BREAKING: Daily Wire CEO DEBUNKS Ben Shapiro Viewership HOAX

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]So, Mike Richards was just named the new Daily Wire CEO and he went on the Hollywood Reporter to answer some questions about it. And credit to the interviewer because they actually asked some very spicy questions. Pretty much all the things that you and I have been wanting to know about. And I want to start with this one because it's gotten a lot of press. They asked, "Let's talk about Ben. He's been under a lot of heat. What can you tell me about what's actually happening with his audience?"

[00:00:25]Richards responded. He's up 7% year-over-year across all platforms. All the reporting, all the sniping. As someone who lives in the numbers because it's my job, we don't even understand it. Some of the numbers are not as public as the other numbers. When I'm looking at the numbers, I'm looking at how many people are listening on our own platform. It's a big number. I'm looking at Spotify, Spotify video, RSS, and YouTube. The per episode numbers are right where they have been. Is it what it was in 2024? the most consequential circus election in the history of the world. Never be to repeat it again, I hope. No, but across all platforms, which is what our business model is.

[00:00:59]That's what makes us unique and so badass. We don't just have to click farm to succeed. He can drive hundreds of thousands of subscribers to our platform. I'll give you an example. He did a really good, pretty aggressive monologue last Friday. We talked about it. It doubled our daily subscriptions that day and sold lifetime memberships, which are expensive, without any call to action, and 6 million views on X. So, I want to pause there for a second. There you have it. Ben's numbers are not going down as we've talked about on the show before. And before I show you more of this interview, I thought I would peel back the curtain just a little bit more on my own operations and share some things with you because what Mike Richard shares here are things that I've been observing about the Daily Wire for a long time. When I started my company, it's called Car Media Company. That's the legal entity for it. I started it three years ago. I knew that I was never going to be as big as the Daily Wire. In fact, I know I don't want to be as big as them to be honest. And as we'll talk about in a second, it's because it's incredibly stressful and comes with a good deal of financial risk for them.

[00:01:54]But one thing I did do is I looked at the Daily Wire and I adopted some of their business strategies. And this is actually something I talked about with Jeremy Boring on his podcast when I went on it. But what Mike Richards is talking about in this question about Ben is a concept of maximizing private views, things that people can't see, such as their private subscriptions or things like uh Facebook revenue and also maximizing profit without the click farming. Essentially, what the Daily Wire has is a way to make more money with less views. They're, you know, they're not trying to be as famous as possible. They're trying to be a profitable company. And the reason why that's so important is it helps you stay intellectually grounded. Because if you can run your business better than Megan Kelly, for example, you don't have to do whatever it takes to get the clicks.

[00:02:42]Megan Kelly, all she talks about is clicks, clicks, views, views. But if you have a full business infrastructure working in the background to maximize the audience that you already have, this is a philosophy that works out in the long run for being consistent. It's a philosophy I've adopted in my own company, obviously, to a much smaller scale. He continued talking about Ben.

[00:03:04]He was asked, "What do you make of the shift toward what Shapiro calls the woke right, the Carlson Owens, Fuentes axis, leaning into anti-semitism and conspiracy theories? Is it moving your audience?" He said, "I don't think our audience is necessarily shifting away.

[00:03:16]There are certain people who are going to go with different conspiracy theories and different ideas about what conservatism should be. The key to the Daily Wire as an institution is that we are consistent with what we believe conservatism is, even if it costs us audience." Again, the reason why is because they actually have a business model that allows them to do that. They don't actually need maximizing the clicks. They've already maximized the back end of their business. He said, "We're going to stay consistent."

[00:03:42]Because in the end, people will come right back around and go, "Oh, wait.

[00:03:45]They really are conservative. They didn't just chase clicks." It's also important to point out that it's not just Ben's voice. We've got 12 shows here and everyone has different opinions. That is the great part about this place. We have debates in the kitchen at lunch and then we all get along afterwards. The way this has gone with other people is they've made it much more personal and aggressive and it's unnecessary. This is guys the beauty of having a business model that isn't dependent solely on clicks.

[00:04:10]Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Tucker Carlson a little bit less. I will admit he has a little bit more backend, but especially Megan Kelly and Candace Owens are solely dependent on clicks. And you can obviously see it in their reporting in their commentary. It is the reason why the Daily Wire, though imperfect at times, has been the best in the conservative movement in my opinion at being consistent. Mike Richards was next asked about the layoffs. A lot of people have had questions about this. He gave a very candid answer, I thought, uh, which is really not. I mean, this is kind of the the beauty of being a new CEO is you can just kind of start fresh and tell everybody everything. He said, "Let's address," or, rather, they asked, "Let's address the layoffs directly. Candace Owens said 50%, then revised it upward to 60. What was the actual number?" He said she was doing that new math, which is why we really have to fix the public school system. The number was 13%, which is just under the 65% that was reported.

[00:05:01]Listen, layoffs are always bad. Those are some of my friends, people I love working with, but we had been expanding heavily in editorial and adding new talent, so we needed to reallocate.

