Reinventing Journalism with Richie McGinniss

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey there, friends, Welcome to jumble Think. My name is
Michael Woodward. I'm your host. Wow. Wow, it's been over
a year since our last episode. It's been a minute,
but we have a killer season lined up for you.
Season five, going live, we're going video, we're changing the game,
we're stepping it up, we're making it a better show
for you. Still approaching that four hundred episodes, we're just

(00:23):
a couple episodes away, and really excited about what we
have for this season of jumble Thing for you. Now,
if you're a longtime listener, you're probably on app podcasts
or wherever you listen to podcasts. Head on over to
YouTube search for jumble Think. Click that subscribe button because
we want you to check us out. Video first, video
all the time. Of course, you can listen to us

(00:44):
where you always listen to us. But hey, watch along,
hear these interviews, see them in real time. It's going
to be a lot of fun, a lot of fun. Well,
next episode we're going to be talking about what the
changes are at Jumble Thing, how we're going live on location,
how we're in more interviews, some adventures that we're on,
and exciting things in store for this year. And next

(01:06):
year of the show, we have a killer episode to
kick it off today, Richie McGinnis. Richie worked for NBC News,
he worked for Tucker Carlson, and he is now reinventing
with his team a new approach to journalism, scrappy gonzo
style on the streets, in the thick of it, catching
the stories, more accurately, telling you what's going on, being

(01:28):
objective about it.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
Let's be honest.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
None of the news organizations are doing a good job
of telling the stories truly, and so Richie and his
team are out there doing it. He was there on
January sixth, He was there in Kenosha with everything happening
with Rittenhouse and Black Lives Matter. He was out in
Seattle for the chaz and the chaos of the takeover

(01:51):
downtown and he's going to give us a real world
and look into what was happening down there. Super cool stuff.
And he has a book called Riot Diet and some
other books coming out to tell the stories of what
happened and why he's changing the world of journalism. It's
super cool. I love this conversation. So let's join our

(02:14):
time with Richie mcguinnis and learning more about how the
world of journalism is getting shaken by what he's doing
and what his team's doing on Hey, we're with Richie McGuinness. Richie,
so glad you're on.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
Thanks for having me.

Speaker 3 (02:33):
Now.

Speaker 1 (02:33):
I love things that kind of push the boundaries of
convention and the way you're approaching things Because you started
as a journalist. You've been a journalist for how long?

Speaker 2 (02:45):
Now, let's see over a decade, right, So you such
an assistant is how I started. So I was serving
coffee to Rev. Sharpton. But I guess I can call
that a journalist.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
I'm sure there's stories to tell from that time. But you,
I worked in kind of the traditional media landscape, but
are pioneering a new way to do that. So before
we dive in, kind of give our listeners our viewers
an insight into what you do and why journalism.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Well, it was a long journey to eventually end up
in the news space.

Speaker 3 (03:18):
I moved to DC in two thousand and eight, and
that was right when Barack Obama was running for president.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Yeah, and I.

Speaker 3 (03:26):
Was in high school during the spring invasion of Iraq,
and I was very interested in the Middle East, not
only because of what was going on over there, but
also because my mom worked in Manhattan.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
On ie to eleven, I was in sixth grade.

Speaker 3 (03:40):
Wow, and I thought that my mom she worked at
thirty Rock up uptown.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
I didn't really know what geography of Manhattan was.

Speaker 3 (03:49):
But on that day we went home a number of
my friends found out that their parents died in the
towers because I we're about forty five miles from DC
in Connecticut at that time. And after that experience, we
got home and my parents sat us down and told
us that my mom had.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
Lung cancer and she was getting surgery for lung cancer
the next day. She was wow. The next day.

Speaker 3 (04:13):
The surgery was on nine thirteen, so they had been
planning on telling us on nine to eleven. And I
told my parents in the month leading up to it
that I thought something bad was going to happen, not
knowing that they were aware of the surgery, and I
could just feel attension in the air, I guess, but
that's really what led me to decide to study Arabic
and Barack Obama, in an op ed in the Washington

(04:34):
Post in the summer of two thousand and eight, wrote
that he was going to get all the troops out
of Iraq by twenty ten, and over the course of
my four years at Georgetown studying Arabic, I also lived
in Aman, Jordan in the Middle East in the fall
of twenty.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
Ten, right before the Arab Spring, oh wow. And I
was in Career Square in Egypt a month before the
Arab Spring kicked off.

Speaker 3 (04:56):
So seeing all that take place, I think really solid
the transition from being an idealistic kid to really realizing
that you know, oftentimes what politicians promise is and what
happens in reality. Yeah, and so rather than when I
graduated from Georgetown in twenty twelve, rather than using my
Arabic to work for the government, I decided I didn't

(05:19):
agree with anything the government did over there and that
really it was an unfixable situation, and I decided to
work in American media and maybe.

Speaker 2 (05:28):
Try to fix that instead, which is a whole other
canon worms.

Speaker 3 (05:32):
But started working at NBC News in at the end
of twenty twelve as a production assistant, and that was
through nepotism. Full disclosure, my mom worked at NBC at
Saturday Night Live since the nineteen seventies, and everybody else
in the newsroom who was sharing a job with me
as a production assistant also nepotistic connections, and I acknowledge

(05:56):
that right at the beginning of the book, just to
show people the way that the hierarchies of corporate media
had been built up over time and the ways in
which people are able.

Speaker 2 (06:06):
To break into that industry.

Speaker 3 (06:08):
So as digital media started to take hold, I decided
to go. I felt like I was working in a
cannel factory when electricity had just been invented, and I
decided to go the digital route. And so I started
working as a video editor for a show called Levin TV.
That's Mark Levin, who's a huge, key serbative radio guy.

Speaker 2 (06:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (06:29):
I actually during the interview, they revealed to me who
the star of the show was, Mark Levin, and I
had to feigned surprise because I didn't even.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
Really know who Mark Levin was.

Speaker 3 (06:40):
And I thought to myself, I've been working in media
for a couple of years now, and I don't even
know who the second biggest radio personality. He was right
behind Lindboh At the time, I didn't even know who
he was really, So when I went home and googled
him and found out who he was, I realized that I.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
Had been completely sheltered.

Speaker 3 (06:56):
Having grown up in the New York area and then
living in DC from this entire other or half of America.
That was during the end of the Tea Party and
the end of Obama's second term and in during Trump's campaign.
So then after Trump won, I started the video program
at Daily Caller, which was founded by Tucker Cerson in
two thousand and ten. But at the time that I started,

(07:17):
at the beginning of Trump's first term, Tucker was a
backbencher at Fox. So within a couple of months he
took over that eight PM slot and became the.

Speaker 2 (07:28):
Hero to half of America and the enemy to the
other half.

Speaker 3 (07:31):
And I didn't realize how the toothpaste is going to
come out of the tube during Trump one point zero,
But that whole experience of not only working there, but
also covering what I did on the ground and seeing
the way that two different narratives would come out of
these situations that I witnessed on the ground, and two
completely different realities were expressed to the public depending on

(07:52):
where they got their news from. So having witnessed all
that on the ground, I felt like I had.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
A responsibility to write about what I witnessed.

Speaker 3 (08:01):
And the last thing I'll say about that journey is
while I was talking to publishers in twenty end of
twenty two to twenty three, I quit my job at
The Caller to write these books, and they told me
that one of two things. Number One, you have to
pick a side if you want to sell books in
the publishing industry today, which I was unwilling to do
because my story was the story of being stuck in between.

Speaker 2 (08:24):
I covered the BLM and also the MAGA unrest. And
number two that Trump was never going to make it
through the primaries. He was never going to be president again.
And Trump was quote old news.

Speaker 3 (08:36):
And I have been in DC long enough to know
that what the press wants to happen isn't necessarily what's
going to happen. And I knew that what I had
witnessed was going to be written about in the history books.
And I decided to start my own publishing company, Pigeon
Press Pigeonpress dot Com, and do it on my own.
And the only thing that really gave me the courage

(08:57):
to do that was Synchronicity. Actually, Anthony Swafford, who's the
author of jar Head, my cousin got drunk with him
at a writing conference twenty years ago. Wow, And through
that connection I was put in touch with him. And
Swafford was the first person of all the professionals that
I talked to who were telling.

Speaker 2 (09:13):
Me, you can't combine the memoir with the chronicling. You
can't add history in there.

