January 18, 2024 • 35 mins
Garrison and Robert talk about the rise of the Daily Wire from conservative news site to aspiring entertainment empire.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Ah, welcome back to it could happen here a podcast
about things falling apart. And whenever you have things falling apart,
you have the Daily Wire. I don't know, Garrison, what
are we talking about today?
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Yeah, the Daily Wire has been our our trusted companions
among the rise of the alt right and this kind
of just impending sense of bad that has been, you know,
increasing the past five, ten years, twenty years, thirty years,
you know. So Mia in the last episode talked about
(00:44):
some of the neoliberal conditions that kind of led to
this dip in church attendance, and it's resulted in the
Christian right kind of changing formations in a few interesting ways.
And we're going to talk about that here, but now
no more specifically about how the Daily Wire has been
able to profit off of this shift. So as third spaces,
(01:09):
including churches die off, online spaces have been gun to
fill the gaps, from Facebook groups to content creators to
conservative streaming services. The organizational hub of the far right
has been picked up by opportunistic bloggers and aspiring movie moguls.
Which brings us to twenty thirteen, a perfect year. Nothing
(01:33):
went wrong, just a normal, normal time. So In twenty thirteen,
we had failed screenwriter Ben Shapiro and failed movie producer
Jeremy Boring. They started working together on a project called
Truth Revolt. Now, I assume most of us are somewhat
familiar with Ben Shapiro. He was an editor at Breitbart
(01:56):
This He started as a young conservative blogger who gained
prominence in the twentyds and the twenty teens. So I'm
not gonna waste too much time going into the background
of Ben because I'm I'm guessing we all basically know
who Benhapiro is. But I'm also guessing that almost no
one listening to this probably knows who Jeremy Boring is,
(02:19):
hence the name, So I'm gonna be focusing a lot
on Jeremy. I find Jeremy to be a kind of
fascinating person. I almost weirdly enjoy watching his stuff just
because I find it to be extremely fascinating. His demeanor,
his way of going about creating a conservative media empire,
(02:42):
I find to be really intriguing. I've watched Jeremy Boring
stuff just as like a voyeurist observer for years now,
and he's actually starting to become more of a prominent
face among the right wing media ecosystem, or at least
he's been putting his face out there for a while.
Most of the time he's just been behind the scenes.
(03:02):
So Jeremy Boring is just A is A is A
is a good Christian boy from a small town in Texas.
He got involved in kind of local town. Yeah. I
I forget the exact town because I didn't I didn't
write it down in the script, but I believe it's
somewhere in West Texas if I remember correctly. It's it's
(03:23):
it's It's been a while since I watched the two
hour interview with Jeremy Boring where he discussed his upbringing.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
God, I wonder if it's Lufkin. I'm pulling it up.
I'm pulling it up Slayton. Okay, Okay, Well still a
dog shit Texas.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Yeah. See, that's why I didn't mention it, because it's like, who.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Can's in Lubbock County, Mike love it. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
He was kind of involved in some local community theater
productions as a kid, and like a lot of kids,
he aspired to be an actor, so as a young
adult he moved to La He very soon gave up
acting I think he had one small bit role as
like a crying soldier, but besides that, he just couldn't
get any work, so instead he decided to become a
(04:05):
struggling screenwriter. A classic classic move were moving from a
failed actor. Yes, yes, yes, exactly. In the early two thousands,
he got invited to a Hollywood Bible study group with
a whole bunch of like young C list celebrities, and
over time he evolved into a sort of pastoral role
(04:27):
within the group. And then in two thousand and seven
he was able to write and produce his first movie, Spiral,
starring Zachary Levi, who now played Shazam in DC's movies
and really nothing else because he seems to be a
deeply unlikable person who has not really been hired in
many other things. But Zachary Levi was also in this
(04:49):
like a Christian Bible study group. They were both friends,
him and Jeremy Boring. So they made this movie Spiral.
It grossed just over three thousand dollars, So not the
smash hit that you know you would you you would
hopeful for your first movie.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
That is, uh yeah, that's not great.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
It's not it's it's not it's not perfect. Now. Jeremy
Boring claims that his religious and political beliefs made it
so that he wasn't able to progress very far in
the Hollywood system. But he was invited to a secret
meeting of conservatives in Hollywood called the Friends of ABE
that Robert, you should you should look up the Friends
(05:29):
of Abe logo because it's really good.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
I think people like like, uh, like John Voight and
just you know those sort of.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Like, yeah, it sounds like I think John Voight would
be a member of Yes.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Yes, I'm pretty sure John voightt was a member of
this group.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
God, they're and they're treating it. They're treating it. There
was like a Friends of something or other group that
was like an underground group providing reproductive healthcare service back
before abortion, back for Roe v. Wade, which is clearly
what they're Oh god is the who made this logo?
This is like bad clip art. Oh my god, it's
(06:06):
quite good.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
So he was he was invited to this secret meeting,
the Friends of ABE, and this is where he met
another friend of the pod, Andrew Breitbart. So this is
this is actually really a really important too, Yes, a
very important weird subcultural community within Hollywood. So as Jeremy
(06:27):
was trying to move into just movie producing, he was
actually asked to take over this Friends of Abe group.
So he became a very central role and he made
a lot of connections, connections that will soon become important
when we discuss The Daily Wire's own adventures in movie
producing in the in the next episode or so. So
he took over this group. Eventually he had this other
(06:49):
smaller Bible study group, so he's kind of moving up
in the world of conservative secret meetings in Hollywood. So
because he met Andrew bite Bart at the Friends of Abe,
Andrew bype Bart obviously knows Ben Shapiro because Shapiro used
to be the editor at Breitbart News.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Also, I feel the need to note the Friends of
Abe was founded by Gary Sinise, who was in such
beloved movies as well. I think the only beloved movie
he was in was Forrest Gump where he played Lieutenant Dan.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Oh he did Bobe.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Yeah, this is Lieutenant Dan founded the group, which is
actually like Lieutenant Dan would be in the Friends of Abe,
so that kind of fits. He also had apparently a
bit roll our some role in Apollo thirteen I forget who.
So there you go, Gary Sinise. Great.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
So around this time is when Ben Shapiro and Jeremy
Borning first met, just before like twenty ten. I think
the two met via Andrew bite Bart, whom Ben was
working for at the time at Breitbart News. Now. Jeremy
and Ben hit it off, and they decided that they
would want to work together to create media to quote
unquote influence culture. That's a term that Boring uses quite
(08:06):
a lot, is like influencing culture now. Boring was very
impressed by Shapiro and sought to propel Shapiro's fame and
wanted to create a platform and wanted to create a
platform to increase Ben's ability to impact politics on a
larger scale. He really thought he saw something in Ben that,
if utilized, could make Ben into a pretty major celebrity.
