclusive content at Tucker carlson. Com. We hope you'll check that out. Here's today's episode. If the First Amendment means anything, and it has to if this is going to remain America, it means that the US government cannot censor the news. It can't make laws to stop journalists from saying what they think is true. So that's not an arcane legal question. It's in the text. It's the First Amendment to our Bill of Rights, the whole point of America. And yet out there in the open, Democrats are working to shut down news organizations all over the country. We've reported on this for a couple of years, but in no case are they doing it more openly than their attempt to shut down a conservative news channel called One America News, OAN. So Why are they doing this? Well, they say the channel pushes something called disinformation. Now, disinformation, you should know, does not mean that something is dishonest or factually incorrect.

It can be entirely true. It just means that the people in charge don't want to hear it, and they don't want you to hear it. So it's therefore disinformation. It's a term stolen from the intel agencies, which are part of the apparatus in the federal government that Democrats are using to shut down the news. So here's California governor, Gavin Newsom, going after OAN for daring to that the vaccine might not be safe and effective.

Well, the platforms are of concern, of course, and platforms have to do a better job across the spectrum. But they're also those that are propaganda machines that are out there as well. Let's be candid. One American news, you're familiar with them down here, perhaps one of the great disinformation networks in America.

Oh, wait. It's one of the great disinformation networks in America. There's a guy who lies every day for a living, and it's not a guess. It can be proven. There's a guy who locked down the entire state and then went to the French laundry in Napa for dinner without a mask on. That guy is accusing other people of disinformation. So what you have here is the oldest story ever told. The people in power don't want to be criticized, and in a so-called democratic system, they don't want voters to know that they're liars and incompetent, so they shut down anyone who tells the truth about them or who spreads a message they don't care for. It's just abuse of power. It never changes. It's been going on since Nebuchadnezzar, and he learned it from his grandfather because it's never not existed. But this country officially disallowed it, made it illegal with the Bell of Rights, which is just now being ignored. House Democrats are putting pressure on cable providers to cut ties with OAN because that's not unconstitutional somehow. We're watching all of this. It's getting no attention. We thought, why not speak to someone at the center of it, Dan Ball?

He's a host of Real America on One America News on OAN, and he joins us now in the studio to explain what's happening to him and his employer. Dan, thanks very much.

Tucker, can I say thank you first and foremost. Oh my gosh, thank you. Are you kidding? For inviting me, OAN, some of our management's here in ownership as well. We truly appreciate it. Oh, of course. You've been a voice of reason, common sense for the people, for the Constitution, for freedom of press, freedom of speech. So thank you.

Well, that's all that matters. I mean, I've got nothing to do with OAN. I don't even own a TV, as you know. But I think it is, I hate the word, but it's existential. It is a question of life or death for the country, whether or not the First Amendment stands. The idea Democrats in power trying to shut down a news organization for saying things they don't like, which, by the way, happen to be true things, is really a threat to life as we know it. So thank you. Tell us, I'll ask you simple questions and get out of the way. How are government officials trying to shut down your news organization.

Go back to 2020. Let's start with the reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop. Oan was the first one to break that. Say it was legit. We had Rudy Giuliani come on with our Chanel Reon and discuss it. We even went over to Ukraine and interviewed some folks. In August, we broke that story. Before the election, we were then called by every single mainstream media outlet and Democrats, purveyors of disinformation, Russian propagandist. There was people online saying that we were owned by Russia, that we favored Putin, that Mr. Harring was bought and paid for by Russia or Trump. I can guarantee you it's a sweet 82-year-old hardworking man and his two sons that own us, not Putin, not Trump. I can assure you. I've been there almost four years.

Can I just say, because I've been obviously the subject to this as well.

Yes, you know.

I don't really care who owns your news network, anyone's news network. If it turned out that you were owned by Vladimir Putin, which you're not, of course, but I would still assess the product on its own terms. Is what you're saying true or not? That's all that matters.

