The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 167 ｜ The Levi's Exec Who Sacrificed EVERYTHING to Stand Up for Kids ｜ Jennifer Sey ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast

00:00:00.000 As a child, today's guest was an elite gymnast.

00:00:04.380 She was considered a U.S. hopeful for an Olympic gold medal when she was just 19 years old,

00:00:10.180 a year after she won the national champion.

00:00:13.140 But beneath the surface, she was battered by injuries that still impact her today,

00:00:17.920 both physical and emotional.

00:00:20.300 She had to make a tough decision, keep suffering,

00:00:23.560 keep hurting herself for the chance of Olympic gold,

00:00:26.060 or quit, put herself back together, and hope for redemption. 0.53

00:00:31.480 Well, she quit, and since exposed her abusive coaches and trainers 0.70

00:00:37.120 in the Emmy-winning documentary Athlete A.

00:00:41.380 She would not let them control her life, which seems to be a trend with her.

00:00:47.320 After a 23-year career at Levi Strauss & Company,

00:00:51.140 she rose to the rank of brand president and had the chance to become the next CEO of Levi's.

00:00:58.120 But when Levi's went woke, she was faced with another decision,

00:01:02.860 fall in line and continue climbing the ladder, or quit and keep her voice.

00:01:09.440 She quit. 1.00

00:01:10.720 She also gave up a million-dollar exit package,

00:01:13.780 which would have required her to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

00:01:17.340 But she still remembers that sensation from her gymnastic years of flying through the air

00:01:23.080 beyond everyone's reach and control.

00:01:26.260 And she wasn't going to let anyone take that from her.

00:01:30.360 Today's guest, on a personal note, also led me to a destructive seven-figure decision

00:01:38.820 in my own life because of a choice she made.

00:01:43.660 Doubt she knows it, but we'll talk about it.

00:01:46.480 Her latest memoir, Levi's Unbutton, The Woke Mob, Took My Job But Gave Me My Voice,

00:01:54.040 details the whole wild story in the chronicles of the secrets of woke capitalism.

00:02:00.700 Today's guest on the Glenn Beck Podcast, Jennifer Say.

00:02:05.000 When the alarm clock goes off in the morning and you open your eyes,

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00:03:06.400 Welcome, Jennifer.

00:03:20.120 Thanks, Ryan.

00:03:20.580 How are you?

00:03:21.260 I'm good.

00:03:21.960 Thank you for coming in.

00:03:23.280 Absolutely.

00:03:24.040 I've wanted to talk to you for a long time for a couple of reasons.

00:03:29.120 I find you fascinating from the beginning of your life.

00:03:32.300 And you also, one of, I believe, your decisions caused a domino to fall in my personal life.

00:03:42.740 And it was a seven-figure decision that I made, I think, because of something that you did.

00:03:51.540 We'll get into that later.

00:03:52.920 However, if this was your decision, in my mind, you were a villain.

00:04:01.440 But I can't wait to talk to you about it.

00:04:03.940 Okay.

00:04:06.280 Let's start with your childhood, because I think if we don't understand your childhood, we don't really understand you.

00:04:12.380 So let's start there.

00:04:14.300 Sure.

00:04:14.800 I had a pretty unusual childhood.

00:04:18.100 I was an elite gymnast.

00:04:19.740 I started gymnastics at six years old, and by the time I was 10, I qualified for the elite level.

00:04:25.960 That's the level to get on the national team and, you know, travel around the world.

00:04:31.280 I was on the national team for eight years, national champion in 1986.

00:04:37.180 It is a brutal sport, an incredibly cruel training environment, absolutely physically, emotionally abusive,

00:04:45.640 and as I think now the world knows, rife with sexual abuse as well.

00:04:49.320 That's crazy.

00:04:49.740 And especially, and maybe not, I don't know, but talking about the physical and mental, back in the 80s, we were going up against the Soviet Union.

00:05:01.160 So I don't know if it's changed at all, but we knew what they went through, not thinking that we did that to our own people.

00:05:10.300 Has it changed at all?

00:05:11.300 Well, you know, in 2016, the story of Larry Nassar broke, and he was the USA team gymnastics doctor for 30 years, and he sexually abused hundreds, over 500 young athletes.

00:05:28.000 He went to prison for life in 2018.

00:05:31.000 So that sort of blew the door wide open on the story, and I had written a book about the abuse in the sport in 2008, and was just, I mean, that was my first sort of taste of being canceled.

00:05:42.480 Kind of prepped me, I guess, for being canceled on a larger stage, if you will.

00:05:49.180 So, you know, I think we like to present an image in the United States that we were different, and we did it because we loved it.

00:05:56.720 But, you know, I started in the 70s.

00:05:58.440 It was bad.

00:06:00.420 I mean, coaches hit the kids. 0.66

00:06:02.320 Oh, my gosh. 0.99

00:06:03.000 The national team coach for the 80s, the Olympic coach in 1984, he was a sexual assaulter. 1.00

00:06:09.560 He was a rapist. 1.00

00:06:11.100 Oh, my gosh. 1.00

00:06:11.860 Of the team?

00:06:14.060 Well, we don't have to get into it.

00:06:15.860 Yeah, I mean, the one specific case that I know that he was actually banned from the sport for is one of my closest friends.

00:06:22.820 Oh, my gosh.

00:06:23.460 And I wrote about it in the book, and everybody said, how dare you, you know, tarnish this man's reputation. 1.00

00:06:29.600 You're a liar and a grifter. 1.00

00:06:31.060 They're all the same terms they always use, liar and grifter. 1.00

00:06:35.180 And this was before me, too, so no one had to believe women. 0.90

00:06:39.380 We were just, you know, I mean, I was considered, you know, a failed ex-gymnast, that it was bitter and trying to get back and make money.

00:06:47.380 And to bring you back on track, it wasn't, you weren't a failed gymnast.

00:06:50.680 You chose to leave.

00:06:52.740 You were at the height, and I assume your parents were there, obviously, from six, which is a huge commitment for a whole family.

00:07:00.840 Right?

00:07:01.560 Yeah, it really is.

00:07:02.600 And so then you get to the top.

00:07:05.860 You're ready to go to the Olympics two years away from it.

00:07:10.620 And you say, I'm quitting.

00:07:13.260 I actually quit just a month before the Olympic trials in 88.

00:07:17.040 And I really was so broken at that point that I could not continue.

00:07:22.620 Explain that, because you had several things going on.

00:07:25.680 Yeah, I mean, I had a ton of injuries.

00:07:28.020 I had broken my femur at the World Championships in 1985.

00:07:32.100 Wow.

00:07:32.640 Which is bad.

00:07:34.240 Bad.

00:07:34.560 Yeah, I mean, having had four children, I will tell you, it's worse than childbirth.

00:07:38.240 Wow.

00:07:39.160 I wouldn't wish it on, you know, on anyone.

00:07:42.500 I came back from that nine months later to win the national championship.

00:07:47.140 So, you know, I wasn't letting my injuries heal, and I just kept getting one injury on top of the next.

00:07:52.420 And by 1988, I had been training on a broken ankle for two years.

00:07:57.300 I didn't know it was broken.

00:07:58.160 The doctor kept saying, there's nothing wrong.

00:07:59.840 You're fine.

00:08:00.360 Take another cortisone shot.

00:08:03.100 But more than that, my mind was, I was just unraveling.

00:08:08.400 I had a bad eating disorder.

00:08:10.700 I was anorexic.

00:08:12.820 And I just lost the ability, frankly, to do the sport.

00:08:16.680 And I walked away.

00:08:17.080 The Germans, it was against the law for you to feed a Jew anything over, I think it was, 0.95

00:08:24.800 600 calories a day just to keep them completely weak.

00:08:29.840 I never knew that.

00:08:31.080 You weren't allowed to eat over 400 calories.

00:08:37.100 Well, that was my self-imposed.

00:08:38.940 Okay.

00:08:39.400 But to maintain the weight that I was asked to maintain, that's what was required.

00:08:44.020 And we were, you know, weighed twice a day and screamed at over the gym's loudspeaker.

00:08:49.360 You know, we don't coach fat gymnasts. 1.00

00:08:51.620 Jennifer gained a quarter of a pound. 1.00

00:08:53.500 Oh, my gosh.

00:08:53.960 I mean, the humiliation and the bullying, it's pretty horrific.

00:08:59.220 And so, yeah, I mean, I was on a starvation diet, but so were all the members of my team.

00:09:03.900 We all were.

00:09:04.860 We were told, lose weight by tomorrow, by any means possible.

00:09:09.160 Wink, wink.

00:09:09.980 You know, you're not going to do that in a healthy way if you're already 98 pounds and 18 years old.

00:09:15.060 Oh, my gosh.

00:09:16.280 So, I was falling apart.

00:09:18.760 Yeah.

00:09:19.240 And I, you know, I'd like to say it was an empowering decision to walk away, but it wasn't.

00:09:25.100 I mean, I left feeling ashamed and just like a complete failure.

00:09:30.140 It took me years to rebuild myself.

00:09:32.660 And why is that?

00:09:35.460 Everybody, you know, you mentioned the parents.

00:09:37.160 My parents had given up so much, arguably too much, you know, and they were really upset with me.

00:09:47.740 I mean, I didn't talk with my mother for over a year after I walked away.

00:09:51.720 Everybody was disappointed and angry and felt they'd put so much into this career.

00:09:58.700 And I was disappointing them.

00:10:00.560 And I was like, but I'm falling apart.

00:10:04.300 I mean, I was suicidal.

00:10:05.300 You did tell them this, right?

00:10:06.700 You told them about, you know, fat-shaming and not when it was happening.

00:10:11.700 Not when it was happening.

00:10:12.740 And parents weren't really allowed in the gym.

00:10:16.040 Although my mom did work there periodically. 0.98

00:10:18.620 I mean, I think she knew, but it was so normalized.

00:10:22.160 Do you know how you can be in this, like, microcosmic world and suddenly these completely horrific behaviors become normal?

00:10:29.680 Yeah, it's called America.

00:10:30.840 Yeah.

00:10:31.400 Yeah, we'll get to that.

00:10:32.600 Yeah.

00:10:33.740 And so I think it just became normalized.

00:10:36.000 And I even thought it was normal, but I was suffering.