(08:30):
Boring was friendly with board members of the David Horowitz
Freedom Center, an extremely racist, anti Muslim right wing think
tank I believe based in law. Boring thought that Ben
and David had a lot in common. They were both
very like politically feisty Jewish conservatives in the LA scene,
and Boring wanted to prepare Ben to sort of carry
(08:52):
the torch of the Freedom Center using all of the
resources that David Horowitz have built up over a long
period of time. So for a year and a half,
Boring met with board members behind the scenes to create
some sort of buy in and cast Ben Shapiro as
the future for the Freedom Center, planning seeds of what
it will be to come. Eventually, David Horwitz chose Ben
(09:14):
as the heir to the Freedom Center first by giving
Shapiro and Boring an opportunity to test things out by
starting a company under the Freedom Center called Truth Revolt.
Truth Revolt is something that I didn't I think I
saw it a little bit when I was like a
younger teen, but it wasn't It wasn't super popular. Truth
(09:35):
Revolt saw some initial success as like a conservative quote
unquote news site aimed at exposing leftist media. Shapiro billed
Truth Revolt as the quote unquote anti media matters Now.
Shapiro admits that Truth of Volt ultimately wasn't very sustainable
because the whole website was designed around trying to generate
(09:56):
traffic by being linked by Drudge Report, and at the time.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
That's like literally literally like a third of right wing
media in the early two thousands to mid auts like
that was Alex Jones's whole strategy for a while too.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
Yeah, the whole point was creating headlines that would be
linked by this conservative news aggregator. And this isn't a
very sustainable business model, at least that's what Ben now claims.
And because truth Revolt was operating under the Freedom Center,
it was run as a nonprofit and received very limited
funding and little to no advertising budget. But even back then,
(10:33):
there was a big focus on creating video content to
fill out the site and grow its own YouTube page.
I have a wonderful screenshot here of some old truth
Revolt videos from like nine ten years ago. We have
brass tax on immigration. Andrew Cleavan I think his name
(10:53):
is Clevan. He's he's one of the main Daily Wire
guys now, but he was involved way way back then.
He has a video on Obama conspiracy theories, which I'm
sure that's great.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Yeah, I can't wait to dig into that one.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Ben Shapiro has a lot of videos about why Jews
vote leftist. We have videos about Hillary Clinton. We have
the left's magical thinking. This is another Andrew Clvan video
called fifty Shades of Barack Obama. So again all like
very very like twenty twelve type stuff here, like all
(11:29):
all very like early early twenty teen.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
They were iterating, they were cooking.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
They were cooking, and like cooking, sometimes your first attempt
doesn't really work out. Truth of Bolt started declining in
around early twenty fifteen, but Jeremy Boring was working on
a business plan with a more marketing driven approach. Instead
of relying on like nonprofit annual donors, Boring wanted to
use a more of a for profit model where they
(11:57):
use ad revenue and the larger web traffic generated through
marketing on social media, especially on Facebook, to pay for
this entire media operation. Now, the old guard of this
conservative think tank did not really like this plan. The
Freedom Center actually fired Jeremy Boring when he produced this
plan to revamp Truth Revolt, and soon after Ben Shapiro
(12:19):
stepped down. This was in April of twenty fifteen. Jeremy
and board Jeremy and Ben attempted to buy out the site,
but that didn't pan out, and eventually Truth Revolt just
withered away. Do you know what else slowly withers away
over time?
Speaker 2 (12:38):
You without the products and services that support this podcast.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
That's right, all right, we are back. Thank the maker
for all of those wonderful products and services that let
me spend about ten hours day watching Daily Wire videos
(13:02):
so I could write like four thousand words.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Truly, this was Sophie's grand dream when she began this.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Just have a wall of computers constantly playing daily Wire
plus exclusive content.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
That was the pitch we came to corporate with, what
if we exposed a man to all of the Daily
Wire one could possibly consume?
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Hell oh, by all right, So Jeremy Boring, failed movie producer,
failed screenwriter, has been fired from Truth Revolt. Ben Shapiro,
his colleague in arms, steps down in solidarity. We love
to see workers unite. So Shapiro and Boring still liked
their plan to use ad revenue in social media advertising
(13:46):
to make a for profit media company. So in twenty
fifteen they looked for other investors to fund a new website.
And it just so happened that around this time, two
Texas billionaires known as the Wilks Brothers. We're looking to
use their fracking fortune to quote unquote influence culture. There's
that term again. Through a mutual friend, Boring was able
(14:09):
to secure millions of dollars in seed money from the Wilkes,
who also later went on to fund prager You. With
an influx of cash on hand, Ben and Jeremy started
The Daily Wire initially just as a conservative news site,
but with ambitions to become an entire conservative entertainment production
and distribution house. Instead of relying on donors or links
(14:33):
from news aggregators, their new approach was focused on creating
and cultivating a long term audience. They first prioritized quote
unquote investing in making Ben and other up and coming
conservative figureheads more famous, in particular, using an intentional social
media strategy to propel people from out of the conservative
(14:55):
bubble into the popular zeitgeist. Specifically, Jerry Bor worked to
increase the personal brand awareness on sites other than Twitter,
where generally most of these writers spend most of their
social media hours. The point was to not just do
it on Twitter, instead do it on the other social
media sites where actual, like regular people spend more of
(15:16):
their time because it's mostly just other writers on Twitter
versus the actual audience that the Daily Wire wanted to attract,
or mostly spending their time on places like Facebook or Instagram.
So fourteen months in the Daily Wire was already cash
flow positive, and we see this approach of specifically trying
to like create celebrity. It really paid off. If you
(15:40):
look at how how like the cultural figure of Ben
Shapiro specifically kind of emerged in the mid two thousands,
Like he became such like a meme, such like a
recognizable character through very simple marketing on like YouTube, on Facebook.
It was. It was wildly successful. You cannot open up
YouTube with out seeing a Ben Shapiro destroys college student
(16:03):
on campus video, like every single every single time. Now,
on top of making a news site, they also decided
to move into podcasting, a very controversial medium. I'm gonna
I'm gonna read one quote from Ben here. Quote. One
area that we had no idea was going to be
the center of revenue was the actual podcast. When I
look back at that business plan, what we had allocated
(16:25):
for the amount of revenue from the podcast was minimal
compared to how successful the podcast became. And that cannot
be understated. The Daily Wire makes a shitload of money
on their podcast.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Yeah, we all, we all were surprised by how lucrative
prop podcasting wound up being like because it was it
was around for like a decade or so before it
was it, before people were really making any money off
of it. It's it kind of snowballed very quickly once
advertisers realized it was something they could get in on.
But like it was, there was a long time where
(16:57):
it was just sort of like a thing weird little
guy like Joe Rogan did and most people didn't really
think about them much.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Yeah, and their social media advertising plan also worked outrageously well,
especially on Facebook. Routinely, over the past few years, stories
published by The Daily Wire received more likes, shares, and
comments on Facebook than any other news publisher by a
wide margin. Shapiro has more followers in The Washington Post,
(17:25):
their engagement outpaces the New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC, CNN,
and Fox News on average by over ten times, and
they often get more clicks on their articles than all
of those outlets combined. They have like they figured out
a really successful method to promoting their news content in
(17:45):
a way that really no one else has been able
to replicate. Utilizing provocative rage bait propagandized by a select
few of online personalities, the Daily Wire has been able
to expand the brand recognition of not just their own
site but also the person brand of its own hosts.