What did they tell us back then? The laptop was Russian disinformation. You had those, what, 50-some ex-intelligence community people say it was misinformation, disinformation, Russian propaganda. Yes, sir. We Heared it. So that's when it really started. They looked at us and went, Oh, my God, these guys are going to interfere with the election because we're spitting truth to power. We're telling you this laptop is real. The big guy is Joe Biden. He's taking 10%. He's used his family and his influence to make millions, to enrich himself. Well, they didn't like that very much. No. And then, of course, COVID. We're in the middle of COVID. We busted through the narrative of the masks aren't working. When Joe took over and he told everybody, get the vaccine, he was talking about that winter of death and everything. We were talking about the irregularities rather you'd see with the vaccine when it comes to side effects and deaths. They didn't like that. So it was cascading downward from the Hunter Biden laptop story to COVID coverage. And then we had the 2020 election. And we had people on, of course, discussing irregularities in the election. They didn't like any of that.

So it started several ways. Youtube demonetized us. I mean, every time we put a story about COVID masks, distancing, the laptop, boom, take it down 30 day suspension, 60 days, or just try to kill the whole account. And then all of All of a sudden, letters came out, I think about '21 or '22. And somebody can correct me if I'm wrong on the date. But you had a letter, and I think I gave them to your producers. There was a letter from four Democrat senators and two California Congress folks, Democrats, who sent letters to not only all of the satellite and cable carriers, but also to advertisers. They used that little thing from Newsguard, which I've heard you talk about Newsguard and that ESG rating and pyramid system.

It's just a CIA operation to shut down the truth, They told them to get rid of, and your old network was named, Fox, Newsmax, and OAN.

Now, who's the smallest on that totem pole? We are. So they came after us. And so they scared away advertisers. They got us kicked off multiple carriers, Frontier, Verizon, Direct TV, everything, because the Democrats sent these letters. What do you mean?

Sitting members of Congress tried to get a news channel kicked off the air and bankrupted. But isn't that right? I mean, call me naive. In the country I grew up in, that was just absolutely not You weren't allowed to do that.

We're not state-run TV, right? We're not supposed to be. I mean, when I got into this- It's against the law to do that. Well, but does this regime care? Look what the Biden regime has been doing in this country. They don't care about the law.

Look at the border. Do you remember the names of the members who distraised themselves by doing this?

I gave your proof to the letters, I I don't have them in front of me. No problem. Issue was one of them from California. Anna Issue, yeah. And McAnerny, McAnaney, something like that from California. That's the two Congress folks, our house representatives.

And your company is based in Southern California.

Yeah, we're in San Diego. You're on stopping grounds. Four senators, I don't recall, but they were Democrats. I can tell you that. And I don't have the names off the top of my head. But again, so they use those letters, and in those letters it said, We want you to look into these purveyors of disinformation, the good old disinformation phrase. And then what do you know? Months later, we're kicked off platforms. We're demonetized on social media. Our major accounts with millions of followers for OAN are shadow banned or censored or fact-checked every damn day. This is what's been going on since 2020 to OAN. Some people covered it and talked about it in '20 and '21 for us, and then it went by the wayside. We went away, according to the left, because they kicked us off everything. But we've been fighting like hell ever since. Again, thank you for covering it.

I'm sorry. I just have to pause to internalize all this. I mean, first of all, I'm embarrassed. It's taking me so long as to hear the story. I'm aware of it. But it's shocking to me because it is so illegal, and obviously illegal. It's as illegal as anything you could do in America.

Tucker, listen.

For members of Congress to shut down a news organization because they don't like what says. That is not allowed in the United States. That's like any other crime, including murder or rape. It's not allowed, and they're doing it anyway, and no one's saying anything about it. Were there news stories about this?

A couple, but not really mainstream. I mean, Bright Bart, Gateway Pundit, places like that would cover it and say, OAN is under fire. But when you have 98%, as you know, of the mainstream media that leans heavily left. Every other day, we had an article from Mediate, Media Matters, Daily Beast, Rolling Stone, even, Ripping OAN. There's dozens of them online, myself, too. Calling me out, calling me a purveyor of this information, a liar, a propaganda.

Because you were saying that COVID vax didn't work very well.

We said that the masks weren't working, that the social distancing isn't working. And by the way, all those reports in the last few months have come out. It's all true. Yeah, but we were saying it three years ago.

How many people do you know who died of COVID? How many people do you know who are injured or killed by the vax? I've asked that question of 100 people. Not one person knows more people who died from COVID than were killed or injured by the Vax. Not one. Maybe the numbers are different. I'm just telling you my experience, so that's not a crazy thing to ask.