Speaker 3 (09:17):
Nobody writes like this anymore, very much Gonzo style, like
my own subjective perspective rather than here's why my side
is right and here's is wrong.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
Yeah, And the first person to say I believe in
this project. And so once I got him on board,
I said, all right, I'm going to do it on
my own. And so here we are.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
Well, there's i mean, three vastly different perspective perspectives on
media right there. NBC to Tucker Carlson to kind of
blazing your own trail on creating your own gonzo approach.
As you talked about. Now the book you mentioned there,
I'm assuming that's right diet.

Speaker 2 (09:53):
Right diet.

Speaker 3 (09:54):
So Riot Diet one covers all of the BLM stuff.
And as I was deciding how to parse the book out,
I realized that Bryant Diet two, the sequel, was the
perfect sequel, because it was the same story told with
a mirror image of the other side of the political spectrum,
descending in the Chaos Wow in a not exactly the

(10:16):
same but a very similar way, where they came to
distrust the police who were the enforcers of the institutions
that they felt were corrupt. Obviously coming from a different angle,
but that's when I decided that it had to be
two books, and so Riot Diet two will be coming
out in a couple of months editing.

Speaker 1 (10:34):
In that super cool. Now, there's a lot to unpack here.
One of the things I found really crazy is is
and correct me if I'm wrong on this, and I
think I'm right on this, But is that a lot
of journalists in the NBC, ABC, CNN, even Fox or MSNBC,

(10:58):
if you are out in about let's say you're going
out and doing campaign coverage, you are almost embedded and
in one worldview for that entire duration. So you may
be only seeing like, oh, this is what's going on
on the Trump side, or this is what's going on
on Harris's side, or whoever happens to be running at

(11:20):
the time, and you get a really narrow focus on
the worldview of what you're experiencing and there's like a
lack of reality, but you being able to bounce from
Kenosha to BLM to the Trump campaign to all of
these different places. How do you think that different approach

(11:41):
allows you to have a more maybe rounded or maybe
available worldview that you can see it a little bit
differently than those who might just be entrenched in a
specific dogma or a specific just even being embedded around
the same people. You may disagree with them, but you're
going to be influenced by that specific worldview and your interpretation.

Speaker 3 (12:03):
Yeah, so I would There's two categories there. There's the
corporate media, and I would definitely put Fox News in
the same categories on the SECA and then where seeing
the way that these programs are scripted literally scripted. They
have scripts that you hand over, Like when I was Rev.
Sharpton's PA, I would hand him the script along with
this tea and toast before the show, and you see

(12:25):
what all the talking points are. All of these shows,
there's twenty four hours of cover, at least twelve hours
of dayside and prime time coverage. They cover the same
talking points from their respective perspectives and it very much
is this canned version of what's going on. And very
rarely do people who are doing the.

Speaker 2 (12:46):
Job that I was doing on the ground actually get
to put their voice foroard, And if they do, it's
within this context of you're getting asked questions that only
serve to satisfy those particular talking points. Yeah, and it's really.

Speaker 3 (13:00):
You know, you're not getting the perspective of the people
who are actually there. It's just a bunch of pundits
sitting in their multimillion dollar studios telling people what they
should think. And the other category would be new media,
which what's concerning for me now in Trump two point
zero is the way in which new media is falling
into those same trenches. And the only way that you

(13:22):
can get attention to your platform is if you're engaging
in the same kind of what aboutism of you know,
this side is always wrong and our side is always right,
and if you're standing in between those two trenches, certainly
going to get blasted. And I'm not asking for sympathy,
you know, I put myself here on the middle of

(13:43):
three boys. I've been in the middle of ever since
I can remember, so I'm just kind of in the
lane that I think is the lane that I should
be driving in. But that being said, it comes with
a lot of baggage and also the difficult task of
bringing it tow to.

Speaker 2 (14:00):
The more nuanced perspective.

Speaker 3 (14:02):
Then just hey, these guys are terrorists, and everybody retweet
what I'm saying because it satisfies your worldview.

Speaker 1 (14:09):
Yeah, hey, don't remember the author. We had a guest
on right after towards the end of Trump's first term,
and he was talking the books called Redneck Revelry. And
in the book, he said, Okay, what's really going on?
Because I'm from with this guy's from the Oki Finochi Swamps.

(14:35):
But then he is working in academia and in media,
and he's going the two worlds that I see, the
one I grew up in and I have friends there,
and the one that I see here are saying stuff
and nothing's lining up. There's no sense of reality between
the two. And so he went down the deep dive
of looking at statistics and data, and what he found,

(14:56):
which was shocking at the time, was was that the
the same voters that voted Obama into office were the
same voters that voted Trump into office. And the narrative
that's being told isn't true, and you talk about I
would call it polarization, in which you get your audience
emotionally tethered to the news to a point in which

(15:17):
they're almost angered and outraged. So they have to tune
back in because there's just another catastrophe on the way.
Trump's going to do something stupid, or Biden's going to
say something that just doesn't make sense, whatever the narrative
is on both sides, How do we have a breakthrough
moment in media? In news, because let's be honest, their

(15:40):
end goal isn't to tell the news. It's not to
be accurate. Their goal is to make lots of money.
And so if that's their goal, they're always going to sensatialize,
They're always going to pump up. They're not really going
to try to find the truth. They're going to find
whatever gets to the end that they want, which is
more money, more ad eyes on eyes, more people viewing.

(16:02):
So how do you navigate that place of saying that's
how people are standing out in the media today. How
do you create a new narrative in which people go,
maybe there's a more rational, reasonable and responsible way to
approach news so that you're getting to a better outcome
of people. And then how do you monetize that when
that's not maybe as sexy because you're not riling up

(16:24):
those people that they're becoming addicted to your newscast. How
do you get people to a place where you're sustainable,
financially able to tell the stories accurately, get to the
real story, but also wrestle through the place of standing out.

Speaker 2 (16:40):
Yeah, well, I guess I'll start with the problem and
then we can get to the solution.

Speaker 3 (16:43):
So in the book, I discuss at length how those
as our discourse has been transposed from the print medium
and the cable news medium into the digital realm. How
I was able to keep my business of running this
video team that built to ten people, how I was
able to keep it sustainable, and what footage sold and

(17:06):
to whom, and how that footage was then cannibalized and
taken out of context in many respects and turned into
exactly what you're talking about. We call it a hate
click in the business. It's a joking manner, but there's
a very real and serious implication from that. And when
you're scrolling through your news feed, it's not like you

(17:27):
have a captive audience where somebody buys a newspaper or
tunes into a particular channel. They are scrolling, and if
you want to get their attention from that news feed,
then you have to appeal to the lizard part of
your brain and not the frontal cortex that does all
the heavy thinking.

Speaker 2 (17:43):
So when you're going for those hate clicks, I mean.

Speaker 3 (17:46):
That is the way that these news media businesses function
in the modern era. And within those news feeds, you
have two different echo chambers that are pushing out two
completely different narrative. It's based upon the same event taking place.
Kenosha is like the perfect example of that. Yeah, i'dn't
been thrown into the middle of that particular story as

(18:08):
both a victim. I didn't ask to be named a victim,
but I told the police I looked down because something
went past my legs. Yeah, it turned out to be
the first bullet that writtenhouse shot.

Speaker 2 (18:17):
It was the first or four shots in point seventy
five seconds.

Speaker 3 (18:20):
But I was both a named victim and a witness,
key witness in that case. I really was able to
see up close what happens to people, whether it was
me or Kyle or the first man killed who I
tried to save, Joseph Rosenbaum, the way that they're turned
into these caricatures because in order after these tragedies, people
just want everything to fit neatly into a box of Okay,

(18:43):
he's either a hero or he's a white supremacist.

Speaker 2 (18:45):
Rosenbaum's either a pedo or he's a martyr of the
BLM cause.

Speaker 3 (18:50):
And I didn't know Rosenbaum's criminal history when I tried
to save him. So that's also something I talked about
in the book, is.

Speaker 2 (18:55):
The difference between experiencing these things firsthand and seeing it
through the pixels on it. But I think that the
solution there is people discerning for themselves. In the present day,
I think the trust in the media brands is diminishing,
and the trust it's authenticity is the new currency in
the discourse. So what people should be looking out for

(19:19):
are the individuals who are speaking up in the discourse,
who aren't just pandering to those two distinctly different echo chambers,
and who are sticking to their authentic voice. And that's
why I knew that I was making a major.

Speaker 3 (19:37):
Compromise and starting my own publishing company, because I wasn't
going to get the distribution that the Big five have,
and I wasn't going to get it in bookstores right
away and start on Amazon, and I would have to
get all these media appearances just like this one on
my own, and that was going to be a long slog.
I mean, looking back, maybe that would have taken the

(19:58):
easier route if I had have known how hard it
was going to be. But I don't have any regrets
because I've learned a lot along the way, not only
about how news functions, but also now the publishing industry.