00:10:39.240 And the problem is, and this is what abusers do, they, if you weren't bad, I wouldn't have to treat you this way. 0.52

00:10:45.560 If you weren't fat, I wouldn't have to treat you. 0.87

00:10:47.380 And so you internalize it.

00:10:48.840 And then you feel ashamed for suffering.

00:10:50.480 And that's what was so hard to get over that took me two decades, really, was to not kind of internalize the shame and make it about me being a bad, weak person.

00:11:02.500 So you leave there, you go to Stanford.

00:11:06.460 Tell me what you pursue, where do you go from here?

00:11:09.460 Well, when I went to college, I was exhausted.

00:11:11.840 You know, I was 19 and I felt like I was going to a retirement home.

00:11:14.880 And I get there and all the kids are, you know, excited to be out on their own for the first time.

00:11:19.960 And I'm just tired.

00:11:20.860 And I'd lived on my own to train.

00:11:22.960 I'd traveled the world.

00:11:25.100 I had, I was a good student.

00:11:26.800 You know, I wouldn't have gotten into Stanford, but I wasn't a very curious or I had a lot of insecurity about my intellect.

00:11:33.280 School had not been a focus.

00:11:35.760 Mostly I wanted to have fun.

00:11:37.280 And I got, you know, I was pretty, I was rebellious, as one can be when they're young.

00:11:42.840 And it was a good period of time for me.

00:11:44.900 And I sort of learned what I was interested in academically.

00:11:48.160 But I was still, I lacked confidence to actually pursue what I wanted to.

00:11:52.520 Can we stop there for a second?

00:11:53.680 Just as an unrelated side note.

00:11:57.980 The, I don't think people realize the importance, if you're in a position of authority or people just look up to you,

00:12:09.820 the importance of saying, you're smart.

00:12:13.160 You're good.

00:12:14.400 You belong here.

00:12:15.920 You should continue to question.

00:12:18.160 People, I think all of us have this, this view of ourselves that we kind of hide that we're not worthy or we're not good enough or smart enough.

00:12:27.360 And when somebody, somebody says to you, or you have to eventually prove it to yourself, that you are smart enough, it's incredibly freeing, isn't it?

00:12:40.840 Yeah, I don't know if I would have listened.

00:12:42.320 But, yeah, no one, I mean, my dad did say it.

00:12:45.860 I always felt not smart enough and not good enough.

00:12:49.000 I don't think dads and moms count. 0.86

00:12:50.500 Yeah, you're right.

00:12:51.240 Probably somebody else needs to say it.

00:12:53.480 I did, I had terrible imposter syndrome, as it's called.

00:12:56.880 I was waiting for them to throw me out of school.

00:12:58.920 And I probably had it well into my late 30s, you know.

00:13:06.200 I don't know where that comes from.

00:13:07.860 I don't think everybody has it.

00:13:09.780 I think a lot of people do.

00:13:10.840 I think you're right.

00:13:11.580 I think a lot of women, type A women, have it. 1.00

00:13:14.300 That's for sure.

00:13:15.620 I know I had, I might, I might be one of them, but I could, because I had it real for a very long time.

00:13:23.120 So how did you, somebody said to me, you know, you're, you're smart enough to figure this stuff out.

00:13:31.340 And he was a Yale professor.

00:13:32.920 And, and then couple that with being called everything under the sun and being a decent human being that doesn't just blow that off.

00:13:44.740 You actually go, wait a minute.

00:13:46.980 Right.

00:13:47.620 Am I that?

00:13:48.460 Do I do those things?

00:13:49.480 Because once you've self-examined enough, which should never stop happening, but you really know who you are, then you don't care.

00:13:58.940 That's right.

00:13:59.380 And that's the most freeing of all.

00:14:00.940 So how old were you when that happened?

00:14:04.220 I was 32 when somebody said, you're smart enough.

00:14:09.480 And I was probably 43.

00:14:15.900 When you believed it.

00:14:16.760 Yeah.

00:14:17.620 And I was, and, and I didn't care anymore because I had, like you, I had been attacked from every angle.

00:14:26.080 And even your allies that you thought were allies attack you from behind.

00:14:30.660 And you're like, wait, what is happening here?

00:14:33.320 Yeah.

00:14:34.300 That's about the age I was 43.

00:14:36.600 I don't think I had that person to say that to me.

00:14:39.240 Um, and in fact, as I was kind of coming up the ladder in corporate America, which, you know, we'll talk about, it was sort of the opposite, you know, it was.

00:14:48.540 Cause they, you're, you know, you're this, that, and the other, you're not this, you'll never be a leader.

00:14:54.660 Um, you know, you're a good number three and you can do the appointments and the, you know, the tactical stuff, but you have no vision.

00:15:02.400 And it took me until I was probably in my early forties to say, you're wrong.

00:15:08.840 Yes.

00:15:09.200 I am good enough.

00:15:10.380 Yes.

00:15:10.860 Um, yeah.

00:15:12.780 And those are the people that changed the world.

00:15:15.060 It's, it's amazing to me how many people, I didn't understand, um, Frank Sinatra's New York, New York until I actually lived there.

00:15:23.560 And then I was at the top of the heap.

00:15:25.380 And the way, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.

00:15:28.980 What he means is there were thousands of people who will shiv you in the back for that opportunity.

00:15:35.320 You know what I mean?

00:15:36.200 And that opportunity is usually not given.

00:15:38.920 You have to come in and just, I don't care what anybody else says.

00:15:44.340 Yeah.

00:15:44.620 This is who I am.

00:15:45.740 And this is what I'm going to do.

00:15:47.960 Those people change the world.

00:15:49.600 Yes.

00:15:49.880 And this is what I'm capable of.

00:15:51.360 Yes.

00:15:51.680 I don't care what you say.

00:15:52.960 Correct.

00:15:53.220 This is what I am capable of.

00:15:54.380 And corporate and political and everything is geared to make you feel small, I think.

00:16:02.160 Yeah.

00:16:02.500 They do a pretty good job.

00:16:03.740 And I started in a hole, you know, with the training that I described.

00:16:07.460 And that's part of why I lay all of this out in my new book to say, if I can get there.

00:16:12.480 Right.

00:16:12.760 Having started in this deep hole and didn't even, you know, start to climb out of it really until my mid thirties, then you can do it too.

00:16:21.820 Yes.

00:16:22.060 Yes.

00:16:22.640 It's hard.

00:16:23.480 It's hard work.

00:16:24.520 And it's not to say, I think you raise a really good point, that you don't listen to what other people have to say who are offering feedback in good faith.

00:16:31.900 But you get to decide what's true and what's true and what's not and what you need to work on.

00:16:37.240 And even if they say things about you that are not true, if you can figure out, if more than one is saying it, maybe there's something I'm doing that is causing people to feel that way.

00:16:53.280 So what is that?

00:16:54.540 And then you have just a series of decisions.

00:16:56.620 Life is nothing but a series of decisions.

00:16:57.660 Yeah, you have to kind of integrate it and kind of, am I presenting myself this way?

00:17:02.740 Am I, is there something I need to adjust?

00:17:05.140 What is true?

00:17:06.220 Yeah, exactly.

00:17:07.220 But it takes great, you have to really, you have to have a lot of self-knowledge to be able to do that.

00:17:13.420 And it took me a long time.

00:17:14.640 Do you think you can do that without severe setbacks of some sort, without your childhood, without what just happened at Levi's?

00:17:26.320 Can you get there if your life is pretty charmed and there's no real resistance?

00:17:34.720 That's a good question.

00:17:36.520 I don't know the answer to it.

00:17:37.840 I've been wondering if anybody does.

00:17:40.280 I'm not sure.

00:17:41.360 I mean, I've certainly encountered lots of folks that are sort of the opposite that I think it's called Dunning-Kruger syndrome that like, you know, overestimate their abilities and their capability and certainly never listen to any feedback because they're so confident.

00:17:55.040 And that's a problem also in the opposite direction.

00:17:59.220 I don't know if that's a function of a charmed life, though, or just a sort of innate personality disorder.

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00:18:23.920 Pre-born introduces mothers considering abortion to their unborn babies through ultrasound.

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00:19:36.920 So, you leave school.

00:19:41.720 When do you get to Levi's?

00:19:43.660 So, I left school in 92.

00:19:45.500 I graduated in 1992.

00:19:46.980 I didn't start Levi's until 1999.

00:19:49.440 So, I had a couple, few jobs in between.

00:19:51.580 Okay.

00:19:52.280 And you joined Levi's because you love the product.

00:19:56.520 You love the company.

00:19:57.740 I had worn the brand since I was a child.

00:20:00.400 Who hasn't?

00:20:01.300 I know.

00:20:01.320 I mean, almost everyone has a pair of Levi's in their closet.

00:20:04.220 Are you from right coast or left coast?

00:20:08.040 I'm from Philadelphia.

00:20:10.220 Philadelphia.

00:20:10.620 My wife didn't grow up with Levi's.

00:20:13.160 It was so strange.

00:20:14.140 On the East Coast.

00:20:14.940 On the East Coast.

00:20:15.560 Yeah.

00:20:15.900 Button flies.

00:20:16.560 Yeah.

00:20:16.840 Where everybody wore them where I grew up.

00:20:19.160 They really didn't cross into the East Coast until like 84, 85.

00:20:24.560 That's so strange.

00:20:25.140 Yeah.

00:20:25.480 And, you know, they were a big sponsor for the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.

00:20:29.800 And that was really when the distribution opened wide in the U.S.

00:20:33.400 Isn't that interesting?

00:20:34.500 It was very much a West Coast brand.

00:20:37.360 Okay.

00:20:37.680 So, you join as?

00:20:41.020 About as low level as you can be.

00:20:43.340 Assistant to the assistant something.

00:20:46.580 Very low level.

00:20:47.540 And you, when did you become chief marketing?

00:20:51.560 I became chief marketing officer in 2013, in the fall of 2013.

00:20:56.300 And, you know, it's interesting because I had risen the ladder and I was a vice president.

00:21:00.780 There's a lot of vice presidents.

00:21:02.220 People don't get that in corporate.

00:21:04.420 But when the CEO that is the current sitting CEO started in 2011, his name is Charles Berg,

00:21:10.620 Chip Berg, he liked me a lot.