Let me tell you, when When I was out there talking about Ivermectin hydroxychloroquine, which worked, by the way, because I did them when I was sick with COVID and I felt better in 36 hours, I would get death threats and messages going, You're killing people by saying that. Why are you telling me to take chlorine in a horse tranquilizer? Morons. Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin amount for decades.

But it's this constellation of intel agency cutouts, Mediaite, Rolling Stone, Daily Beast. Daily Beast. But it's the same group, neoliberal, effectively state media organizations that don't represent a huge percentage of American voters or any meaningful percentage of American voters. But they're all working in concert.

They're a mouthpiece for the left and Democrats, period. I mean, that's what they are. Look, I got into this just like you. You're a few years older than me, but I've been doing this for, gosh, I'm 50 this year, and I started at 18 in the military for the armed force radio television service. So 32 years I've been doing this. I started doing it to tell stories to help the people. My brother was a firefighter. We lost him years ago to cancer. But him and I got in a debate one time about my job versus his and first responders and people that help the community goes, Dan, your job is important. What journalists do is like a public servant. You're out there trying to help protect the people, Tell them the truth of what's going on. Speak truth to power of government. And so don't discount yourself. Don't discredit yourself. And so that stuck with me back in '08. My brother told me that before he passed. And I come to this network in 2020, and I think, oh, my gosh, here's a place where I can tell the truth. Mr. Harring and his sons, they don't come down and dictate and say, You will have these hosts or guests.

You won't have these guests. You must use these talking points. They're like, Dan, you have 30 years of experience. We've been on the air 10 years. You know more than us. Go. And they let me be to tell the truth. And so I really embrace that. And I got to say it, I fell in love with the network and the family, and they've treated me like family. And to watch them go through this and the 125 hardworking employees, it pisses me off to no end, Tucker. I bet it does. That they can do this to us when we have that first article that talks about free speech and freedom of the press. I've dedicated my adult life to it, so have you. And now we're dealing with this bullshit where they can just try and shut down an entire family-owned mom and pop network. It's disgusting. It's so un-American. It's like what's happening with the border.

The people in charge don't want to be criticized, of course. No. Right. But in this country, they're not allowed to do anything about it, but suddenly they are. Exactly. Tell me about the carriers. And for those who aren't in this business, explain, if you would, how that works.

What do you mean carrier? From satellite and cable and online services. In the year of 2022, from May, August, and November, if I got those three months correct, and it went in this order, I believe, Direct TV, Verizon, Fios, and Frontier. All dropped us.

That means to- It's about 20 million households. You produce the product, the programming, the shows, and then those shows come into the homes of your viewers through wires owned by and services provided by the companies you just listed.

There's contracts worked out and whatnot I can't go too deep into all that because there's pending lawsuits, of course, but that's another way they've tried to silence us is through lawsuits.

Are you satisfied? Is management of the company satisfied? Do you sincerely believe, no BS, that you were dropped from those providers because of pressure from the Congress?

110%, of course. Listen, right before they started dropping us, ComScore, which is a rating service I'm sure you're familiar with. Yeah, of course. Nielsen, not the old-school books and stuff. But ComScore store, had us in the top 10, 15 networks of all the cable channels, 200 and some channels you get on, like Direct and Dish. We were actually scoring close to some of the Fox business shows. We were beating Newsmax. We were climbing. My show, personally, was climbing big time. And then all of a sudden, we're killed because they saw us growing. They saw the audience tuning in to want to hear some truth because they're not... Come on. Can you trust MSNBC and CNN? You used to work there. And to a degree, some of the folks on Fox, a lot of the mainstream media, I think Americans are wising up, you can't trust anymore because everybody's figuring out you have to spew a narrative depending on which network you work for. That doesn't happen at OAN.

Well, that is factually true, I can say. I can tell you. No, I know that to be true. What happens then? They stop, We're not going to carry your signal into people's homes anymore?

Again, I can't go into particulars. All I can tell you is that that Mr. Herring and his sons tried like hell to keep us on those carriers, and we were dropped. That's as far as I can tell.

What do you do? I get it. Up in arms.

No, you're an anchor on the channel. I've been in this- I don't want any more lawsuits against myself with the herring's and We're a wonderful network, and the employees don't deserve that either. That's why for the first time in 30-some years, I'm nervous doing this interview. No, I trust you. Because I don't want to get a company who's struggling to stay afloat because of what the Democrats have been doing because I misspoke. But this story has got to be told, and you have a massive audience, and you can help.

