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

00:00:00.000 It was the greatest blessing, just being vulnerable and honest with people about how much I was struggling.

00:00:04.000 It made me realize, I hate being vulnerable.

00:00:06.000 I want to be independent and do everything myself.

00:00:08.000 I came out of the womb that way.

00:00:09.000 But you gotta lean on other people sometimes.

00:00:11.000 And if you don't give them the gift of being honest about how you're struggling, then they don't get the gift, I think, of helping you.

00:00:25.000 Hey, hey, and welcome.

00:00:25.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special.

00:00:27.000 I'm excited to welcome Shannon Bream.

00:00:29.000 She's the author of the brand new book, Finding the Bright Side.

00:00:31.000 We'll get into that book and everything else you need to know about Shannon Bream in just one second.

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00:01:41.000 Well, Shannon, thanks so much for stopping by.

00:01:43.000 I really appreciate it.

00:01:44.000 It's great to be with you.

00:01:45.000 So why don't we start with this.

00:01:46.000 I'm not a person who is particularly known for finding the bright side.

00:01:49.000 You obviously are somebody who's done that.

00:01:51.000 How do you stay positive?

00:01:52.000 I mean, you have a difficult job and you're covering the news every day.

00:01:55.000 You're doing it late at night.

00:01:57.000 It's a very fraught political cycle.

00:01:58.000 So how do you stay positive all the time the way you seem to?

00:02:01.000 You know, I try to keep perspective.

00:02:03.000 Sometimes you have to compartmentalize things, and we do report on things that are really tough, especially if it's, you know, a situation with a loss of life.

00:02:09.000 It could be natural disasters, you know, a terrorist attack, whatever it is.

00:02:12.000 You have to do what you have to do in the moment, report these things.

00:02:15.000 But for me, I try to separate that and have my real life where I have a little bit of perspective on the bigger picture.

00:02:21.000 For me, my faith is at the center of everything, and that's really my compass and kind of where I have my foundation.

00:02:26.000 And so for a lot of people, I think, I'm not sure where they put their roots and where they kind of find that stability, but that's it for me.

00:02:32.000 So, one of the big controversies that's broken out in sort of the journalistic sphere is the objective journalist versus opinion journalist divide.

00:02:38.000 Now, I'm very obviously an opinion journalist.

00:02:40.000 I say what I think.

00:02:42.000 It must be difficult for you because you are a fair and balanced objective journalist.

00:02:46.000 That means you're trying to remove your views.

00:02:47.000 How do you, number one, do that just as a human being?

00:02:50.000 And number two, how much do you think it's possible to do that as a journalist?

00:02:54.000 I think you have to make the effort 100% of the time if you're in, as I am, in the news division.

00:02:59.000 And we go through our show every night when we're preparing it.

00:03:01.000 We want to make sure that all sides are presented.

00:03:02.000 Do we have guests that are opposing in views on any particular issue we're going to cover?

00:03:06.000 We go through the copy very carefully and say, let's take out any adjectives that are over the top.

00:03:11.000 It's always good to winnow those out.

00:03:13.000 And just let the story speak for itself.

00:03:14.000 Let the facts speak for themselves.

00:03:15.000 We make sure that we give voices to all sides.

00:03:18.000 It doesn't matter what I agree or disagree with.

00:03:20.000 And I feel like I'm doing my job if, at the end of the day, my Twitter is split.

00:03:24.000 I have some people on there who say, like, you're the worst.

00:03:26.000 You are attacking our president.

00:03:28.000 Why don't you respect him?

00:03:29.000 And on the other side, the very same show, I have people who will say, obviously, you're taking all of your talking points straight from the White House.

00:03:35.000 The president told you exactly what to say.

00:03:36.000 And I think, well, if people don't know where I'm coming from personally, then I've done my job.

00:03:40.000 Because, of course, all of us have our own opinions as human beings.

00:03:44.000 But my goal every night in doing this show is that people don't know what my personal opinions are.

00:03:48.000 We just give them the news.

00:03:49.000 Our viewers are smart.

00:03:50.000 They can figure things out for themselves.

00:03:51.000 So we give them the information and leave it to them.

00:03:54.000 So is it frustrating for you?

00:03:55.000 You see a lot of politicians, particularly on the Democratic side of the aisle, now having this open debate about whether it's even appropriate to do things like appear on Fox News, whether to do these town hall events with the objective side of Fox News, people like Brett Baier.

00:04:07.000 And then you have Senator Elizabeth Warren who goes on The View and says, well, Fox News is a hate machine and a propaganda machine.

00:04:12.000 I'll never appear on there.

00:04:13.000 And even their objective hosts are just providing cover for their non-objective hosts.

00:04:17.000 What do you make of that critique of Fox?

00:04:18.000 I expect it.

00:04:19.000 I mean, it's something that if you work there for five minutes, you know you're going to have to deal with.

00:04:23.000 I always encourage people, and sometimes I think I get a convert or two out there, who will say, oh, how could you work there?

00:04:29.000 It's such a terrible place, especially as a woman. 1.00

00:04:30.000 And, you know, they go through the whole litany of problems.

00:04:32.000 And I say, Make me a deal.

00:04:34.000 Will you watch our 11 o'clock show, or 6 o'clock with Brett, or 7 o'clock with Martha, any of our shows that are strictly news programs?

00:04:40.000 Watch it for a week or two, and then see what you think.

00:04:42.000 You don't have to watch the opinion-based shows, which we celebrate.

00:04:45.000 They have their own fan base, and they spark really interesting conversations.

00:04:49.000 But for the news division, I say, watch one of our shows that is straight down the middle, and then you tell me what you think.

00:04:54.000 And I find that most of our critics have not spent any time doing that.

00:04:57.000 So I think it's fair to ask them to recognize the difference, choose one of those news programs, and then you can judge for yourself.

00:05:04.000 And I think if people do that, they might be pleasantly surprised.

00:05:07.000 How much does the news division interact with the opinion division?

00:05:10.000 Do you guys talk amongst yourselves?

00:05:11.000 Are you guys friends?

00:05:12.000 How does that work?

00:05:12.000 We are all friends.

00:05:13.000 I mean, my hallway, I've got Tucker, Laura, Brett, and myself.

00:05:17.000 We're all in there.

00:05:18.000 And Brett Hume is on our hallway, too.

00:05:19.000 And we will pop in.

00:05:21.000 We'll exchange ideas and talk about things and news of the day, of course.

00:05:21.000 We're all friends.

00:05:25.000 What are you going to do on your show?

00:05:26.000 Who have you got on tonight?

00:05:26.000 That kind of thing.

00:05:27.000 But when it comes to putting our shows together, making editorial decisions, there's really no crossover at all.

00:05:32.000 I mean, we're friendly with each other, but we have completely different production staffs.

00:05:36.000 And the way that we tackle our shows, I think, is very different.

00:05:38.000 So given sort of the politically fraught nature of the moment and the very strong opinions that people hold about President Trump, what do you think is the best way as an objective journalist to cover President Trump?

00:05:47.000 It's been kind of fascinating.

00:05:48.000 From the left, there's been a contention that if you treat anything that is pro-Trump with any level of seriousness, that you are somehow contributing to his fake news narrative or that you are somehow covering for him.

00:05:59.000 On the right, there's this feeling that if you criticize President Trump at all, then you are being disloyal or that you are treating him As something terrible.

00:06:08.000 What is the best way to cover President Trump?

00:06:10.000 And how exactly do you separate the narrative from the news when you do this?

00:06:13.000 I think that we stick to the facts.

00:06:15.000 I think that's the most important thing.

00:06:16.000 And if he has a good day, he makes a good decision, something's good with the economy.

00:06:19.000 I mean, we just report it down the middle.

00:06:21.000 And some people will see even that as taking a side.

00:06:25.000 As you said, there's some people who say you shouldn't even treat him as a legitimate president.

00:06:28.000 If you cover him in that way, in some way, you are legitimizing something that they feel is illegitimate.

00:06:33.000 But I think, you know, he tweets.

00:06:35.000 We don't cover every single tweet.

00:06:36.000 But if they're newsworthy, we do.

00:06:37.000 And sometimes he makes policy statements by tweet.

00:06:41.000 We try to winnow through those.

00:06:42.000 But again, if it's factual information, it's data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on unemployment, those kinds of things, that's what we traffic in, in the news side.

00:06:49.000 That's what we do in our particular hour.

00:06:52.000 And I find that so much of people's reaction is projection.

00:06:55.000 Either they're pro-President Trump, they're anti-President Trump.

00:06:58.000 And I think that their feelings factor into the way that they hear what we're saying.

00:07:02.000 So we try to be very careful in the way that we present things, knowing that people are going to come at it from, you know, often very tribal places.

00:07:09.000 And sometimes we have to remind ourselves more about their emotions, and things are so emotional and passionate on both sides right now.

00:07:15.000 It's more about that than it is about what we're presenting.

00:07:18.000 So what do you make of the critique that the Trump administration is somehow uniquely stonewalling?

00:07:22.000 I mean, you're a journalist.

00:07:24.000 The critique is that they are a threat to press freedom.

00:07:27.000 You have Jim Acosta, and ladies, find you someone who loves you like Jim Acosta loves Jim Acosta.

00:07:31.000 But you have Jim Acosta at CNN who actually puts out books about how victimized he is from an air-conditioned office in Washington, D.C.

00:07:38.000 So as a journalist, what's your impression of how transparent the Trump administration is or is not?

00:07:43.000 I think, if anything, I would say that this administration, sometimes there are members of it who feel like they're too transparent, because he does say and think what he, you know, he puts it all out there, whether it's on Twitter, whether it's stopping to talk at these gaggles as he does so often when he comes to or from the White House.

00:07:59.000 I mean, that's something we didn't always get with previous administrations.

00:08:03.000 He will stop and take question after question, and I think in the beginning there were probably some people on the No, no, let's keep it moving.

00:08:08.000 Just get on Marie One and let's go on this trip.

00:08:10.000 He loves that.

00:08:11.000 He loves to engage there.

00:08:13.000 But I think his critics are going to say, yeah, he's been really nasty to the press.

