10-08-25 *INTERVIEW* Leland Vittert Host of 'On Balance' on News Nation

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm so pleased to welcome back to the show my good.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
Friend Leland Viddtert.

Speaker 1 (00:03):
He hosts on Balance on News Nation seven pm weeknights
here in the Mountain time zone, and it plays again
at ten pm. Also, make sure you go to warnoes
dot com and sign up for that. And we are
gonna talk a bit, or maybe more than a bit
about Leland's new book, which is Born Lucky, which is
published now so you can buy it, you can read it.

(00:24):
I read it already, is doing incredibly well. So we
had a lot of stuff to talk about. And Leland,
thank you for subscribing to my sub stack.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
I saw that you did that.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
You know, if there was an option to pay, I
would have because I believe it is that good.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
I often tell my listeners it's free and probably worth
slightly more than that. All right, I have lots of
things I want to ask you today. So you used
to be a foreign correspondent. You were stationed in Jerusalem
for a long time for Fox News. You were just
telling me about the flag that's behind you in your
home office right now, a torn flag from the in

(01:00):
revolution when you were there.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
And my question for.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
You is does any part of you wish that you
were doing that job right now.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
Sure, you always wish that you were back with a
small team, running in dangerous places, telling important stories and
getting information that no one else can because no one
else is there. And Inborn Lucky, we take you out
into the battlefields of the Middle East. Is not the
most important part of the book, but there's no other

(01:31):
way to really understand what is happening.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
Than being there.

Speaker 3 (01:36):
And I think there's very little also learned in the
second Kick of a Mule. So after about four years
of being in the Middle East, I decided that I
had learned what I could and then needed to come home.
But if what you're getting at is how important the
story of the Middle East is right now?

Speaker 4 (01:54):
Yes, how important?

Speaker 3 (01:55):
Moral clarity about the story in the Middle East is
absolutely And the only way I've gained that moral clarity
was by being there.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Yeah, there are a lot of aspects, a lot of
aspects to that. And plus I know this is not
the most important thing, although you did touch on it
just I don't know whether you'd quite call it fun.
But let's say the adventure of it, including the fact
that there's risk involved given everything going on in the
Middle East right, now, Yeah, I was just kind of

(02:24):
wondering whether you longed for that a little bit, not
whether you would trade jobs or anything.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
Well, Churchill said that the greatest thrill in life was
being shot at without a fact.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
All right, I have lots of stuff, lots of different topics.
So I know you often say that journalists make terrible
media critics. So I'm going to try to ask you
a question that is more along the line that you
could actually answer. So shortly after, Barry Weiss posted her
tremendous interview of you on her Honestly podcast, and folks,
if you haven't heard it, just go find Barry Weiss's

(02:58):
podcast and listen to the interview with Leland. Shortly after that,
she was announced as editor in chief of CBS News
and the guy who is running that whole thing when
he kind of explained it, his focus was on trust,
and he said, we aim to make this brand a
brand we can trust again. And I would like to
know your big picture thoughts about television news and trust.

Speaker 3 (03:21):
Trust is hard to earn and easily lost without question.
So again, I'm not a media critic. Journalist make lousy
media critics. What I can tell you is what I
do every day, which is try as hard as I
possibly can to be accurate and to be fair and bias.

(03:45):
Somehow we have gotten in this idea that bias is
not having an opinion. Well, let me let me ask
you to check your pulse, and you have an opinion.
You have a pulse, therefore you have an opinion. Therefore
you have bias. And for those who say AI is
the answer, I would just direct them to the pictures
of the black Nazis the day I created. So bias

(04:08):
is not having.

Speaker 4 (04:09):
An opinion, it's excluding opinions.

Speaker 3 (04:12):
And what I try to do every night is try
and not exclude opinions.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
And that's hard.

Speaker 3 (04:20):
It's both hard to do as a journalist because you
have to be able to play both sides and bring
equal heat to both sides and equal critical thinking of
both sides, regardless of your own opinion. And number two,
you have to have viewers who are willing to have
their own opinions and their own closely and sincerely held

(04:43):
beliefs questioned. And I think what I would say is
an observation is that you can go no matter what
your political spectrum is, at nine o'clock at night, and
watch a cable news show that will tell you not
only exactly what you're thinking, right, but why you're so
brilliant for thinking it. That is the echo chamber. That

(05:06):
is not what I try to do every night on NewsNation, right.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
And you know my listeners know because I say it
when you're not on with me, Leland, that yours is
the best show on on not just cable news, here's
the best show on making network that is in any
form of a news show.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
And my wife and I watch it every night, and
you know, yeah, I would just say.