Well, I've certainly very often been in the position you are now in. You're working for a company you think is doing a good thing, and they're kind to you, and you don't want to inadvertently cause them more problems by It didn't too much. I'm very familiar with that position.

But the story needs to be shared because, like you said at the beginning, we're talking about the First Amendment.

So what happened to... And the First Amendment doesn't mean anything if no one can hear you. You may have a right to speak, but if They lock you in a room and no one can hear your words, and it's immaterial. It's not a real right. What happened to your viewership after?

We had to not rebuild because we still were on, I think, 100 and some small cable affiliates around the country in different states, where you might have a town of 50,000, and their local cable is a co-op. They chose to keep us.

Were you going to take it off all the big ones?

All the big ones. All the big ones. All the big ones.

Then- Wait, and just to be clear, without getting into the details, but so our audience can make their own judgments about what happened and why. These companies are not connected to each other. They're independent companies. Yeah.

But they all got the letters. They all received those letters.

You know for a fact, they received the letters and they all dropped you within a short time.

If you read the letters, it literally says, We sent to cable, and they called the cable and satellite carriers out. So yes, I would assume it went to every single major cable and satellite carrier from these four Democrats, senators, and two members of the House, all Democrats.

And shortly thereafter, you were dropped by all the big cable carriers.

In the same year, yes.

And then- So I think a fair, without knowing any other information, and maybe you guys committed some heinous crime that I'm not aware of, I haven't heard that. But just on the basis of what you said, which I think is checkable, a fair person would conclude they did that in response. Well, I think I would conclude on the basis of that information.

You're a pretty smart guy, Tucker.

I don't know about that. I can note the obvious.

I think any American out there with common sense can look at the timeline and say two and two is four because math isn't racist. Right.

No, math is not racist. Maybe the only thing immune from racism. So let's destroy it. Yeah. Where does that leave the company?

Here's what we did. We had to scramble. We had seen what happened to, I believe it was Parlor. Remember when Parlor got shut down because the third party servers shut them down?

We didn't want to-Not just the servers. I think if I'm remembering correctly, it was everybody. It was the entire what they call the stack. It was all the service providers between the content creator and the consumer. All, I think there are lawyers dropped them.

And since we were worried about the same thing, just like when Trump started Truth, you've got to go build everything on your own from scratch. If you hire one of these third-party vendors, they're going to listen to the powers that be. So we don't want to trust them. So we had to build our own app, build up the servers, everything. And then we launched OANN app. So you can go to our website, you download it, it's like four or five bucks a month, and then you get live streaming on demand everything. So we're going streaming like everybody is anyway, because let's be real. In 20 years, what's local news and cable and satellite going to be? Everything's streaming. It's moving that way. That took us a while to ramp back up.

And a ton of money, too.

And a ton of money. But Mr. Harring, who has an amazing story of perseverance and coming from nothing Louisiana to creating millions of dollars for himself in multiple industries over the decades, and then getting into TV news about 10, 12 years ago, he's been kicking cash in and saying, We're going to fight this if we have to all the way to Supreme Court. We're not backing down. We have a right to broadcast, and they cannot shut us up. Are they trying to bankrupt us and put us out of business, or they legitimately have a concern that we're purveyors of disinformation? Because I can name probably about nine of the major stories over the last three, four years I've covered, and we were right. We were right first. Oh, I'm aware. Because we had the guts to say it, because we didn't have corporate lackeys telling us we couldn't like the other big networks.

Yeah, I mean, I've been accused of being a tool for Putin, of Putin, of Russia, which is, I would say, material effected my life. I've never sued anyone over that, and I never will. I never sued anybody. I never will sue anybody because I don't believe in lawsuits. But anyway, leaving that aside, it's just interesting that coming out of, this is winding, but I can't resist, eight years of nonstop lying by the Daily Beast and Rolling Stone and NBC News and CNN and MSNBC and all the rest about really big things like life and death things, insurrections, and potential nuclear wars. The Russian Kaluzia hoax. Exactly.

I mean, if somebody's providing a misinformation, Tucker, why aren't those other networks getting letters sent about that?

Well, that is the question.

Why aren't they getting kicked off for misinformation. Thank you. That's my first question. If we said something you all said was misinformation, then I can point to, as you just said, probably 10 or a dozen major stories that CNN, MSNBC, and others have lied or falsely reported about over the last, well, since 2015, '16, since Trump came on the scene. Are they kicked off carriers? Are they being sued?