00:08:16.000 The fact that he points them out or calls them out when they're at these rallies, he always points to them in the back.

00:08:21.000 It's something you see him consistently do.

00:08:23.000 He knows it's a winning talking point for him with a crowd who's there.

00:08:26.000 But as far as transparency is concerned, I think he's made himself in ways that are very unique to him, much more available to the press and to these questions than a lot of people have in the past.

00:08:36.000 Because even if he's doing a joint presser with a foreign leader, he ends up taking all kinds of questions that I think sometimes people in his staff who are trying to manage him would like him to do less of that.

00:08:46.000 But I think he's made himself pretty available.

00:08:48.000 I think every White House is going to be criticized for not turning over more documents or having more press conferences because they are limited in that respect.

00:08:55.000 We don't have a ton of press conferences and briefings from them that we've had more of those in the past.

00:09:00.000 So I think he gives you a little bit more on the personal side.

00:09:03.000 But I think on the more structured side of the way that this administration talks to people, certainly there are those in the press who wish it more of that.

00:09:09.000 And one of the things that's been kind of fascinating is to watch the dynamic between President Trump and Fox News.

00:09:14.000 So, he'll tweet things out where it's as though he has certain expectations that Fox News is going to cover him in a particular way.

00:09:20.000 Again, making, I think, some of the same mistakes that people on the left make.

00:09:23.000 Mistaking the opinion stuff, the Sean Hannity show, for your show, for example.

00:09:28.000 Or the idea that if Fox News has a town hall with Pete Buttigieg, that this is somehow Fox News now supporting Pete Buttigieg when before they were just the Trump network.

00:09:36.000 And that seems to have Created a false perception of Fox News among people right and left.

00:09:42.000 So, in your mind, what do you think Fox News actually is?

00:09:44.000 Because, obviously, it's a huge talking point for people on both sides of the aisle.

00:09:48.000 What I think is interesting about Fox, and I always tell this story about my dad's birthday is the same day that Fox launched, and he loved that because he is, you know, he's a former law enforcement officer.

00:09:56.000 He's passed away now.

00:09:57.000 He was a former Marine.

00:09:59.000 Everybody says, never a former, but I just mean that he's not in this earth anymore, to say oorah. 0.51

00:10:04.000 But he felt like when Fox launched, it actually was a place that presented stories and viewpoints that he felt represented for the first time in a long time in the media.

00:10:12.000 Not that they were taking his side, but at least that they told his part of the story or that they looked at stories that other people would overlook.

00:10:18.000 The fact that it was being presented.

00:10:20.000 So I think about a lot of people like my parents and people out there in America feel like, okay, this is a place that's at least going to treat our viewpoint like it's one worthy of conversation or being included.

00:10:32.000 So I think Fox is unique in some of the stories that we pick and the way that we do things.

00:10:35.000 There's definitely the opinion contingent, which is highly popular and has a very devoted fan base.

00:10:41.000 But we do make a real effort to keep a dividing line between that and the news division.

00:10:45.000 So I think in the news division, we do stories that you may not hear other places and we tackle stories in a different way.

00:10:51.000 But our commitment is always to have both sides on.

00:10:53.000 I don't think it's interesting to go on and have You know, any kind of conversation about a particular issue, whether it's abortion or taxation or whatever it is, and only have one side.

00:11:02.000 I think it's a much more interesting conversation for people to make sure you have two or three sides, or however many you can fit into a broadcast, to have that conversation.

00:11:09.000 Because to me, that's adding value.

00:11:12.000 That's where our viewers can learn something new, maybe, or at least feel like, hmm, okay, I hadn't thought about that particular point.

00:11:17.000 I'm willing to at least hear it.

00:11:19.000 So, let's talk a little bit about your sort of backstory, so how you got where you are, because there's a lot of this in your book, Finding the Bright Side.

00:11:25.000 So, if you go back all the way to the beginning, you grew up in a very Christian household that had very solid values.

00:11:31.000 Obviously, you talk at the beginning of the book, first few chapters, about your mom and how she really impacted your life.

00:11:35.000 I was hoping maybe you could talk a little bit about that.

00:11:37.000 Yeah, I talk about, the chapter about her is called The Meanest Mom in the World, and people cringe sort of when I say that, but the truth is, she embraced that title.

00:11:44.000 There was actually a yarn sale that she went to, which is the kind of thing we would have done growing up, that there was a plaque there called Meanest Mom in the World.

00:11:50.000 She actually found it when the book came out and tweeted, and texted me a picture of it, because it does exist, and it's hilarious, because it talks about sort of like, I'm not your friend, we will be one day, but right now I'm here to keep you on a straight and narrow, and keep you out of trouble, my word goes, and that's it, kind of thing.

00:12:04.000 She hung that up in the kitchen, and that really is how I grew up.

00:12:06.000 I mean, I really was not allowed to listen to secular music.

00:12:09.000 There was definitely no dancing and that kind of thing.

00:12:12.000 There was a ton of love, though, and I understood the discipline because I was, from a young age, always asking, why?

00:12:16.000 Why?

00:12:17.000 Why don't we do it this way?

00:12:18.000 My idea is better.

00:12:19.000 And my parents allowed me to do that, but they tried to channel that energy in positive ways and kind of keep me on the straight and narrow.

00:12:26.000 And, you know, the little things that I did here and there, they got me into trouble.

00:12:29.000 always knew.

00:12:29.000 They always found out.

00:12:30.000 My mom was a teacher at the school I went to, K through 12.

00:12:32.000 So it was hard to get away with really anything.

00:12:35.000 And I joke about when the movie Footloose came out, I was in high school, was not allowed to see it because I was living in Footloose.

00:12:41.000 Somebody got a VHS copy.

00:12:42.000 People will have to Google that.

00:12:44.000 And we watched it at someone's house in their VCR.

00:12:47.000 And I remember I didn't tell my parents, like, I got to see Footloose because I was living it.

00:12:50.000 So that's really how I grew up.

00:12:52.000 And you really did lead an extraordinarily clean life.

00:12:55.000 I mean, for somebody who's in sort of public life, this is considered taboo now.

00:12:59.000 I mean, as a person who, you know, was religious also from youth, who is an outspoken virgin until marriage, as somebody who believes in those sort of social standards, it's unique to read a book where somebody talks about...

00:13:09.000 All those same sorts of values.

00:13:10.000 You went to Liberty University.

00:13:11.000 You're somebody who took your faith seriously.

00:13:13.000 You also talk about how, when you were in college, you originally started not at Liberty University.

00:13:18.000 You took some classes over at Florida State.

00:13:21.000 And you talk a little bit about maybe what that clash of values was like.

00:13:25.000 It was interesting.

00:13:26.000 I grew up in Tallahassee, so I had a full ride to Florida State academically, and it made sense to stay home and be in Florida and be close to my family and go to college basically for free.

00:13:35.000 But my parents were very open.

00:13:36.000 Listen, if you want to go to a place like Liberty where you're going to get an education, but you're also going to have people investing in your faith and allowing you to grow in that the whole time, we're open to that too, even though I knew financially it would be tougher for them for me to do that.

00:13:48.000 So, I did take classes right out of high school at Florida State.

00:13:51.000 It's a great university, but I realized that very first class that I had in psychology that there were going to be serious questions about my faith.

00:13:58.000 We were asked to write about the most important thing in our lives, and I talked about my relationship with God, and I had a professor who wasn't Nasty about it, but was sort of patronizing, like, you'll get over that at some point.

00:14:10.000 Like, this is not legit.

00:14:11.000 And I remember thinking, I'm 17.

00:14:14.000 I'm going off into the world.

00:14:15.000 Is this what I want to do for the next four years?

00:14:17.000 Or do I want to have another four years of kind of really rooting myself in my faith?

00:14:21.000 And Liberty has very interesting classes that are required for everybody to take that are kind of apologetics classes and really questioning and digging into the doubts about your faith and learning the other side of the argument.

00:14:33.000 And I thought, I think I'll do four more years of that before I get into the world that's going to constantly be questioning the most important thing in my life.

00:14:41.000 One of the things that I found interesting in the book, and I found this is to be a common thread, you know, for a lot of the folks that I interview who are very successful, is that you were bullied and not treated great back when you were in high school.

00:14:50.000 And now it's funny because whenever you see people who are super successful and they say, well, I was bullied back in high school, people tend to think, no, that's not right.

00:14:56.000 Especially somebody like you, you were, you know, in the Miss, you're the winner of the Miss USA pageant.

00:15:01.000 How were you bullied in high school?

00:15:02.000 How's that even a possibility?

00:15:03.000 What was it like to be bullied?

00:15:05.000 How do you think that shaped you as a person?

00:15:07.000 I will say I had a really great environment in that it was a high school where I had a lot of friends.

00:15:11.000 I was always sort of on the fringe.

00:15:13.000 I felt like I wasn't cool.

00:15:14.000 I was sort of a nerd, partially because my mom was omnipresent at everything that I was ever trying to do, and giving out detentions and stuff to the cool kids in school, so there were times when it was hard to try to be cool at all.

00:15:25.000 I was a voracious reader, so I had, you know, these thick glasses.

00:15:28.000 I was one of those little kids.

00:15:29.000 I'm not sure it was cute, but like second, third grade, wearing glasses.

00:15:32.000 Always had a book in my hands.

00:15:33.000 I was a bookworm.

00:15:34.000 And I joke, but really I think the only reason I had any friends is because we had a pool.

00:15:37.000 So people would want to come to our house, hang out at the pool.

00:15:40.000 And I might have been in my room reading books, but they're there having a great time jumping around in the pool.

00:15:44.000 So I just, and I still, I think, carry this, which I think is a good thing to feel like you're always sort of on the outside a little bit looking in.

00:15:51.000 And I felt that way as a kid, and I certainly was not cool.

00:15:54.000 There was a very cool girl who ended up being a great friend of mine who lived across the street from me. 0.71

00:15:58.000 She was a little bit older, didn't have any of the rules that I had, and I thought she was super cool because she listened to all, you know, these hair bands, and they had cable at their house.

00:16:06.000 I mean, all these things we never would have had.