Ben and Jeremy brought over some of the people from
Truth Revolt, but they were also scouting for new talent
(18:08):
among the twenty sixteen Conservative spear to invest their newly
acquired fracking resources into. Another quote from Ben is like
surround yourself with people who are going to be successful unquote,
particularly not like going after people who are currently popular,
but trying to find up and coming content creators who
they think they can turn into being much more successful
(18:31):
than what they currently started as. Among the people they
recruited was the relatively unknown extremist Christian writer and radio
talk show host Matt Walsh, who we will get to
in a sec the slightly more famous blogger Candice Owens,
who was picked up a few years prior by the
conservative student group Turning Point USA to be their quote
(18:52):
director of Urban Engagement, which is an awful title what
they mean by I wonder what they mean by urban engagement.
And then in twenty twenty, after being a Daily Wire
correspondent for a few years and helping to launch Ted
Cruz's own podcast, the Daily Wire hired failed actor Michael Knowles,
(19:15):
who's basically a discount Matt Walsh to host his own podcast,
And finally, in twenty twenty two, the Daily Wire recruited
Jordan Peterson, probably their biggest get to date after he
quote unquote retired from the University of Toronto. The original
funding pitch to the Wilkes Brothers, who are looking to
influence culture, explicitly positioned the Daily Wire not just as
(19:39):
a news site, but as a prospective alternative to the
liberal Hollywood monopoly. There's a really interesting quote here from
Jeremy Boring quote, I think there is a path for
conservatives to create entertainment, but I think you have to
go about it in a roundabout way. We need a
(20:00):
marketing and distribution mechanism that allows us to actually put
an audience on the target, because Hollywood will never cooperate.
Even if you manage to make a great film, they'll
never cooperate. They'll make it very difficult for you. With
Ben and with what we've been doing at Truth Revolt,
we can make something that's capable of marketing whatever we
produced thereafter for this particular audience unquote. So there he's
(20:24):
emphasizing that no matter the quality of the actual content
you create. For this sort of conservative media ecosystem, you
first need to actually build an audience that will be
able to find it. That's like their first step is
building up this audience, and then they can focus on
actually making the content just because of how this distribution
system works. That at least that was Jeremy's take on that.
(20:48):
Do you know what else is really important for building
up a sustainable audience? Products, that's right, trustworthy products and
services that our audience knows are of of fantastic, fantastic quality.
It's the it's the only way.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
We are also supported by the Wilkes Brothers, but but
directly through selling hydraulic fracturing technology. So rack your backyard
and join the frackvolution.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
We're fracking back here, all right. That was just a wonderful,
a wonderful frack break. My back feels is so much,
so much, so much more loose after that, I cracked like.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
The house across from me exploded when uh fracturing fluid
released natural gas that was then ignited by an oven.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
Speaking of speaking of fracking, I think we're both actually,
even though we're on different sides of the country, we're
both in like a ridiculous cold freeze right now.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
It's it's it's it's pretty cold.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
Yes, it is twenty two degrees right now.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Yeah, it's like sixteen or something here.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Yeah, And you're in Atlanta, so you are the last
person alive in the entire city.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
Yeah, yes, but no, I'm sure for Racking has done
nothing to contribute to this anyway. So let's turn our
dials now to twenty twenty one once again. Normal year.
Nothing bad happened, just a fun time overall. In twenty
twenty one, the Daily Wire relocated from liberal Hollywood, California,
(22:33):
to Nashville, Tennessee, with hopes of creating their own conservative
entertainment empire in the music city. After over half a
decade of building up an audience, the Daily Wire started
to shift towards creating in house entertainment media like movies
and TV, as well as producing their own neatly packaged
(22:54):
documentaries to serve as a cultural catalyst in a way
that a daily podcast show like The Shapiro Show just
can't write like we put out a daily podcast, and
because it's a daily show, it can only have a
certain level of impact for all the things we cover
in a way that you know, a highly produced documentary
can have like a little bit more like easily observable
(23:17):
impact just because of how it's being packaged. So they
saw this and decided they wanted to start putting a
lot of resources into their own documentaries as well as
their podcasts. But it wasn't just documentaries. In twenty twenty one,
they also distributed their first movie, Run Hide Fight thirty
eight percent on Rotten Tomatoes. It is a school shooter
(23:40):
thriller movie that I have not watched. I've watched a
lot of the Daily Wires a bitual content. I am
not watching Run Hide Fight. I'm sorry, I'm just not
doing it.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Yeah, I don't really want to watch Diehard with school
shooters and a teenage girl. That seems a bit on
the nose. No, I simply refused. Four other original Daily
Wire movies have come out since then, which we'll get
to some of those in the next episode. Now, before
twenty twenty, the Daily Wire was making some exclusive content
(24:14):
behind like a membership paywall for something that they called
Daily Wire All Access, But across twenty twenty one and
into twenty twenty two, they rebranded and pivoted hard into
promoting their own subscription based streaming service, The Daily Wire Plus. Again,
they are nothing if not original. This was during a
(24:35):
wave of plus branded streaming services. We have Disney Plus,
we have Paramount Plus. I'm sure there's probably many others
that I'm just not gonna bother even looking up. But
the Daily Wire Plus the hit new streaming service that
I'm sure your great uncle has.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Quote. The Daily Wire Plus is the streaming home of
the Daily Wire, Peterson Movies, Prager You and Daily Wire
Kids were one of America's fastest growing media companies and
counter cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. We're building
the future you want to see unquote. That's their that's
(25:17):
their little their little tagline thrilling.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Yeah, truly, the new line cinema of racism.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Such groundbreaking original content includes My Dinner with Trump?
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Oh my god, I hadn't even heard of that one.
Are you fucking kidding me?
Speaker 3 (25:34):
No, I'm not kidding. What is it?
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Is it actually on My Dinner with Andrea parody? Or
is it just something completely disconnected that they stole a
famous title for.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
If they just stole the famous title.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
For, damn it, it would be really funny if it
was just a shot for shot remake of My Dinner
with Andrea, but with with Andrea as Trump, Like I would,
that's respectful.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
That's actually respectable.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
That would I would watch that movie tonight.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
No, it's it's it's just a filmed dinner with Trump
and like various political advisors.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Oh my god. Yeah, oh that's so lame.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
We have I don't believe the Daily Wires releasing their
streaming metrics just like Netflix, they're camping them.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
Secret similar companies, Yeah, very similar.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
We have other other hit hit documentaries like Kanye West's Favorite,
The Greatest Lie Ever Sold by Candace Owens. Oh god,
an extremely racist misinformation or sorry, disinformation documentary about about
George Floyd.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
We have.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
That Mandalorian actresses movie Terror on the Prairie. We have
a whole bunch of a whole bunch of stuff from
Jordan Peterson after he left uh the University of Toronto
and got and got kicked off Twitter. That's the exact
time that he was hired at Daily Wire. He's a
whole bunch of stuff of just like roundtable discussions on
like the Bible, and I believe he has that dragon mythology.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Oh it's great now that that's that's a good show.