Speaker 2 (20:08):
But there is a similar thing.

Speaker 3 (20:11):
Taking place in publishing where in digital media, I now
have a cell phone where I can create broadcast quality
footage yeah from this device. And in publishing, you have
print on demand now, so you don't need the warehouse
your books and spend all this money to you know,
pay for their storage. It's all print on demand and

(20:32):
seventy percent of book sales happen on Amazon. So I
saw an opportunity similar to when I went to digital
media and started a video team the Daily Caller, to
do this without requiring a massive amount of capital and
just getting myself out there and trying my best to
do it on my own. So I think, you know,

(20:52):
people should be looking for not the individuals who have
the hottest takes on their news feeds, but the.

Speaker 2 (21:00):
People who are actually there.

Speaker 3 (21:01):
So in the book, I name a number of people
who are on the ground next to me. BG on
the Scene is one of them. Fort Fisher is another one.
Shelby Talcott, who was my coworker in Jorhebin Tura, who's
also an unpaid intern at the time, end up getting
hit by the uber and outside of the chazz in Seattle,
poor Jorge. But now he works at news Nation. News
Nation is more of a middle of the road outlet,

(21:24):
And I'm not saying that people need to look for moderates,
but they should look for at least individuals who are
acting in good faith and giving you.

Speaker 2 (21:32):
You can disagree with.

Speaker 3 (21:33):
Them, but at least you know that that person is
telling you what they really think rather than just what
they think is the most expedient.

Speaker 1 (21:39):
Yeah, I know, at least they're honest. In Europe, where
they call a lot of the newscasters newsreaders instead of
correspondence or journalists, because they aren't typically there's somebody else
giving them what to say. Now, I love. Let's look
at like the col rittenhouse experience for you. Now here

(22:02):
you are boots on the ground right in the trenches.
First off, how do you keep yourself safe in those cases?

Speaker 2 (22:09):
That's funny you say boots on the ground because it
was running shoes on the ground, because I always had
running shoes, because I knew, like in Kenosha I mentioned
in the book, somebody tried to mug me at the time,
like three lenses on your camera on your camera phone
was like this a very expensive phone.

Speaker 3 (22:25):
So on the night before the shooting, some guys were like, oh,
nice phone, and I was like, oh, really this one.
And I just kind of distracted him for a second
and then I just forced gumps my way.

Speaker 2 (22:33):
Out of there.

Speaker 3 (22:34):
So and I think we were pretty naive going into
it about how dangerous things were going to become. So
on that night, I was wearing a BLM shirt, I
had running shoes, I had a gas mask, but I
didn't have a bulletproof vest, didn't have a bulletproof backpack,
didn't have a bulletproof helmet like I did on Jenu
by the time January.

Speaker 2 (22:52):
Sixth came around.

Speaker 3 (22:54):
But as far as keeping myself safe, it really was
just keeping your head on a swivel. I witnessed a
number of times journalists filming on savory things were surrounded
and then sucker punched in the head. So those kind
of mod scenarios. It's really easy for people to sit
from their keyboards and say, oh, I would have done
this or I would.

Speaker 2 (23:14):
Have done that.

Speaker 3 (23:14):
But it's amazing how quickly things can descend into that
lizard bring where some pepper spray comes out, some tear gas.
People start screaming. They see their fellow tribesmen, their fellow
political tribesmen, yelling at somebody, and you know what happened.

Speaker 2 (23:30):
After the shooting in Kenosha was a great example.

Speaker 3 (23:33):
I was attempting to render aid to Joseph Rosenbaum, and
I removed the BLM shirt from my back and I
was stemming the bleeding and I was dragging We were
carrying Rosenbaum to the hospital when some guy who worked
at the hospital was like, I have an SUV right here,
let's drive him in. And I was loading him into
the back of that suv and some guy, I had
so much adrenaline I didn't notice at first, felt something

(23:55):
hit me in the head and then just an absolute.

Speaker 2 (23:58):
Right hook straight to the wow turning.

Speaker 3 (24:01):
This guy had punched me in the head, presumably because
he thought somehow I was associated with Writtenhouse because I
had interviewed him, because you guarding this business and I
was in.

Speaker 1 (24:11):
Only minutes before, right like you yeah, yeah, So do
you feel like Written House? I mean, there's a lot
of testimony that you've shared, You've you've been a part
of the legal process where you were called in as
a witness as a part of that, so a lot
of your story is there. But do you feel like
he went in with intent to do these things or
it just was a de evolution of the heightened emotion

(24:32):
that was going on.

Speaker 3 (24:33):
That's definitely the latter, okay, And I think that's really
hard for that's again something that's more nuanced that doesn't
fit into that box. But it's very often in these
kinds of situations people go in with good intentions, and
like I said, when the chaos, when the stuff hits
the fan, it's a whole different world. And he went
in as a seventeen year old and he had a medpack.

(24:56):
He claimed to me that he was an EMT, and
this came out in the trial that was a lie. Yeah,
I asked him like four different ways, like really, like
because he just I thought that he was twenty something,
but he had a baby face. That's what I told
the police night of But it was very clear from
the moment that I met him that with his med
kit in his AR fifteen, that he thought that he
was there for all these great reasons. But when he

(25:19):
was walking around, so I interviewed him in front of
the business that he was guarding, a car source business,
and then he was like, we're going to go out
and see if any of the protesters need medical attention.

Speaker 2 (25:28):
You want to come, And.

Speaker 3 (25:28):
We're walking through where all the rioters had just been
pushed away from the courthouse. There was tear gas, there
were pepperballs, so people have been winged with all kinds
of riot munitions. And he was saying medical, medical, and
I noticed looking around that the perception from the people
surrounding us was not as positive as the reasons why

(25:48):
he thought he was there. And actually, about four minutes
before the shooting, these four guys yelled at him, Oh.

Speaker 2 (25:54):
You think you're in a movie. You think you're cool
or something with.

Speaker 3 (25:56):
Your gun, And I went to interview them, interviewed written
house about all these reasons that he thought he was there,
and I wanted to get their side of the story.
My job was always to not only get you know,
this guy's version of reality, but the people who also
were opposed to him. So one of those guys had
a handgun, another one had a couple of bricks, and

(26:16):
I ate the camera at them, and the dude with
the bricks stepped out on me like he was going
to smash my head and again, and that's my running
shoes I took. I took the stance of okay, I'm
going to put some distance in between us, and I
went with my break glass in case of emergency move
because I really wanted to hear at least this guy's
side of the story.

Speaker 2 (26:32):
I put my phone away. I said, okay, phone is away.
I just to hear what you guys have to say.
Does anyone want a.

Speaker 3 (26:37):
White Claw and we can talk about it. Yeah, that
was a spiked alcoholic drink.

Speaker 2 (26:41):
That was really popular at the time. Yeah, the dude
with the handgun.

Speaker 3 (26:46):
Okay, I don't advise handing out alcoholic riots, but this
is flicking.

Speaker 1 (26:50):
Back but to a great way to build trust.

Speaker 2 (26:54):
Well, maybe that.

Speaker 3 (26:56):
Was yeah, but that that really was my method. If
I was at the VLM stuff, I had white claws
and doobies, and if I was at the MAGA stuff,
I had built buddaweizers and cigarettes, and it was my
way of saying, look, let's just crack a drink and
let's sit down and talk about it.

Speaker 2 (27:10):
I just want to hear your version of the story.

Speaker 3 (27:12):
So the guy with the handgun was actually like, yeah,
I'll take a white cloth and I cracked it. And
that's when I then saw a rittenhouse running with not
only his AR fifteen and his medkit, but now also
met fire extinguisher sprinting the street, and I was like,
whatever's going on over there is something that's going to
be newsworthy. So I said, sorry, guys, I gotta go,

(27:33):
and I ran after him. And that was when I
called my coworker Shelby, and I said, I don't know
what's going on.

Speaker 2 (27:39):
Something's about to happen.

Speaker 3 (27:41):
And that's when I heard screaming and Rosenbaum emerged from
a dark part of the street, and I said, oh, exploitive,
I got to go.

Speaker 2 (27:47):
I hung up.

Speaker 3 (27:48):
I thought that I took video, but I actually ended
up taking a photo of the ground. So that's why
my testimony ended up being essential to the case because
I didn't have any video and the only video is
from farther away, So I was the closest one to
the first shooting. Well, and I even told police night
of I have the shooting right here. Look and I

(28:11):
opened up my phone and my heart dropped because I
realized at that moment that I wasn't going to be
able to show the world what I saw, but I
would have to tell them.

