“I Should’ve Fired Her Earlier” - Ex Daily Wire on Candace Owens
Episode Stats
Harmful content
Misogyny
17
sentences flagged
Toxicity
3
sentences flagged
Hate speech
3
sentences flagged
Summary
Former White House Chief Strategist Ben Shapiro joins Jemele to discuss his time at the White House, why he left for CNN, and why he thinks Candice Owens should have been fired earlier. Plus, a look back at his time as White House Strategist at the Daily Wire.
Transcript
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Yeah, hey, who should I take in the Boston game?
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Nah, no more statistically speaking. I want hot takes. I want knee-jerk reactions.
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We terminated Candace Owens, which I feel like was a morally important thing to do
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and important for the health of the conservative movement more broadly.
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Ten out of ten times you would have fired her again?
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Or is there a part of you like we could have had?
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Ten out of ten times I would have fired her again.
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Nine out of ten times I would have fired her two months earlier.
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One out of ten times would you have signed her?
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I've said that I look back and signing her was the biggest mistake of my life.
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Not firing her earlier is a bigger mistake, more of a bigger moral mistake.
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I had misgivings about Candace when we hired her.
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But on the whole, I believe that she would be, that she was and would continue to be
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I believe that we could successfully help her trend in a positive direction.
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I believed, I believed and still believe that she's the, she has the most star power of any
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person I've ever met. That's after 20 years in Hollywood. I mean, I've met giant movie stars.
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Candace has more it than any other personality I've ever encountered. Winsome, charming,
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hugely talented. So in retrospect, is it a mistake that I hired her? Sure, because of the way it
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played out. But I wouldn't say one out of 10, I would have hired her. You know, seven out of 10
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do-overs I still would have hired her. The reason why I'm asking this question is the following
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look I look at I look at everybody as a talent right I look at Candice as a talent I look a lot
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of these guys as talent you know Jordan Peterson all these guys yep is it worth doing it because
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I don't think anybody's going to be able to control Candice I don't think anybody's going
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to be able to control even a Tucker I don't think anybody's going to be able to control some of these
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you know the talent so it is it like even now you're not there anymore would you go back into
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the model ever let's just say you raise a hundred million dollars would you go back to signing
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talent again or how would you do it differently would you go after the best the current Jordan
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Peterson the next Michael Knowles the next Matt Walsh would you make that investment yes
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breaking talent is very difficult you know seeing talent in someone who doesn't already
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have an established audience, is very, very difficult.
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Obviously, at the time that I started working with Ben,
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he had been the youngest syndicated columnist in the country,
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He had made some sort of cable news appearances,
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one-market radio show, was developing himself in that regard.
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It was not obvious that he was going to be Ben Shapiro to most people.
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you know i i'm not the only one who saw it ben's family knew it ben believed in himself
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who else knew outside of family because family's going to believe and you believe but who else
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anybody else ben's family believes in him uniquely not just the way that all
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ben's family wasn't just supportive they really believed you know uh but no not not many people
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saw what ben was going to be um michael knowles you know michael i saw michael as huge talent um
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He was an actor, and I could tell that he was gifted as an actor,
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I've seen some pictures, old-school pictures of Michael Knowles.
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You know, good-looking young stud, Michael Knowles.
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Just the other day, they were telling me, this guy looks like an actor.
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He looks like an actor that's, you know, maybe right there.
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Like, that picture looks like he was on General Hospital.
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You know, he was, like, on, you know, some of the.
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If that guy had gotten one single hit on General Hospital, you'd have never seen him.
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Michael had it so bad that when he started working for us, he came to work for us as
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he had been doing Andrew Klavan's personal social media.
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And so we hired him to be our social media director.
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So Michael comes over, and I was like, man, this guy, he's so freaking charming and winsome, and he's so smart.
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The audience, if you ever put a camera on him, even for a little social media video, everybody loves him.
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And I remember very clearly taking him to breakfast one day at my favorite breakfast spot in L.A. called Jinkies in Sherman Oaks.