00:16:08.000 But I remember she used to make fun of me for just how sheltered she thought I was and uncool that I was.

00:16:14.000 But I think it makes you get a little bit of a shell and almost a badge of, yeah, I don't have to cave into peer pressure.

00:16:20.000 I joke in the book, I didn't have a ton of peers pressuring me to do anything, but I wasn't afraid to kind of be my own person and stand up and kind of be a little bit of an outsider.

00:16:28.000 And I still kind of, on the inside, I think I'll always feel that way.

00:16:31.000 So in a second, I'm going to ask you about how you got from doing stuff at Liberty University and going on trips to Brazil to do humanitarian aid to doing beauty pageants.

00:16:40.000 I'm going to get to that in just one second.

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00:17:42.000 All right, so let's talk about your history in beauty pageanting. 0.97

00:17:46.000 So this, I will admit, this is not a topic I know anything about.

00:17:49.000 So maybe you can explain sort of the appeal of it.

00:17:51.000 Like what got you into this in the first place?

00:17:53.000 Yeah, when I was a little kid, I'd watch Miss America with my mom and my grandma, and I thought it was so glamorous.

00:17:58.000 And I thought, how do these people have it so together?

00:18:00.000 You know, these sparkly evening gowns, they look perfect.

00:18:03.000 They know everything about solving world peace.

00:18:04.000 They have all these great ideas.

00:18:06.000 I just thought, these are like otherworldly beings.

00:18:08.000 I think this is really exciting.

00:18:09.000 And as I got older, I learned a lot more about the Miss America pageant, that it actually, most of the winnings that you would have are paid in scholarship, where you actually then, if you have scholarship money, you have to submit to them, you know, your tuition bills and that kind of thing.

00:18:21.000 And it's very much pushed toward getting you to finish your education and get scholarship in the process.

00:18:25.000 So for me, I had a guy who cut my hair.

00:18:29.000 I talk about him in the book who was running one of these local pageants that fed into Miss America.

00:18:33.000 And I'd done one before.

00:18:34.000 It was disastrous because during the talent competition, I forgot my piano piece halfway through the total stage fright.

00:18:39.000 I thought maybe this pageant thing isn't for me.

00:18:41.000 But the guy who cut my hair is like, no, no, no, you should do this again.

00:18:43.000 You should try it.

00:18:44.000 And I went on to win this little local pageant.

00:18:47.000 I go off to Miss Virginia still with this horrible stage fright about playing the piano.

00:18:51.000 And it really deepened my prayer life, I say to people, because I was so terrified.

00:18:55.000 I'm praying the whole time onto the stage, through the piece, you know, getting through it and just saying, like, God, I know that you've brought me here for a reason, and I have to depend on you in this terrifying situation.

00:19:05.000 Which I think a lot of things in life, if they scare you, it's kind of a good idea to try it.

00:19:09.000 And that's kind of how I viewed this whole thing.

00:19:11.000 And a few months later, I was there in the finals of Miss America, never thinking as a 19-year-old I was going to go from almost falling off the stage with embarrassment and forgetting my piece to being in the finals of Miss America.

00:19:21.000 It's like, unlike anything I ever did before, it enabled me to graduate from college with zero debt, which was a huge gift to my family because I come from a modest background.

00:19:30.000 But it forced me to go out and travel on my own, speak, really dig into a lot of ideas.

00:19:35.000 The very first question I got at Miss America was, there was a KKK rally in Georgia yesterday.

00:19:40.000 Is that really what the First Amendment?

00:19:42.000 you know, protects.

00:19:42.000 And I thought, whoa, OK, we're going to have serious questions and serious discussion.

00:19:47.000 And so it's a very thoughtful, engaging process.

00:19:49.000 Not for everyone.

00:19:50.000 Not everyone wants to walk on stage in a swimsuit and high heels.

00:19:53.000 But that was actually the least of my worries.

00:19:56.000 The whole rest of the process was much more terrifying to me than walking around in my swimsuit.

00:20:00.000 There's been a lot of criticism of the pageant, specifically because of the sort of swimsuit aspect of it, from both sort of the feminist left and also from the social con right.

00:20:08.000 People saying, well basically isn't that just skimpy attire?

00:20:11.000 Is that appropriate?

00:20:12.000 What's your take on whether these pageants should continue to include things like swimsuit competitions?

00:20:17.000 I mean, to me, nobody is forcing you to do this.

00:20:20.000 if you choose this way potentially to put yourself through school or to, you know, push yourself intellectually to really dig into these issues for a lot of the young women, that's the toughest part is doing the interview and having to dig into questions like the First Amendment or gun control or whatever it is.

00:20:35.000 There are a lot of political questions in the pageant now.

00:20:37.000 So I think that there are a lot of ways to look at how it pushes you.

00:20:40.000 I mean, for me, the physical aspect of it was the least of it.

00:20:43.000 It did encourage me to quit being a lazy college student and eating 24-7 and be much more disciplined in that part of my life.

00:20:50.000 So it was disciplined across the board, not for everyone.

00:20:53.000 I mean, for me, it was, you know, a great option.

00:20:56.000 But I know a lot of the programs are trying to, and Miss America especially, are trying to modernize in that they're saying, if you do swimsuit, you could wear activewear if you want to.

00:21:04.000 And we're not going to insist that everybody be a skeleton.

00:21:07.000 I mean, it's about who you are and what your body is.

00:21:09.000 And I think it's been healthy that there's been much more of an acceptance in advertising or the patents or whatever, that people are unique and they have different shape.

00:21:17.000 And, you know, you could be positive about whoever you are.

00:21:20.000 For me, it took me to a different level of discipline across the board that I needed as a college kid.

00:21:26.000 Do you think that when it comes to pageanting that there are serious questions to be asked about objectification of women?

00:21:30.000 People treating women simply as sort of pretty objects.

00:21:33.000 Yes, there's all of this other aspect.

00:21:35.000 There's playing music and people answering political questions.

00:21:38.000 But the essence of it is it is a beauty contest.

00:21:40.000 It is not just a piano playing contest.

00:21:42.000 It isn't the Tchaikovsky competition in Russia.

00:21:44.000 Thank goodness.

00:21:45.000 I would not have done well with that.

00:21:47.000 So what do you make of that particular critique?

00:21:49.000 I get it.

00:21:49.000 I mean, I completely get it.

00:21:51.000 And I understand that we're having important conversations about the role of women and the role of equality and all of those kinds of things.

00:21:58.000 So for me, if it's not for you, fantastic.

00:22:01.000 I'm not going to play in the NFL.

00:22:02.000 I mean, there are different options for different people.

00:22:04.000 I say we don't take it away and say, this option is no longer going to be there.

00:22:08.000 Because for some young women, it's a lot of fun. 1.00

00:22:11.000 It's very helpful financially.

00:22:12.000 And it's a good option for some people.

00:22:15.000 But I get that some people will say, Listen, if you're walking out on the stage in a swimsuit, that's not great for women. 1.00

00:22:20.000 But do you take that decision away then from women who say, no, for me, it's fun.

00:22:24.000 I don't feel pressure and I enjoy doing it.

00:22:26.000 I think in the 21st century, we can have all the options on the table.

00:22:29.000 If it's not for you, don't do it.

00:22:30.000 I mean, it is pretty interesting to see this sort of uniting between, as I say, the social right and sort of the feminist left on a lot of these issues.

00:22:40.000 At the same time, there's this move that's been very bizarre in both media and advertising away from basic human standards of beauty, meaning the idea is that We're supposed to pretend that a beauty pageant is no longer a beauty pageant, that basically it is the Tchaikovsky competition and the only way for this stuff to survive is for us to move away from the very idea of a beauty pageant at all.

00:22:58.000 It seems to me that if you're going to do a beauty pageant, it seems like beauty should probably be part of it.

00:23:01.000 Yeah, and I think you see that now.

00:23:03.000 There's a difference in Miss America and Miss USA. 1.00

00:23:04.000 A lot of people, you know, you hear one and it sounds the same.

00:23:07.000 They actually split years ago over an issue related to swimsuits.

00:23:11.000 So Miss America is seen as the more academic.

00:23:14.000 You have the scholarship fund.

00:23:15.000 Miss USA does not apologize.

00:23:17.000 I mean, they do swimsuit, evening gown, and an interview portion.

00:23:20.000 They're all equal, and they don't shy away from it.

00:23:23.000 And for a lot of young women who are aspiring models, actresses, the woman who just won Miss USA is a lawyer. 0.89

00:23:28.000 I mean, she's actually been through school, educated, and is a practicing lawyer.

00:23:32.000 So I think it's an avenue for different people to choose what they want to pursue.

00:23:37.000 Miss USA makes no bones about the fact that this is a beauty pageant, this is a competition, but we also have women here who are doctors and lawyers, and if that's what they choose to do, good for them. 1.00

00:23:45.000 Yeah, I mean, when I was at Harvard Law, one of my friends there was actually a former Miss America winner, Erica Harreld, who ended up running for Congress in Illinois.

00:23:51.000 There are an enormous number of qualified women who actually compete in this sort of stuff and are really academically brilliant. 0.78

00:23:57.000 So speaking of that, you ended up moving on into law, so how did you decide that that was the direction that you wanted to move?

00:24:03.000 Well, I was always fascinated by politics and I, you know, it's all intertwined with this idea of our laws and how they come to be and how we decide to navigate our society.

00:24:13.000 My dad had always said to me when I was in school, you're going to law school or med school, you're going to pick one.

00:24:17.000 I don't want to hear anything about any guys or anything else until you tell me they might as well have been.

00:24:21.000 They were sort of like, you pick one of those.

00:24:23.000 Listen, med school was not ever going to happen for me for numerous reasons, but law school had no math, and I thought that would be a good option for me.

00:24:30.000 I wasn't sure what I would do with it.

00:24:32.000 I was very hesitant.

00:24:33.000 I thought I want to go into law school.

00:24:35.000 I think it'll be a basis for a lot of potential things.

00:24:37.000 I don't know if I'll practice, which I did briefly.

00:24:40.000 But I had an opportunity to go back home to Florida State in Tallahassee and to go to school basically again for free, get a law degree and then figure out what I was going to do.