00:21:14.080 And it really kind of accelerated my career.

00:21:16.620 It also ended it, which we'll get to.

00:21:21.600 It was interesting.

00:21:22.560 He didn't have this baggage.

00:21:24.060 You know, he hadn't known me since I was an assistant.

00:21:26.060 He took me as I was, as I presented myself.

00:21:29.040 You know, because if people have known you for 12, 13 years, they have all this data. 0.97

00:21:33.680 And they remember when you were 29 and maybe said something dumb.

00:21:37.080 The best thing kids can do at 18, I think, is move away from their hometown. 0.76

00:21:42.220 Oh, yeah.

00:21:43.080 Because you get a chance to be you.

00:21:45.280 Yep. 0.98

00:21:45.500 Not what everybody, I'm still, my sisters are still not impressed with their little stinky brother. 0.97

00:21:52.560 Yeah, yeah, of course. 0.88

00:21:53.360 I'm still the small one in the family.

00:21:55.680 So get away from it.

00:21:56.740 So it was, you know, it was a real gift.

00:22:00.540 You know, he came in and he took me as I was in the moment.

00:22:03.040 And he appointed me as the CMO in 2013.

00:22:08.360 And I sat in that chair for eight years, which is really long for a CMO.

00:22:12.480 Most, I think the average tenure is 18 months, 20 months.

00:22:16.620 So then you were not the person that made the decision.

00:22:20.180 You may have been on the team that affected me.

00:22:23.260 Oh, I'd love to hear.

00:22:24.380 I, I've always loved Levi's.

00:22:26.980 Always loved Levi's.

00:22:28.280 I'm a big fan of Cone Mills.

00:22:30.480 Yeah.

00:22:31.080 Oh, you know, Cone.

00:22:32.040 That's awesome.

00:22:32.620 And I, I have always loved the product.

00:22:36.980 It is America.

00:22:38.740 It's not politics.

00:22:39.860 It's America.

00:22:41.580 Hard.

00:22:41.980 I've always said that.

00:22:42.920 Working.

00:22:43.860 Best values.

00:22:44.720 Best values.

00:22:45.640 Yeah.

00:22:45.880 Best representation of what we think of as America.

00:22:49.540 We, Levi's was the symbol of America.

00:22:54.540 Yep.

00:22:55.600 To the Soviet Union. 0.54

00:22:56.900 The people would give their arm for a pair of 501s.

00:23:00.620 501s.

00:23:01.380 Did you know, we had pictures in the hallways at the plaza, as we called it, when the wall

00:23:07.240 came down, men atop the wall, all wearing Levi's 501s.

00:23:10.860 Not product placement, because some smart marketer would try to do that today, but because it was

00:23:15.960 a symbol of freedom the world over.

00:23:19.680 So you ran, Levi's ran a spot of.

00:23:24.320 I know what you're going to say.

00:23:25.560 You know what spot it was?

00:23:26.620 I think so.

00:23:26.940 Keep going.

00:23:27.400 We are the uniform of the revolution.

00:23:30.980 It's not mine.

00:23:32.260 Thank you.

00:23:33.040 I'm glad.

00:23:35.300 I started my own jean company.

00:23:37.940 Ran for about 10 years.

00:23:40.180 And, you know, I had nothing.

00:23:41.720 I did it out of.

00:23:44.880 I love Levi's.

00:23:48.380 And if you are going to take that stand, I don't love another pair of jeans.

00:23:54.600 I personally will make it from the cone mills.

00:23:58.380 I will make the jeans that Levi's used to make.

00:24:02.100 And I did.

00:24:03.220 It cost me a fortune.

00:24:04.720 I bet.

00:24:05.020 But everything made in America.

00:24:07.280 And it was just because of that ad.

00:24:10.080 I was so angry at, how dare you take that position when there's lots of us that don't have that position.

00:24:19.400 Yeah.

00:24:20.820 So I write about that campaign in the book.

00:24:23.500 It was not mine.

00:24:24.540 I was running e-commerce at the time.

00:24:26.500 I was the recipient as the commercial leader of that content and was like, what?

00:24:35.020 No, I can't use this.

00:24:37.380 One, it's dark.

00:24:38.400 Like, forget the.

00:24:39.000 Very dark.

00:24:39.460 Forget the, you know, politics or.

00:24:42.140 No, it was revolutionized.

00:24:43.520 Molotov cocktails.

00:24:44.680 People have fun in jeans.

00:24:45.840 What are we doing here?

00:24:47.020 You can't even see any product.

00:24:48.420 Our business was terrible at the time.

00:24:50.800 And this was like this desperate attempt to appeal to younger consumers by capitalizing on their perceived activism.

00:25:00.220 Horrible.

00:25:00.640 It was terrible.

00:25:01.760 And I was like, I can't even use any of this.

00:25:03.700 And to his credit, the CEO did not like it either.

00:25:09.800 You know, he was in early days.

00:25:11.320 And I think some stuff was already about to go.

00:25:14.600 And that was, you know, why he put me in the role.

00:25:18.180 He was like, we got to get back to marketing the jeans in a relevant way with a focus on the product.

00:25:24.260 So you cannot be mad at me about that.

00:25:27.660 I'm not mad at anybody anymore.

00:25:29.620 Or him.

00:25:30.160 He didn't like it either.

00:25:31.720 I still don't buy Levi's because of that.

00:25:34.320 But so I want to, because there's so many labels and none of them are ever defined.

00:25:42.920 And I'm convinced that so many people have so much more in common than they have.

00:25:46.560 I agree.

00:25:48.180 You say you're a progressive and I, I define progressive clearly as the 19, early 1900s.

00:25:57.720 Most people don't even know the origin of progressives.

00:26:01.820 But I, instead of using labels, do you, do you believe in the Bill of Rights?

00:26:08.500 Yes.

00:26:09.200 All of them.

00:26:10.320 All like the top 10.

00:26:11.720 Yes.

00:26:12.020 Then we have no, we have no issue.

00:26:15.920 Yeah.

00:26:16.340 I would say, um, I formerly identified as a lefty left.

00:26:23.980 I would have said left of left of center, use progressive in that place.

00:26:27.520 You know, given the last few years of my life and what we've all experienced, um, you know,

00:26:35.640 I wouldn't use those labels anymore.

00:26:36.980 And I wouldn't use any of the labels anymore because I still believe in the idea of progress and, you know, making life better for the most possible people, including as many people as possible in the American dream.

00:26:50.620 I believe in this project, I believe in free speech, which does not seem to be a progressive value right now.

00:26:56.840 So I would just shy away from using any of the labels.

00:27:00.020 Yeah.

00:27:00.200 I, I'm with you.

00:27:02.240 I don't know what conservative means anymore.

00:27:04.500 I just want to conserve the Bill of Rights and the amendments.

00:27:07.860 We want to change things.

00:27:09.560 Great.

00:27:10.080 Let's do it.

00:27:10.660 Let's just use the process.

00:27:12.960 Yeah.

00:27:13.200 I think, I think we're coercion.

00:27:15.320 And, and I think where we collectively, I mean, my belief sometimes fails, we don't include everybody in that Bill of Rights or in what it means to move forward and have opportunity.

00:27:28.400 And I think we make progress there.

00:27:31.120 That's progressive.

00:27:33.620 Progressive is not itself a bad, I believe in progress.

00:27:36.540 Yeah.

00:27:36.780 If you just think of progress as the root of that word.

00:27:39.780 And I think while we've failed at times to include everybody in that dream, I think we continue to work hard to make that better and make progress.

00:27:49.480 And so I still believe in that.

00:27:50.680 Yeah.

00:27:50.980 Okay.

00:27:51.420 So I don't think I've changed really.

00:27:53.420 I mean, we'll get into the story.

00:27:54.800 I, I've changed in that I reject the left, right binary.

00:28:00.000 I reject, you know, red, blue, any of that.

00:28:04.380 I don't identify as blue.

00:28:06.200 I don't, I just believe in everything you just articulated.

00:28:10.580 That's why, that's why we have been separated.

00:28:13.800 I think we lost the understanding of e pluribus unum from many one.

00:28:21.040 What are those things that we all believe in?

00:28:25.600 Yeah.

00:28:25.720 And they should be life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, you know, first amendment, second amendment, third amendment.

00:28:30.920 We can argue about some of these and where they go, but generally speaking, that was what brought us all together.

00:28:38.860 And that's where the argument kind of ends.

00:28:43.320 Everything out of free speech, we can argue about.

00:28:47.240 We'd argue all day long about those things and still love each other and still be one.

00:28:51.460 Yeah, I feel like what is most concerning to me is, I think this is sort of where you're going, what I've seen in the last three years, let's say, is a vast majority of people do not believe in individual rights.

00:29:07.820 And we're completely fine giving them up and demonizing anyone who said, hey, wait a minute.

00:29:13.440 What about the right to gather, the right to worship, all of it, you are a horrible person.

00:29:20.860 And there seems to be this lack of, you know, respect for our humanity and the individual, which is why we need individual rights.

00:29:30.480 It was like, I don't, I worry that younger generations are willing to give that up.

00:29:38.080 Oh, I think studies show they are.

00:29:41.000 When I left Fox, one of the reasons I left Fox was Roger Ailes said to me, Glenn, we all love the Constitution, because I was pounding on the Bill of Rights to the right.

00:29:51.620 And he said, we all love the Constitution, but there are things we have to do.

00:29:57.380 No, no, that that's what leads you to internment camps.

00:30:01.280 You know, sorry, Bill of Rights, Constitution.

00:30:04.800 If it's outside of that, you're going to have to find a legal way to do or just not do what you're planning on doing.

00:30:12.060 Anyway, so you were doing fine and trying to pull the company back out of its hole of the revolution.

00:30:25.400 Yeah, and we did it.

00:30:27.320 Did you?

00:30:28.120 Yeah.

00:30:28.580 Okay, good.

00:30:29.060 Um, we put ourselves on a trajectory and I, you know, I'm proud.

00:30:34.240 I was a big part of that.

00:30:36.140 Um, was that sales or is that perception?

00:30:38.720 Both.

00:30:39.360 Okay.

00:30:40.260 Both.

00:30:40.860 We set, um, in the beginning, you know, 2013, I sort of look at that as the beginning of our kind of March.