Draw your own conclusion. Well, our economy is on the verge of collapse. Our country is being invaded, and we are literally on the cusp of nuclear war, actually, all because of lies told by CNBC News, CNN. I mean, told by their masters in Washington, but repeated by them.

And people died because of the COVID lies. I mean, let's all remember, again, as I said earlier, you had the winter of death, and you had hosts out there like Rachel Maddow saying, If you get the vax, you will not spread it, you will not die. Go get it. Remember all those people? And the celebrities coming together, Rallying around Joe saying, You must take it. And the people that don't are going to kill people. We just told people, It's your body. No one can force you to take it. And by the way, here's the VAERS reporting website. Have you looked at VAERS? Because there's millions of side effects and thousands of deaths. Those were facts, yet we would get fact-checked. We would get shadow banned for saying factual stuff.

You I always want to... I don't have any abortion ladies in my life, thank heaven. But when I see the abortion ladies on TV, I always want to say, Whatever happened to my body, my choice? You know? Right. Whatever happened to that?

Yeah, I know. And that's different because actually, well, it's two lives. Obviously, if you take the shot, you're risking your own life. If you're for abortion, you're killing a life. Of course.

But just that slogan is around my whole life. We made an exception for the vax because why? I want to ask you again in a little more detail. So all of this is happening and everyone's ignoring it, including me, honestly.

You were busy.

I don't know about that. There's a lot going on. I missed it somehow. I shouldn't.

Fox wouldn't have allowed you to have me on.

I don't know about that. I never even really read about it or thought about it. There's just so much drama going on. That's true. How can you keep up? But it was publicly available, this information. I know since you texted me and I went back and checked, an informed person could know You can do two minutes of research on DuckDuckGo.

I'm not pitching that other one. And you can find it. Exactly. I'm not going to say the G-word.

Exactly. To me, it's not even about the Vax or how corrupt NBC news is, irretrievably corrupt, but it's about the First Amendment to the Constitution, which specifically prohibits Congress from doing what Congress did to you.

Correct. Thank you.

My question is, where all the First Amendment watchdog groups and all the media organizations and the White House Correspondence Association and all the people are supposed to be protecting us from totalitarian- Wait, White House Correspondence?

Hold on. Can I butt in quick? Yeah. You mean the folks that wouldn't give us a seat at the table in the press room? Yeah, look that up. Our Chanel Rihanna, our White House Correspondent, should have gotten a seat there. They pushed back. Your fellow journalist in DC pushed back, wouldn't let her sit. For a couple of years, she had to stand in the corner. Once the Biden regime got it, they kicked us out. By the way, this is factual. You can ask some of our camera guys and Chanel. Our tent that we have on the White House lawn when the Biden regime took over, guess what happened? Multiple times, our internet line would be cut. So either that's a journalist or White House staff.

Somebody cut our line. I thought you were going to say they gave your tent to illegal aliens.

No, I don't. No, they can't. They're not going to live at the White House, please. They want you to move to your house. They want to give you 500 bucks in Michigan to put them in your house there, Why am I laughing? Yeah, that happened. That literally multiple occasions. Ask Janel. They would come in, the camera guy would set up, we'd try to dial in and, Oh, what's wrong? Grabbed the line. It's cut or it's broken. Who did that? Was it other people in the press corps? Oh, probably. It doesn't like OAN, or was it White House staff? I don't know. Had to be one of the two. Who else is on the ground is going to cut our cord?

It's probably... It really is like getting booted out of a country club you don't want to be a member of, though. Yeah, I know. Having spent my life there in a lot of time at the White House, it's like the worst, saddest, emptyest, most insecure people in the world cover that stupid beat and pretend like it's important when, of course, it's not at all. You can get it all in C-Span.

And they're in such a bubble. They have no clue what it means to be a regular American who's out there struggling.

But they're also sad, bitchy little people. They are. They're so impressed.

I've come from the White House.

Oh, really? How is that impressive?

Yeah. Liberals, in general, I think, are miserable people. And the ones in the press corps are even worse because they're so snotty and arrogant and elitist, and they think they know better than conservative media people or just regular Americans.

Yeah, but it's just a hell of she's existence. I can't stand them. Standing there all day long.