00:24:48.000 But even before I was out of school, I knew this is not going to be the traditional practice of law isn't what I was going to do the rest of my life.

00:24:54.000 And so you ended up moving into TV.

00:24:56.000 There are tons of people who actually obviously want to be in TV.

00:24:58.000 And I'm sure the question they're all asking is, how do I do this?

00:25:01.000 What is the pathway to getting into TV?

00:25:03.000 I'm sure there are enormous number of people who want a job just like yours or your job.

00:25:06.000 Yeah, one day.

00:25:08.000 So how did you get into TV?

00:25:10.000 I am honest with people.

00:25:12.000 I mean, I went to the bottom of the rung and started there.

00:25:15.000 I mean, I wanted to go do an internship.

00:25:17.000 I wanted to volunteer at one of the local stations in Tampa where I was practicing law in Florida.

00:25:21.000 They said, you can only come in as an intern.

00:25:22.000 And I said, OK, well, how do I do that?

00:25:24.000 It's got to be for college credit.

00:25:25.000 I started calling all of the local universities and schools, like, hey, can I take this credit through you so I can go intern at this?

00:25:30.000 Nope, you have to come back here, get your mass comm degree when you get into your third or fourth level of classes, then we'll approve this internship credit.

00:25:37.000 And then you can do it.

00:25:38.000 And I thought, that's not realistic for me right now.

00:25:40.000 So I just kept going.

00:25:41.000 No, no, no, no, no.

00:25:42.000 I finally get to University of South Florida.

00:25:44.000 I get to the dean of the communications school.

00:25:46.000 This is a time when faxes are still happening.

00:25:48.000 I mean, I'm faxing my transcripts from law school, from college to say, look, I'm a serious person.

00:25:53.000 I want to do this.

00:25:54.000 Will you help me?

00:25:54.000 He was the first person who said, OK, you're driving me crazy because I think if you just wear people down, that's half of it.

00:26:00.000 He said, stop faxing me and sending me all this stuff.

00:26:01.000 I'll do this for you.

00:26:03.000 You have to do a news writing class because you know nothing about that.

00:26:05.000 We'll do that.

00:26:06.000 But then I'll also approve the credits for you to go intern at night at the station.

00:26:09.000 So I did that, and I didn't tell my law firm, and I would go nights and weekends, overnights, whatever I had to do to just go intern there.

00:26:15.000 I would go out with photographers, reporters.

00:26:18.000 I would work the desk, answer the phone, make coffee.

00:26:20.000 I mean, I started at the bottom.

00:26:21.000 I was running everybody's errands while practicing law during the day.

00:26:25.000 But I loved it.

00:26:25.000 I loved being in the newsroom, and I thought, You know, I need to stick with this and figure out what to do here.

00:26:30.000 So a few months into it, when the internship was wrapping up, I went to the boss there and said, I'm going to quit my law firm.

00:26:35.000 And he's like, uh, no one here has offered you a job.

00:26:37.000 I'm like, technicality.

00:26:38.000 I feel like this is what I'm going to do.

00:26:41.000 So I'm just going to, you know, move down this path.

00:26:43.000 And within a few weeks there, they had this overnight position open up 2 a.m.

00:26:46.000 to 11 a.m.

00:26:47.000 And I took it, and it was, you know, a major salary cut.

00:26:51.000 The hours were terrible.

00:26:52.000 I felt like I never saw my friends.

00:26:53.000 My husband would tell you I was tired all the time, but so happy.

00:26:56.000 And so I started at the bottom, and I just, any little job they would let me take on, I learned TV production from being there and doing it.

00:27:02.000 I was working the prompter.

00:27:03.000 A producer quit, I started producing.

00:27:05.000 I mean, it was just one thing after another, and just learning on the job, which is a, you know, sink or swim kind of situation, but it was a great experience.

00:27:12.000 Yeah, I mean, that's a very familiar story.

00:27:14.000 I finished law school.

00:27:15.000 I worked at a law firm for 10 months.

00:27:17.000 I hated it.

00:27:18.000 I despised it.

00:27:18.000 I was about to get married.

00:27:20.000 We had just gotten a mortgage on a condo.

00:27:22.000 And my wife looked at me and said, you should quit.

00:27:24.000 So I quit, and I took a job for one third the pay doing production behind the scenes.

00:27:28.000 And that's how everybody starts.

00:27:29.000 I mean, it's still good to go to law school.

00:27:31.000 I mean, I definitely recommend.

00:27:32.000 Folks should continue. 0.75

00:27:33.000 It teaches you a certain way of thinking that's very useful.

00:27:35.000 But don't stick with something that you hate just because there's money behind it.

00:27:38.000 Life is too short.

00:27:39.000 Yeah, and I had to tell myself, even within the news business, there have been times I've taken promotions or different jobs that were tied to a financial bump.

00:27:47.000 And I thought, I knew that wasn't right for me, but I did it for the wrong reasons.

00:27:50.000 So I do think you have to follow your passion and what you're going to be excited to get up every day and do.

00:27:54.000 So how did you get from local news all the way to Fox News being a national broadcaster?

00:27:58.000 Well, I do like to include the story about getting fired from my very first TV job, because the guy who put me on TV left the station.

00:28:04.000 The new guy who came in, everybody was freaked out.

00:28:06.000 And they said, you don't understand.

00:28:07.000 When a new person comes in, they clean house.

00:28:08.000 And I'm like, I'm making no money and I'm doing 10 jobs here and loving it.

00:28:11.000 I have a great attitude.

00:28:12.000 Like, I'm safe.

00:28:14.000 No, you're not safe.

00:28:15.000 When I got called in and the head of HR was sitting there, I literally for a second thought, they're promoting me.

00:28:21.000 No, the head of HR is sitting there.

00:28:23.000 That's not happening.

00:28:23.000 And the guy said to me, you're the worst person I've ever seen on TV.

00:28:26.000 You will never make it in this business.

00:28:28.000 I don't know why anyone put you on television.

00:28:30.000 It was humiliating.

00:28:31.000 And I cried.

00:28:32.000 I literally went into a soundproof at a bay and cried.

00:28:35.000 It was so humiliated.

00:28:36.000 It took months and months and months for me to get anyone to return my calls.

00:28:40.000 I applied for jobs all over the country.

00:28:42.000 Eventually, I landed at a wonderful station in Charlotte, North Carolina.

00:28:45.000 Worked there three years, then went to D.C.

00:28:47.000 to work for the NBC affiliate.

00:28:49.000 While I was there, Fox had exploded, and I was sending my work there.

00:28:53.000 Couldn't get an interview.

00:28:54.000 Nobody cared because they get a thousand resumes a day.

00:28:57.000 And so, my husband, who handles professional speakers, had booked Brit Hume for an event.

00:29:02.000 It was a breakfast event.

00:29:03.000 And he said, you need to come with me tomorrow morning.

00:29:06.000 He'll be there.

00:29:06.000 Maybe we can talk to him.

00:29:07.000 I'd worked the late news the night before.

00:29:09.000 I did not want to do it.

00:29:10.000 I got up that morning, had a huge zit on my face.

00:29:12.000 Like, this is not a good first impression.

00:29:13.000 I don't want to go.

00:29:14.000 My husband convinces me to go.

00:29:16.000 So we get there.

00:29:17.000 Britt's waiting backstage in the green room.

00:29:19.000 So he's sort of a captive audience.

00:29:20.000 The program's running behind.

00:29:21.000 A little ways into that, my husband says, you may not know Britt.

00:29:24.000 If you recognize my wife, she is a local anchor here in D.C.

00:29:28.000 And Britt's like, oh, very nice.

00:29:29.000 What would you like to do long term?

00:29:30.000 And this was my moment of truth.

00:29:32.000 And I just said, I want to come work for you at Fox.

00:29:33.000 And he was like, that's nice.

00:29:35.000 It was sort of like a light blow off.

00:29:37.000 He's like, people say that to me all the time.

00:29:39.000 I'm not sure they understand exactly what we do or how it's done.

00:29:41.000 But send your stuff over.

00:29:42.000 Maybe I can give you some advice, some career advice.

00:29:43.000 I'm a little embarrassed.

00:29:45.000 I leave the room, sort of take a walk.

00:29:47.000 The guys are there talking.

00:29:48.000 While I'm gone, he says to Sheldon, my husband, do you think that or does she like politics?

00:29:53.000 What does she like to cover? 0.99

00:29:54.000 And he said, well, when she was in law school, she worked in the Florida Speaker's office.

00:29:58.000 And he said, law school?

00:29:58.000 Did she finish?

00:29:59.000 My husband's like, yeah, she graduated with honors.

00:30:01.000 Britt says to him, do you think she would want to cover the Supreme Court for Fox News? 0.59

00:30:06.000 And my husband's sort of like, I won't speak for her, but I think that would probably be a yes.

00:30:10.000 So I come back in the room five, ten minutes later, and Britt literally says to me, when can you start?

00:30:15.000 And I'm like, I don't know what just happened here for the past five, ten minutes, but I should be paying my husband the agency fee that we're paying to my agent.

00:30:22.000 And from there, it was, you know, there were several months in there where I was still under contract with NBC, where I'm trying to work things out to get to Fox.

00:30:29.000 Didn't think it was going to happen numerous times.

00:30:31.000 It looked like it wouldn't come together.

00:30:32.000 And I had to sort of let go of the process.

00:30:34.000 And eventually, when my contract was up with NBC, I went over to Fox, thanks to Brit Hume, and I've been there ever since.

00:30:39.000 So I want to ask you about the Supreme Court beat, what that was like in just one second.

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00:31:47.000 Write Shapiro in their How Did You Hear About Us box so they know we sent you because that's how you heard about them.

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00:31:56.000 So, let's talk about what it was like to cover the Supreme Court.

00:31:58.000 Obviously, the Supreme Court has become an incredible hot button, certainly over the course of my lifetime.

00:32:03.000 I really think it's been exacerbated really since Roe versus Wade, but even in the last 15 or 20 years, it seems to have become the number one issue on a lot of people's radar.

00:32:12.000 Many people attribute President Trump's victory to the fact that there was an open Supreme Court seat and that was Scalia's seat.