I've watched all of that one that's Kobe and we
we enjoyed ourselves quite a lot.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
We have We have a making a Murderer ripoff documentary
by Candace Owens called Convicting a Murderer. Again, truly original stuff.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Great.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
But it's not just movies, TV shows and documentaries. It's
also like, like we mentioned, their their they're hit podcasts quote.
The Daily Wire Plus podcast network is America's sixth largest
podcast publisher and produces several of the top ranked podcasts
in America, including The Ben Shapiro Show, The Jordan B.
Peterson Podcast, Candace with Candace Owens, The Matt Wall Show,
(27:43):
The Michael Knowles Show, and The Morning Wire, some of
which do quite well on the charts and are often
sometimes sometimes beaten by Robert's Podcast. Anyway, so, a little
over a year ago, the Daily Wire Plus passed one
million subscribers. We don't have any updated numbers on that,
(28:05):
so it's probably quite higher now, but at least as
of around a year ago they had a million subscribers,
and again as of back then, it was bringing in
the company two thirds of its annual revenue. I think
it was like three or so years ago they were
making one hundred million dollars a year, so they were
making bank across their podcasts and exclusive content. They have
(28:29):
over three hundred employees and are still growing and are
investing hundreds of millions of dollars into producing original entertainment content.
In their efforts to influence politics through entertainment media, they
strive to create cultural events around the release of their
original documentaries. The biggest success they've had with this is
(28:50):
what was in twenty twenty two with What Is a Woman?
Which rocketed the Daily Wire Plus into the online spotlight
and proved there was great success to be had with
this star of aggressive anti trans advocacy. The film also
put the previously niche figure of Matt Walsh on the
map and established Walsh as an authority in queer exterminationist campaigning.
(29:13):
I've known of Walsh for like the past decade. After
he had a short lived radio career, he made a
name in Christian circles as a provocative blogger, sort of
like a young firebrand of the Christian right. In the
early twenty teens, he had a brief stint at Glenn
Beck's The Blaze before being recruited to The Daily Wire
in twenty seventeen to do a daily podcast. The goal
(29:36):
of documentaries such as What Is a Woman? Beyond growing
the Daily Wire's subscriber count is also to encourage real
world action while converting attention from the documentary into actual
real world harassment campaigns and live events, which fuel even
more content. It's like this, It's like this weird content
circle that the Daily Wire does. They create content to
(29:58):
make these real world events, which then can fuel more content.
It's this perfect loop that generates them a lot of money.
On October twenty first, twenty twenty two, the Daily Wire
put on a quote rally to end child mutilation at
the Tennessee State Capitol, which was streamable on Daily Wire
Plus exactly. This is a perfect example of creating this
(30:18):
event that then allows them to also create exclusive content
for their own streaming service. The Daily Wire has been
incahoots with the state government of Tennessee ever since they
first moved their headquarters there. Back in twenty twenty one,
the General Assembly and Governor drafted a resolution welcoming the
Daily Wire to the state. Jeremy Boring regularly gets invited
(30:38):
to dinners at the Governor's mansion. After the release of
What Is a Woman, the governor of Tennessee announced an
investigation into a transgender health clinic in Nashville, and Walsh
has made appearances at official state press conferences, and Tennessee's
legislator has led the charge on following the Daily Wire
and Walsh's political program to target trans people, ban drag shows,
(31:00):
and lobbying school boards to ban LGBTQ materials in schools.
The Daily Wire was they were kind of wise to
not get too caught up in the Trumpian mud from
twenty sixteen to twenty twenty, instead instead focusing on broader
culture war issues ranging from anti liberalism, antidiversity, parental rights,
(31:23):
religious rights, and attacks on LGBTQ people. But that also
means that they didn't peak during the Trump era in
the way that a lot of other conservative content people
kind of did. They chose not to capitalize on the
Trumpian alt right moment, and they were way too smart
to go full QAnon. Instead, they were kind of waiting
(31:45):
on the sidelines, slowly growing an audience to eventually find
the right moment to catalyze more widespread support and thrust
themselves into the spotlight, which they have now done by
crafting anti queer propaganda to pick up the baton from
the dying to a non movement, while moving the needle
away from from like explicitly ce brain shit to simple
(32:06):
stuff like parental rights and the more socially acceptable groomer
and save the children talking points. The once more exotic
target of pedophilic elites has been shifted to simply any
random queer person, which is a much more tangible point
of iyre. And that's where're gonna leave us here today,
kind of on the point that the Daily Wire waited
(32:29):
and found the moment in like the first year or
two of the Biden presidency to really push themselves to
be the own spotlight instead of just relying in the
shadow of Donald Trump in the way that someone like
Tucker kind of has now done. He's not nearly as
popular as he was in twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen,
and the Daily Wire is now massively influential in a
(32:50):
way that they were only kind of rising to prominence
back during the Altright era. So in the next episode,
we'll talk a little bit more about The Daily Wire's
own anti queer advocacy and their push for original content,
including a brand new child focused to streaming service, which
I will talk about in the next episode. Anyway, Robert,
(33:13):
do you have any do you have any thoughts on
the Daily Wire?
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Well, I know that the child grooming service they're building
a big part of what they're looking to do is
try to copy the show Bluey, which is like the
biggest thing in children's entertainment right now, and just casual
knowledge of where that is, talking to parents and stuff
about Bluey, Like, I feel like it might be a
bridge too far for them, because they're they're they're they're
(33:40):
trying to go after they're trying to capture like market
from something that's legitimately really fucking good, as opposed to
just put it like they're the they're kind of most
commercially viable movies like the School Shooting movie are, from
what I've read in reviews, like just kind of normal
mid movies, Like they don't necessarily feel like a Daily
(34:01):
Wire movie. There'll be a couple of points in there maybe,
but they could more or less pass for something you'd
see on Netflix or Amazon Prime or whatever, which is
you know, if you're competing with mid grade action movies
and the like that are a dime a dozen, you
can actually do that fairly well. And it's even possible
to like well. The economics of streaming are actually deeply obscure,
(34:24):
but theoretically it's possible to do as well with that
as Netflix does with it, right because people, But if
you're trying to replace a children's show that, like kids
consume voraciously and are deeply in love with and is
really well made, I think that's actually a lot harder
than they're guessing it's going to be. Like yeah, word,
adults who want something to watch when they're drunk at
(34:47):
night are a harder audience than little kids who are
obsessed with a TV show that is the best in
its market.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
It's certainly a gamble, and we will talk more about
the details of this gamble in the next episode, as
we will also eventually eventually talk about their brand new
movie that came out last month, Ladyballers. All right, we're
do I.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
Feel like I should call hr just because you mentioned
the name of that movie.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
See you in the next episode.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
It could happen here as a production of Cool Zone
Media For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our
website coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts,
you can find sources for It could happen here, updated
monthly at cool zonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Ah, welcome back to it could happen here a podcast
about things falling apart. And whenever you have things falling apart,
you have the Daily Wire. I don't know, Garrison, what
are we talking about today?