Speaker 1 (28:18):
Well. Now, a lot of times when you go into
whether it's war zone or riots or protests or anything
like that, there's a lot of journalistic markers and the
police have to treat you differently, or they're supposed to
at least. Yeah, very different world. But for you, do

(28:39):
you have that same right as kind of a standalone,
non traditional media source.

Speaker 3 (28:45):
Well, I did have congressional press credentials, so I was
allowed to be in the Capitol regardless of whether there
was a riot going on, So I had that at
least I had a credential. With that being said, we
chose from the very beginning not to wear big press
signals on our chest or on our boatproofsts or whatever,
because after witnessing multiple journalists get punched in the head,

(29:10):
we decided that we'd rather be at the mercy of
police munitions than a sucker punch. I did get blasted
pretty good in Portland. I was swearing my gas mask,
and I've got pepper sprayed hundreds of times on January
sixth because I didn't have that press signifier. So whether
or not I would have been treated differently is maybe

(29:32):
a different story. I got beat up in Wawatosa, Wisconsin,
even with my credential not fun getting I'd rather take
a pepper ball or even a rubber bullet over a
billy club. But also part of that was if we
were wearing this big press thing, people are more standoffige
towards you. So if you're just a guy with a
cell phone and saying, hey, what's up, tell me why

(29:53):
you're here, then I think it's a lot easier to
elucidate the truth out of the people who were there
than if you're like, I'm a big co media guy
and let's sit down for an interview about why this
is mostly peaceful, or you buy you're a domestic terrorist.
You know, So people would be less inclined to think
that you have an agenda if you're just dressed like
they are. So, whether it was the Magas stuff or

(30:14):
the BLM stuff, we would try to dress the part
and just blend in em bed with them, take out
our cell phones and say, hey, tell me what's up.

Speaker 2 (30:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:22):
Now, you mentioned Kenosha, you mentioned the chaz out in Seattle,
you mentioned Portland, you mentioned mentioned January sixth, So a
lot of different things. And and uh, I tighten a
lot of these things. It was often tied to the
early stages of COVID too. And and now we're in
a new season of protests. We're in a new season

(30:45):
of demonstrations. Uh And and so what are you seeing
in the changing landscape of how people responding to controversy
or anger or disbelief or politicization of like where they
stand and I'm either pro Tump, anti Trump, pro Democrat
anti Democrat, whatever that is. How are you seeing that evolve?

(31:08):
And are there things that are making you feel more
positive or more negative about the changing landscape of those things?

Speaker 2 (31:14):
Well, I guess I'll get to the positive or the
negative after I can give you my observations, because that's
a deeper and more difficult question to answer. But what
I've seen I've been at a number of the Doge protests,
was just at a protest outside the White House when
Net and Yahoo visited the White House. And what I've

(31:35):
noticed is definitely so back in twenty twenty, the age
group of the BLM protesters was very young, Yeah, and
the age group of the MAGA protesters was a lot older. Okay,
Now out on the ground specifically at the dog stuff,
it's a lot older, like federal workers and stuff like that,

(31:58):
and so just Democrats a lot older.

Speaker 3 (32:01):
And also secondarily this five alarm fire that's been ringing
since Trump was elected in twenty sixteen, I think people,
you know, the orange man bad mentality carries a lot
less strength and power than it did.

Speaker 2 (32:19):
In twenty twenty.

Speaker 3 (32:20):
Yeah, you could say all cops are b words, and
that would get people going, but what really got people
going and the most galvanizing thing out there at every
single one, whether it was Seattle, Portland, DC, New York,
it was what do you guys.

Speaker 2 (32:34):
Think of Donald Trump? F Donald Trump? Now?

Speaker 3 (32:39):
Trump is actually like at the last Doche protest that
I went to outside the.

Speaker 2 (32:43):
Capitol, it was Elon.

Speaker 3 (32:46):
So Elon Musk has taken is kind of public enemy
number one because this new figure, and if you look
at the approval ratings, people approve of what Trump is
doing a lot more than they do Elon Musk. I
think a lot of that has to do with just
the amount of time that Trump has been in the picture.
But also secondarily, you know, Elon is an oligarch. I

(33:09):
mean by all measures. I mean people could take issue
with that statement, but the guy runs one of the
biggest platforms that it serves as our town square. And
so you know, Trump is a maga. Went from being
this from the backwaters of American culture to being mainstream
having won the popular vote, and so now that he

(33:31):
has guys like Elon in his corner, I think there
is a huge opposition to the idea of this guy
who's the richest man in the world, not only running
Twitter because I refuse to call it X but it's.

Speaker 1 (33:47):
The dumbest name ever and.

Speaker 2 (33:49):
Facebook, Like, I'm not going to call it meta. I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah,
metas is really weird. Yeah X is even weirder for
a number of reasons.

Speaker 3 (33:57):
But but you know, he's running that platform and he's
sitting in the Oval office, and so it's no longer
that you.

Speaker 2 (34:05):
Know, Trump is like has this outsider approach.

Speaker 3 (34:08):
It's like, well, you know, he's very much part of
the mainstream and the entire and he did win the
election largely because of his ability to appeal to new
media figures like Joe Rogan and you know these guys
who the left has been saying, oh, we need our
Joe Rogan.

Speaker 2 (34:25):
It's like you had him. His name was Joe Rogan.

Speaker 3 (34:28):
But that's really indicative of the shifting of the sands,
where this paradigm shift that started in twenty sixteen is
finally really taking its final turn. And a lot of
the younger people who may maybe never even had voted
before or wouldn't have voted otherwise, saw Trump on Joe
Rogan and decided to come out and vote for him.

(34:49):
So that transition of the Republican Party from the Party
of the South and the Party of the Country club
Republicans in towns like being outside New York Town that county.
Fairfield County voted eighty percent Republican for forty years, and
then in twenty sixteen they voted seventy eight percent for

(35:09):
Hilly Clinton. So while the country club Republicans jumped ship,
you had, the Republicans were able to bring in this
working class vote and a younger vote and a lot
of minority votes that they didn't have previously. Yeah, and
really that's a similar paradigm shift to what we saw
when starting with William Jennings Bryan in eighteen ninety six,

(35:31):
who didn't win against McKinley. But really that started the
transition of the Democrat Party going from the Party of
the South to the Party of the working class. So
I do see a lot of parallels. And that's why
in the book I use a lot of history, because
I think America is a young country, but we still
have a lot of parallels to what's going on in
the past. And that's one of the reasons why I
didn't listen to the publishers, and I decided to combine

(35:53):
that because I feel that it's relevant to the story
of where we are today.

Speaker 1 (35:57):
Now. You've been a part of a lot of these
flashpoints in the last ten years, and January sixth, of course,
this one that continues to come back, and I think
got almost a second win with Trump's pardons. Yes, it
really came to the surface. Now, being in that environment,

(36:19):
is there a perspective that you can bring that might
be different on were the outcomes maybe in the courts justified?
Were these people? What were they they were branded as?
What is your take on that as somebody was there
talking to them, trying to understand and trying to hear.

Speaker 3 (36:37):
That's a great question, and I guess what I'll start
with is what I saw.

Speaker 2 (36:43):
So it was very similar to what happened with BLM,
where you have in.

Speaker 3 (36:46):
Portland, for example, five thousand people come out and there's
demonstrations in front of the courthouse and their speeches and
the sun's going down, and then by midnight there are
five hundred people one hand of that total number smashing
into the fence with their umbrellas and their gas masks
and the express intention of agitating police, drawing them out

(37:07):
and drawing this confrontation where it becomes a spectacle and
as soon as the footage it's the Internet that goes
viral because of how violent it is. So on January
sixth I arrived at the Western Front. I thought that
it was going to be like the Stop the Steels,
where the violence wouldn't really start until the sun went down,
and the mag of people started leaving the area and

(37:31):
they dispersed into the city and that's when the counter
protesters catch them in smaller groups and then there are clashes.
That's what happened at the stop the Steel. So I
had five people on the ground during January sixth. You
had to get in super early to get in past
the Secret Service because Trump was speaking. So I was
at home screaming the rally. There was no internet down there.
And my now wife, which people have to teene into

(37:51):
the second book for that love story, but because I
met her in October of twenty twenty.

Speaker 2 (37:55):
But she's like, I see cops running.

Speaker 3 (37:58):
So I realized about one twelve pm when she sent
that text, oh man, it's starting now. So I put
on my bulletproof, best bulletproof backpack, bulletproof helmet, gas mask,
and I brought my skateboard so that when the uber
hit traffic, I skateboarded down there.

Speaker 2 (38:12):
Yeah, and I arrived on the Western Front.