00:32:17.000 So, what was it like to cover the Supreme Court?

00:32:20.000 How political was it at the time?

00:32:21.000 When I first got started, I realized how much I had to learn.

00:32:24.000 The very first giant case I covered over there was dealing with Guantanamo Bay, the rights of various prisoners there.

00:32:30.000 It had been back and forth through the federal court system numerous times, and I just tried to read the record and get ready for covering it there at the Supreme Court.

00:32:37.000 I was like, whoa, this is a whole different level of reporting.

00:32:42.000 It's a tough beat to cover because there are almost zero leaks over there.

00:32:45.000 I mean, anyone who's clerking there, they're not going to blow up their entire legal career giving you information.

00:32:49.000 It's not like Congress where people are like, Here, I've got stuff I want you to talk about that I want to leave to you.

00:32:53.000 It's completely the opposite.

00:32:55.000 But I loved it because it was an intellectual challenge for me.

00:32:57.000 I was getting to use that law background doing it.

00:32:59.000 I just knew I had a lot of work to do to get up to speed over there.

00:33:02.000 So it was a little overwhelming in the beginning.

00:33:05.000 It's a very austere place, and they don't mess around over there.

00:33:08.000 But I've really enjoyed getting to know the various justices as much as you can, really trying to figure out how their brains work, how you think they're going to vote.

00:33:17.000 Um, and really interpreting the oral arguments because there are a lot of them that lay booby traps on both sides and they want to play devil's advocates.

00:33:23.000 You don't know how they're going to vote.

00:33:24.000 Um, so yeah, I mean it has become highly political, which I don't think is what the founders ever intended for the judicial branch at all.

00:33:31.000 I think it's morphed into something that's probably away from the original intentions.

00:33:36.000 But covering the confirmation hearings, I should say battles over the last several years, I've never seen anything like what happened with the Kavanaugh situation.

00:33:45.000 I mean, I've covered, that's probably my fifth one.

00:33:47.000 There was nothing ever like that before.

00:33:49.000 And I think even just, you know, you think about to, you know, Justice Kennedy, who was, you know, such a, at the end, you know, the swing vote, he hated that term.

00:33:58.000 He was confirmed 97 to nothing.

00:33:59.000 I mean, those days are gone.

00:34:01.000 I can't imagine us doing that.

00:34:02.000 Years ago, they would confirm by voice vote.

00:34:04.000 Now, it's a totally different process, and I think the whole thing has been so politicized.

00:34:09.000 I think it's a little bit off the rails.

00:34:11.000 What did you think of how the Kavanaugh hearings broke down?

00:34:13.000 I mean, obviously, that was probably the biggest hot-button issue of the last five to ten years in American politics, maybe even surpassing the 2016 election itself.

00:34:20.000 How do you think that ended up playing out?

00:34:23.000 Yeah, I mean, I truly have never seen anything like that, because it was there in the room, and it became apparent within 10 seconds of then-chairman Grassley starting the hearing, it was not going to be a normal hearing at all, whether it was from the dais, from the various members, or the audience and the seats for the public.

00:34:39.000 We literally from our vantage point that we're at as we're broadcasting sort of in skyboxes overlooking the area we could look down and we'd see each group that they brought in and you could immediately we'd started playing sort of bingo on the protesters like that one's gonna pop up that one's gonna pop up it was and I mean the first day it was so jarring because it happens so often by day three we were sort of like There's another protester.

00:35:00.000 Capitol Police, very good with informing people.

00:35:03.000 If you do this, here's what's going to happen.

00:35:04.000 Quickly taking them out and moving on with the hearings.

00:35:08.000 But then when we started to get the fallout from the letter that came in with Senator Feinstein revealing it, all of that that played out over the next few weeks, it just got so vitriolic.

00:35:18.000 There were times that people did not feel safe.

00:35:20.000 I'm talking about senators trying to get to the floor to vote.

00:35:22.000 You saw it happen.

00:35:23.000 I mean, regardless of what side they were on, there were a lot of people who were very upset.

00:35:27.000 I've never seen people that emotional about anything I've covered.

00:35:31.000 That's certainly the most emotional topic or story that I've seen where people just were relentless about it.

00:35:37.000 I mean, it has become really blood sport and it must be difficult for you.

00:35:42.000 I mean, you're a woman at Fox News, which means that You're going to be shellacked by the media for having the temerity to be a woman at Fox News. 0.55

00:35:49.000 What is that like?

00:35:50.000 I mean, now that it seems like every issue is being broken down into a certain sort of sexual politics, where women are expected to be on one side and men are expected to be on another.

00:35:56.000 And Kavanaugh is an example of this, where it must have been that if you were a woman and you thought that there were holes in Christine Blasey Ford's story, then you were being disloyal to women.

00:36:04.000 Even if you objectively covered that, you were being disloyal to women.

00:36:07.000 How did you deal with that?

00:36:09.000 Well, it's tricky because as a woman who's had a few Me Too moments myself in my life, my legal career and beyond, but also being a lawyer, I thought, we've got to be really careful about this because I'm 100% in favor, as every American I think should be, in the idea of due process.

00:36:24.000 No one in this country should be accused without the opportunity to defend themselves and to have some due process.

00:36:30.000 This was different because it's not a court proceeding.

00:36:32.000 You know, people would say it's the most glorified job interview in the world.

00:36:36.000 So I definitely had very serious concerns about due process, but as a woman who has been through some of these things, I thought, we need to hear from this person, and we need to allow senators to make informed decisions about who she is and where she's coming from.

00:36:48.000 But as we started to get in that second and third and fourth tier of people who are now sending in anonymous letters, that he and his friend had sexually assaulted them multiple times in a car, but I can't name myself, the guy who got in trouble for sending in a false report about something, Um, saying that a woman was on a boat with Kavanaugh and she called him for help.

00:37:04.000 I mean, it just got to be preposterous.

00:37:06.000 We're like, now we're losing sight of the core story, the person who is willing to come here under oath and tell her story, his side of the story, as we're now, you know, Michael Avenatti gets into it.

00:37:16.000 We have the Julie Swetnick's.

00:37:17.000 I mean, it turned into such a circus that I think people lost the ability to be objective about a lot of it because it became completely political and not about the substance of what was being discussed.

00:37:30.000 So I want to ask you about some of those Me Too experiences.

00:37:32.000 So obviously this has become a hot button issue again in the country.

00:37:36.000 It seems like this has really ratcheted up since 2012 when Mitt Romney, the most anodyne human being ever to walk the earth, was supposedly waging a war on women and then that was revived obviously during 2016 when President Trump, who was not anodyne, was running for President of the United States and Hillary Clinton sort of revived that.

00:37:52.000 So you've been in the TV industry, which is not Well, I mean, there's some, you know, there's the funny subtle stuff that is not a sexual assault, but it makes you very aware of some gender stereotypes and things.

00:38:12.000 I can remember as a young attorney that I was conducting a deposition and the person came in that day with their lawyer.

00:38:17.000 I met them out front and they said, tell Mr. Breen that I'm here and please get me some coffee.

00:38:21.000 And I'm like, It's Mrs. Bream, and I'll see about getting you some coffee.

00:38:24.000 I mean, there's just those subtle things.

00:38:26.000 And probably most of that had to do with the fact that I was so young and baby-faced as a new attorney, like, I'm going to be the one deposing you today.

00:38:33.000 There were times that we would show up for a deposition for something else, and there's somebody there that maybe we were representing the company that they worked for, and they were being accused of sexual harassment.

00:38:41.000 The way that they treated me when I walked in the door, I thought, might be true. 0.85

00:38:44.000 You might want to settle this case.

00:38:46.000 I mean, there's just that stuff that happens, like, yikes, this may not be your best character witness here.

00:38:50.000 Um, but there were, you know, there were times over the years where I've been put in situations that were uncomfortable.

00:38:54.000 There were discussions about my body or about being more sexual or being more sexy on TV.

00:38:59.000 I mean, those conversations are uncomfortable and you have to navigate them carefully as a woman.

00:39:03.000 I'd been a sexual harassment attorney when I was sitting in those conversations and I'm thinking, okay, there are lines I'm not going to cross.

00:39:11.000 How close am I to that line?

00:39:12.000 Because my career does matter to me.

00:39:14.000 I think there's a way to, as a woman, navigate this carefully, to respectfully use comedy or humor to get myself out of this situation, not offending the person who is now making a decision about my career, but also maintaining my own dignity.

00:39:26.000 And sometimes it's a really thin line to walk.

00:39:29.000 Yeah.

00:39:30.000 How do you decide where exactly that line ought to be?

00:39:31.000 We've spoken with a bunch of women on the show before and asked the same sort of question. 0.62

00:39:35.000 Women who... Carly Fiorina was sitting in this chair a few weeks ago and she was talking about some of her experiences in the business world with this sort of sexism. 1.00

00:39:42.000 And I asked her, so how do you deal with the person across from you?

00:39:46.000 Do you seek to diffuse?

00:39:47.000 Do you seek to elevate?

00:39:49.000 At what point do you say, okay, well, I can't work here anymore.

00:39:52.000 How do you draw those lines?

00:39:52.000 Yeah, and that's so frustrating to me as a woman, because you feel like you shouldn't have to make that decision.

00:39:57.000 I mean, you shouldn't be put in that place.

00:39:59.000 But also, if you're being realistic about some conditions, and I think, listen, in the last five years or so, that's wildly changed, that companies are having extreme makeovers with the way that they handle HR, giving women a place to report, and so I think there's been such a disinfectant of sunlight, which is fantastic for all women, and men get harassed too.

00:40:17.000 I mean, we have to be honest, I've seen those cases, plenty of them, in my career as well.

00:40:21.000 Um, so I think that the more we can decide personally where we're going to draw a line.

00:40:25.000 For me, it was, you know, I talk about Roger Ailes in the book and the fact that he was a dichotomy like everybody.

00:40:31.000 He was incredibly generous to people who were in trouble or ill or had emergencies in their life.