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Yeah, the Daily Wire has been our our trusted companions
among the rise of the alt right and this kind
of just impending sense of bad that has been, you know,
increasing the past five, ten years, twenty years, thirty years,
you know. So Mia in the last episode talked about
(00:44):
some of the neoliberal conditions that kind of led to
this dip in church attendance, and it's resulted in the
Christian right kind of changing formations in a few interesting ways.
And we're going to talk about that here, but now
no more specifically about how the Daily Wire has been
able to profit off of this shift. So as third spaces,
(01:09):
including churches die off, online spaces have been gun to
fill the gaps, from Facebook groups to content creators to
conservative streaming services. The organizational hub of the far right
has been picked up by opportunistic bloggers and aspiring movie moguls.
Which brings us to twenty thirteen, a perfect year. Nothing
(01:33):
went wrong, just a normal, normal time. So In twenty thirteen,
we had failed screenwriter Ben Shapiro and failed movie producer
Jeremy Boring. They started working together on a project called
Truth Revolt. Now, I assume most of us are somewhat
familiar with Ben Shapiro. He was an editor at Breitbart
(01:56):
This He started as a young conservative blogger who gained
prominence in the twentyds and the twenty teens. So I'm
not gonna waste too much time going into the background
of Ben because I'm I'm guessing we all basically know
who Benhapiro is. But I'm also guessing that almost no
one listening to this probably knows who Jeremy Boring is,
(02:19):
hence the name, So I'm gonna be focusing a lot
on Jeremy. I find Jeremy to be a kind of
fascinating person. I almost weirdly enjoy watching his stuff just
because I find it to be extremely fascinating. His demeanor,
his way of going about creating a conservative media empire,
(02:42):
I find to be really intriguing. I've watched Jeremy Boring
stuff just as like a voyeurist observer for years now,
and he's actually starting to become more of a prominent
face among the right wing media ecosystem, or at least
he's been putting his face out there for a while.
Most of the time he's just been behind the scenes.
(03:02):
So Jeremy Boring is just A is A is A
is a good Christian boy from a small town in Texas.
He got involved in kind of local town. Yeah. I
I forget the exact town because I didn't I didn't
write it down in the script, but I believe it's
somewhere in West Texas if I remember correctly. It's it's
(03:23):
it's It's been a while since I watched the two
hour interview with Jeremy Boring where he discussed his upbringing.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
God, I wonder if it's Lufkin. I'm pulling it up.
I'm pulling it up Slayton. Okay, Okay, Well still a
dog shit Texas.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Yeah. See, that's why I didn't mention it, because it's like, who.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Can's in Lubbock County, Mike love it. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
He was kind of involved in some local community theater
productions as a kid, and like a lot of kids,
he aspired to be an actor, so as a young
adult he moved to La He very soon gave up
acting I think he had one small bit role as
like a crying soldier, but besides that, he just couldn't
get any work, so instead he decided to become a
(04:05):
struggling screenwriter. A classic classic move were moving from a
failed actor. Yes, yes, yes, exactly. In the early two thousands,
he got invited to a Hollywood Bible study group with
a whole bunch of like young C list celebrities, and
over time he evolved into a sort of pastoral role
(04:27):
within the group. And then in two thousand and seven
he was able to write and produce his first movie, Spiral,
starring Zachary Levi, who now played Shazam in DC's movies
and really nothing else because he seems to be a
deeply unlikable person who has not really been hired in
many other things. But Zachary Levi was also in this
(04:49):
like a Christian Bible study group. They were both friends,
him and Jeremy Boring. So they made this movie Spiral.
It grossed just over three thousand dollars, So not the
smash hit that you know you would you you would
hopeful for your first movie.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
That is, uh yeah, that's not great.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
It's not it's it's not it's not perfect. Now. Jeremy
Boring claims that his religious and political beliefs made it
so that he wasn't able to progress very far in
the Hollywood system. But he was invited to a secret
meeting of conservatives in Hollywood called the Friends of ABE
that Robert, you should you should look up the Friends
(05:29):
of Abe logo because it's really good.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
I think people like like, uh, like John Voight and
just you know those sort of.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Like, yeah, it sounds like I think John Voight would
be a member of Yes.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Yes, I'm pretty sure John voightt was a member of
this group.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
God, they're and they're treating it. They're treating it. There
was like a Friends of something or other group that
was like an underground group providing reproductive healthcare service back
before abortion, back for Roe v. Wade, which is clearly
what they're Oh god is the who made this logo?
This is like bad clip art. Oh my god, it's
(06:06):
quite good.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
So he was he was invited to this secret meeting,
the Friends of ABE, and this is where he met
another friend of the pod, Andrew Breitbart. So this is
this is actually really a really important too, Yes, a
very important weird subcultural community within Hollywood. So as Jeremy
(06:27):
was trying to move into just movie producing, he was
actually asked to take over this Friends of Abe group.
So he became a very central role and he made
a lot of connections, connections that will soon become important
when we discuss The Daily Wire's own adventures in movie
producing in the in the next episode or so. So
he took over this group. Eventually he had this other
(06:49):
smaller Bible study group, so he's kind of moving up
in the world of conservative secret meetings in Hollywood. So
because he met Andrew bite Bart at the Friends of Abe,
Andrew bype Bart obviously knows Ben Shapiro because Shapiro used
to be the editor at Breitbart News.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Also, I feel the need to note the Friends of
Abe was founded by Gary Sinise, who was in such
beloved movies as well. I think the only beloved movie
he was in was Forrest Gump where he played Lieutenant Dan.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Oh he did Bobe.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Yeah, this is Lieutenant Dan founded the group, which is
actually like Lieutenant Dan would be in the Friends of Abe,
so that kind of fits. He also had apparently a
bit roll our some role in Apollo thirteen I forget who.
So there you go, Gary Sinise. Great.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
So around this time is when Ben Shapiro and Jeremy
Borning first met, just before like twenty ten. I think
the two met via Andrew bite Bart, whom Ben was
working for at the time at Breitbart News. Now. Jeremy
and Ben hit it off, and they decided that they
would want to work together to create media to quote
unquote influence culture. That's a term that Boring uses quite
(08:06):
a lot, is like influencing culture now. Boring was very
impressed by Shapiro and sought to propel Shapiro's fame and
wanted to create a platform and wanted to create a
platform to increase Ben's ability to impact politics on a
larger scale. He really thought he saw something in Ben that,
if utilized, could make Ben into a pretty major celebrity.