Speaker 3 (05:33):
I would also say, and I am biased because Barry
Weiss interviewed me and helped launch More and Lucky, the
book with that interview and the really excellent podcast. You said,
But her interview and her interviewing skills and her intensity
and not just easy questions, I thought was extraordinarily impressive.

(05:56):
I've never been interviewed in the same way she how
about that? Yeah, or with that level of intensity, probity, preparation,
thoughtfulness ever.

Speaker 1 (06:10):
And yeah, I agree with you, although I would say
I think you embody those things when you interview people
almost all the time, and I try to. I try
to do the same all right, let me switch gears.
You mentioned this on your show, and I had never
not really thought about it before. Tell me about what
you've learned and what we need to know about fake

(06:31):
books that seem to say born Lucky on the front.

Speaker 3 (06:35):
It's a funny question because just as Born Lucky was
starting to take off on Amazon and we clearly hit
a nerve, because this is a book for every parent
of a kid having a hard time, doesn't matter if
it's ADHD or autism, or anxiety or bullying or I
had one mother told me about how it spoke to

(06:55):
herbies her son had a nut allergy, another kid who
would overcome a speech impediment.

Speaker 4 (07:00):
This speaks to.

Speaker 3 (07:00):
Everybody and every parent and every parent who has a
kid who's having a hard time. But as it shot
up to number sixteen on Amazon that included our long,
hard fought and losing battle with Blueie the Dinosaur on Amazon,
that there were all of a sudden, dozens of fake

(07:21):
books written by AI and uploaded to Amazon. So as
we were selling out on Amazon, people were buying the
AI books because it said in stock and they looked
kind of the same in the answer of similar covers
and on and on and fake reviews, so I would
get angry emails from people about what trash the book was.

(07:44):
And it turns out they had gotten the AI version
of some knockoff and they were horribly angry and rightfully so.
So we had to work through that for those interested,
Born Lucky. Right now it says sold out on Amazon.
We have gotten four thousand reprinted twenty eight thousand will
be at Amazon warehouses tomorrow, so by it now, don't

(08:05):
get into a car crash. But when you get to
where you're going, pull out your phone, get moor In Luck,
go to Amazon Born Lucky, and it'll be there hopefully
before the end of the week if you if you
purchase it now, all.

Speaker 2 (08:15):
Right, just one one other follow up on this.

Speaker 1 (08:18):
Does does Amazon have any responsibility and are they acting
like they have any responsibility to prevent these these knockoffs?

Speaker 2 (08:29):
And then all this it's a great it's a great question.

Speaker 3 (08:32):
They ended up taking them all down, so I thought
that was really really great. But you know, look for
different reasons. We had a lot of interest in our book,
and there was it was it was sort of exploding
at that time, so Amazon really started paying attention. I think,
what's sad about it is is that this is how

(08:55):
sort of the world is working. And I think for
other people who have written books and maybe who are
self published, don't have sort of the resources we had
behind Born Lucky, how hard it would be to try
to fight with Amazon about which one is the real one,
which one's.

Speaker 2 (09:07):
The fate with Yeah, yeah, I had that same thought.

Speaker 1 (09:09):
I wonder if Amazon would have been as aggressive if
somebody less prominent than you were having these problems. And
for folks who don't know, like we didn't say it
all that much, but the Leland's book Born Lucky, and
I'm going to summarize in the most general possible way,
but about the challenges that he went through and the
things he suffered as a child, and then how with

(09:31):
the help of an unbelievable father and other people, he
got through them to get where he is today. And
it's a remarkable story. And you won't you won't put
it down. So that's Born Lucky. You can, as Leland said,
find it on Amazon or Born luckybook dot com.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
And again if you don't know.