00:30:46.920 We called it the 20 mile March, improve every year, bit by bit, top and bottom line.

00:30:51.240 Uh, we IPO'd in, gosh, was it 2019 or 18?

00:30:55.540 I think it was 19.

00:30:56.660 So we went public.

00:30:57.640 I got to stand up on the thing.

00:30:59.540 It was a cool moment.

00:31:00.960 I definitely, um, you know, was a huge part of that process in rebuilding the brand's image and connecting to more and more people around the world and driving sales.

00:31:10.800 Our women's business was through the roof. 1.00

00:31:12.640 It never had been before.

00:31:14.220 We set a goal for ourselves to hit a billion in sales for women's in five years.

00:31:17.720 We did it in two.

00:31:18.560 I mean, we were on fire and I was definitely kind of the public face of the brand as the chief marketing officer.

00:31:26.040 I was credited with a lot of it.

00:31:27.480 Not all of it.

00:31:28.040 A lot of it.

00:31:28.660 Right.

00:31:29.100 And then COVID happened.

00:31:31.440 Yep.

00:31:32.300 And what happened?

00:31:33.760 From day one, probably even before day one of shutdowns, as I sort of saw it coming, I was very outspoken, um, about how wrong it was to close the public schools.

00:31:47.880 Now, I was alarmed about all of it, lockdowns, all of it.

00:31:52.740 I knew somewhere in my brain, this was controversial.

00:31:56.740 I hadn't feel it yet, but I knew it would be.

00:31:59.100 And I thought I'll keep my advocacy to children because to your point, can't we all agree on our kids?

00:32:04.900 Yes.

00:32:05.100 Isn't that one thing?

00:32:07.060 And if I can get people, I thought of myself as pretty logical and diplomatic.

00:32:11.420 You know, you learn that as a woman in corporate America. 1.00

00:32:14.260 I thought I can get people to see it through our children.

00:32:18.140 Um, so I had feelings about all of it, lockdowns and everything, but I focused on kids and restrictions to kids from, from March 13th, uh, 2020, which is when...

00:32:29.140 Wow, you were really early.

00:32:30.800 I was early.

00:32:32.920 Good for you.

00:32:34.100 Yeah.

00:32:36.120 Yeah.

00:32:36.880 So...

00:32:37.160 And what were you going to say?

00:32:39.020 No, you know, and I was, you know, I, you know, what does that look like to be outspoken?

00:32:43.620 I was outspoken on social media.

00:32:45.140 I didn't have much of a following at the time.

00:32:47.420 Um, but it sort of evolved and I was on local news shows by the fall of 2020.

00:32:53.120 I was writing op-eds.

00:32:55.380 Um, no one reached out to me at the company until September of 2020.

00:33:02.260 So I had a six month run where I was like, maybe no one noticed.

00:33:06.860 I'll just keep going.

00:33:08.800 Um, I should mention my husband was also very outspoken and that'll be part of the story in a bit.

00:33:13.540 And he was, you know, he is a more aggressive communicator than I am.

00:33:19.700 He doesn't work for anyone.

00:33:22.220 So, you know, he went for it.

00:33:25.200 Um, good for him.

00:33:26.540 I would never tell him he can't do that.

00:33:28.440 Um, although I did get a lot of criticism for the things he said.

00:33:32.260 I said, he doesn't work here, but you know, um, so yeah, I was very outspoken from the very

00:33:37.060 beginning.

00:33:37.400 And then, um, you know, I got that first call from the head of corporate communications.

00:33:41.560 You know, she sees her job and it is her job to protect the company's reputation.

00:33:47.960 She said, we were all working virtually.

00:33:50.060 So I get a phone call, which no one called anyone, you know, they just sent emails and

00:33:54.400 I was like, oh gosh, this is it.

00:33:55.840 This is the one I've been waiting for.

00:33:58.000 And she said, people are noticing your Twitter.

00:34:00.520 And I said, oh, yeah.

00:34:04.180 Um, when you speak, you speak on behalf of the company.

00:34:07.740 I said, I don't, I don't have Levi's in my bio.

00:34:12.380 I'm a mom, four kids, public school children in San Francisco.

00:34:17.220 She said, you never went on TV as anything Levi's dress.

00:34:21.840 And at this point, I don't even think I'd been on, but I always ask them explicitly, do

00:34:26.200 not identify me as, and usually they said, oh, we didn't even know you were because I

00:34:31.000 wasn't out there waving my arms around as the head of Levi.

00:34:33.760 You had to look for it.

00:34:34.980 Um, she said, I don't know.

00:34:39.020 She went on for a bit and I said, are you telling me I need to stop?

00:34:42.860 I wanted her to say yes, you know?

00:34:45.240 And she said, no, I can't do that.

00:34:47.180 And I don't know if she meant because, you know, we were peers and she wasn't my boss or

00:34:50.840 because I actually have a right to say or a little bit of both.

00:34:55.480 And I said, okay, then I'm not going to, you know, this is a continuation of the advocacy

00:35:02.580 I've done for children in sports because I became very outspoken about that after my

00:35:07.360 experience in gymnastics.

00:35:08.560 And I wish as a child, someone had stood up for me and these kids aren't going to do it.

00:35:13.460 And it sort of petered out because neither of us wanted to really keep talking.

00:35:18.900 And then this is the part that just lit me on fire.

00:35:22.960 Um, around that same time, all the private schools in San Francisco opened.

00:35:27.820 So she and all of my other peers were sending their kids back to school.

00:35:32.640 Mine were in public.

00:35:34.000 Mine are still in public.

00:35:36.880 And the nerve of waving your arms around and talking about equality, because this is after

00:35:43.020 the summer of 2020 and the murder of Joy Floyd and everybody's posting black squares 0.93

00:35:47.180 and all you remember, um, we're going to do our part in defeating racism.

00:35:51.800 And they're saying to me, you can't advocate for what we have.

00:35:59.320 We are wealthy white folks in San Francisco, sending our kids to $60,000 a year, private

00:36:06.980 elementary schools.

00:36:08.580 I'm not crying poor here.

00:36:09.940 I chose to, I chose to send my kids to public.

00:36:12.700 Like you cannot advocate for the 50,000 children in San Francisco public schools, 60% of whom

00:36:21.000 are low income to have the same opportunity.

00:36:24.000 And so that just sort of lit me on fire.

00:36:29.420 And it's the same thing with, um, don't go out.

00:36:33.100 No social.

00:36:33.920 You can't, you have to social distance.

00:36:35.420 You can't be any crowds, but go ahead and protest.

00:36:38.360 That may actually be healthy for you.

00:36:41.020 Well, only one kind of protest.

00:36:42.540 Only one kind of protest.

00:36:43.780 Yeah.

00:36:44.160 Cause my husband had, um, led a few rallies and participated in a few anti-lockdown rallies

00:36:49.460 and those were all broken up by police.

00:36:51.120 Those were not acceptable.

00:36:52.780 Right.

00:36:53.120 Those were very dangerous.

00:36:54.320 They're very dangerous.

00:36:54.880 Yeah.

00:36:55.140 Even though there were like six people there.

00:36:57.440 Cause no one, it was San Francisco after all.

00:37:00.120 So from that first call in September, it went on that way for another year and a half that

00:37:06.760 I kept getting calls.

00:37:08.520 Different people were assigned to speak to me.

00:37:11.080 They had the unfortunate job of calling me and having me be rather intransigent and just

00:37:16.380 kind of repeat the same things.

00:37:18.820 Um, head of HR, a board member, my boss avoided the call.

00:37:24.440 He was a CEO.

00:37:25.180 He doesn't necessarily like having those, but eventually he did.

00:37:27.800 I mean, he called me a Trumper and an executive team meeting.

00:37:32.480 I mean, I don't know what that has to do with anything.

00:37:35.820 You voted for Elizabeth Warren in the primary.

00:37:39.900 Yeah, that's it.

00:37:40.600 That's not a Trumper.

00:37:42.620 I had been a registered Democrat my entire life.

00:37:45.760 If anything, they criticized my views as to, you know, Warren, the anti-business, you

00:37:50.760 know, um, but I was never told I couldn't say things.

00:37:54.600 I was never told not to post about any of, you know, my political leanings until, um,

00:38:03.440 so it went on that way.

00:38:04.740 I'd get a call every two weeks.

00:38:06.540 I would say, no, thank you.

00:38:09.280 I don't think I want to stop.

00:38:10.620 The head of legal, you know, said, you might want to think about it when you speak on behalf,

00:38:14.880 when you speak, you speak on behalf of the company.

00:38:16.720 And he said an interesting thing, the head of legal, when he called me, he said, okay,

00:38:21.640 I understand, but make sure you get to him first.

00:38:24.800 And I was like, stopped in my tracks.

00:38:26.880 I didn't know what he meant.

00:38:29.000 Um, and I realized, cause at this point I was on some local news shows.

00:38:33.100 He meant I needed to tell Chip, my boss, if I was going to say something publicly, because

00:38:39.380 this woman in corporate communications was running to him and basically updating him on

00:38:46.600 a weekly basis on my, he wasn't on social media.

00:38:50.240 He didn't know any of it.

00:38:51.500 Um, and of course it was very slanted, you know, the way she was doing that, but it went

00:38:55.880 on that way for a while.

00:38:57.080 I chose to move my family to Denver in February of 21 so that my youngest children could be in

00:39:02.700 school.

00:39:03.020 Um, and at that point, you know, I posted about that on social media and I got a call

00:39:08.040 from Fox, um, to go on, uh, the Ingram angle.

00:39:14.720 Yes.

00:39:15.240 You see where this is going.

00:39:16.380 Oh yeah.

00:39:17.460 Uh, I called my little open.

00:39:19.020 You can be on anything except anything on Fox.

00:39:22.440 Oh, for sure.

00:39:23.980 Yeah.

00:39:24.320 And I kind of knew that.

00:39:25.740 I mean, I didn't watch the show.

00:39:28.320 Um, I didn't need to, I knew I didn't watch any news at this point.

00:39:32.140 And I was like obsessed with reading COVID data.

00:39:35.500 Um, I called my little group of open schools, moms, you know, across the country.

00:39:41.000 Cause at this point we were all kind of in it together.

00:39:43.280 Most of them came from the same political leanings I did.