Speaker 3 (38:15):
My first question was number one, why am I better
prepared than most of these police because most of them
didn't have gas masks. People on the Maga side were
pepper spraying the cops. They were running away. The cops
were pepper spraying them. They were running away, and I
was just standing in between. But a lot of the
all of the fences in my area had been trampled,
even with no trust missing sign that I picked up

(38:35):
off the grass had been flipped over, so that wasn't
even visible to the thousands of people that arrived on
that front.

Speaker 2 (38:41):
And then once the clashes started, there was the pepper
spray and the gas came out, and people start to
go pretty Nutso when they see their fellow first and compatriot,
maga or whatever whatever side it is that you're on,
once they see them get billy clubbed by the police,
that turned on a whole different part of your brain.

Speaker 3 (39:03):
So people were smashing in to the cops. The cops
were completely overwhelmed, the one hundred and forty of them
on the Western front. I climbed up in the inauguration
tower and I filled the breaking of the police line,
and that first group of people were of that smaller group.
They were specifically smashing into the police. And when they
started flowing in, then you just had this flow of
thousands of people going up the stairs. And by the

(39:25):
time I got up there I came down from the tower,
I was like, I'm not going to trust the FEDS
of the protesters or slash riders to tell me what happened.

Speaker 2 (39:31):
So, just like with the BLM stuff, I'm going to
go in there and get in the middle of it
and relay the footage back to the people at home
without commentary or spin.

Speaker 3 (39:39):
Let them decide for themselves. But I followed them in
and many of them walked through open doors. That being said,
I followed a group all the way to the house
doors and we were on the other side of the
house doors with there were about twenty of them and
like two cops trying to pry them off the doors.
That famous photo of the guy with his face through
the broken glass Congressman on the other side of those doors,

(40:01):
and the sergeant arms had glocks pointed at us on
the other side of the doors, and my thought was,
if these doors open up, I'm gonna end up in.

Speaker 2 (40:08):
The crossfire again. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (40:10):
Yeah, So ten minutes later, after the police pulled us
off the doors and I went back into the rotunda,
I filmed the guy, which was my most viral clip
of the whole day smoking a joint. So you had people,
a small group of people, smaller group of people who
were genuinely trying to smash down those doors and trying
to get in to where there were congressmen and do

(40:32):
lord knows what, but definitely try to stop the proceedings
that were taking place.

Speaker 2 (40:37):
So those girlss agitators were there. And then there were
also guys like the dude who just decided to pull
out a joint and very peacefully smoked that joint. He
walked in, I call his story he walked in through
open doors. So both of those things were true at
the same time. And I think that's what's unfortunate with
what happened with the pardons, because if if Trump and

(41:01):
his administration wanted to parse that out, the difference between
those people and go through case by case, what did
this guy do?

Speaker 3 (41:11):
Does this guy deserve a pardon? That would have taken
a lot of time. But he wanted to undo everything
that Biden did. So the night that he came in,
he pardoned everyone blanket. And so Stuart Rhodes, who was
an architect of that very scurrilous.

Speaker 2 (41:29):
Action of actually going.

Speaker 3 (41:30):
In there and actually trying to stop the proceedings, he
was pardoned in the same way of as the Doobie
man or the Lectern guy who I met Lecturn dude
since then, and a lot of the guys who didn't
commit violent crimes were disappointed with the pardon because they
felt like it was diminished.

Speaker 2 (41:48):
Number one, it took away their ability to appeal in court,
and number two, they were then thrown into this, for
lack of a better term, basket of the florables, who
you've got the partner, so you're just like everybody else
who did that. And I definitely think that there was
a two tier justice system as far as the way

(42:10):
that those people were targeted versus the people that I
saw trying to I'm not comparing drawing a direct equivalency,
but you can't help but draw the comparison between those
individuals and the individuals who are trying to break into
the Portland Courthouse and setting fires in the plaza, and
then we're getting arrested and let out the very next
night by these funds that were specifically set up to

(42:32):
bail out people who were arrested during the BLM stuff.
So there certainly was a.

Speaker 3 (42:40):
Treatment of the people on January sixth that was different
as far as the criminal justice system was throwing the
book at them versus really skating over the ones who
were associated with the BLM stuff. But with all that
being said, there were people in there who certainly beat
up cops, who certainly were threatening the lives of elected officials,

(43:03):
and the fact that they were pardoned in the same
breath as people who were actually peaceful, like Lecter and
guy who all he did was carry elector in thirty
nine feet, He walked him through an open door, he
carried elector in thirty nine feet and he was thrown
in federal prison for seventy days.

Speaker 2 (43:18):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (43:18):
And so to see, it's difficult for me to express
that to people who weren't there that like.

Speaker 2 (43:25):
Look, this is if you were on the BLM side. Okay, fine,
well this was very very similar insofar as you had
a large group of people, many of whom were showed
up with good intentions, some of whom made bad decisions
because of the reasons that I explained, and they had
their lizard brain turned on.

Speaker 3 (43:41):
But the majority of those people were not beating up
on cops and the smaller group of people were, So
both those things were at the same time.

Speaker 1 (43:51):
Yeah, I'm pretty transparent on our show about the fact
that I'm pretty conservative overall, But I think that that
was the biggest thing that frustrated me with it. I
very much was against the January sixth stuff. I didn't
think it was the right action. It doesn't paint a
good picture of anyone, doesn't get you to the end
result of what you want, It doesn't help your costs.

(44:11):
But I felt like there was a duplicity between different
pockets and at least how it was covered. Like BLM,
I thought that there were a lot of times in
which the equivalent cy was very equal apples to apples,
and yet it was treated differently. And so for you
when you see these things because you brought that up
in Portland, you know there's a fund, people are bailed out,

(44:33):
similar situation, different capital, all of that kind of stuff.
But how do you process how to communicate these stories
and know that each of us are going to incorporate
our own bias into it, each of us are going
to bring our own perspective into it, as we should.
I think that's the biggest frustration on the media side

(44:54):
for me is just be honest about where you are.

Speaker 2 (44:56):
Yes, you know, I agree, but no one's unbiased.

Speaker 1 (44:59):
Right, it goes Everyone has a presupposition based on their
life experience. It is who we are. So how do
you try cause you seem to be one that you're
going to paint the picture. You're going to interview, You're
going to get diversity of voices, You're going to have
these conversations. How do you distinguish between this is news
and accurate and this is opinion? Because let's say CNN,

(45:22):
Fox News for sure, MSNBC like ninety nine percent of
that's opinion. So how do you differentiate that? How do
you tell that? Because your voice is what helps sell.
What you're doing is that people are coming to hear
you know, Richie and his view, his interpretation. You're going
to hear those stories. You're going to have some transparency there.
How do you filter that? How do you communicate that?

(45:43):
How do you get that out to the world around you.

Speaker 3 (45:46):
That's that's a great question, and it was the number
one question that I had while I was writing the book, Chiz,
How do I tell the story of what happened in
Seattle or what happened in Portland or January sixth?

Speaker 2 (45:57):
And the way that I did it was number one.

Speaker 3 (46:01):
Here's the history of this place, and this is kind
of Portland was the most racist city in the West.
People forget that, and it still only has like a
three or four percent black population. And so the who
the people who were actually out there is almost entirely
white people who were out there, especially the ones who
were violent with police. And so I set the scene
of Okay, this.

Speaker 2 (46:21):
Is what this place was.

Speaker 3 (46:22):
Here's what I saw when I showed up. Here's a
little tour of this autonomous zone where you know, effectively
like in Seattle, where they seated a six block area
abandoned the police precinct and the police were not going
in there for calls. Whether it was for an assault
or for a rape or whatever it was, the police
were not going in.

Speaker 2 (46:41):
There, which is just crazy to me that it got Yeah,
it was Chess's pretty wild.

Speaker 3 (46:49):
But and set that scene and then and then just
stay very simply, here's what the politician said in this
moment on this side on that side, Here's what the
media said in this moment on this side on that side.
And then I go through. I had thousands of videos,
so I go through exactly what I filmed, exactly who
I interviewed, exactly what they said, and then after the fact,
the narratives that came out of it, and just my

(47:12):
honest opinion of like, well, here's how it felt to
be in the middle of it all, and here's what
I thought. And I think the interesting thing for me
now that the first book has come out is the
story of the BLM stuff. To people who have come
to me and been the most I think taken the
most away from the book have been people who fall

(47:34):
on the left because they were like, I didn't know
any I didn't know how crazy it.

Speaker 2 (47:40):
Was, yeah back then, and I didn't know all of
these details. And I think they.