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And I just told him, I said, Michael, you got to walk away from the acting.
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Like, it's a waste of you, and you're going to spend your entire life chasing the thing that you don't have
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when I'm telling you that there's a thing that you can have right now.
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And the acting thing, acting is a thing you can just do in success.
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Like, it's not a thing that you, you know, the only time that acting is impossible is right now.
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and uh but even at that we we had this idea one day that we were going to make this movie that
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andrew clavin and i had worked on a script together about samson from the bible and it
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was ever read samson syndrome the book no okay so maybe that was a book please continue samson
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you and you and clavin yeah and michael gets it in his head that we're going to cat this movie
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isn't baked this the script is good drew did a great job but i mean this this movie never got
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past first base Michael Knowles started gaining weight so that he could look like a Jewish warrior
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he was like you guys are gonna put me in it right it's like Michael I don't think we're gonna make
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this movie and there's no way I'm gonna put you in it he starts having pizzas delivered to work
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he gets on a on a regime where I think he gained 30 pounds no he can't gain I mean he he blew up
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like a big red balloon wow because he thought it was gonna give it that's how bad this guy had it
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to be to be an actor you know but look what he actually is look what he's accomplished in the
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time that michael's been doing a show he's educated himself i mean he went to yale he was no he wasn't
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a slob no no no no mike he's educated himself michael's honestly one of the most i don't know
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i may put him as number one most likable out of all the conservative talent in the world i don't
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know if i put anybody ahead of him and incredibly intelligent and the same with brett cooper brett
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She was a series regular on a show called Heathers.
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My team had created this show called The Comment Section.
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and it had not worked out with the first gal that we cast.
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So they went back to square one looking for someone.
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They'd created this format, and they thought the format would work,
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They brought her to me, and it was just obvious.
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this gal had enormous talent um but at that time it was completely unrecognized talent now hiring a
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jordan peterson at the height of his career that costs a lot of money um but it's kind of a no
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brainer you guys didn't make money on that of course you want jordan peterson on your brain
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did you make money off of peterson you know we made a little bit of money not that much right
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but what peterson but what peterson did is he helped secure the brand he helped to elevate
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the brand i remember the announcement massive announcement the whole what was it the lobster
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thing you guys put on the website it was you know all this stuff that so so going back maybe this is
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the better question to ask is the model a model of getting household names or building well it's
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both you secure the brand with some household names but the the economic model is in breaking
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new talent got it and of course it's the case as you see with brett you can build talent you can't
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make someone talented we're not responsible for brett being talented that's brett but we're
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responsible for helping come alongside that talent, cultivating it, building a brand around
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it. The day comes when she wants to leave, she can take that. An audience is going to follow her
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online. We have parasocial relationships with audiences. They're going to follow us to some
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degree. She's really been able to build on that. And I think particularly today in the post-second
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Trump win, you experienced it here, I'm sure, the huge change in how the platforms treated us after
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Trump won again in 2024. Suddenly you're not being demonetized. Suddenly you're not being
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shadow banned. Suddenly you're not being boxed out. Right now is a great moment for independent
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talent to have independent success. This is just a phase like every other phase. It's a cycle.
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The Democrats are going to take power again at some point in the future. The platforms are going
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to turn on us again at some point in the future. And networks are going to be more valuable to
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talent again in the future because they provide. Networks are going to be more valuable to talent
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in the future. What do you mean by that? Well, I think networks were very helpful to talent
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in the Biden years because we helped talent navigate. Instead of being independent, go with
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somebody. Go with somebody. So during the conservative, go by yourself. During a liberal,
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team up with somebody. I think that right now that certainly seems to be the case. Interesting
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perspective. So, okay. So Crowder, would you have done anything differently with Crowder?
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I would have called him from California instead of Nashville,
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I stand by the offer that we put in front of Crowder.
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I think Crowder showed sort of like personal disloyalty and disrespect,
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And I think it kind of shows some of what's wrong with our business that what Crowder ultimately did was he needed a controversy to launch himself as an independent talent.