00:39:46.960 And they said, you need to do it.

00:39:48.880 This is a chance.

00:39:50.020 We'd been trying to get ourselves in the mainstream.

00:39:54.060 I don't even know what that means.

00:39:55.960 No one would talk to us.

00:39:57.180 We were just billed as these like racist, horrible people who, QAnon. 0.68

00:40:02.820 Oh, I got that. 0.94

00:40:03.980 Theorists.

00:40:04.880 Conspiracy theorists.

00:40:05.700 I had a hood in my closet.

00:40:07.040 Yeah. 1.00

00:40:08.580 I wanted to kill all the black children. 1.00

00:40:11.340 And grandmothers. 1.00

00:40:12.740 Those two.

00:40:13.540 And teachers.

00:40:14.340 Yeah.

00:40:14.760 All those.

00:40:15.520 Yeah.

00:40:16.220 So, you know, I'm a trained media professional.

00:40:19.900 They said, well, you're going to get dragged for it, but do it.

00:40:22.180 Do it for us.

00:40:22.980 You know, represent the open schools moms and go on the show. 1.00

00:40:26.920 So I did it in March of 21.

00:40:30.840 And that's when things started to get really bad for me at work.

00:40:35.080 I mean, they were pretty bad before, but they got really bad then.

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00:42:10.320 This is when you got an email from Levi's.

00:42:15.460 This is astounding.

00:42:18.800 They wrote to you, Jen, who is it that's writing to you?

00:42:21.980 Well, I'm not going to tell you a name because I'm not going to be mean.

00:42:24.640 But it was somebody in corporate communications and between HR and corporate communications,

00:42:31.300 they were suggesting I needed to do an apology tour.

00:42:34.000 So this was meant to kindly prepare me for said apology tour.

00:42:38.460 OK.

00:42:39.400 The thing about this and my sense is that there are people who just don't like what you're

00:42:43.780 saying or where you said it.

00:42:46.260 It's in conflict.

00:42:47.400 I'd say it's where you said it.

00:42:49.160 It's in conflict with a good, bad world we're living in.

00:42:52.700 Doesn't that tell you everything right there?

00:42:55.600 That we shouldn't be living in a good, bad world?

00:42:58.040 Where Fox is bad, MSNBC is good.

00:43:00.920 Was going on Fox and that show in particular an endorsement of what they stand for?

00:43:09.100 Are you one of us or one of them?

00:43:12.780 That's the kick in the pants, isn't it?

00:43:14.940 Oh, my gosh.

00:43:16.140 Perhaps an oversimplification.

00:43:19.500 But that's what it feels like.

00:43:21.080 I think explaining why Fox is important.

00:43:25.800 I don't think you actually need to address each of those, but I'm guessing the following

00:43:30.660 is pretty close to a list in an apology tour, right?

00:43:34.780 Why did you choose Fox, Laura Ingram's show?

00:43:38.180 My guess is you didn't choose them.

00:43:40.220 They were the only ones offering.

00:43:42.420 Correct.

00:43:42.940 Correct.

00:43:43.120 Do you endorse, do you endorse the views of Fox News and Laura Ingram?

00:43:52.400 You're right.

00:43:52.960 Yes, of course not.

00:43:54.360 Can you, I mean, think of that.

00:43:56.820 You're being held, you're being held to an impossible, if I went on MSNBC, do you endorse

00:44:02.560 the views of whoever that is, Rachel Maddow?

00:44:05.320 Of course not.

00:44:06.380 Of course not.

00:44:07.540 You're having a conversation.

00:44:08.560 Well, and I would go on those now, and I don't endorse anything they did for the last

00:44:12.560 three years, but I'm fine to have a conversation.

00:44:14.980 Yes.

00:44:16.100 Are you anti-mask?

00:44:19.020 Do you want me to answer that?

00:44:20.300 Yeah.

00:44:21.500 I had been outspoken about masking of very young children, toddlers.

00:44:25.700 I did not speak about adult masking.

00:44:27.720 I am opposed to it.

00:44:28.900 I think it hinders communication.

00:44:30.660 Agreed.

00:44:30.960 But we had a policy, and I didn't talk about it.

00:44:33.340 Great.

00:44:34.200 Are you anti-vax?

00:44:35.560 I was vaccinated in May of 2021.

00:44:40.780 Are you into conspiracy theories?

00:44:42.680 That's the best one.

00:44:43.480 I love this.

00:44:44.420 Are you into conspiracy theories?

00:44:46.720 Yeah, because you're conspiring against me, so I think it's not a theory, clearly.

00:44:51.260 Yeah, there's a difference between conspiracy theory and conspiracy fact.

00:44:55.580 Are you anti-union?

00:44:58.160 That's an amazing question.

00:44:59.560 Is advocating for school reopenings perpetrating systematic racism, mostly white moms? 0.99

00:45:09.980 Is there a conflict of interest between your role as Levi's brand president and what you're

00:45:14.560 saying on your personal Twitter?

00:45:16.080 That's the only one that I would push you on their behalf.

00:45:23.200 Sure.

00:45:23.680 If you are the, you're the, are you the spokesperson?

00:45:27.900 I was the president.

00:45:28.940 So I got, amidst all of this controversy internally, in October of 2020, I got promoted to brand

00:45:35.340 president.

00:45:35.740 And that's probably next in line for CEO if you do a good job.

00:45:40.560 Right, right.

00:45:40.900 Yeah.

00:45:41.440 So, but you never went on.

00:45:43.940 You never identified.

00:45:45.240 Nobody ever identified you as that, right?

00:45:47.260 Can I just tell you, I still get, like, I had a book come out two weeks ago.

00:45:51.560 I still get people writing to me now and say, I didn't even know you work for Levi's until

00:45:57.960 your book, which is called Levi's Unbuttoned.

00:46:00.680 I had no idea.

00:46:01.640 People didn't know.

00:46:02.500 I was just this mom saying we need to open the schools.

00:46:05.780 People really didn't, they didn't know.

00:46:08.040 So as a business person, if the president of my company is saying things that are against

00:46:14.800 me, and I'd just like to hear your response, do I have any rights because you're causing

00:46:21.480 disruption with everybody who works here and my, you know, my clientele?

00:46:27.880 I totally hear where you're coming from.

00:46:30.600 No, I think it's a fair question.

00:46:32.640 It is a fair question.

00:46:33.680 I guess I would answer it in two ways.

00:46:36.300 The first is the business was great.

00:46:40.200 So all the fears and, you know, all the arm waving and hysteria around, you're going to

00:46:48.360 destroy our business and our reputation was false.

00:46:50.820 We were coming out of the COVID hole.

00:46:52.800 You know, our stores have been closed.

00:46:54.620 You know, our business had been down 70% in the spring and summer of 2020.

00:46:58.960 But we were emerging strong because of the strength of the brand, which is what I led.

00:47:03.240 So I think that's the first and most important point is it was not impacting the business.

00:47:08.340 The second is, if you're going to have a rule that your leaders can't do this, then you

00:47:13.940 better make them sign something.

00:47:16.100 Some sort, you better have some sort of policy in place because you had no issue with me being

00:47:20.700 very outspoken on other issues and politics when they aligned.

00:47:24.420 And so now, and I promise you, if I was up screaming about keep all the schools closed

00:47:32.680 or you're going to kill all the teachers, it would have been fine.

00:47:35.280 So now we're into viewpoint discrimination. 0.97

00:47:39.880 That's a problem.

00:47:41.120 And then I will end by saying, I guess they have that right.

00:47:45.980 Fine.

00:47:46.500 I chose this.

00:47:47.420 I said, I decided for myself, this was more important.

00:47:49.880 And if I, and you know what, I was right.

00:47:53.100 It was damaging.

00:47:54.940 Horribly damaging.

00:47:55.940 So does that count?

00:47:58.340 Apparently not.

00:47:59.520 No.

00:48:00.060 But it also, if you were the, if you were the uniform of the revolution, I would understand

00:48:05.660 that.

00:48:06.100 But if you were trying to dig yourself out of that hole, it would have made people like

00:48:11.400 me that you leaving only reinforced.

00:48:14.700 Sure.

00:48:15.080 What I believed about Levi's, you hadn't made that impact on me.

00:48:19.420 And if they would have said, Hey, we really disagree with her, but we believe in the right

00:48:25.020 to disagree.

00:48:26.220 See, this is the thing.

00:48:28.540 I think it could have all been handled so easily.

00:48:31.220 And, you know, you mentioned if you've lost, lost the trust of employees and certainly that

00:48:36.160 as a leader in a company, you know, you have to be aware of that.

00:48:39.280 But it was a tiny, tiny percentage of very vocal employees.

00:48:46.160 It was not the entire organization.

00:48:48.960 And in fact, when I did that apology tour.

00:48:53.400 So wait, what was the apology tour?

00:48:56.720 So, you know, after I appeared on Ingram's show, the noise, I'll call it noise, got kind

00:49:03.660 of louder and louder.

00:49:04.300 But again, I think it's a small minority of people and they're complaining and they're

00:49:07.920 chit chattering.

00:49:08.980 And so a friend came to me who was on my team and said, we might want to do this.

00:49:17.920 You might want to do this.

00:49:19.040 And then HR got involved in corporate communications.

00:49:21.560 And I was like, you know, my husband said you should refuse.

00:49:23.540 And I said, no, I'm just going to do it.

00:49:25.220 I'm not going to apologize.

00:49:26.400 I won't bend a knee, but I will explain myself.

00:49:29.360 I still had this sort of naive faith in my ability to explain myself and build a bridge.

00:49:35.560 So it took some planning.

00:49:36.360 You had a naive, not in your ability, in the ability of others being honest.

00:49:41.560 There.

00:49:43.260 So we had it in June.

00:49:44.900 That was the preparation for it.

00:49:48.580 I introduced myself.

00:49:50.400 I explained, you know, my background and history and, you know, my advocacy for children in sport

00:49:56.820 and how that was related to this.

00:50:01.240 The fact that two of my children are mixed race, which shouldn't matter. 1.00

00:50:04.460 But I, you know, explained all of this.

00:50:07.440 And you got torched for that, too, didn't you?

00:50:10.720 Not internally, but certainly.

00:50:14.040 Don't you shouldn't bring those.