00:40:36.000 He was a TV genius, but there was the side of him too, that for me, I had to deal with some really uncomfortable conversations and I kept going back and having those conversations because it was part of a regular part of my career to meet with him and to advocate for myself, to take on new assignments and do things.

00:40:50.000 But there came a point to me where I felt like there was a moment where he said, let's talk about you having a show.

00:40:56.000 And I thought, fantastic.

00:40:58.000 I talk about in the book how I put together this folder of all of my ideas.

00:41:01.000 It was very mapped out and specific.

00:41:04.000 And I went in there to talk to him.

00:41:05.000 I had the folder.

00:41:05.000 He immediately kind of tossed the folder aside where I realized we're not going to have a conversation about the show.

00:41:10.000 That's drawing me back into another one of these uncomfortable conversations with him.

00:41:13.000 And I said, It may jettison my career, but at this point, I have to draw the line here and say I'm not going to have these uncomfortable meetings with him anymore.

00:41:20.000 And so for the last two years, he was at Fox.

00:41:23.000 I never saw him again in person.

00:41:24.000 And I thought, I can live with that because for me, it's gone to my my breaking point, which is no more of this.

00:41:31.000 And I love my job as a Supreme Court correspondent.

00:41:34.000 If that's the last thing I do at Fox, I will have been blessed.

00:41:37.000 And I love it.

00:41:38.000 And I left it there.

00:41:38.000 And I never saw him again after that last meeting, where for me, that was the line in the sand.

00:41:42.000 I don't mean to get gossipy, but I think I'd be remiss if I didn't ask what those uncomfortable conversations were like, or what exactly the content of those was.

00:41:48.000 Well, he would talk about the need to be more sexy on TV.

00:41:54.000 The conversation he would use is, people need to think if they went on a date with you, it'd be a good time.

00:41:59.000 Because right now, that's not the vibe I'm getting from you.

00:42:01.000 I'm kind of getting like church lady vibe, which is me.

00:42:03.000 I kind of give off a church lady vibe, and I'm okay with that.

00:42:06.000 And I think he understood the medium of television and he knew what audiences wanted in a way that sometimes you had to think, okay, as a journalist, am I okay with this?

00:42:15.000 Yes, I can dress differently than when I was a lawyer and I wore a black suit to court every day.

00:42:19.000 So, okay, that's the step I can take.

00:42:21.000 I need to dress more colorfully.

00:42:22.000 I need to be more imaginative about that.

00:42:25.000 But if I have to try to do the news in a way that's also me flirting with the audience, no, that's not okay with me.

00:42:32.000 You can have a wink and a nod about a funny topic or story here and there, but I didn't want to come across as provocative or somebody who was trying to be sexually alluring while delivering the news.

00:42:42.000 That just wasn't something that works for me as a combination.

00:42:45.000 It's been really fascinating to watch everybody trying to navigate the new lines.

00:42:50.000 As a social conservative and somebody who is very strict on these matters myself, I'm pretty comfortable as a social conservative with a lot of the new lines that are being drawn.

00:42:57.000 At the same time, one of the things that I see is that there's almost a virtue that is attached to claiming for some people that they've been victimized more than they've been victimized.

00:43:07.000 The other week I was with my wife and we were at Disneyland with my kids.

00:43:09.000 We're walking down the street and there was this big fat homeless guy sitting on the side of the street and he's wearing a beanie with a marijuana symbol on it.

00:43:17.000 And I figure, okay, well this guy probably is not, you know, vice president at Chase Manhattan Bank.

00:43:21.000 And we're walking by and he turns to my wife, who's an attractive woman, and as she walks by he goes, oh girl, don't do that.

00:43:28.000 And my wife turns to me and she goes, still got it.

00:43:34.000 I mean, I agree with you.

00:43:39.000 I had a guy on the metro in DC offer to pay my rent.

00:43:42.000 So I was like, I haven't heard that one before, but does that apply to mortgages?

00:43:45.000 Because I'm never going to be offended.

00:43:48.000 And I will get emails from people, even friends or people that I don't know, who will say like, I love that dress you had on tonight.

00:43:53.000 You look really great.

00:43:53.000 Am I getting in trouble for saying that?

00:43:55.000 I'm not one of those people who cares about that.

00:43:57.000 Yeah, I would like to think at almost 50 that people think I look sort of cute, so I'm fine with that.

00:44:01.000 And if somebody walking down the street is, you know, salacious is another thing, but to get an admiring glance or something like that, I don't know what woman, well no, some women will be offended by that.

00:44:11.000 I'm not one of them.

00:44:12.000 I mean, sure, if it crosses the line into something super sexual, not okay.

00:44:16.000 But for me, that even I have male friends that have to worry about whether they can say that something looks nice or how I feel, you know, I'm hoping that the pendulum will equalize somewhere where people can feel comfortable saying nice things to a friend or a woman that's in their life that they are an acquaintance with and not feeling like they have to be hypersensitive.

00:44:35.000 Good for your wife. 0.77

00:44:37.000 So you have obviously a very demanding career.

00:44:39.000 You also have a family.

00:44:40.000 How do you balance the needs of that?

00:44:42.000 I mean, you're doing a show at 11 p.m.

00:44:43.000 on the East Coast.

00:44:44.000 That's really rough.

00:44:45.000 My wife has bad hours because she's a doctor, but eventually that will end and she'll finish residency and she'll choose her own hours. 1.00

00:44:52.000 How have you been able to balance those demands?

00:44:54.000 Well, I'm a night owl, so that for me works really well.

00:44:56.000 I was, for about a year, doing the morning show with Bill Hemmer, who I adore, in New York.

00:45:01.000 That meant I was up at 4.30, which, those are not my hours.

00:45:04.000 A.M.?

00:45:05.000 4.30 P.M., sure.

00:45:07.000 So, when they came to me and said, we really want you to launch this nighttime news show at 11, I thought, I'm awake then.

00:45:12.000 That's great for me.

00:45:12.000 So, it works really well for me, just, you know, biologically.

00:45:16.000 And I also have a husband that I've been married for, we've been married for almost 24 years.

00:45:20.000 And so he's been through everything with me, the doing the law and hating it every day of my life, getting up, as I'm sure your wife saw with you, going to do it, getting fired, moving around the country.

00:45:29.000 I mean, I couldn't have done any of this without him.

00:45:31.000 And so we don't have kids.

00:45:33.000 And I talk about that in the book because I get asked that question a lot.

00:45:35.000 So I explain it in the book.

00:45:37.000 Um, but the two of us, you know, we kind of try to be each other's biggest cheerleaders and biggest supporters.

00:45:42.000 We disagree and have arguments like everybody does, but we try to remember we're on the same team.

00:45:46.000 And so that means that sometimes when I have crazy hours and I travel, he comes with me when he can or he makes sure that our house does not completely implode in disaster when I'm not there, you know.

00:45:55.000 He's a guy who's great at all things that I'm not good at, which are cooking, grocery shopping, laundry.

00:46:01.000 I can put it in there and get it started, but we're very much a team, and I don't think I could have done any of this without him.

00:46:07.000 How did you meet?

00:46:08.000 We met in school at Liberty University undergrad.

00:46:11.000 We had friends who were constantly trying to put us together.

00:46:13.000 We were always dating other people.

00:46:15.000 Not that I dated anyone before him, but hypothetically.

00:46:18.000 Um, but, um, we had friends kept trying to put us together, and so finally our senior year, we were at this homecoming sort of football game, my parents were there, he was there, my friend who really was instrumental in putting us together came to me and she's like, you are meeting him today!

00:46:34.000 So she dragged him over to me, I think, and I was with my family, and I joke about it.

00:46:37.000 I love my mom and stepdad.

00:46:39.000 My stepfather is very unique.

00:46:41.000 His name is Jasper.

00:46:42.000 And so when my husband, I met him that day formally, and we had friends in common, but to really meet him, I'm standing there with my stepdad, who is a unique character, and I'm thinking, he's already met my very interesting stepdad on day one of this not even being on a date yet.

00:46:56.000 And so I thought, if he can make it through that gauntlet on this very first meeting, There might be something to it.

00:47:02.000 Now, we were still dating other people at that time, so nothing came of it.

00:47:05.000 But our final semester in school, we were both single and available.

00:47:08.000 And I, at that point, had determined, I'm leaving.

00:47:10.000 I know I'm going home to law school.

00:47:11.000 I'm tired of having my heart broken by the last guy that I dated.

00:47:14.000 I'm just going to date like a guy. 0.90

00:47:16.000 And I'm not going to get emotionally attached, maybe a nice dinner out, something like that.

00:47:19.000 That's it.

00:47:20.000 And he played baseball, and a lot of the players on the team kind of had this player reputation for not being the most wholesome guys in the world.

00:47:28.000 A couple of them rightfully earned.

00:47:30.000 But what I found on our first date with him is that it wasn't accurate for him.

00:47:35.000 And he turned out to be this guy of deep faith, wonderful family background, very family-oriented.

00:47:40.000 And I kind of knew very early on, like, this guy is marriage material.

00:47:43.000 This is a serious thing.

00:47:44.000 I'm going off to law school.

00:47:45.000 What do I do?

00:47:46.000 And I think when you fall in love with somebody, you really can't help that.

00:47:49.000 He says he went home that night after our first date and told his roommates we were going to get married.

00:47:53.000 He didn't tell me that for a little while, but I think that I knew right away it was something different, too.

00:47:56.000 Yeah, that is every story that I hear is basically the guy knows almost immediately and then at least this is what it was with my wife as well.

00:48:03.000 I knew like right away that I was going to marry my wife and then it took her a little while longer.

00:48:08.000 But you got to the same place.

00:48:09.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:48:10.000 Every so often I'll look at her and I'll say, Yeah, that's right.

00:48:12.000 Eventually it came around.

00:48:14.000 You won her over.

00:48:16.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:48:16.000 I mean, we have two kids now, so it's too late.

00:48:19.000 She can't get out.

00:48:19.000 It's working.

00:48:20.000 We're at 11 years in July, so she cannot get out.

00:48:22.000 So, you opened your book talking about this health crisis that you had with your site and how your faith helped get you through it.

00:48:22.000 Congrats.

00:48:28.000 I was wondering if you could tell that story.

