Valuetainment - June 18, 2026


ļ¼‚People Are Dancing On Daily Wire's Graveļ¼‚ - What REALLY Happened When Ex-Daily Wire CEO Left


Episode Stats


Length

6 minutes

Words per minute

169.63

Word count

1,118

Sentence count

67


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Stories came out, I think, the last 12 months.
00:00:01.920 They had two sets of layoffs, one layoff that comes in,
00:00:04.000 and then the last one that comes in.
00:00:05.180 And then, hey, it's not as many as you guys say it is.
00:00:07.740 It's not 100 people.
00:00:08.640 It's not 80 people.
00:00:09.280 It's really only 40 people, 50 people.
00:00:11.060 And as a guy that operates, it's very hard to run a business.
00:00:13.820 So you're going to go through your season.
00:00:15.540 So I know what it is to be on the inside and how difficult this is.
00:00:19.300 So it's coming from a guy that's on the inside.
00:00:21.220 So if that's the case and it's grown after campus, after Brett,
00:00:25.320 why are the layoffs happening?
00:00:26.660 Well, I can probably speak more to the first round of layoffs because they came very rapidly on the heels of my departure.
00:00:34.640 The second round of layoffs happened more than a year after I leave.
00:00:38.040 And as I say, I don't have a view.
00:00:41.520 I have more of a view than most because I still know a lot of people there.
00:00:44.380 And I know how things have historically worked so I can make certain inferences.
00:00:47.940 But I don't have visibility into the company that you might expect me to have.
00:00:52.680 The first round of layoffs are consistent with me leaving the company.
00:00:55.980 It was a huge change in the structure, the fundamental structure of the company,
00:01:02.900 the fundamental business model of the company,
00:01:06.280 the fundamental relationships that sort of undergirded the company.
00:01:11.940 And so some projects became orphans.
00:01:16.340 And so it makes perfect sense that when the founding CEO of the company,
00:01:23.380 The founder and CEO of the company, the guy who sort of conceived of the thing and has
00:01:27.500 led it for a decade, leaves, there's going to be other turnover that happens as a result
00:01:32.200 of that.
00:01:32.860 You know, as my business partners and their consultants pursued their new strategy, that
00:01:38.520 new strategy is going to leave some orphan situations.
00:01:41.580 And so, you know, my top two lieutenants left within a week of me leaving.
00:01:46.020 They both left, weren't fired, but...
00:01:49.300 So they were loyal to you, meaning they liked working for you.
00:01:52.400 Because that's typically what happens.
00:01:53.520 CEO leaves.
00:01:54.240 The leadership team that reports them that has a close relationship, they leave.
00:01:57.580 Yeah, I think that they obviously had loyalty to me, and they work for me now in my new venture.
00:02:03.100 I think also they had loyalty to the strategy that we had been unfolding for the last five years.
00:02:09.040 And to the extent that that strategy was changing, they didn't see the new strategy as being one that they wanted to invest in.
00:02:18.540 um so they leave but then of course those people who were in some of those other departments like
00:02:26.600 the the children's department was one of the things that was largely shut down in the days
00:02:31.740 after me leaving so of course there were you know quite a few employees just of that department who
00:02:36.200 no longer had value that they could add to the company because the company was no longer pursuing
00:02:40.540 that strategy so i think that initial round of layoffs that happened is was mostly about a pivot
00:02:47.480 into a new strategy, which, you know, as you say, that's just part of business.
00:02:53.620 You have to be able to adapt.
00:02:55.240 You have to be able to pivot.
00:02:56.060 You have to be able to change.
00:02:59.500 Obviously, I disagree with the new strategy, or I would still be there running the old
00:03:02.880 strategy.
00:03:03.740 That doesn't mean that the new strategy can't be effective.
00:03:06.060 It doesn't mean that the new strategy can't succeed.
00:03:09.280 But in pursuing that new strategy, they had to make a lot of sort of foundational changes
00:03:13.940 to the company, and some people lost their jobs as a result of that.
00:03:19.020 The new round of layoffs, I can only speak to what's been said publicly.
00:03:23.200 You know, Ben says that they've seen challenges over the last year.
00:03:26.300 Some of them are very obvious, like Jordan Peterson being sidelined.
00:03:32.360 To lose Jordan Peterson is a huge blow, I think,
00:03:35.340 to the entire conservative movement to lose his voice.
00:03:37.880 But he's a major part of the economics of how the company was working
00:03:41.380 before he took ill.
00:03:43.520 So you're going to see challenges there.
00:03:45.700 And then I just also suspect that any, you know, I think a lot of conservative media companies have seen some attrition during the second Trump administration just because conservatives tend not to do great with victory.
00:03:58.880 You know, we're a great opposition party.
00:04:00.640 We're a great opposition movement.
00:04:01.720 Then you win and everybody kind of breathes out, exhales for a minute, and they don't pay as much attention to conservative media for a season.
00:04:09.260 And then I suspect that there's just the realities of a transition.
00:04:12.440 And if you're implementing a new business strategy for the company,
00:04:17.320 you're implementing new governance strategy for the company,
00:04:20.120 a new leadership team for the company,
00:04:22.400 new executives at almost every department of the company over the last year,
00:04:26.920 even if that strategy all bears out to be successful,
00:04:30.220 there's just going to be some rough patches in the transition.
00:04:33.060 So I suspect that that's all you're seeing.
00:04:36.280 I think a lot of people are kind of dancing on Daily Wire's grave
00:04:38.580 because Daily Wire has been ascendant.
00:04:42.440 for over a decade. And nobody, you know, America loves underdogs. We don't really love number one.
00:04:48.280 So I think there's a lot of people who are kind of eagerly dancing on Daily Wire's grave.
00:04:51.940 I just think that that's unfounded. You know, Daily Wire still has nine figures of revenue.
00:04:57.760 Daily Wire still has some of the most talented people in the movement working for them.
00:05:02.460 I suspect that all the people who are sort of cheering their demise are going to be
00:05:07.500 disappointed by the fact that their demise is not at hand. They're just going through
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00:05:59.580 And if you want to watch the entire podcast, click here.
00:06:05.480 We'll be right back.