00:50:16.400 It's like a shield.

00:50:17.900 It's using a shield for your actual racism.

00:50:22.040 Yes, that's what I think my children are.

00:50:24.000 Yeah, a shield.

00:50:24.800 Yeah, exactly.

00:50:25.560 And so I did it and there were three questions only.

00:50:30.000 So not all those questions.

00:50:32.220 One was about, you know, the racism of school advocacy as a white mother.

00:50:37.700 Although our group of moms in the Bay Area was always diverse. 0.86

00:50:41.720 So that was a lie perpetrated by the press saying it was just this movement of rich white yoga moms.

00:50:48.500 That was never true.

00:50:49.520 One was about my husband and his voice, which, you know, the short answer is he doesn't work here.

00:51:01.640 I support his right to speech and yours and yours and he can say what he wants.

00:51:07.100 He has no constraints, nor should I, honestly, as an employee of this company.

00:51:12.560 Spouses can disagree.

00:51:14.480 How retrograde is that that you assume?

00:51:16.560 I agree with everything my husband says.

00:51:18.300 So we moved on.

00:51:21.380 And then the third was a comment that was just, thank you.

00:51:23.760 I understand better now.

00:51:25.300 And I got a couple of emails the next day, people saying, I really get it now.

00:51:29.520 I do.

00:51:30.020 I understand.

00:51:31.300 So I thought it was like a moment that we kind of, I was like, let's get on with the work.

00:51:38.200 But it just didn't stop.

00:51:40.300 You know, we would have these town halls at work and people would submit, they were all

00:51:43.960 virtual questions about my racism and my conspiracy theorizing.

00:51:49.620 I was called anti-trans, which I don't even understand where that came from.

00:51:55.020 And it just went on and on.

00:51:56.700 And, you know, he got tired of it.

00:52:01.840 Although, you know, then in the summer, he and I had dinner, my boss and I had dinner.

00:52:06.100 And he said, you're a real candidate for CEO.

00:52:08.320 You're one of two.

00:52:10.080 He'd never said that to me before.

00:52:12.240 It might have been bait to get me to stop, which I didn't do.

00:52:15.840 He then requested a background check.

00:52:18.240 He said it was standard operating procedure, which I believe to be true, but did one on

00:52:21.740 my husband as well, which included social media.

00:52:26.080 And by January, you know, reported back to me and said, you're going to have to leave.

00:52:31.540 Wow.

00:52:33.920 Not on my performance.

00:52:35.000 It was solely on my advocacy, my social media presence.

00:52:41.020 And here, and then he offered me severance.

00:52:45.440 A million dollars.

00:52:46.500 A million dollars.

00:52:50.560 That comes with a non-disclosure agreement.

00:52:52.720 That's standard operating.

00:52:53.140 How much is your silence worth?

00:52:56.520 I don't.

00:52:57.880 I was going to say more than that, but I don't.

00:53:01.740 That's a lot of money.

00:53:02.740 You know, it would make a big difference in my life, certainly.

00:53:05.720 I certainly would be less nervous about the future.

00:53:10.000 I'm not so old.

00:53:10.920 I got to make a living.

00:53:11.960 I'm the breadwinner for our family.

00:53:13.700 But everything I'd been fighting for for two years, beyond the children, was free expression,

00:53:22.640 free speech, the First Amendment.

00:53:24.660 And so, taking hush money felt so wrong to me.

00:53:29.280 I just wouldn't have been able to look myself in the mirror.

00:53:32.140 Good for you.

00:53:32.800 So, I didn't.

00:53:35.900 And I quit.

00:53:38.120 And then, the next day, publicly published a piece on Barry Weiss's Common Sense of Sec.

00:53:46.660 Why Barry Weiss?

00:53:52.360 That's a good question.

00:53:53.640 I just, you know, I followed her story closely.

00:53:58.720 I think there's a lot of parallels.

00:54:02.760 You know, she famously wrote, Twitter's not on the masthead of the New York Times, but I might get the quote a little wrong.

00:54:09.680 But they're certainly kind of driving the policy and content.

00:54:13.460 And that was so comparable to my story.

00:54:16.900 You know, it was this Twitter mob demanding my ousting and hashtag boycott Levi's and all of this.

00:54:25.220 And I just thought she was the right person.

00:54:28.820 I think she's amazing.

00:54:30.020 I think she's making a...

00:54:31.740 There are a few people that are stepping away from, I don't know.

00:54:39.680 The play.

00:54:41.460 Well, I think outside of the binary.

00:54:43.320 They're stepping outside of the binary.

00:54:45.200 Whether it's the political binary.

00:54:47.320 I mean, I think it's funny that she's always billed as this, like, right...

00:54:51.140 All right.

00:54:51.960 I mean...

00:54:52.240 She's not.

00:54:52.920 She's not at all.

00:54:53.980 She's not.

00:54:55.080 And so, yeah, it just seemed...

00:54:58.660 And she's been amazing and supportive and wanted to tell the story.

00:55:03.480 And I just felt like we were of like minds, you know.

00:55:08.900 So, let's go into...

00:55:10.800 Because you've talked about it in your book.

00:55:12.440 Let's go into woke capitalism.

00:55:14.420 Sure.

00:55:14.780 What it is and the lie that you now think it is.

00:55:22.520 Yeah.

00:55:23.100 In many ways, it's illustrated by that campaign that you hated.

00:55:28.500 Right?

00:55:29.020 I think there's a lot of things going on.

00:55:32.920 I think the first is it is corporate America's attempt to profit off of Gen Z activism.

00:55:40.420 Gen Z and millennial activism.

00:55:42.320 Right?

00:55:42.620 They're trying to kind of...

00:55:43.920 I know that's a cynical take, but it's factually correct. 0.82

00:55:47.840 That's part of what capitalism is.

00:55:51.120 Yeah.

00:55:51.300 To either create a need in you or to exploit a need you already have.

00:55:58.080 Right.

00:55:58.440 So, you know, they're not even exploiting a need.

00:56:01.980 They're exploiting a value.

00:56:03.620 Mm-hmm.

00:56:06.060 Which is kind of gross, I think.

00:56:09.360 Mm-hmm.

00:56:09.800 So, that's part of it.

00:56:11.200 I think there's this other piece, which is...

00:56:13.640 You know, for many, many years, it was assumed that corporate leaders were Republicans.

00:56:18.880 Right?

00:56:19.960 They were greedy, and greed was good.

00:56:22.700 And now, really, a lot of corporate leaders in some of the biggest industries are Democrats.

00:56:31.260 And, I mean, it really is the party of elite.

00:56:33.220 And you have, you know, tech led by the left.

00:56:35.920 And, you know, even Goldman Sachs is waving their arms around being woke.

00:56:41.480 I mean, it's banking for God's sake.

00:56:43.660 Yeah, I know.

00:56:44.080 It's like...

00:56:45.140 I say, I used to hate things like Blade Runner, where, you know, the bad guys worked for the corporation, which was the government.

00:56:54.480 And I used to think, come on.

00:56:57.220 So, this is it.

00:56:58.640 They don't want to be the bad guy.

00:57:00.380 Right.

00:57:00.740 But the left was right.

00:57:03.660 You were right.

00:57:04.520 You were right.

00:57:05.280 Right.

00:57:05.620 You got it right once.

00:57:06.600 Why'd you change?

00:57:07.140 You nailed it.

00:57:07.800 We were wrong.

00:57:08.740 You were right.

00:57:09.920 You got this one.

00:57:10.660 Now, we're like, wait a minute, you, the bad guys, and they don't recognize it, or they...

00:57:17.160 It's so weird.

00:57:17.620 They have just embraced it.

00:57:18.840 It is so bizarre.

00:57:19.800 It's very bizarre.

00:57:21.620 And so, there's this real desire for these leaders to distance themselves from the, you

00:57:27.080 know, robber barons of the past, from the greed is good of the past, and to say, no, I'm

00:57:34.500 a good person.

00:57:35.440 I'm a philanthropist.

00:57:36.520 I would have been in philanthropy, or I'm an altruist.

00:57:41.180 I just happen to make billions of dollars, which never happens on accident, let's be

00:57:45.700 clear.

00:57:45.920 They're just as greedy as the ones that came before them.

00:57:50.200 And they have their children who they've sent to these very woke elementary schools and high

00:57:55.380 schools and colleges, and they want to impress them.

00:57:57.220 There's this new dynamic between parents and children.

00:58:00.220 I'm your friend, not your parent.

00:58:01.900 And it also serves as a cover.

00:58:06.760 Although, I do think, I believe in my heart of hearts, they do believe it about themselves.

00:58:10.600 Like, it might...

00:58:12.080 I think they come to believe it about themselves.

00:58:14.940 You have to...

00:58:15.580 You have to, or you recognize, or you're recognizing that you are the evil you say you're trying

00:58:21.260 to destroy.

00:58:23.140 There's a...

00:58:23.900 Yes, there's a cognitive dissonance there.

00:58:26.080 That is too big, I think, for you have to convince yourself you're on...

00:58:29.420 I think that's right.

00:58:30.200 And that's why it is quite convincing, because they really believe it.

00:58:34.240 But at the end of the day, there is a real disconnect and dissonance, because what does

00:58:39.940 still matter most is making money.

00:58:42.900 And, you know, I'll give you an example.

00:58:45.760 During COVID, Levi's, we laid off 15% of our workforce, perhaps required, right?

00:58:52.520 The business, it was tough out there.

00:58:54.240 It was hard to run a business.

00:58:56.340 Same time period, the CEO cashes in $43 million of stock.

00:59:02.820 Tell me it wasn't just about the money, because those layoffs bolstered the stock price.

00:59:08.380 The socially just thing would have been to find a way to keep people employed, possibly

00:59:13.640 demand that the world open up so that we could keep people employed.

00:59:18.500 So that's why I say I think they believe it, because deep down they also know they're going

00:59:25.720 for the money, and they don't want it to be exposed.

00:59:28.880 But I think you're...

00:59:30.140 Boy, that's true.

00:59:31.520 The thing that I think we're missing here on this conversation is the fact that they've

00:59:38.780 added...

00:59:39.500 I don't know who has added, but there's another level to this delusion, and that is some people

00:59:47.220 know more than other people.

00:59:50.560 So if they're part of the decisions, and we're all going woke, we're better than these people.