Speaker 3 (47:47):
Were sheltered from that because of the way the mostly
peaceful narrative, the party like atmosphere narrative that was being
fed to them while they were locked down at home.
And I think, like you said, I just come out
right after right in the author's note, I'm like, look,
I'm going to give you my opinion because that's more fun.
But at the same time, I'm also going to tell

(48:07):
you exactly what I witnessed, exactly why I am my
camera where I did, why I interviewed people like Kyle
Rittenhouse or the people who were opposed to him, And
I think when you come at it from a perspective
of that's the Gunzo perspective, I'm going to give you
a subjective lens into what it was like to be
in my shoes, and I think you draw more truth

(48:29):
from that than if somebody says after the fact, Okay,
here I am in an ivory tower telling you why
my side is right and yours is wrong, and I'm
the objective on end all be all. So if you
come at it from the perspective, I'm going to give
you a subjective lens, and I'm going to tell you
why I thought these things and why I did what
I did, I think you get more from that than

(48:49):
what is really the prevailing approach and the Trump arrow,
which is, here's why I'm right and my side's right
and yours is wrong.

Speaker 1 (48:57):
Yeah, I'm going to ask question.

Speaker 2 (49:00):
Now.

Speaker 1 (49:02):
There's a lot going on, a lot in the news.
There's a lot of emotion about the Zolynx, the Zelensky
conversation to the office is a person that's in DC.
As you watch that, as you listen to those things,
and as you talk to people who are protesting that,
who are up in arms about it whatever on both sides.

(49:23):
Where's your take on that as you've kind of what
is your analysis of the Zelensky Ukraine situation.

Speaker 3 (49:30):
Well, I'd say, first off, the really interesting thing about
what's going on in DC right now is that shifting
of the sands, the paradigm shift that I was talking about,
where when I got to DC in two thousand and eight,
I was pro free speech and anti war, and that
made me left.

Speaker 2 (49:46):
I was anti bush, I was against the foreign wars,
and now that perspective would place me not only on
the right, but would like make it some people would
call that far right.

Speaker 3 (50:00):
And the really weird thing about that is like and
the same goes with like the pharmaceutical stuff, where if
you were a granola hippie, you were the one who
was skeptical of the pharmaceutical industry industry, And now that
is viewed as a right wing perspective. And so the
really weird thing for me is to see the way

(50:22):
in which people who fell on that side of the
spectrum back in two thousand and eight have now almost
taken an about face. And I'm not saying, you know
that Putin is right, but that's exactly the way that
it gets spun, which is, if you have any skepticism
about a foreign war in Israel or in in Ukraine,

(50:47):
then you're a putin toady or you know it's And
so just the degree to which this about face has
taken place, where the politically correct narrator surrounding foreign war, pharmaceuticals,
the military industrial complex, it's like the parties no longer

(51:09):
represent what they did even five six years ago.

Speaker 2 (51:13):
And so I think a lot of the reaction to what.

Speaker 3 (51:16):
Happened in the Oval Office has to do with personal
animists towards Trump or jad Vans and less to do
with the actual geopolitical implications of America being involved in
a war like that. And also, secondarily, you know, one
thing that really stood out to me from that interaction

(51:38):
was this moment where Trump said, oh, this is going to.

Speaker 2 (51:40):
Make great TV.

Speaker 3 (51:42):
And that is that was really crazy for me, because
that shows you that he goes in with the perspective
of like, this is the leader of the free world,
and he has an idea in his head as he's
meeting with this foreign leader who's in the middle embroiled.

Speaker 2 (51:56):
In a terrible, terrible war where hundreds of thats of
people have already died and thinking about good TV.

Speaker 3 (52:05):
So on both coming from both directions, you have a
very like a trench warfare battle between trumpers and never trumpers,
but with all of like if we cut through all
of that noise surrounding it, the craziest part is the

(52:28):
degree to which number one, the left has become the
party of foreign wars and of censorship, and number two
the degree to which the Conservative Party has transitioned to
not a party of conservatives who will stand on their
principles and never have been in their principles no matter what,
but have become reactionaries where it's like after Kenosha, it

(52:50):
was like, well, if they're going to call Kyle written
House a white supremacist, we're going to call him a hero.
And that just threw out the window the question of
what kind of well built family allows their seventeen year
old to go out to a riot with an air
and fifteen, I mean, that question was thrown out the
window in favor of well, they said this.

Speaker 2 (53:08):
So we're going to do that.

Speaker 3 (53:10):
And so I think on both sides of the political
spectrum you have people abandoning what used to be their
principles in favor of opposing the other side. So the
concern that I have with that is when the conservatives
become reactionaries and when the left is opposed to Trump
at every turn, that creates what I think is like
a death spiral where everybody's just trolling each other and

(53:33):
throwing mud.

Speaker 2 (53:34):
And that's where you end up. You end up in
the mud if that's your approach. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (53:38):
For me, I grew up in a Anabaptist, Pacifist Christian background,
and so I grew up in a very anti war culture,
knowing that there are times where that's necessary, you defend
yourself if you've been attacked. I get all of that,
and I also grew up very conservative, and so when

(54:00):
I first heard the Trump stuff about the whole Ukraine,
that whole conversation between Jade Vance Trump and their stance
on that, at first I was kind of like, hey,
Ukraine is in the right here, they should be defending
their self because I agree with that. I'm anti war,
but Putin's in the wrong. But then when I really

(54:23):
stepped back and looked at the argument being made, like hey, yeah,
we could stay at this for the next ten fifteen
years and try to brute force out a response, or
we could step back and say no, one's going to
get everything that they want. And you know, the part
that I struggle with is is where there's a narrative
that's being rewritten in which I don't know it was

(54:44):
JD Vance or if it was Trump, but they said, oh,
you're the one that the war. You're at fault for
this war. And that's the part I didn't understand with
all of that. But then as I processed it, I
found watching it and listening to it going there's actually
some legitimate arguments there. Well, my first initial opinion was no,

(55:04):
we got to back Ukraine to the hilt, to one
hundred percent. We should be putting boots on the ground,
we should be on the turf, we should be pushing
back Russia. So how do you reconcile, because you also
talked about the TV portion of that conversation, how do
you reconcile like there are some really right things there,
there's also some really wrong things there, And how do

(55:27):
you reconcile like where to stand as you process how
you're covering the news?

Speaker 2 (55:32):
Well, Number one, Ukraine historically, I mean that the center
of roofs of the Empire was Kiev, while Moscow was
really a forest at the time, and it was given
to was it Gorbachev or Khrushev got to get my
touch up on my Russian history. But it was in
the nineteen fifties Ukraine, the Crimea was given to Ukraine

(55:57):
while it was still part of the Soviet Union. Yeah,
with the expectation that the.

Speaker 3 (56:01):
Soviet Union would still exist. So when the Soviet Union
was broken up, that was carved out. But that particular
spot of eastern Ukraine, you know, there are a lot
of Russian speakers. And then also throwing to the mix
the fact that in twenty fourteen there was a CIA
sponsored coup of the pro Russia democratically elected leader, and

(56:22):
so that is just those are just historical facts that
exist now. With that being said, the Vladimir Putin's invasion
was unexpected, I wouldn't say that it was unprovoked entirely.
I also wouldn't say that Zelensky started the war. I

(56:42):
would say that Ukraine was largely a puppet of NATO
in the west, continually inching their guns closer and closer
to the Russian border. And you know, that's similar to
what happened in Cuba during the Upan missile crisis.

Speaker 2 (57:00):
Yeah, yeah, where you know, and so without This is
the crazy part is that, like we're calling Putin this
horrible dictator, which he is. At the same time, what
do you think is going on in Saudi Arabia? Yeah,
and even you know what's going on in Israel.

Speaker 3 (57:19):
If you want to get real news coming out of Israel,
you go to the Israeli press, because the American press
is more inclined to side with what Israel is doing
right now than the Israeli press. And so it's really
easy for us to sit with two massive bodies of
water on each side of us and moralize about these
war zones. But you actually put yourself in the mind

(57:42):
of the leader of one of these countries, there is
no right answer. And so going in with that perspective
of there's a problem here and like you said, not
everybody's going to get what they want, and just saying well,
Trump wants this and so therefore him and Putin are
one and the same.

Speaker 2 (58:02):
Is the wrong way to go about it.

Speaker 3 (58:03):
And then vice versa, you know, saying, well, because Zelensky
got support from Biden, then he's he certainly corrupts, but
so is putin right. So yeah, so it's like there's
there's not really a right answer beyond I think the

(58:25):
the ultimate answer there is what is going to end
the bloodshed? And if you look at the Ukrainian people
getting dragged off the street and conscripted into the military.
I've talked to a number of Ukrainians who live in
DC and they're.