[00:05:12]Three years ago, there were eight or nine shows shooting almost daily in our studio. Most of our hosts now shoot remotely. Matt Walsh is in an undisclosed location. Isbel Brown is in DC. Andrew Claven is in DC. Ben is in Florida. A lot of the staff we unfortunately lost was from production because we simply don't shoot as many shows here in our Nashville headquarters. We've launched a new daily shoe show Wired in Live that shoots here and we have the Michael Null show here and that's it. The contraction was us refocusing on the things we know we need to do to be the preeminent new media institution in the country. And then he was asked, are you still hiring? He said, we'll add where we need to add.

[00:05:48]We've expanded our social team from 3 to 14. We've got another major talent about to front Premium Content, a big big name and I think an unexpected name. And we've signed a new person in the conservative universe who will start in 2027. We are not shrinking away. We are expanding. Shrinking is not always a bad thing. This is what I was trying to explain. People are talking about the layoffs. Obviously, if it was 65% like Candace Owens lied about, that would be one thing. But I know a lot of people who don't want to hear this, but AI is making a lot of these layoffs inevitable, at least in the short term, and especially in the media industry. I can guarantee that when the Daily Wire laid off 13% of their workforce, they did not lose any production. I know that's tough to hear. Maybe that will make people hate AI more, but that's the reality. Again, context for my business.

[00:06:36]I do the work of probably one to two producers with AI now instead of hiring that out. So, in a massive company like the Daily Wire, that's going to have some big effects. It's also true, by the way, that podcast studios are increasingly requiring less. People don't need massive productions to enjoy podcasts. If you look at people like Joe Rogan, for example, he does not have a large team and his studio is quite conservative. It's really not very large. And it's because people just enjoy authenticity. And so, that means people can do these things from their homes. And when you do it from your home, you don't have lunch coordinators or janitorial staff or, you know, more HR, for example. And so that's going to cut down your labor quite a bit.

[00:07:20]Finally, guys, Richards was asked about Caleb Robinson stepping away. And this is interesting, right? Because Jeremy Boring stepped away a little over a year ago. Caleb Robinson has always been kind of co-CEO. Um, but he's only been there for a year by himself. And so for him to step out was kind of interesting. Uh, if you didn't know, Caleb has been there since the beginning with Jeremy Boring and Ben Shapiro. And Caleb released this kind of cryptic message when he resigned. A lot of people were very confused. He said, "Stepping down as CEO of Daily Wire, effective immediately. My new title is guy on the board who still owns a lot of the company. Pay cut and stress raising the important things.

[00:07:56]Handing the keys to Mike Richards. No, not that. Mike Richards. Yes, that Mike Richards. Five times Emmy winner.

[00:08:01]Hollywood expat. Eat, sleeps, and drinks content. Never makes a deal unless the price is right. That's a reference because he was a producer on the prices, right? Built something special here over a decade. We're the largest and most impactful digital media company for people who love this amazing country.

[00:08:14]And now we make it even bigger thanks to our audience of millions. Yes, millions.

[00:08:18]Kind of just out of nowhere. No reason.

[00:08:20]But Mike Richards gives us a reason.

[00:08:22]They asked if he knew that this was going to happen. And he said not anyone in the building knew. He said Caleb had been working with the board for a month and talking about how things would go and what that would look like. A lot of it was him wanting to make sure we had a great management team in place. He felt very confident in me and our CFO and our CMO and the rest of the management team.

[00:08:42]I didn't know that's where he was heading, but it had been in process for some time, I was told. They asked, did he say why? And Mike Richards gave the reason why. Yes. He has been doing this for 11 years. It's a stressful job. It is a 24-hour a day job. He has many, many children and wanted to spend time with them. He's still on the board. He still owns a huge chunk of the company.

[00:09:02]He's still going to be very active. A lot of people say that when they're stepping down and then it's like, "See, you never I was actually texting him this morning about something we're working on. He's just taking a less stressful version of what he's doing."

[00:09:14]So, Caleb seems to be involved still.

[00:09:18]Again, I think this change out is a very good thing for a company, partly because 11 years is a very long time for a company to have the same leadership and it's good to actually get some churning there, get some fresh faces. But I also think it's good because it shows people in charge of this company are real. This is a real company. People who are CEOs of large companies for 40 years are kind of freaks. Like Elon Musk, I like Elon Musk, but he's a freak. They don't spend time with their kids. They don't serve in their community. They do great things in the private sphere, but they're just machines. And I don't think that's who we need leading the one of the largest institutions in the conservative movement. I think it's good to see that one of the most important conservative institutions in the US is run by normal people. I wish Mike Richards all the best. I hope they can double and then triple in size like they've already done many times before. Really quick, y'all, I wanted to invite you to become a member of the Josh Carr Show. When you become a member, you get your comments right at the top. I answer every single one. I'm able to see all the questions that you have. you get access to exclusive videos, exclusive Q&As's, and I've got some exciting guests coming on the show. I will be putting for members only a place where you can ask them questions and I will have them answer it live to you. It's very exciting. It's coming up soon. I'm very excited. It's only $1.99 to join. It's a way to support me, but I'm not a communist.

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