00:59:57.400 So making money, yes, but we're making things so much better in the long run.

01:00:04.320 The ends justify the means.

01:00:06.140 But it just...

01:00:06.840 Yes, I'm not arguing any of that.

01:00:09.520 I agree with that.

01:00:10.380 I think they also...

01:00:11.640 I believe that somewhere in their brains, they still kind of maybe know.

01:00:16.800 I'll give you another example.

01:00:18.860 When I wrote a formal proposal in October of 2020 saying, let's take a stand on this.

01:00:24.960 We've done taking stands on all sorts of things, as I'm sure you know.

01:00:27.960 Let's write an op-ed from Levi's in the local paper.

01:00:32.120 We're like, we're a big business in this town.

01:00:34.680 We can make a difference and influence.

01:00:38.140 The response back was, we can't...

01:00:40.400 We'll look bad.

01:00:41.100 Our kids are in private.

01:00:46.720 It'll make executives look bad because our kids go... 0.89

01:00:50.120 So it's like, it will reveal that we are really elitist.

01:00:54.280 I'm like, first of all, who doesn't think you are?

01:00:56.060 I mean, everybody knows you said you're...

01:00:57.500 I'm the weirdo sending my kids to public school.

01:01:01.100 No one's assuming you're not.

01:01:02.660 Right.

01:01:03.260 And why is it bad to say, my kids go to private.

01:01:07.420 I want the same thing for every child in San Francisco.

01:01:10.800 But it was sort of very revealing.

01:01:14.060 It's like being in the Carnegie organization and being against when he decided to build libraries

01:01:19.500 and all of the poor towns all across America.

01:01:22.620 Right.

01:01:22.920 We can buy our own books.

01:01:24.260 We don't want to...

01:01:24.740 Everybody knows.

01:01:26.460 Everybody knows you are so wealthy you can do this.

01:01:29.160 This is doing good for the people who can't.

01:01:31.580 Yes.

01:01:32.220 But it revealed the lie, which is ultimately it's all about reputation laundering.

01:01:37.860 These stances.

01:01:39.280 You know, and I think...

01:01:40.500 Big time.

01:01:41.360 It's laundering of reputation so that, hey, don't look over here.

01:01:45.380 We're still taking all the money.

01:01:47.640 And it works so well that even when they lay off 15% of the workforce, they say they're

01:01:53.040 doing it with empathy and everybody's like, oh, thank you.

01:01:56.560 Thank you.

01:01:57.260 So, how does...

01:02:01.420 I think one of the reasons why they attack so viciously and relentlessly is because they

01:02:12.120 know it's a house of cards.

01:02:13.720 That's right.

01:02:14.260 Right?

01:02:14.720 That's what I was going to say.

01:02:15.720 Yeah.

01:02:16.000 So, if there's someone that threatens to reveal the lie... 0.73

01:02:20.260 They've got to be destroyed. 1.00

01:02:21.720 You're an apostate. 1.00

01:02:23.260 You're a hero.

01:02:23.740 There's a like, come on, we're all in...

01:02:25.500 You know, they don't say it, but like...

01:02:26.980 Oh, yeah, I know.

01:02:27.320 Come on.

01:02:27.680 You know, I know.

01:02:28.460 You know, like, let's do this and we get our big bonuses and we've got to lay these people

01:02:34.040 off so that we can get our bonuses so that the stock, you know, continues to go up.

01:02:38.340 It's like an unspoken pact.

01:02:40.080 And I think that my quitting and not accepting the money was so astonishing because no one gives

01:02:47.360 up the money.

01:02:48.200 I know. 1.00

01:02:49.980 What lunatic gives up the money? 0.96

01:02:51.820 When I walked out, the last thing Roger Ailes said to me when I walked out, they were offering, 0.96

01:02:59.200 you know...

01:03:00.680 More than my million, I'm sure.

01:03:01.920 The world.

01:03:03.040 And he said, you're not going to leave.

01:03:06.580 See?

01:03:06.780 You're not going to leave.

01:03:07.720 He said, no one leaves here.

01:03:10.640 Exactly.

01:03:10.740 And he had always called me Jack Parr.

01:03:15.200 And I said, hmm, I would have thought you would have understood because one guy who did leave

01:03:23.900 was Jack Parr.

01:03:25.860 And that was the first moment I saw the fear in his eyes of, this guy's leaving.

01:03:31.420 He's really leaving.

01:03:32.920 Yeah.

01:03:33.720 They don't get it.

01:03:35.080 No.

01:03:36.240 But...

01:03:37.080 Because they've already sold their soul.

01:03:38.320 That's right.

01:03:38.900 And they can't even fathom or imagine that somebody else would do different.

01:03:43.140 And...

01:03:43.300 And that makes them hate you even more, I think.

01:03:45.140 Oh, God.

01:03:45.500 Yeah.

01:03:45.900 You've...

01:03:46.260 Like, it's...

01:03:47.240 I keep thinking about what they're saying to themselves now.

01:03:49.880 They're like, see, we were right. 0.93

01:03:51.280 She is horrid.

01:03:51.940 It's like... 0.97

01:03:52.680 Yeah.

01:03:53.160 Yeah.

01:03:53.360 You know?

01:03:53.880 She wasn't with us.

01:03:55.340 She wouldn't keep our secrets.

01:03:57.020 Right.

01:03:57.620 She didn't care most about the money, first and foremost.

01:04:00.760 We say we care about the other stuff, but let's be honest, guys.

01:04:04.120 We all know what we really care about is the money.

01:04:05.780 She didn't. 0.96

01:04:07.140 She's evil. 1.00

01:04:08.060 She's a heretic. 1.00

01:04:09.800 She has to go. 0.96

01:04:10.440 So how do we break this?

01:04:11.740 Because this is...

01:04:12.780 This is...

01:04:14.780 It's destroying our nation.

01:04:18.600 I mean, the smartest things that the Uber Uber left, those who hate everything America

01:04:26.920 stands for, the smartest thing they did was get into the boardroom.

01:04:32.080 Yeah.

01:04:32.420 You know, they got in and they infiltrated everything.

01:04:36.060 Once they got into the boardroom, everything changed because even I buy Apple products and

01:04:44.220 I hate myself for it.

01:04:45.700 I really do.

01:04:46.800 What they're doing in China and the Uyghurs, it's inexcusable. 1.00

01:04:51.000 What they just did with turning off the air, what do you call it, you know, where you download

01:04:58.260 to a friend just through the air.

01:05:00.220 Yeah, drop, airdrop.

01:05:00.880 Airdrop.

01:05:02.680 That's...

01:05:03.440 In China. 0.97

01:05:04.340 It's crazy evil. 0.98

01:05:06.120 It's crazy evil.

01:05:07.720 But how do you break it?

01:05:09.080 How do you get out of it?

01:05:11.300 Because it's everything.

01:05:13.400 Yeah.

01:05:13.560 It's also proof that, you know, consumers don't really care, right?

01:05:18.220 Like, Levi's is thinking they're taking all these stances because that's going to, you

01:05:22.020 know, that's aligned with these young people's values.

01:05:24.920 They don't care.

01:05:25.840 They still buy Nikes.

01:05:26.960 They still buy Apple.

01:05:29.820 None of them care.

01:05:31.320 They don't actually care.

01:05:33.580 They like to pretend that they do.

01:05:35.120 And it's true on the right as well.

01:05:38.720 You know, they burn their Nikes and then they go back to buying Nikes the next week.

01:05:41.960 They burn them because of...

01:05:43.380 Well, a lot do.

01:05:44.640 The brand is doing fine.

01:05:45.740 One of the biggest things I think conservatives wrestle with is, do you still have Disney Plus?

01:05:51.780 Do you still take your kids to Disneyland?

01:05:54.180 I mean, if you are really, morally, this is wrong, but what else do I do?

01:06:03.240 You can say, I don't want the old stuff.

01:06:05.420 I mean, I don't want the new stuff.

01:06:06.560 I just want the old stuff, but it's still feeding the same beast.

01:06:10.560 So what do you think they do?

01:06:12.960 What are they doing?

01:06:14.600 I think they hold out as many times as they possibly can and then still take their kids

01:06:20.000 to Disneyland, you know?

01:06:22.220 Yeah.

01:06:22.660 I mean, there's, there's like, I don't give up my Apple product because it would dramatically

01:06:27.740 change my life.

01:06:29.880 Sneakers don't change my life. 0.95

01:06:31.440 Levi's don't change my life.

01:06:33.420 At my age, with my kids' age, Disney doesn't change my life.

01:06:37.520 Right.

01:06:37.920 But if I had little kids...

01:06:39.740 It'd be hard.

01:06:40.240 It would be extraordinarily hard.

01:06:42.340 Yeah.

01:06:42.840 And it, I don't understand.

01:06:45.920 I mean, I do because I understand history.

01:06:48.500 People call this woke capitalism.

01:06:50.480 You call it woke capitalism.

01:06:52.080 And I'd like to...

01:06:52.840 It's a shortcut for me, yeah.

01:06:54.800 Okay.

01:06:56.080 It's actually fascism.

01:06:57.720 It is the definition of fascism.

01:06:59.620 It is, absolutely.

01:07:01.000 And I have written at length about this.

01:07:03.620 And, you know, the issue now, and we've seen it writ large during COVID, is corporations,

01:07:13.040 either directly or indirectly, are furthering, are colluding with government to further their

01:07:19.480 message.

01:07:19.960 It is grotesque.

01:07:22.140 Grotesque.

01:07:22.400 And, you know, we've seen now with Twitter that it's direct, with the Twitter files being

01:07:27.380 published, although we kind of knew before, there's literally direct communication from

01:07:31.700 government operatives to Twitter saying, take these people down.

01:07:35.960 They cannot say these things.

01:07:37.420 My own husband has been banned from Twitter for saying the following.

01:07:40.560 Are you ready?

01:07:41.040 The vaccines have known side effects, myocarditis, blood clots, and strokes.

01:07:49.680 That's a fact.

01:07:51.140 Just read the Pfizer documentation.

01:07:53.420 He then offered an opinion, which said, that is not my idea of, quote unquote, safe, banished.

01:08:00.540 I think close to a year now.

01:08:02.200 Still not bad.