Speaker 2 (58:38):
Like, thank god I got out of there when I did,
because it's so bad.

Speaker 3 (58:42):
And you know, anybody who's a man over there doesn't
want to get sent to the front lines. I think
it's really easy to sit here when we have him
committed any troops to the conflict and say, well we
got to do this and fight till the bitter end,
you know, and not give a single inch to Russia.
Well what if it was your kid getting sent to
the front lines and doing absolute meat grinder, would you

(59:03):
favor some concessions then? So I think, you know, you
have to place it in reality and also understand the
history of these places. And it's just we have it
really good in America, and it's really and armchair quarterback
when you're not the one who's who's got skin in
the game.

Speaker 1 (59:21):
Yeah, I've been watching a lot of commentary from former
CIA operatives, agents, executives within the agency, and it's interesting
how what you laid out there about the history of
Ukraine and Kiev and that whole transition. A lot of

(59:42):
what people are are digesting the news through is is
really lacking information that's based on longevity. And I think
America more than any other country, has a very short
view of everything, and whereas like you think of the
Middle East, you're talking thousands of years of worldview and

(01:00:06):
they're thinking in that worldview forward. But what they were
pointing out to me is just how often we're not
as innocent in our country from the leadership, especially the
CIA and other entities who are doing these cues and
other actions, some of them well intended, some of them
based on agenda, and it seems like that's one of

(01:00:27):
the things that's coming to the surface more and more
as you have different operatives are saying, hey, we can't
do this anymore. This isn't the values in which we
signed up for. And so for you, as you tell
these news stories, it seems like a lot of people, journalists,

(01:00:47):
government operatives, business owners. Elon musk Is an example of that,
whether you like them or low them, who are willing
to put their reputation on the line for standing on
truth versus is assumption or bias or agenda. For you
with Pigeon Press, how are you selecting the team that
helps champion the values you have? Because it's it's very

(01:01:10):
clear from what you say that there are things that
you stand for when it comes to journalism and telling
the story that you won't you won't. You won't betray
those values, and that's part of the integrity of how
you're telling the story. So how are you selecting the people?
How are you making sure that you keep on task?
Because you know it's real easy. You get a corporation

(01:01:34):
that has an executive who then makes a decision and finances.
When that money starts flowing, it's it changes the dynamic
on decisions. How are you keeping it so that you
stay true to the values in which you set out
to approach.

Speaker 3 (01:01:48):
Well, Assembling my editorial team was the perfect example of that.
I had Anthony Swofford, who he doesn't really fall on
one side or the other politically, but he's a jar
ahead and so has a certain very tough worldview. And
then I balanced that out with my copy editor. She
did a developmental and then a copy editor. Her name

(01:02:09):
is Kadie and she ran a publishing company for years,
and she's a bleeding heart liberal from San Francisco. And
so the similarities between her and Swafford were that they
believed in the mission of telling the truth. And the
difference was they had completely opposite world views. And so
it's not so much I'm looking for people who share
my viewpoint. In fact, quite the contrary, I'm looking for

(01:02:30):
people to cover my blind spots.

Speaker 2 (01:02:34):
But with that being.

Speaker 3 (01:02:35):
Said, it is difficult in this day and age to
find people who have the intellectual fortitude and the open
mindedness to open themselves to another perspective. And really, like
when I'm finding the people who are going to write
the next story, I'm actually working on a book about
Muhammad Ali.

Speaker 2 (01:02:51):
I have a guy who is this trainer.

Speaker 3 (01:02:53):
He's like eighty seven years old now, and I picked
him and his story not only because he had crazy stories,
but because the stories that he were telling me. He
was telling me were so counter to the narratives, the
kind of revisionist approach to history, and he was telling
it like it is so the stories that he were

(01:03:14):
telling me. He was telling me, I'm like, WHOA, that
is like way way too spicy to go, you know,
in as Simon and Schuster book, because that's the way
that people talk to each other back then, across the races,
because things were bad racially back in nineteen seventies. And
for people that don't know, Muhammad Ali was opposed to
the Vietnam War and he refused to be drafted and

(01:03:35):
so he wasn't allowed to fight. And this guy Reggie,
who was his trainer, he helped him get his first
fight in Atlanta, Georgia.

Speaker 2 (01:03:44):
And the stories that he's telling me.

Speaker 3 (01:03:46):
About his interactions with Muhammad Ali are like they're saying
things to each other that are definitely not savory and
that people would never say in twenty twenty five. But
that's the way that it was. So I'm specializing in
what I call pulp nonfiction. It's like cheaply manufactured books
that sure they might not be bound perfectly, but the
stuff that's inside of there is real and we're not

(01:04:07):
going to water it down just to fit a PC narrative.
And really what I'm looking for are people, yeah, who
aren't afraid to say it state that truth. And I
think it's really easy to kind of tailor your perspective
based upon what's going to get the most retweets because
it satisfies the world.

Speaker 2 (01:04:26):
View on this or that. So I think you do
have to look under a couple of rocks and really
ask people tough questions in order to pick the right
person to help out your book, because it's like they
have to, like you said, not hide their bias, but
at least be open to reading another perspective, tell you
what they really think, and then be okay with the

(01:04:46):
fact that, Okay, yes, I agree with you on this
and this, but I'm going to break this rule and
I'm going to break that rule and let's do it.
So yeah, that's so bad I've been approaching it so far. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:04:56):
Now the name Pigeon Press. You told me you're going
to tell the story behind names, So yeah, okay.

Speaker 3 (01:05:01):
So I was freelancing after NBC and before I started
working for Mark Levinn, and I was covering a weed
protest of all things, on tax Day.

Speaker 2 (01:05:14):
In twenty fifteen. And I don't know if people remember
the story, but there was a guy who flew a
mini helicopter a gyrocopter straight down the National Mall and
landed on the Capito arklown. Yeah. And at the time,
I was doing a lot of drone work. So the
logo for my company was a pigeon because I had
worked for NBC as a peacock. It's a flightless bird

(01:05:34):
and it's totally useless in this cocky bird. And the
pigeon flies up and gives you the bird's eye view.
So I immediately ran in the closest satellite truck. And
this whole story is in the second book, so I've
given people a little preview. But I ran in the
nearest satellite truck. You can see. You can tell the.

Speaker 3 (01:05:49):
Big news company because they don't have the microwave truck,
which has like this little pole that goes up.

Speaker 2 (01:05:53):
They have a huge satellite. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:05:54):
So I found the satellite truck and I hopped in there.
It just so happened to be the NBC satellite truck,
and it was this camera guy who I used to
work on his time sheets and get him his lunch.

Speaker 2 (01:06:04):
And I was like, Mark, what's up, dude, I think
I got some footage.

Speaker 3 (01:06:08):
I called my assignment editor, Tony, who had been my
boss previously, and I was like, I think I got
some footage for you, and he was like yeah, yeah,
I'm busy, and I'm like.

Speaker 2 (01:06:15):
No, no, check out these screenshots.

Speaker 3 (01:06:16):
And so they offered me eight hundred bucks and I
was like, no, CNN offered me four thousand, So you
guys are gonna have to up the cost there. And
so then they were like, all right, we're gonna twenty
five hundred bucks. So I sold the footage for twenty
five hundred bucks, which at the time I was like
struggling to pay around.

Speaker 2 (01:06:32):
I was like, this is amazing. Yeah, and I mandated.

Speaker 3 (01:06:35):
I said, okay, you guys can have the footage, but
you have to put my logo up for seventy two hours.
So the pigeon was up above the peacock for seventy
two hours on every MSNBC, NBC Today show Nightly Cool.
He was up there, flying above the peacock, and CNN
ended up offering me forty five hundred.

Speaker 2 (01:06:53):
I made up that they offered me four thousand, but
the joke was on me because they ended up offering
me more. But it's funny, as was the case with
this whole process of the book. I'm like racking my brain.
I need to get a publisher.

Speaker 3 (01:07:06):
I need to get the nice advance so that I
can buy my family a nice car. And I was
going through agents and I actually said a prayer. I
became Christian after experiencing all this, but I hadn't said
a prayer ever about my professional life, and I just said,
please look after me. And I had sent this pitch
to this top agent and it was three weeks to

(01:07:29):
the day from when I had sent it to him,
and I got a reply from him saying, no, we're
going to pass.

Speaker 2 (01:07:33):
We don't like the approach.

Speaker 3 (01:07:35):
And in that moment, I was like, well, I guess
I'm doing it on my own. I sold to Ethereum
and bought a Toyota Matrix instead of getting a nice
new car. I had a two thousand Toyota Matrix and.