00:48:30.000 Yeah, I've been struggling for a long time with a genetic eye condition that I have, and I didn't know.

00:48:34.000 I mean, it took me almost two years to actually get diagnosed.

00:48:37.000 What I knew was I'd started waking up in the middle of the night with excruciating pain that, I mean, literally makes me jump out of bed.

00:48:43.000 I mean, it was as if somebody were stabbing my eye.

00:48:47.000 It seemed so strange when it first started happening because it was very infrequent, became more and more frequent.

00:48:51.000 My first original eye doctor was like, I can't help you, but I think we need to get you to a specialist to figure this out.

00:48:56.000 I went to that next specialist, spent a few months with him.

00:48:59.000 It got to the point where it was nearly every night.

00:49:00.000 So I dreaded going to sleep because I knew for whatever reason this was happening overnight.

00:49:05.000 So I'm exhausted.

00:49:06.000 I'm now living in chronic pain, double vision a lot, migraines, everything that was triggered by what was happening with my eyes.

00:49:12.000 Trying to hide it from everybody and do my job because I had no words for it.

00:49:15.000 I had no diagnosis.

00:49:17.000 So, after a couple of visits to this specialist, I went back to him and I was really just barely holding it together at this point.

00:49:22.000 I'm like 18 months into not sleeping, chronic pain, and he says to me, you know what, I just think you're really emotional.

00:49:28.000 And I thought, yeah, I am.

00:49:30.000 Because my world is like, I'm barely holding it together at this point.

00:49:34.000 I left there and felt so discouraged that he couldn't help me and that it was sort of suggested that I was nuts, that for a long time I didn't go back to the doctor.

00:49:42.000 So I'm living in this constant cycle of excruciating pain, chronic sleep deprivation, and that gets you to a really bad place because I'm now almost two years into it.

00:49:50.000 Start searching online, which I say don't do for a health condition, because you'll find out you have like 17 seconds to live, and that's it.

00:49:56.000 It's all over.

00:49:57.000 So, I was just trying to find people with similar symptoms so I could get an answer, and I would stumble into these message boards and chat boards where other people would say, yeah, I've been turned away from the emergency room 10 times, nobody can tell me, no one can help me, and they, you know, would talk about ending their lives.

00:50:11.000 And I thought, that actually sounds like a huge relief.

00:50:14.000 I'd gotten to the point where I was into my 40s then, and I thought, I can't make it another 40 years like this.

00:50:20.000 I can't make it 40 seconds some days.

00:50:21.000 I'm barely able to keep it together.

00:50:24.000 And I thought, that just sounds like such a relief.

00:50:26.000 Like, if I could just go to sleep and not wake up.

00:50:28.000 And I really started to think it through a little bit.

00:50:30.000 What would it do to my family?

00:50:31.000 What would it do to the people that I loved?

00:50:34.000 And that sort of shocked me a little bit too, logically and intellectually, knowing that's not the choice you want to make.

00:50:41.000 But it was in such a bad state emotionally.

00:50:42.000 And I think when you're physically exhausted too, it exacerbates everything.

00:50:46.000 And I went to my husband and said, listen, I'm really at the lowest point.

00:50:49.000 And he was the only one who had any clue what was happening.

00:50:52.000 And he said, we're going to find you a doctor.

00:50:53.000 We're going to start from scratch.

00:50:54.000 We're going to do this.

00:50:56.000 And I remember praying so many times, Lord, if you're not going to heal me, please just send me to the right person who can help me.

00:51:01.000 Because sometimes God has a different plan than we do.

00:51:03.000 And I thought, maybe not healing me.

00:51:05.000 That's not part of it.

00:51:06.000 So I worked to find another doctor.

00:51:08.000 Within a couple of days, I found this fantastic cornea specialist in D.C.

00:51:12.000 And I called, and I said, keep it together.

00:51:14.000 Don't act crazy.

00:51:15.000 Don't cry on this phone call.

00:51:16.000 And the lady said to me, can you hold on?

00:51:17.000 She came back and said, we've got a cancellation for tomorrow.

00:51:19.000 Can you make it?

00:51:20.000 And I said, just one more night, God.

00:51:22.000 I'm just praying.

00:51:22.000 Get me through this night.

00:51:23.000 Let this guy help me tomorrow.

00:51:24.000 I get there, and his assistant, who does the initial assessment, does all the write-up.

00:51:29.000 He walks in having read that, and he's like, I know what you have.

00:51:31.000 And it really, for the first time in two years, I felt like this little sprout of hope.

00:51:35.000 Like, somebody finally is going to help me.

00:51:38.000 He says, let me look at your eyes, but I'm almost 100% sure.

00:51:40.000 He goes through and he's like, yep, this is what you have.

00:51:43.000 It's a genetic condition.

00:51:45.000 As we go through the appointment, he eventually says to me, just so you know, there's no cure.

00:51:49.000 And I completely lost it.

00:51:51.000 I don't remember even checking out.

00:51:52.000 I remember running back to my car.

00:51:54.000 I was filling in for Brett Baer that night on the 6 o'clock show.

00:51:57.000 I had to get back.

00:51:58.000 And I remember getting in the car and just sobbing and sobbing and sobbing and saying, like, God, why?

00:52:02.000 Like, I can't continue living like this.

00:52:05.000 And I really just thought, I'm going to just drive my car off a bridge.

00:52:07.000 I mean, I can't function this way anymore.

00:52:10.000 And I was praying and crying, and I remember, I say to people, I don't feel like I've audibly heard the voice of God, but I remember feeling in my spirit Him saying, I will be with you.

00:52:18.000 Not, I'm going to heal you, I'm going to take this away, life's going to be perfect, but I'm going to walk through this with you.

00:52:23.000 And it was such a calming thing because it felt like I heard from Him.

00:52:28.000 And I drove back to work, got through that day.

00:52:31.000 Eventually went back to the doctor and he said, I don't want you to miss what I'm saying.

00:52:34.000 I can't heal you.

00:52:35.000 There's no cure for this, but we can manage it.

00:52:37.000 And eventually years later, what that meant was having the surgery that I put off and put off and put off.

00:52:42.000 And the prognosis was, I'm going to work on your corneas, do this thing, but while I'm there, I'm going to correct your vision as well.

00:52:48.000 It's the same time I'm launching this new 11 o'clock show for Fox.

00:52:51.000 And I'm like, great.

00:52:52.000 I have a couple of weeks off camera.

00:52:53.000 He says, within a couple of weeks, most patients have their vision better than it's ever been.

00:52:56.000 It's going to be great.

00:52:58.000 I quickly realized, first of all, it was an excruciating pain for the recovery.

00:53:01.000 It's just part of it.

00:53:02.000 But I couldn't see.

00:53:03.000 I mean, I could see blobs.

00:53:04.000 I couldn't drive.

00:53:05.000 I couldn't read my phone.

00:53:06.000 I couldn't read my computer.

00:53:07.000 I couldn't recognize people's faces.

00:53:09.000 I completely shut down and kind of went into a shell because I thought, I can't even say hi to people in the hall because they're blobs walking by. 1.00

00:53:16.000 I don't know who this is.

00:53:17.000 So I talk about in the book, during that I had been booked to speak at a conference, a Christian conference, and I wanted to cancel because I thought, this is ridiculous. 0.79

00:53:25.000 I can't even, I don't, how am I going to get there?

00:53:27.000 I can't see.

00:53:28.000 And so I went to my husband looking for affirmation of wanting to cancel this thing, but I didn't get that from him.

00:53:35.000 And he said, Nope, I think you should go.

00:53:36.000 I think you should be honest.

00:53:37.000 These are people of faith.

00:53:39.000 And they're going to want to hear this and be supportive of you." And he was right.

00:53:42.000 Just navigating the airport I talk about in the book, I mean, I couldn't see.

00:53:45.000 I'm asking people to help me to get from gate to gate, and I'm just really emotional about not being able to see.

00:53:50.000 I go on the stage to speak.

00:53:51.000 I can't see.

00:53:52.000 They're like, hey, just look at the clock in the back.

00:53:53.000 You need to wrap up at this time.

00:53:54.000 And I'm like, I can't see the clock in the back.

00:53:56.000 I can't see people's face in the audience.

00:53:58.000 My mom met me there to be my seeing-eye human for the weekend to get me through this thing, and I just leveled with people.

00:54:03.000 I was honest in that speech, like, hey, I'm not here to make fun of myself and be funny like I usually am.

00:54:07.000 Like, I'm struggling, but I'm hoping that you all will understand this, and I'm relying on God because I know there's purpose in this.

00:54:14.000 It makes you more empathetic when you go through things like that, and He's teaching me something, so I get this moment that I'm in.

00:54:19.000 When it was over, People lined up down the aisles just to hug me, to pray with me, to cry with me, to tell me about their own struggles and say like, hey, I'm in a terrible place too.

00:54:28.000 And it was a greatest blessing just being vulnerable and honest with people about how much I was struggling.

00:54:33.000 And I hadn't looked at it that way, but it made me realize I hate being vulnerable.

00:54:37.000 I want to be independent and do everything myself.

00:54:39.000 I came out of the womb that way.

00:54:40.000 But you got to lean on other people sometimes.

00:54:42.000 And if you don't give them the gift of being honest about how you're struggling, then they don't get the gift, I think, of helping you.

00:54:48.000 I think that's one of the most beautiful things about the book, Finding the Bright Side, is that you actually do talk about this sort of stuff, because if you happen to be a strong person, it seems like you seem like a congenitally happy person, a person who just, by nature, every time I've met you, you've been upbeat, that people think, therefore, that you haven't suffered, that you don't have to struggle with these things.

00:55:05.000 The fact that you are willing to openly struggle with these things, I think, is a good reminder to folks that just because somebody is happy doesn't mean that they're not struggling to be happy, or that if you have struggles, you can't be happy.

00:55:16.000 Yeah, and that's what I hope people will be encouraged in it because everybody, if you haven't been there, you'll be there.

00:55:20.000 A sudden death of someone you love, a terrible health diagnosis, losing your job, financial trouble, just struggles in relationships, whatever it is, we're all going to be in a valley at some point.