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And a great controversy is to get into a fight with the big guys, you know.
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And by the way, Candice defended the guys hardcore against Crowder.
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I remember because to me, I'm in the middle, right?
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Like, I don't know if, you know, what level of, to me, I'm more in the place where I'm thinking, is it worth going in and building long-term, or do I have to deal with every four to eight years, depending on who the president is, that the talent's going to go and be independent and say, we don't need you.
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Andrew Klavan, Michael Knowles, Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Jordan Peterson, these talent never, never left.
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I mean, Jordan has left as a result of—I don't know if he's left.
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We've had one talent really leave in the way that you would be concerned about talent just leaving you.
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You have to continually help talent to become more successful.
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If the network is helping talent get more views, more money in their pocket, more opportunity for growth, then they're going to be incentivized to stay with you.
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And if you fail at that, you're going to lose them.
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Sometimes you might lose them for other reasons because human relationships are complicated, business is complicated.
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But for the most part, talent is going to go where they see opportunity.
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So for talent, you know, I built an insurance agency, you know, national 60,000 agents.
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So I had to look and see what this guy has, what that guy has.
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And what I used to value of somebody being a broker eventually opening up an office wasn't that valuable.
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Versus I realized, no, that was sexy, not important.
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These are the three qualities that are important.
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Like when you saw Ben or Brett Cooper or Knowles, what are you looking for?
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Well, in the early days, what I was looking for was ideological alignment meets raw talent, meets what I would consider to be like a strong ethical foundation.
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And I knew that if Ben – if the going got tough politically, Ben wouldn't say something that he didn't believe just to make money, which to me was incredibly important.
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I didn't want someone who would let the audience wield them as opposed to trying to both represent and lead the audience.
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There's tension there, but you have to – that's your job.
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Your job is to navigate that tension, not to become a populist who lets the mob, because the mob is often wrong.
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Populist answers to the mob, don't answer to the mob, but not an elitist who says the people are wrong and only the smartest guy in the room is right.
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Lowercase r Republicanism says you have to live somewhere between those two things.
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You have to be mindful of both of those impulses and navigate them.
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I knew Andrew Klavan is never going to say one freaking word he doesn't believe.
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I'm not going to have a situation where he gets too big for his britches
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or afraid of the audience or whatever it is, right?
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I think that as time went on, I also looked for things like,
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can they speak to a demographic that we have not been successful at speaking?
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I took on more business considerations by that, by those later days.
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And in some cases, I made bad judgment calls because I, you know, you always have these competing priorities, not just in business, but in your life, right?
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But there is tension between those two roles, and it's not a question of which one do you do well.
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You have an obligation to do both of them very well.
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You have an obligation to succeed in both of those areas.
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that requires constantly assessing how you've ordered your priorities.
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At The Daily Wire, the number one priority had to be the mission.
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If you go into negative cash flow, the gear stops spinning right away.
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You have to reach people or you'll be doing this for self-congratulatory reasons
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as opposed to actually making an impact and making a difference.
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At various times, the biggest problem you have is that the company's not making enough money
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and you're going to run out of cash in 90 days.
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And so you hard pivot toward addressing that problem.
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But if you stay in a position where making money is the number one priority,
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then definitionally all of your other priorities become subordinate to that one,
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which means the ideology the mission becomes subordinate to money which means character
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becomes subordinate to money which means um honesty and integrity become subordinate to
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to money so you're constantly fighting that and i think that you know in the case of of
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some of you know particularly say with candace i i probably had miss
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I thought she can speak to a whole range of people
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but we sort of fought from a kind of intellectual.
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That's a color that we need in the sort of tapestry.
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and I think that I probably didn't prioritize rightly whether or not I really believe that
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Candace would always say what she believes is true. Did I really believe that Candace would
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behave ethically? Yeah. She was famous. She was a huge opportunity. She had these,
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she represented opportunities in areas we didn't have. And I, I kind of let myself
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make a decision from probably the wrong place. With her, with Candace. Got it. And of course,
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Of course, other decisions along the way, but specific to talent.
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