(08:30):
Boring was friendly with board members of the David Horowitz
Freedom Center, an extremely racist, anti Muslim right wing think
tank I believe based in law. Boring thought that Ben
and David had a lot in common. They were both
very like politically feisty Jewish conservatives in the LA scene,
and Boring wanted to prepare Ben to sort of carry
(08:52):
the torch of the Freedom Center using all of the
resources that David Horowitz have built up over a long
period of time. So for a year and a half,
Boring met with board members behind the scenes to create
some sort of buy in and cast Ben Shapiro as
the future for the Freedom Center, planning seeds of what
it will be to come. Eventually, David Horwitz chose Ben
(09:14):
as the heir to the Freedom Center first by giving
Shapiro and Boring an opportunity to test things out by
starting a company under the Freedom Center called Truth Revolt.
Truth Revolt is something that I didn't I think I
saw it a little bit when I was like a
younger teen, but it wasn't It wasn't super popular. Truth
(09:35):
Revolt saw some initial success as like a conservative quote
unquote news site aimed at exposing leftist media. Shapiro billed
Truth Revolt as the quote unquote anti media matters Now.
Shapiro admits that Truth of Volt ultimately wasn't very sustainable
because the whole website was designed around trying to generate
(09:56):
traffic by being linked by Drudge Report, and at the time.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
That's like literally literally like a third of right wing
media in the early two thousands to mid auts like
that was Alex Jones's whole strategy for a while too.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
Yeah, the whole point was creating headlines that would be
linked by this conservative news aggregator. And this isn't a
very sustainable business model, at least that's what Ben now claims.
And because truth Revolt was operating under the Freedom Center,
it was run as a nonprofit and received very limited
funding and little to no advertising budget. But even back then,
(10:33):
there was a big focus on creating video content to
fill out the site and grow its own YouTube page.
I have a wonderful screenshot here of some old truth
Revolt videos from like nine ten years ago. We have
brass tax on immigration. Andrew Cleavan I think his name
(10:53):
is Clevan. He's he's one of the main Daily Wire
guys now, but he was involved way way back then.
He has a video on Obama conspiracy theories, which I'm
sure that's great.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Yeah, I can't wait to dig into that one.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Ben Shapiro has a lot of videos about why Jews
vote leftist. We have videos about Hillary Clinton. We have
the left's magical thinking. This is another Andrew Clvan video
called fifty Shades of Barack Obama. So again all like
very very like twenty twelve type stuff here, like all
(11:29):
all very like early early twenty teen.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
They were iterating, they were cooking.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
They were cooking, and like cooking, sometimes your first attempt
doesn't really work out. Truth of Bolt started declining in
around early twenty fifteen, but Jeremy Boring was working on
a business plan with a more marketing driven approach. Instead
of relying on like nonprofit annual donors, Boring wanted to
use a more of a for profit model where they
(11:57):
use ad revenue and the larger web traffic generated through
marketing on social media, especially on Facebook, to pay for
this entire media operation. Now, the old guard of this
conservative think tank did not really like this plan. The
Freedom Center actually fired Jeremy Boring when he produced this
plan to revamp Truth Revolt, and soon after Ben Shapiro
(12:19):
stepped down. This was in April of twenty fifteen. Jeremy
and board Jeremy and Ben attempted to buy out the site,
but that didn't pan out, and eventually Truth Revolt just
withered away. Do you know what else slowly withers away
over time?
Speaker 2 (12:38):
You without the products and services that support this podcast.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
That's right, all right, we are back. Thank the maker
for all of those wonderful products and services that let
me spend about ten hours day watching Daily Wire videos
(13:02):
so I could write like four thousand words.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Truly, this was Sophie's grand dream when she began this.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Just have a wall of computers constantly playing daily Wire
plus exclusive content.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
That was the pitch we came to corporate with, what
if we exposed a man to all of the Daily
Wire one could possibly consume?
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Hell oh, by all right, So Jeremy Boring, failed movie producer,
failed screenwriter, has been fired from Truth Revolt. Ben Shapiro,
his colleague in arms, steps down in solidarity. We love
to see workers unite. So Shapiro and Boring still liked
their plan to use ad revenue in social media advertising
(13:46):
to make a for profit media company. So in twenty
fifteen they looked for other investors to fund a new website.
And it just so happened that around this time, two
Texas billionaires known as the Wilks Brothers. We're looking to
use their fracking fortune to quote unquote influence culture. There's
that term again. Through a mutual friend, Boring was able
(14:09):
to secure millions of dollars in seed money from the Wilkes,
who also later went on to fund prager You. With
an influx of cash on hand, Ben and Jeremy started
The Daily Wire initially just as a conservative news site,
but with ambitions to become an entire conservative entertainment production
and distribution house. Instead of relying on donors or links
(14:33):
from news aggregators, their new approach was focused on creating
and cultivating a long term audience. They first prioritized quote
unquote investing in making Ben and other up and coming
conservative figureheads more famous, in particular, using an intentional social
media strategy to propel people from out of the conservative
(14:55):
bubble into the popular zeitgeist. Specifically, Jerry Bor worked to
increase the personal brand awareness on sites other than Twitter,
where generally most of these writers spend most of their
social media hours. The point was to not just do
it on Twitter, instead do it on the other social
media sites where actual, like regular people spend more of
(15:16):
their time because it's mostly just other writers on Twitter
versus the actual audience that the Daily Wire wanted to attract,
or mostly spending their time on places like Facebook or Instagram.
So fourteen months in the Daily Wire was already cash
flow positive, and we see this approach of specifically trying
to like create celebrity. It really paid off. If you
(15:40):
look at how how like the cultural figure of Ben
Shapiro specifically kind of emerged in the mid two thousands,
Like he became such like a meme, such like a
recognizable character through very simple marketing on like YouTube, on Facebook.
It was. It was wildly successful. You cannot open up
YouTube with out seeing a Ben Shapiro destroys college student
(16:03):
on campus video, like every single every single time. Now,
on top of making a news site, they also decided
to move into podcasting, a very controversial medium. I'm gonna
I'm gonna read one quote from Ben here. Quote. One
area that we had no idea was going to be
the center of revenue was the actual podcast. When I
look back at that business plan, what we had allocated
(16:25):
for the amount of revenue from the podcast was minimal
compared to how successful the podcast became. And that cannot
be understated. The Daily Wire makes a shitload of money
on their podcast.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Yeah, we all, we all were surprised by how lucrative
prop podcasting wound up being like because it was it
was around for like a decade or so before it
was it, before people were really making any money off
of it. It's it kind of snowballed very quickly once
advertisers realized it was something they could get in on.
But like it was, there was a long time where
(16:57):
it was just sort of like a thing weird little
guy like Joe Rogan did and most people didn't really
think about them much.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Yeah, and their social media advertising plan also worked outrageously well,
especially on Facebook. Routinely, over the past few years, stories
published by The Daily Wire received more likes, shares, and
comments on Facebook than any other news publisher by a
wide margin. Shapiro has more followers in The Washington Post,
(17:25):
their engagement outpaces the New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC, CNN,
and Fox News on average by over ten times, and
they often get more clicks on their articles than all
of those outlets combined. They have like they figured out
a really successful method to promoting their news content in
(17:45):
a way that really no one else has been able
to replicate. Utilizing provocative rage bait propagandized by a select
few of online personalities, the Daily Wire has been able
to expand the brand recognition of not just their own
site but also the person brand of its own hosts.