I don't know how you did it all those years, by the way. What did you say? I don't know how you did it all those years.

Well, I never covered the White House. I would just show up occasionally to do various things, but I always hated it. They're living out of vending machines in a former swimming pool waiting for some low IQ political operative to feed them lies and pretending they're real. It's like, that's your life, really? Can your wife possibly respect you or sleep with you? I don't think so. It's just not possible. It's just not It's possible. I understand their bitterness and rage because it's really about themselves and their own wasted lives. Right. Unhappy. But I do think at some point they have to take a stand on principle just on behalf of the profession itself in the country and say, no, government is not allowed to shut down news organizations because they don't like what they say. Did anyone stand up for you?

Is there anybody I'm forgetting that actually stood up for us? No, I'm trying to remember. I can't think of... I mean, when I would have guests on from different entities like Gateway Pundit, The Hoffs, they would do articles. They stood up for us. Breitbart did a couple. I think those two. I don't recall.

You know what's sad is- What happened in Gateway Pundit? I don't think there's any news organization in the world that's being sued by more left-wing groups than Gateway Pundit.

Yeah, they might beat us. But yeah, there wasn't a lot. From what I recall, and I'm trying to remember if anybody else did, I would have guests on my show that were from other entities, and they would say things to support us and then post things. But as far as doing full stories or one-hour interviews and discuss it, no, nobody did. Because I guess we weren't big enough or something.

No professional organization. Well, it doesn't matter. We spent 70 years hearing about the McCarthy blacklist and the darkest moment in American history. All those Guys went on to win academy awards or whatever. They're fine. I'm not defending them blacklist. I'm not for it. But all this constellation of first amendment free speech groups arose in the wake of the Red Scare, and their job was to protect the principle of Freedom of Speech and the First Amendment has written, and none of them defended you. No.

I think that the American people are seeing through the façade of mainstream media, especially just what, two weeks ago with the bloodbath statement of Trump, and thanks to Elon opening up X so people could see it unlike everything has been stifled on all social media, thanks to Zuckerberg and those guys. I think just that one little tidbit where they saw how the media takes a sound bite out of context, and then the politicians take it and make ads, and you had millions of people on X for days. We can have to go discussing how... And these were lefties, independents, and righties. Everybody was discussing it. I think that and the spaces and things on X where he's opened it up to free speech, that is the new town square. And I hope that in places like OAN are going to save us because I think the people, some, are waking up and finally seeing the truth. It took a long damn time. Look at the border situation, right? We've been reporting on the border. I went down there the first week of March after Biden took over. So six, seven weeks, six weeks into his regime.

I went to Yuma, Arizona. They were already seeing three times the numbers from Trump in six weeks. And now we've seen 500 times the numbers. But no one in the country really knew about it because the CNNs, the MSNBCs, the big old three, ABC, NBC, CBS, they weren't going down there. They weren't going to Del Rio. They weren't showing you what was happening. We were, again, this information, this information. Then what? Three or four months ago when the polls came out that the border was tied with the economy, all of a sudden, the regime changed their narrative, the media starts covering it, and now the American people are waking up.

But you got to wonder, though, and you're in a good position to answer this because you've been in this business your whole life, will those places do seem like they're in their death throws? Like Joe Scarborough?

Look at their numbers.

Their numbers are horrible. That's what I'm saying. So Joe makes whatever, 10 million or 12 million or whatever Joe makes. But if Joe Scarborough walked into the NBC News HQ tomorrow, would he ever be able to sign a contract like that? Like the business model. No. So the people currently on the air at those channels are really on their last contracts because none of this can- I hope so. Nobody watches it, right?

Yeah. Well, I'm glad you brought up Scarborough since he's gone so hard against Trump the last couple of weeks. I love the fact that you just interviewed Cuomo, so I'll bring Cuomo. The other night, he had Heraldo on, and they were discussing the coverage of the bloodbath comment and other things, and they were talking about how these guys are hypocrites, how Mika and Joe, leading up to the 2016 election, had Trump on every other morning, and they were kissing his ass. Now, fast forward a few years, and it's, he's the devil. You know the phrase, he's the threat to democracy. We're a Republic, by the way. Thanks, idiots. But every day, threat to democracy. They call us that, threat to democracy. What the hell does that mean? Free speech is a threat to democracy?