Speaker 1 (09:48):
Leland's show on Balance seven pm Mountain Time, and it
plays again ten pm Mountain Time on News nation. All right,
so on yesterday's show, you played a clip of Marjorie
Taylor Green kind of sort of with the Democrats on
this issue of extending what we're supposed to be temporary
Obamacare subsidies or tax credits, and you My own opinion

(10:12):
on this is if Republicans can't just allow temporary tax
credits to expire, then they're not really useful for much.
But you had some wider analysis than that. Now, with
another few hours to think about it yourself, what are
your thoughts.

Speaker 3 (10:30):
The issue that is going to bring the government shutdown
to either ahead or a focal point or whatever. I believe,
if history repeats itself, will be the same one that
did the last time, which is air traffic control, because
it is the one thing that the American people don't
tolerate is planes either being late or feeling like there's

(10:53):
on the air traffic controllers to keep them safe in
the air. And that is something that as soon as
it hits and begins to become a pain point, will
change things.

Speaker 4 (11:03):
And that would be the.

Speaker 3 (11:06):
Process that I think is going to start happening here
in the next week or two. I think that both
Democrats and Republicans have a point. Democrats point is made
much better than Republicans when it comes to the government shutdown.

Speaker 4 (11:20):
That's why the polling.

Speaker 3 (11:23):
Shows Democrats with the upper hand and Americans blaming Republicans
when it was Republicans who voted over and over again
to keep the government opening, to keep funding the government.
So facts are testy things, but in politics, perception is reality,
and the perception is that Democrats are somehow fighting against

(11:43):
evil Republicans to keep healthcare across slow. That may be
part of it, but that is certainly not the entire story.

Speaker 1 (11:52):
It's part of the reason I'll say I like your
analysis is that about an hour ago on my show,
I was talking about the shutdown and I said, it
seems to me that this is very much an inside
the Beltway story, and most people don't care except for
air travel, and this is the first thing that I
think is hitting the public more broadly. And so you know,

(12:15):
you and I picked up the same thing in air travel.

Speaker 4 (12:18):
And if this goes on long enough.

Speaker 3 (12:21):
That people start getting their Obamacare renewal notices that have
hugely spiked premiums, that is going to put additional pressure
on Republicans to come up with or to acknowledge that
there's going to be some kind of fit. Now, we
could take this the next step right in, say, you know,

(12:43):
one more step and go to the point that the
fact that we're having to subsidize Obamacare or the ACA
to the point that we are proves the point that
we shouldn't have Medicare for all because of the loading
cost of healthcare and.

Speaker 4 (13:01):
How we've been unable to deal with it.

Speaker 3 (13:02):
But that's more of a political philosophy point than it
is strictly sort of political analysis of what's happening right
now in DC.

Speaker 1 (13:11):
Did you happen to see the Washington Post editorial from
a few days ago talking about, you know, big spending
and entitlements. I shared a sentence or two with my
listeners a little bit earlier. Once you habituate people to
some generous government handout, they grow dependent on it and
it becomes politically perilous, if not impossible, to fully claw

(13:32):
it back. So, I mean, I find that to be true.
But it's also kind of amazing that it's an editorial,
not an op ed, an editorial in the Washington Post.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
What do you make of that journalists.

Speaker 4 (13:43):
Make rousy media critics.

Speaker 3 (13:45):
I think What is interesting about it is is that
it is a true so it has the adverts of
being true.

Speaker 4 (13:55):
What your point.

Speaker 3 (13:56):
Is is that the Washington Post is becoming more centrist
and more free market oriented dull.

Speaker 4 (14:03):
And that is because Jeff Bezos that owns.

Speaker 3 (14:05):
The Washington Post realized that to borrow a phrase, you
can do this the hard way or the easy way,
and that Trump was going to extract an enormous price
from him if the Washington Post kept beating him up.

Speaker 2 (14:20):
I think I think you're right all right.

Speaker 1 (14:23):
Last last couple of questions, but all kind of sort
of about the same thing. The Born Lucky special with
Bill O'Reilly was that filmed at his house.

Speaker 4 (14:35):
He was filmed up in New York.

Speaker 1 (14:38):
Do you often wear cowboy boots always? Are you wearing
cowboy boots right now?

Speaker 3 (14:46):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (14:48):
And not always?

Speaker 1 (14:49):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (14:50):
I think you're well, well.

Speaker 4 (14:51):
I should say when I have to wear dress.