01:08:02.720 Whether or not he has a lawsuit that's active with two other men who were kicked off for similar

01:08:12.960 reasons.

01:08:14.900 So you have direct communication, but I would argue that the alignment is so tight that there

01:08:21.540 doesn't even need to be direct communication.

01:08:23.680 It just happens.

01:08:24.420 Now, with Levi's in particular, there are family connections to Gavin Newsom.

01:08:31.580 There are family democratic office holders.

01:08:34.740 So there are direct connections.

01:08:38.080 But I don't even think there has to be a direct communication.

01:08:42.140 There's just, they're like this, they're in lockstep.

01:08:44.400 And that is the definition of fascism.

01:08:46.900 I said at one point, got a lot of heat at one point that there would be a caliphate and

01:08:56.120 you would see communist Marxists, capitalists, and Islamists all working together to forward

01:09:06.100 this.

01:09:07.340 And they all said, oh, conspiracy theory, blah, blah, blah.

01:09:10.020 They'll never work together.

01:09:11.280 Are you a conspiracy theory?

01:09:12.320 Yeah, I know.

01:09:13.280 And I was very, very clear.

01:09:16.040 Working together doesn't mean they call each other.

01:09:19.080 That's right.

01:09:19.540 They're in lockstep.

01:09:20.500 That's right.

01:09:20.880 This is good for us.

01:09:22.700 That's right.

01:09:23.140 They're going that way.

01:09:24.340 Let's go.

01:09:25.460 Yes.

01:09:25.760 And I would add to that the press is also in lockstep.

01:09:29.560 And I think, you know, what we're watching now with Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX is really

01:09:33.860 illustrious.

01:09:34.480 Will he go to, will he pay at all for this?

01:09:38.700 I don't know.

01:09:40.280 And even today, when we see the fraud and what appears to be obvious criminality, he's on

01:09:49.720 stage at the New York Times Deal Book Summit last week with Andrew Ross-Surkin.

01:09:53.460 People are saying, oh, he asked tough questions.

01:09:55.160 No, he didn't.

01:09:55.900 He giggled.

01:09:56.720 The guy got like a standing ovation or at least like a round of applause for his aw shucks.

01:10:01.680 I didn't do fraud to anyone.

01:10:05.480 And, you know, the press's glowing articles about him for the last two years is why he

01:10:11.400 avoided any scrutiny for so long.

01:10:13.540 He says it himself.

01:10:14.900 He says, we take these stances so people like us.

01:10:19.020 He said the quiet part out loud.

01:10:23.840 He said it.

01:10:24.860 To a Vox reporter who, by the way, he thought was in on the pact.

01:10:29.100 She's one of it.

01:10:29.820 Like, I can say this to her.

01:10:31.520 Now, obviously, she doesn't have the kind of money he had, but he still thought of her

01:10:36.240 in the same.

01:10:37.120 I imagine.

01:10:39.000 That's why he said it.

01:10:40.140 Right.

01:10:43.620 The last question is we're way over time already.

01:10:46.400 I can talk with you.

01:10:47.720 Would you come back again?

01:10:48.680 This is not the last question.

01:10:49.780 Would you come back again?

01:10:50.760 I would love it.

01:10:51.480 If I'm listening to this and I'm like, okay, I know, I know, I know, I know.

01:11:01.100 What do we do?

01:11:01.720 I didn't answer that part.

01:11:02.760 What do we do?

01:11:06.240 Goodness.

01:11:06.640 I really am at a little bit of a loss, but I just will not stop talking about it.

01:11:14.120 I mean, I think most people are followers, I think we've learned, and will do whatever

01:11:22.440 the group is doing.

01:11:23.780 They would rather stand with the group than stand apart and alone and do the right thing.

01:11:28.820 But that means we can bring them around.

01:11:31.060 That's the good news, is we can.

01:11:34.300 And if you have a few outspoken, brave people who are willing to keep saying it and make

01:11:39.680 it make sense, and despite the opprobrium and name-calling, keep going, it happens slowly

01:11:46.860 and then all at once.

01:11:49.020 Now, they don't, if they come over and say, yeah, this is wrong, the 65% of Americans who

01:11:54.060 are quiet right now or confused, they don't really, they'll believe the next thing, too.

01:11:59.200 But it doesn't matter.

01:12:01.180 We can bring them along.

01:12:02.440 You know, it happened to me in gymnastics.

01:12:04.260 It was, I was vile and hated, and suddenly, 10 years later, they pretended they always

01:12:09.440 stood with me.

01:12:10.160 They didn't.

01:12:10.740 I got the emails.

01:12:12.180 You know?

01:12:13.940 I also think that companies, look, I'm the first real insider that's come forward, but

01:12:21.740 other people are going to do it.

01:12:24.000 They're going to think twice about this.

01:12:26.640 There are, I have no doubt there are conversations happening.

01:12:32.300 How do we avoid this PR nightmare in the future?

01:12:36.320 Now, they might decide that the way they avoid it is make everybody sign something that says

01:12:40.200 you won't be active on social media.

01:12:43.000 That would not be the outcome I would want.

01:12:45.260 Yeah.

01:12:45.560 But that's a real possibility.

01:12:48.780 I don't know.

01:12:49.640 I think what, I think your solution of, you know, courage is courageous, contagious, and

01:12:58.540 for the 65%, you know, there's always 19 to 20%.

01:13:05.040 I think the far, far I hate everything about America is less than 20%, and it's not going

01:13:11.680 to get, it's, well, I don't know.

01:13:13.720 I think it's less than, I think it's less than 10 on either side.

01:13:16.960 I hope you're right.

01:13:17.940 I hope you're right.

01:13:20.100 But 20% changes to the world.

01:13:22.660 There's a tipping point.

01:13:23.580 And if, if those who wake up, who truly value the Bill of Rights, and because I don't, at

01:13:34.760 this point, that's all I want to preserve for my kids.

01:13:37.640 That's all I want to preserve for my kids.

01:13:39.400 That's a lot.

01:13:40.060 Constitution Bill of Rights.

01:13:41.500 Let's let them be free.

01:13:43.120 Okay.

01:13:43.300 If those who believe that, even if we disagree on absolutely everything else, would come

01:13:52.680 together, that's when this will happen.

01:13:55.600 Because there's still this divide of trust.

01:13:59.100 I'm not sure if I trust you.

01:14:01.660 You wouldn't be on the show if I didn't know you believed in the Bill of Rights.

01:14:07.140 But that's what has to happen.

01:14:09.120 And we have to come together with people that make us a little afraid of, I don't want to

01:14:14.100 necessarily be on their side.

01:14:15.700 You know what I mean?

01:14:16.500 But do we join here?

01:14:17.860 Yeah.

01:14:18.320 And not that I don't want to be.

01:14:19.640 I'm with you 100%.

01:14:20.840 No, I'm not afraid of, look, I have met every sort of conservative in the last few months

01:14:29.060 that I was told, you know, was evil.

01:14:32.820 And that is, I've found, to have amazing conversations.

01:14:38.060 And I have easily found the commonality with no struggle whatsoever.

01:14:43.680 And that's what has to happen.

01:14:45.020 I've had the same thing with people who, you know, were, I thought, Marxist professors.

01:14:51.140 Interesting.

01:14:51.660 That are fantastic.

01:14:53.800 We love each other.

01:14:55.120 Yeah.

01:14:55.300 I mean, I guess I feel like, you know what, you may be fine with this, you know, for me,

01:15:01.980 COVID is what brought it all to the fore.

01:15:03.920 And you may have been fine with that.

01:15:05.180 But guess what?

01:15:05.900 You're next.

01:15:07.360 You're not going to agree with everything.

01:15:08.940 I guess if enough people get canceled, then we can all live on canceled island and we

01:15:17.280 can be the big voice that kind of pushes back.

01:15:20.740 It's going to be enough people one day.

01:15:24.040 It's kind of my theory on the border.

01:15:26.060 I say leave the border open.

01:15:27.760 Let everybody from Mexico come here.

01:15:29.580 Then at night, we'll go there.

01:15:31.080 We get the beaches.

01:15:32.680 It's a good strategy.

01:15:34.100 It just seems like the group will keep growing and growing and growing and you can't cancel

01:15:39.300 everybody and that we on canceled island find the commonality because we're forced to

01:15:46.420 and we just become a bigger and bigger force over time.

01:15:50.200 I mean, look, even in China, they're protesting now.

01:15:52.680 You can push people too far.

01:15:55.820 It's possible.

01:15:57.400 What are you doing now?

01:15:58.680 What's next?

01:16:00.320 Well, I spent the summer writing this book.

01:16:03.020 I wrote it in like two months in a fever dream.

01:16:05.620 It's hard, isn't it?

01:16:06.120 It's really hard.

01:16:07.980 But I recommend doing it that way instead of dragging it out for five years.

01:16:12.300 Just get it done.

01:16:14.500 I'm making a documentary film about the impact to kids from the prolonged school closures.

01:16:19.340 Good for you.

01:16:20.620 And it's going well.

01:16:21.780 We're probably 80% filmed.

01:16:23.560 Probably won't get an Emmy for this one.

01:16:25.480 I probably won't.

01:16:26.600 That's okay.

01:16:28.080 You know what I will say is I do think that some folks are trying really hard to kind of

01:16:32.420 distance themselves from having either been silent or advocated for closures.

01:16:37.500 I mean, even Fauci is right.

01:16:38.720 He says I had nothing to do with it.

01:16:40.160 So we may find some brave streamer who wants to distance themselves and put the film on.

01:16:47.260 And then, I mean, I'm going to figure out what to do.

01:16:49.660 I actually have had corporate offers.

01:16:52.180 I'm a little hesitant right now.

01:16:54.060 But one day.

01:16:55.740 Good for you.

01:16:56.920 Thank you so much.

01:16:57.660 Yeah, thank you.

01:16:58.600 God bless.

01:17:04.140 Just a reminder.

01:17:06.080 I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.

01:17:26.400 Thank you.

01:17:27.140 Thank you.

01:17:28.140 Thank you.

01:17:28.200 Thank you.

The Glenn Beck Program - December 10, 2022

Ep 167 ｜ The Levi's Exec Who Sacrificed EVERYTHING to Stand Up for Kids ｜ Jennifer Sey ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast

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