It's interesting if you wake up in a country where all of a sudden you're getting a moral lecture from, of all people, Joe Scarborough. Or Joy Reid. Or a moral left... Yeah, but especially Joe Scarborough. Yeah, well, Joy Reid is just like an idiot, an angry idiot.

And the most racist, thank you, the most racist host on television. It's unbelievable. I have to say it weekly with him.

But a moral lecture from Joe Scarborough is hallucinogenic. I can hardly even believe this is happening. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, exactly. It's like getting a fitness lecture from an obese person. That's like, I don't judge that you're fat. In Joe's case, I don't judge that you're evil. You've got to deal with God on that question. That's not for me to judge, but for you to lecture me about morality.

There's so many skeletons in those main hosts and talk show hosts. I don't call them anchors anymore. I love that they still call themselves journalists. That's what really pisses me off, too, Tucker. When I got this job almost four years ago, I made it apparent to viewers, this is an opinionated, conservative talk show. You're going to hear some facts, then you're going to hear my opinion, and the guest comes in. But they never do that. The other night when MSNBC was doing their victory lap, we got rid of Ron McDaniel, yay, you had Joy and Rachel literally saying, We journalists stood strong, and I'm so glad that the CEO at NBC changed his mind. I'm like, Did you just call yourself a journalist? Are you kidding me? That's the biggest line of, You guys are propagandists. I don't call myself a journalist any longer, even though I did it for 30 some years, because now I throw my opinion in. But I remind viewers of that because a lot of the American people are so busy. They're so stressed out with the economy. They're so worried about crime, their kids' education, going to a war, that they don't have time to pay attention, that everything in primetime is not a newscast, folks.

It's people's opinions. Those are talk shows. Oh, I agree.

But a lot of American people don't get that. I always call myself a talk show host. That's what I am.

But these guys lie to the American people every damn night.

But no one's even listening.

Well, that's true. Their numbers are dwindling. That's the only hope I see. And the next couple of generations, the Xers and the millennials are all online anyway. Nobody's watching traditional media. They're streaming everything. They're getting their news on X or Instagram or TikTok. So, yeah, this old school set in a corporate setting is done. What you're doing is where everything's going. You have a studio, you stream it.

Well, it feels that way. I mean, I'm only here by accident because I was totally out of options. I for everybody. I kept getting fired.

But you're a hell of a happier, too, aren't you?

Oh, 100%.

No more leash of the corporate a-holes.

No, but I'm just saying I'm hardly at the leading edge of anything. I'm usually the last person to see the leading edge. It's already gone. I'm like, waving at it as it drives by. I just wound up here. But now that I am here, it's very obvious that all the other... I work for every network, that all of them... Things are changing really fast. It does feel that way. It does. Just bottom line, first of all, thank you for doing this. Second, and finally, what's going to happen with OAN, do you think?

I think that we're going to win. I think we're going to survive. I think that we're on the right side of history. I think that, and I know the family and myself, very religious. We're putting it in God's hands. I also know Mr. H, Mr. Harring, the owner, who is one hell of a fighter like me, says we're not backing down. I think we'll prevail. I think we'll get through it. I think we'll only grow while the old dinosaurs die. That's what I hope happens.

I hope that. I think it will.

Just like you're going to grow with this versus just doing the show with Fox. Not that that was bad. You were averaging 4 million viewers, but look at your videos now.

Yeah. I just want to say what I think. They're even better. That's it. I just want to say what I think. I'm on the Jimmy Cliff program, I'd rather be a free man in my grave. Nice. I agree. Amen. Dimbal, thank you for telling us about that. No, Tucker. I'm sorry it took me so long.

No, that's okay. We appreciate the support and just getting the word out about who Oian is, where we come from, what we're trying to accomplish with speaking truth to power, and what's being done to us. Because as you've said throughout this entire interview, it is a direct assault on freedom of speech and freedom of the press, something you and I have dedicated our lives to.

Of course. I actually agree with what you're saying, but even if I disagreed with what you're saying, I'd be every bit as outraged. We just interviewed a black, socialist, Communist who's facing life in prison for saying things the Biden administration didn't like. I brought the same level of outrage to that because you can't tell people what they can say. That's not allowed because you're not God and they're not slaves.

Simple. That's what we were taught growing up here, right? Let's see if we can continue that. Thank you, Dan. Thank you, Tucker.

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