Speaker 3 (14:54):
Shoot, yes, I always wear cowboy boots when I'm walking
around my house. I either in barefoot where I wear
flip flops. Is if you're listeners happen to be that
interested in my footwear?

Speaker 2 (15:05):
Ross? We are?

Speaker 4 (15:07):
I don't know what to say.

Speaker 2 (15:08):
No, we definitely are.

Speaker 4 (15:09):
That sounds that sounds like a personal problem.

Speaker 1 (15:12):
Yes, okay, last footwear question. Did you learn to love
cowboy boots when you were in Denver?

Speaker 4 (15:21):
Or yes?

Speaker 2 (15:22):
Yes, okay, last thing for you.

Speaker 1 (15:25):
And I think you're the center of attention a lot
already and I don't want you to get you know,
a big ego or something. So in the context of
Born Lucky, uh, tell us a little story about not you,
but about your awesome sister, who has been a guest
on my show more than once.

Speaker 3 (15:44):
So one of the many things I think Born Lucky
shows is how hard it is on the siblings of
kids who are having a really hard time. And my
sister's first memory of me, and I didn't know this
until we started interviewing her and the rest of my
family for the book, is when I was in fifth grade.

(16:06):
She was in kindergarten. So I would walk from my
fifth grade classroom to her kindergarten classroom every day at
the end of school and then pick her up and
walk her home, and we'd walk through the back of
the sports fields with this elementary school I went to,
and then through the woods into our house.

Speaker 4 (16:24):
And she said that her first memory of me was getting.

Speaker 3 (16:28):
Into the woods every day at the back of the
pe fields and starting to cry, and her holding my
hand as we walked home every day crying because of
the bullying and the isolation and the humiliation I felt
every day. So eventually I got pulled out of that
school in fifth grade. But it was remarkable to me,

(16:49):
and I put this in Born Lucky, how my parents
never told her about my autism diagnosis, because in the
words of my mother, they never wanted her to see
me as anything but my.

Speaker 4 (17:00):
But her brother.

Speaker 3 (17:02):
And I think what was remarkable to me is the
intensity and the loyalty she has and the feelings of
protection she has towards me, despite the fact of how
she has been so hurt at times because of me.
You know, when she was in seventh grade, I was
in twelfth grade to a different school, but the same school,

(17:24):
she was called the retarded kid's little sister, and a
teacher said to her, we hope you don't turn out
like your brother, And that to me really spoke to
how for so many families this is a struggle, and
then there's a feeling of loneliness, not just for the
child that's having a hard time, but for the whole family,

(17:45):
and one of the messages from Born Lucky is you're
not alone as a family and as a parent, there
is so much you can do to help your child.
There's so much you can do to help your kid be.

Speaker 1 (17:57):
More Your nickname from the time you were very young
has been lucky.

Speaker 2 (18:03):
I've got to tell.

Speaker 1 (18:04):
You, you are beyond lucky to have been born into the
family that you were born into, because if you had
been born to some other family, there's a very big
chance your story would not have ended up so well
thousand percent.

Speaker 3 (18:19):
And one of the reasons I wrote moren Lucky, The
first reason was to give hope to so many other
families with a kid who's having a hard time.

Speaker 4 (18:27):
Doesn't matter what it's with, for every parent whose kids
having a hard time.

Speaker 3 (18:32):
But the second reason is ross I really wanted to
be able to say thank you to my dad and
have him understand that I understood the enormous sacrifice he
made after I got diagnosed with what we now know
to be autism, and to work to adapt me to
the world rather than the world to me. And that's
why Born Lucky is getting such an incredible response, and

(18:54):
it's why I think people are reading it and talking
about it, not because of Leland Viitter, but because of
what it says about what parents can do.

Speaker 2 (19:05):
Leland Viitter is on news Nation every night.

Speaker 1 (19:07):
His show is called On Balance every weeknight seven pm,
replay at ten pm here in the Mountain time zone.
His book, which is a really tremendous read, is called
Born Lucky. You can buy it wherever you buy your books,
or go to bornluckybook dot com and again go to
warnotes dot com and sign up there for Leland's daily emails.
They will make you smarter and you will enjoy them too.

(19:27):
As always, Leland, thanks so much for making time for us.

Speaker 4 (19:30):
Thanks Ross.

Speaker 2 (19:30):
Always fun. All right, take it easy,