Ben and Jeremy brought over some of the people from
Truth Revolt, but they were also scouting for new talent
(18:08):
among the twenty sixteen Conservative spear to invest their newly
acquired fracking resources into. Another quote from Ben is like
surround yourself with people who are going to be successful unquote,
particularly not like going after people who are currently popular,
but trying to find up and coming content creators who
they think they can turn into being much more successful
(18:31):
than what they currently started as. Among the people they
recruited was the relatively unknown extremist Christian writer and radio
talk show host Matt Walsh, who we will get to
in a sec the slightly more famous blogger Candice Owens,
who was picked up a few years prior by the
conservative student group Turning Point USA to be their quote
(18:52):
director of Urban Engagement, which is an awful title what
they mean by I wonder what they mean by urban engagement.
And then in twenty twenty, after being a Daily Wire
correspondent for a few years and helping to launch Ted
Cruz's own podcast, the Daily Wire hired failed actor Michael Knowles,
(19:15):
who's basically a discount Matt Walsh to host his own podcast,
And finally, in twenty twenty two, the Daily Wire recruited
Jordan Peterson, probably their biggest get to date after he
quote unquote retired from the University of Toronto. The original
funding pitch to the Wilkes Brothers, who are looking to
influence culture, explicitly positioned the Daily Wire not just as
(19:39):
a news site, but as a prospective alternative to the
liberal Hollywood monopoly. There's a really interesting quote here from
Jeremy Boring quote, I think there is a path for
conservatives to create entertainment, but I think you have to
go about it in a roundabout way. We need a
(20:00):
marketing and distribution mechanism that allows us to actually put
an audience on the target, because Hollywood will never cooperate.
Even if you manage to make a great film, they'll
never cooperate. They'll make it very difficult for you. With
Ben and with what we've been doing at Truth Revolt,
we can make something that's capable of marketing whatever we
produced thereafter for this particular audience unquote. So there he's
(20:24):
emphasizing that no matter the quality of the actual content
you create. For this sort of conservative media ecosystem, you
first need to actually build an audience that will be
able to find it. That's like their first step is
building up this audience, and then they can focus on
actually making the content just because of how this distribution
system works. That at least that was Jeremy's take on that.
(20:48):
Do you know what else is really important for building
up a sustainable audience? Products, that's right, trustworthy products and
services that our audience knows are of of fantastic, fantastic quality.
It's the it's the only way.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
We are also supported by the Wilkes Brothers, but but
directly through selling hydraulic fracturing technology. So rack your backyard
and join the frackvolution.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
We're fracking back here, all right. That was just a wonderful,
a wonderful frack break. My back feels is so much,
so much, so much more loose after that, I cracked like.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
The house across from me exploded when uh fracturing fluid
released natural gas that was then ignited by an oven.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
Speaking of speaking of fracking, I think we're both actually,
even though we're on different sides of the country, we're
both in like a ridiculous cold freeze right now.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
It's it's it's it's pretty cold.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
Yes, it is twenty two degrees right now.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Yeah, it's like sixteen or something here.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Yeah, And you're in Atlanta, so you are the last
person alive in the entire city.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
Yeah, yes, but no, I'm sure for Racking has done
nothing to contribute to this anyway. So let's turn our
dials now to twenty twenty one once again. Normal year.
Nothing bad happened, just a fun time overall. In twenty
twenty one, the Daily Wire relocated from liberal Hollywood, California,
(22:33):
to Nashville, Tennessee, with hopes of creating their own conservative
entertainment empire in the music city. After over half a
decade of building up an audience, the Daily Wire started
to shift towards creating in house entertainment media like movies
and TV, as well as producing their own neatly packaged
(22:54):
documentaries to serve as a cultural catalyst in a way
that a daily podcast show like The Shapiro Show just
can't write like we put out a daily podcast, and
because it's a daily show, it can only have a
certain level of impact for all the things we cover
in a way that you know, a highly produced documentary
can have like a little bit more like easily observable
(23:17):
impact just because of how it's being packaged. So they
saw this and decided they wanted to start putting a
lot of resources into their own documentaries as well as
their podcasts. But it wasn't just documentaries. In twenty twenty one,
they also distributed their first movie, Run Hide Fight thirty
eight percent on Rotten Tomatoes. It is a school shooter
(23:40):
thriller movie that I have not watched. I've watched a
lot of the Daily Wires a bitual content. I am
not watching Run Hide Fight. I'm sorry, I'm just not
doing it.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Yeah, I don't really want to watch Diehard with school
shooters and a teenage girl. That seems a bit on
the nose. No, I simply refused. Four other original Daily
Wire movies have come out since then, which we'll get
to some of those in the next episode. Now, before
twenty twenty, the Daily Wire was making some exclusive content
(24:14):
behind like a membership paywall for something that they called
Daily Wire All Access, But across twenty twenty one and
into twenty twenty two, they rebranded and pivoted hard into
promoting their own subscription based streaming service, The Daily Wire Plus. Again,
they are nothing if not original. This was during a
(24:35):
wave of plus branded streaming services. We have Disney Plus,
we have Paramount Plus. I'm sure there's probably many others
that I'm just not gonna bother even looking up. But
the Daily Wire Plus the hit new streaming service that
I'm sure your great uncle has.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Quote. The Daily Wire Plus is the streaming home of
the Daily Wire, Peterson Movies, Prager You and Daily Wire
Kids were one of America's fastest growing media companies and
counter cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. We're building
the future you want to see unquote. That's their that's
(25:17):
their little their little tagline thrilling.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Yeah, truly, the new line cinema of racism.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Such groundbreaking original content includes My Dinner with Trump?
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Oh my god, I hadn't even heard of that one.
Are you fucking kidding me?
Speaker 3 (25:34):
No, I'm not kidding. What is it?
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Is it actually on My Dinner with Andrea parody? Or
is it just something completely disconnected that they stole a
famous title for.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
If they just stole the famous title.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
For, damn it, it would be really funny if it
was just a shot for shot remake of My Dinner
with Andrea, but with with Andrea as Trump, Like I would,
that's respectful.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
That's actually respectable.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
That would I would watch that movie tonight.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
No, it's it's it's just a filmed dinner with Trump
and like various political advisors.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Oh my god. Yeah, oh that's so lame.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
We have I don't believe the Daily Wires releasing their
streaming metrics just like Netflix, they're camping them.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
Secret similar companies, Yeah, very similar.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
We have other other hit hit documentaries like Kanye West's Favorite,
The Greatest Lie Ever Sold by Candace Owens. Oh god,
an extremely racist misinformation or sorry, disinformation documentary about about
George Floyd.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
We have.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
That Mandalorian actresses movie Terror on the Prairie. We have
a whole bunch of a whole bunch of stuff from
Jordan Peterson after he left uh the University of Toronto
and got and got kicked off Twitter. That's the exact
time that he was hired at Daily Wire. He's a
whole bunch of stuff of just like roundtable discussions on
like the Bible, and I believe he has that dragon mythology.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Oh it's great now that that's that's a good show.