00:55:28.000 And because people do think I'm so happy all the time, I thought it was important to tell some really tough stories in the book and say, I've been in that valley.

00:55:36.000 There are ways to work through it.

00:55:37.000 You will come out the other side.

00:55:39.000 Life doesn't always go as we plan.

00:55:40.000 There's plenty of pain in the process, but I think there's purpose in it.

00:55:43.000 I'm way more empathetic to people now living with chronic pain or mental health issues because I've been there.

00:55:48.000 I think it makes you look at people differently, like you have no idea what's going on with them.

00:55:53.000 I remember at one point being on a treadmill and running and thinking like, yeah, I could burst into tears at any moment with all these things I'm struggling with.

00:56:00.000 The person next to me has no idea.

00:56:02.000 What if that person feels the same way?

00:56:03.000 The person who cut me off in traffic, which I hate.

00:56:06.000 I'm a little crazy behind the wheel myself.

00:56:09.000 But who knows what they're rushing off to do?

00:56:10.000 I mean, we have to give each other a little bit more leeway and a little bit more respect and love because everybody's struggling with something.

00:56:17.000 So let's get back to you covering stories and journalism.

00:56:21.000 So you talked about the difficulties of covering the Kavanaugh hearings.

00:56:23.000 What was the hardest story you had to cover?

00:56:26.000 And what hardest for you personally?

00:56:28.000 I think sometimes where you've been at the site of devastation.

00:56:31.000 I mean, I've covered tornadoes and, you know, storms, Superstorm Sandy, things like that, where you see people who utterly feel like they've lost everything or they're just looking around themselves and their life, at least the physical part of their life, seems to be in shambles.

00:56:43.000 I mean, that's, Really difficult.

00:56:44.000 I had a story one time when I was a local reporter in D.C.

00:56:47.000 about a woman who had been out walking, an older woman, and she had been, there was a hit and run, and police were searching for this person.

00:56:53.000 She had been killed in that accident.

00:56:55.000 And as a reporter, you know, you have to go to the family and go knock on the door.

00:56:59.000 I got there, and it became quickly apparent to me as I started talking to her husband, he did not know yet.

00:57:04.000 And we were the first ones to arrive on the scene.

00:57:06.000 His kids weren't even there yet.

00:57:08.000 And those moments make you stop and think about humanity and just how precious life is and how people, we can report on these stories every day.

00:57:16.000 People's lives are being devastated by the things that we report on, whether it's a shooting or anything else, a natural disaster.

00:57:22.000 So I think things that force you back to the humanity of the people that you're covering so they aren't just another story that you read in the prompter, but you're actually seeing them and seeing the devastation to them.

00:57:30.000 I think as a reporter, those are the hardest things to show up and see people in enormous grief.

00:57:36.000 It's interesting being in sort of the political business and covering the news.

00:57:38.000 Every so often I sit around wondering, am I really just sort of in the gossip business?

00:57:42.000 Because it seems like a lot of what we do these days is just covering whatever gossip is happening without really thinking about how it impacts people's lives.

00:57:49.000 What gets you up in the morning to do what you do for a living when it seems like half the stuff that we have to cover is just minutia or errata of the day?

00:57:57.000 I'm super curious.

00:57:58.000 You probably are too.

00:57:59.000 You strike me as that kind of person where I want to know what's the real story behind the story.

00:58:03.000 So I feel like every day we're going to have, we know what guests we have on, we know certain things that we're covering.

00:58:07.000 I want to get people off their talking points and find out what's really going on.

00:58:11.000 So much of DC is political theater.

00:58:12.000 I think the best example of that was a few weeks ago when Speaker Pelosi and Attorney General Barr were at this event and behind the scenes they see each other and he jokes to her about whether she's brought her handcuffs, like she's going to throw them in the jail over at the Capitol.

00:58:25.000 And she makes a joke back, well, the sergeant at arms is here, so if I need to arrest anyone, I can.

00:58:29.000 That's a typical D.C.

00:58:31.000 People will be at these events or cocktail parties, and they're fine.

00:58:31.000 thing.

00:58:34.000 But the minute you put them in front of a camera, there's a partisan agenda, and that people have to be mad at each other, where, truthfully, they're very chummy, a lot of them, and when they see each other socially, it's fine.

00:58:44.000 So I think knowing that a lot of this is for show, it's for the rest of us, and kind of digging to see what's really behind it, what the real policy is, what the real motivations are, because there's always a secret motivation behind a lot of these stories and the reasons that people introduce a bill or vote for a bill or don't vote for a bill.

00:58:59.000 So to me, what gets me up is digging to find the story behind the actual headline to see what's really going on.

00:59:05.000 They've covered politicians forever, so do you think that they are more or less honest than they are portrayed in the media?

00:59:12.000 Oh, I think that's tough.

00:59:12.000 You know, my dad used to always joke, like, lawyers are the worst rated people, I think, behind dentists, as far as, like, how the public feels about them.

00:59:18.000 And then there's journalists.

00:59:19.000 So he's like, really, you're leaving law and now becoming a journalist?

00:59:22.000 People feel this way about politicians.

00:59:25.000 I think that what's so funny is you always see the approval rating for Congress is, like, 18 percent or something like that.

00:59:30.000 But when you ask people about their member, it's way higher.

00:59:33.000 So I think they're frustrated with the institution and see that it's paralyzed and doesn't get a lot done.

00:59:37.000 But when you talk to them about the person that represents them, a lot of times they're like, well, that's different.

00:59:41.000 My person is different.

00:59:42.000 And I think we've talked about this.

00:59:44.000 A lot of politicians away from the camera are great people that you'd want to hang out and go to lunch with them or hang out with their families.

00:59:50.000 But I think something happens sometimes in front of the cameras.

00:59:52.000 They feel an obligation to have a certain talking point or to be a certain way.

00:59:56.000 I do think there are good people on both sides of the aisle who generally are driven by their faith, their own moral compass.

01:00:03.000 Um, that they genuinely believe in and that they want to make a difference in a positive way, I think that's the minority.

01:00:09.000 And I think a lot of other people are on the Hill for a lot of other reasons, or they go there with good intentions, but they get caught up in the whole thing.

01:00:15.000 I mean, I'm personally a fan of the idea of discussing term limits.

01:00:18.000 I think America should have that conversation.

01:00:21.000 Um, it would require amending the constitution, which is not easily done.

01:00:24.000 Um, you know, so I don't know.

01:00:26.000 I think a lot of people get there and they get enamored of the whole thing and it's, Since we're both members of the media, how do you think the media climate has contributed to this?

01:00:34.000 So if it used to be, I've said forever that people say, well if you were president what would you do?

01:00:39.000 I'd say basically make it so that, I thought Rick Perry's line was the best, make it so that Washington D.C.

01:00:43.000 is irrelevant to your life.

01:00:44.000 So you don't care who's the president, you don't care who's in Congress because they're not bothering you all the time.

01:00:49.000 But the media, because we cover this stuff incessantly because we're on top of it all the time, how much are we magnifying the conflict and making the conflict worse as opposed to helping to get people behind the news that they're seeing?

01:01:00.000 Yeah, I think sometimes we have to be very careful not to take the bait because I think both sides will put it out there and there's histrionics about this or that and you get the press releases or the releases from the congressional offices or the tweets that are like, this is the end of the world.

01:01:11.000 And you're like, no, it's not.

01:01:12.000 You guys have voted on this before.

01:01:14.000 You know, this is not the end of the world.

01:01:16.000 So I think we try to, like I say, when I go through a script and I see too many adjectives, I want to take those out.

01:01:21.000 Like, I don't want to be so descriptive and hyperbolic about things.

01:01:23.000 I think that we have a responsibility to present things.

01:01:26.000 And sometimes if a story has been super overhyped, we're like, you know what, we're not doing a full guest segment on that.

01:01:30.000 We're going to read it and tell people about it in the story, but we're not devoting five or 10 minutes to it because it's not something that rises to the level of that in reality.

01:01:38.000 And I think it's up to us to parse the difference.

01:01:40.000 So, since now you've been covering a very polarized period in American history, are you optimistic or pessimistic for where the country is going?

01:01:47.000 I'm always optimistic, you know me.

01:01:49.000 I'm very Pollyanna, people will say at times.

01:01:51.000 So, I mean, there's a great book out a few years ago called Implosion by Joel Rosenberg, and it was very interesting because he talks about times where a country has seemed irreparably fractured.

01:02:00.000 You think about the Civil War.

01:02:01.000 And other periods and it was it was very good book for me to go back and read when things seem so crazy right now to say like our country has been in horribly divided places before and we have found ways he says mostly through religious revival but we found ways to come back to our humanity and to each other and you don't want a tragedy to have to be the way the country comes back together but there have been examples through history where we've been in a much worse place I mean someone caning someone to death on the Senate floor essentially I mean it has been crazier as bad as it may seem now and we've come back from that we have reunited many times

01:02:31.000 And I think, I'll always think that there is good ahead.

01:02:34.000 So I do have one final question for you.

01:02:35.000 I want to ask you, if you can give three pieces of advice to young up-and-comers who want to get into journalism, want to get into covering politics, what those would be?

01:02:42.000 But if you actually want to hear Shannon Bream's answer, you have to be a Daily Wire subscriber.

01:02:45.000 To subscribe, head on over to dailywire.com.

01:02:47.000 Click subscribe, you can hear the end of our conversation there.

01:02:49.000 Well, Shannon Bream, thanks so much for stopping by.

01:02:51.000 I really appreciate it.

01:02:51.000 Your book is Finding the Bright Side.

01:02:52.000 Folks, you should go pick it up right now.

01:02:54.000 Thank you for your time.

01:02:54.000 Thank you.

01:02:54.000 Great to be with you.

01:02:55.000 Thank you.

01:03:04.000 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

01:03:06.000 Associate producer, Mathis Glover.

01:03:08.000 Edited by Donovan Fowler.

01:03:10.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Coromino.

01:03:11.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.

01:03:13.000 Title graphics by Cynthia Angulo.

01:03:15.000 The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is a Daily Wire production.

The Ben Shapiro Show - July 07, 2019

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

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