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 .

On today's show, host Alex Blumberg sits down with Ben Shapiro, the former CEO of The Weekly Standard, to talk about his departure from the company and the impact it has had on the conservative media landscape.

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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00:05:56.600 If you enjoyed this video, you want to watch more videos like this, click here.
00:05:59.580 And if you want to watch the entire podcast, click here.
00:06:05.480 We'll be right back.