I've watched all of that one that's Kobe and we
we enjoyed ourselves quite a lot.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
We have We have a making a Murderer ripoff documentary
by Candace Owens called Convicting a Murderer. Again, truly original stuff.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Great.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
But it's not just movies, TV shows and documentaries. It's
also like, like we mentioned, their their they're hit podcasts quote.
The Daily Wire Plus podcast network is America's sixth largest
podcast publisher and produces several of the top ranked podcasts
in America, including The Ben Shapiro Show, The Jordan B.
Peterson Podcast, Candace with Candace Owens, The Matt Wall Show,
(27:43):
The Michael Knowles Show, and The Morning Wire, some of
which do quite well on the charts and are often
sometimes sometimes beaten by Robert's Podcast. Anyway, so, a little
over a year ago, the Daily Wire Plus passed one
million subscribers. We don't have any updated numbers on that,
(28:05):
so it's probably quite higher now, but at least as
of around a year ago they had a million subscribers,
and again as of back then, it was bringing in
the company two thirds of its annual revenue. I think
it was like three or so years ago they were
making one hundred million dollars a year, so they were
making bank across their podcasts and exclusive content. They have
(28:29):
over three hundred employees and are still growing and are
investing hundreds of millions of dollars into producing original entertainment content.
In their efforts to influence politics through entertainment media, they
strive to create cultural events around the release of their
original documentaries. The biggest success they've had with this is
(28:50):
what was in twenty twenty two with What Is a Woman?
Which rocketed the Daily Wire Plus into the online spotlight
and proved there was great success to be had with
this star of aggressive anti trans advocacy. The film also
put the previously niche figure of Matt Walsh on the
map and established Walsh as an authority in queer exterminationist campaigning.
(29:13):
I've known of Walsh for like the past decade. After
he had a short lived radio career, he made a
name in Christian circles as a provocative blogger, sort of
like a young firebrand of the Christian right. In the
early twenty teens, he had a brief stint at Glenn
Beck's The Blaze before being recruited to The Daily Wire
in twenty seventeen to do a daily podcast. The goal
(29:36):
of documentaries such as What Is a Woman? Beyond growing
the Daily Wire's subscriber count is also to encourage real
world action while converting attention from the documentary into actual
real world harassment campaigns and live events, which fuel even
more content. It's like this, It's like this weird content
circle that the Daily Wire does. They create content to
(29:58):
make these real world events, which then can fuel more content.
It's this perfect loop that generates them a lot of money.
On October twenty first, twenty twenty two, the Daily Wire
put on a quote rally to end child mutilation at
the Tennessee State Capitol, which was streamable on Daily Wire
Plus exactly. This is a perfect example of creating this
(30:18):
event that then allows them to also create exclusive content
for their own streaming service. The Daily Wire has been
incahoots with the state government of Tennessee ever since they
first moved their headquarters there. Back in twenty twenty one,
the General Assembly and Governor drafted a resolution welcoming the
Daily Wire to the state. Jeremy Boring regularly gets invited
(30:38):
to dinners at the Governor's mansion. After the release of
What Is a Woman, the governor of Tennessee announced an
investigation into a transgender health clinic in Nashville, and Walsh
has made appearances at official state press conferences, and Tennessee's
legislator has led the charge on following the Daily Wire
and Walsh's political program to target trans people, ban drag shows,
(31:00):
and lobbying school boards to ban LGBTQ materials in schools.
The Daily Wire was they were kind of wise to
not get too caught up in the Trumpian mud from
twenty sixteen to twenty twenty, instead instead focusing on broader
culture war issues ranging from anti liberalism, antidiversity, parental rights,
(31:23):
religious rights, and attacks on LGBTQ people. But that also
means that they didn't peak during the Trump era in
the way that a lot of other conservative content people
kind of did. They chose not to capitalize on the
Trumpian alt right moment, and they were way too smart
to go full QAnon. Instead, they were kind of waiting
(31:45):
on the sidelines, slowly growing an audience to eventually find
the right moment to catalyze more widespread support and thrust
themselves into the spotlight, which they have now done by
crafting anti queer propaganda to pick up the baton from
the dying to a non movement, while moving the needle
away from from like explicitly ce brain shit to simple
(32:06):
stuff like parental rights and the more socially acceptable groomer
and save the children talking points. The once more exotic
target of pedophilic elites has been shifted to simply any
random queer person, which is a much more tangible point
of iyre. And that's where're gonna leave us here today,
kind of on the point that the Daily Wire waited
(32:29):
and found the moment in like the first year or
two of the Biden presidency to really push themselves to
be the own spotlight instead of just relying in the
shadow of Donald Trump in the way that someone like
Tucker kind of has now done. He's not nearly as
popular as he was in twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen,
and the Daily Wire is now massively influential in a
(32:50):
way that they were only kind of rising to prominence
back during the Altright era. So in the next episode,
we'll talk a little bit more about The Daily Wire's
own anti queer advocacy and their push for original content,
including a brand new child focused to streaming service, which
I will talk about in the next episode. Anyway, Robert,
(33:13):
do you have any do you have any thoughts on
the Daily Wire?
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Well, I know that the child grooming service they're building
a big part of what they're looking to do is
try to copy the show Bluey, which is like the
biggest thing in children's entertainment right now, and just casual
knowledge of where that is, talking to parents and stuff
about Bluey, Like, I feel like it might be a
bridge too far for them, because they're they're they're they're
(33:40):
trying to go after they're trying to capture like market
from something that's legitimately really fucking good, as opposed to
just put it like they're the they're kind of most
commercially viable movies like the School Shooting movie are, from
what I've read in reviews, like just kind of normal
mid movies, Like they don't necessarily feel like a Daily
(34:01):
Wire movie. There'll be a couple of points in there maybe,
but they could more or less pass for something you'd
see on Netflix or Amazon Prime or whatever, which is
you know, if you're competing with mid grade action movies
and the like that are a dime a dozen, you
can actually do that fairly well. And it's even possible
to like well. The economics of streaming are actually deeply obscure,
(34:24):
but theoretically it's possible to do as well with that
as Netflix does with it, right because people, But if
you're trying to replace a children's show that, like kids
consume voraciously and are deeply in love with and is
really well made, I think that's actually a lot harder
than they're guessing it's going to be. Like yeah, word,
adults who want something to watch when they're drunk at
(34:47):
night are a harder audience than little kids who are
obsessed with a TV show that is the best in
its market.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
It's certainly a gamble, and we will talk more about
the details of this gamble in the next episode, as
we will also eventually eventually talk about their brand new
movie that came out last month, Ladyballers. All right, we're
do I.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
Feel like I should call hr just because you mentioned
the name of that movie.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
See you in the next episode.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
It could happen here as a production of Cool Zone
Media For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our
website coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts,
you can find sources for It could happen here, updated
monthly at cool zonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
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Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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