Speaker 2 (01:07:47):
I was thinking about what it named the company, and
I was like, it was the answer was sitting right
in front of me, and I had already lived it,
and so I was like the pigeon, there it is.
It's sitting right up above the peacock. Not to mention
the penguins.

Speaker 3 (01:07:59):
Also a flightless know this massive publishing company, and so yeah,
you can see the pigeon right on the inside there
and right on the spine of the book, and it's
just a humble bird that delivers the message from the
streets to the people with no corporate interference.

Speaker 2 (01:08:12):
So there's a story of pigeon press.

Speaker 1 (01:08:15):
To my publisher friends, which we have several that refer over,
we still love you. We know that your discontent at
your job, as we know that you're fighting the good fight.

Speaker 2 (01:08:25):
So yeah, please put me on the New York Times
bestseller list. Nice things to say about even the book, please, right,
that's right.

Speaker 1 (01:08:32):
Yeah. One thing I want to make sure we cover
real quick is that part of our heart is telling
everyday people that you can do extraordinary things. And I
think so many times you talked about that. I'm trying
to figure out how I'm going to pay rent. I
get this great footage, It's like, Okay, I can survive.

(01:08:52):
I can get to tomorrow. But so often we think, oh,
if we just get the right camera, or if we
just get the right instrument for you're a musician, or
if you get the right whatever that is, we put
those kind of things. Once I get this, I'll be
able to do my dreams and it doesn't work that way. Like,
I have met very few people that just go, oh,

(01:09:13):
I had the resources. Joe Rogan, Okay, he had the resources.

Speaker 2 (01:09:17):
Great.

Speaker 1 (01:09:18):
But the average person that's pursuing their dreams, they're doing
it scrappy. They're making it up as they go. You
mentioned my cell phone. It was my camera that I
took out with. You had and you used.

Speaker 2 (01:09:29):
What you had.

Speaker 1 (01:09:30):
And so for people who are wanting to chase those
dreams or ideas or create and a space and they're
just going, I just don't have the resources, what would
you tell them about being scrappy and making it work
even when it seems impossible.

Speaker 3 (01:09:44):
Well, I would use that was the hunter astopsic quote.
It something like when the going gets weird, the weird
turn pro.

Speaker 1 (01:09:50):
And I love that.

Speaker 2 (01:09:51):
I've not heard that one beppiest. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:09:54):
I mean, the whole reason why we even covered the
protests in the first place was because my business exploded
overnight when the pandemic happened. And I go through that
in the book where we were doing all this on
the ground stuff. I had a bunch of twenty somethings
kids who were new to the business, and we're paying
them peanuts and you know, I myself bartended while I
was a production assistant because I couldn't afford rent otherwise.

Speaker 2 (01:10:16):
But whether it was the protest on tax Day that we.

Speaker 3 (01:10:22):
Protest, or the pandemic and the protests and riots that happened,
it was in those moments of chaos and of not
knowing which way forward that I didn't even know that
the answer was sitting right in front of me.

Speaker 2 (01:10:35):
So when the protests and riots started, it was I
asked the question of Like that first weekend, Jorge and
Shelby and I got down there on the Monday, the
day of the Trump Bible photo op, which is in
the book.

Speaker 1 (01:10:49):
It was weird moment, too, very weird. Yes, as a
Christian that is still very weird to me.

Speaker 2 (01:10:54):
Yes, And they can people can.

Speaker 3 (01:10:56):
I was there, and I was on podcast live on
CNN in front of the police line, so people can
read about that. But in that moment, that first weekend,
it was very clear that the corporate press with their
big cameras were not able to get the same fly
on the wall perspective that we were with our cell phones.

(01:11:18):
And so it was only by actually jumping into it
and actually seeing the results that the answer was sitting
right in front of us of all right, we're young.

Speaker 2 (01:11:27):
What are our advantages here over the corporate press. No
we don't have the money. No we don't have the
big expansive cameras. No we don't have the reach.

Speaker 3 (01:11:33):
But what we do have is a scrappiness and a
willingness to go in there and just sit there for
eight hours and just show people what's going on behind
the curtain. And so it wasn't until we actually jumped
in headfirst with nothing but a cell phone that we
were able to realize we had found this lane that
nobody else was occupying.

Speaker 2 (01:11:52):
At that time.

Speaker 3 (01:11:53):
And so I think the hardest thing to do is
to put yourself out there in the digital age where
we're going to be during the comments, and you're going
to be hearing so many people say this and that
about everything, and everybody has an opinion now. But the
real important thing is not putting your hot take on
Twitter so you get more retweets. It's finding your lane.
What is everybody else doing, what are they not doing?

(01:12:16):
And how sometimes your greatest weakness is your greatest strength.
And so I think with respect to the to the
pandemic and the protests. It was like the fact that
we were young and nimble was exactly what allowed us
to just turn on a dime and go to these
places where the correspondence had their big security teams and
they couldn't, you know, just sit in there as a
fly on the wall.

Speaker 2 (01:12:36):
So yeah, and that's what we do it.

Speaker 1 (01:12:38):
That's what we found with our business was every time
the economy takes a dump or there's COVID or something
like that, that's when our business has done the best.
Exactly where we grow the fastest. That it's the whole
blue ocean concept of find the blue water, get out there,
swim alone. And I love that concept. How can people
find you and find Pigeon Press and find these.

Speaker 3 (01:13:02):
Books Pigeonpress dot com and Richie McGinnis aur I C
H I E M C G I N N I
S S. And that's the same on all social media platforms,
no spaces, just and yeah, I think the Pigeon Press
itself is indicative of exactly what you're saying. All the
publishers were saying, Oh, the business is so hard and
you have to you have to pick aside. Yeah, you

(01:13:23):
have to, you know, either throw in your hat with
this side or that if you want to sell books
in this day and age, and it's like, sure, it's
been hard selling books with my approach. But with all
that being said, I can be twenty years from now
somebody can pick up the book and get just a
good as good an idea of what happened as right now.
So I think people are just coming around now to Okay,

(01:13:45):
well maybe everything that I was told wasn't true.

Speaker 2 (01:13:47):
And I think as time.

Speaker 3 (01:13:49):
Goes on it will age like a fine wine hopefully.

Speaker 1 (01:13:53):
I love that, and I'm excited to watch what you
guys continue to do. I've I didn't know about you guys,
and we were introduced, and I've become a fan of
what you're doing, and I just really enjoy watching your approach.
It just feels use the word early on in the interview, authentic,
and I do agree with you that that's what the
world is looking for, like there it's the Emperor's new clothes,

(01:14:16):
like hey, something's not lining up here. And that authenticity
and that realness I so appreciate. So we're we're becoming
big fans of Chumble. Think of what you're doing with
Pigeon Press. We always wrap up with one final questions,
one of my favorite questions to ask everyone I meet,
what's one dream you're still going to fulfill in your
own life.

Speaker 2 (01:14:37):
I want to tell longer form stories, and the dream
that I've always had was to make my way on
to feature length stuff and to combine the writing with
the video.

Speaker 3 (01:14:51):
And so one day, hopefully probably not in the near future,
but hopefully one day I still got you know, I
still got some years in me. I don't get you know,
winged by any more, don't follow any more kids with
ar fifteens into dark alleyways, but I want to make
my way into only longer form books, but eventually combined

(01:15:13):
the video with the writing.

Speaker 2 (01:15:15):
I love it.

Speaker 1 (01:15:16):
Richie, thanks so much for taking time out. I hope
we connect up again in the future and share more
of these stories.

Speaker 2 (01:15:23):
So there's a second book, so.

Speaker 1 (01:15:25):
Gotta do all right? Sounds good? Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (01:15:29):
I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:15:34):
Wow, what a story, What a conversation?

Speaker 2 (01:15:37):
Oh wow?

Speaker 1 (01:15:38):
Lots about what's going on with Richie. We'll have the
links in the notes below wherever you're listening or watching,
so you can go check out the book so you
can learn more about what's happening. With Richie and his team.
Wow wow wow. Well we are back next week telling
you about what's happening at Jumble Think, what's happening in

(01:15:59):
our world, and what changes we're making to this podcast
and our adventures forward. So make sure tune back in
wherever you're watching. Subscribe subscribe right now, click that click
that little bell, and make sure that you get the notifications.
Lots going on, well, so fun. Thanks for joining us,
Thanks for being along for the ride, Thanks for listening

(01:16:20):
to this conversation. Season five off to a killer start,
got so much more for you in twenty twenty five.

Speaker 2 (01:16:28):
See us soon

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