A Podcast that Reveals All in Washington DC - Jennifer Briney

Speaking with TJ Walker, dissecting the communication.

Skills and practices of world class leaders. We live in an era where all you hear from the hucksters is you can be the media. There are no more gatekeepers. Cbs, abc, the Wall Street Journal, they don't run things anymore. Just go out, start your own podcast, become your own mini media empire. And you can do it, no matter how small the niche, no matter how specialized. Find your audience, pursue your passion. Now, we hear that all the time, but who actually does that? Well, our guest today did that. Jennifer Briney is with us. She started from scratch the show Congressional Dish, which is exclusively about Congress, the bills that pass through Congress. No, she didn't have to be an intern in Washington D.C. for 20 years before starting this. She just did it. Jennifer, thanks for joining us.

Thank you so much for having me.

And so I'm jealous of younger people like you because I graduated from college in 1985 and I took audition tapes, political commentaries. I moved from North Carolina to New York City and I sent out all my little demo tapes to every radio station in New York City looking for my big break. And I got nothing, Nada. In fact, I would run out of town after about three months. Took me 10 years to come back.

Oh, no.

But you took a different tack. Tell us how you started the show, Congressional Dish.

Well, lucky for me, the Internet exists because I wouldn't have been able to do this otherwise. And it really was as simple as going on Amazon. I bought a sad little mixer that could only fit one microphone and I started it from my kitchen table. And what I decided to do because I wanted to educate myself about Congress. And so for the first two years of Congressional Dish, my goal was to read every bill that passed the House of Representatives and just tell people what I found and what that experience was like. I did that and just was shocked at the way that the way I thought Congress was supposed to work was so different from how it actually turned out to be. The Internet was what allowed me to do that because there used to be a time where if you wanted to get the access to these documents, you had to go to Washington, D.C. and now I can just download the Congressional Record every day. And so I can do this from wherever. I've actually Never lived in D.C. and it's a beautiful thing that any citizen is able to do this now with the records that are available to every one of us online now, you really.

Have a narrow niche. I mean, I consider myself a political junkie. My wife laughs at me and Says, ah, you talk about politics, no one cares about politics, but you're even a sub niche of the political world of what goes on in Congress. I worked there for a couple of members of Congress a quarter of a century ago, and even I'm not sure I want to hear every single bill read. Although I've heard your show and you do a great job. How do you find an audience for that? And I'm not suggesting you have to have millions to make it worthwhile, but how do you find an audience?

Well, you know, the show has actually changed over time. So I was reading every bill in the 113th Congress, and the lesson I learned is that that was really quite impossible. Unfortunately, our own representatives are not reading all of these bills. They can't. It's physically impossible with the number of them and how long they. And so the show has actually evolved over time to where now I'm filtering what I'm covering. So if you see something that's all over the mainstream media, I probably won't talk about it. But I'm looking for those stories that are fascinating me that are not getting the coverage that they deserve. And what's amazing is that by watching Congress, it's opened up my world to so many different topics that I never expected to go into. So even though Congress itself itself is somewhat of a niche topic, I mean, I just did an episode on why we invaded Libya. I've looked at the 2001 anthrax attacks. I've looked at trade agreements, international trade agreements. I've done a lot of coverage on the tpp. So because Congress legislates everything, I've actually found that Congressional dish has been doing so many different topics, and I'm learning about so many different things. You know, my last episode was on aviation, about the Federal Aviation Administration. But in order to cover that law, I had to talk about the issues like drones and things like that. So it's actually not as niche as it might seem. When you first hear about a show about Congress, it's really fascinating all the different topics that Congress has their hands in.

Jennifer, this all sounds good, but I'm worried you're not spending enough time covering Anthony Weiner.

Oh, poor Anthony Weiner. Yeah, he needs to just stay off Twitter. It's that simple, Anthony. Stay off Twitter.

I'm violating my own rule. I just did a commentary on YouTube saying I would pay good money for anyone who could come up with an app that would prevent my cell phone or desktop computer from ever showing me an article with the name Anthony Weiner in it. That's a side topic. How long has the show been on and how has it evolved beyond what you just mentioned of going from reading the bills to exploring the bigger issues that Congress dealt with every day?

Well, I launched the podcast in September of 2012, so technically that was in the 112th Congress, but I only covered the lame duck. This is now my second Congress. Every Congress is two years long. And so I did the 113th, and now this is the 114th. So that I'm in my. This is four years next month. And the way that it's evolved, I mean, I've learned so much not only about how Congress works, but also about podcasting. So my equipment's definitely gotten better. I've changed kind of how I record. I used to be much more careful about every word, and now I allow myself some freedom to go off script.

How much of it is scripted? I mean, you certainly sound to me completely conversational and just like a real person talking. I don't script anything either, but part of that is just time constraints. I can't imagine writing a script for an hour.

Yeah, I definitely don't script the whole thing, but what I am very careful about is I fact check everything I say, so I can't really veer off course. So I do have extremely detailed outlines, and for some episodes, like the Libya episode, I wanted to be very careful about every word. And so that one. I'm not going to say it's scripted because it's not, but. But I definitely know exactly what I'm going to say in every segment. But like with the Federal Aviation Administration bill, I'm really just going off of an outline, and I have a bunch of stories that are kind of on the side, and some make it in and some don't, but I definitely have very detailed show notes that allow me to make sure that everything I say is factual. So that's really important. So that's why script is such a weird word. But I definitely. I'm definitely reading something as I'm speaking almost all the time.

You fact check every word. I would not put that on your resume if you're applying for the Dick Morris Pundit Chair at Fox News next time.

Yeah, there's a reason I'm not even attempting to go into tv, because what they do horrifies me every single day. The way that they just say things that are not true or speculative or in many cases, are just opinion. People yelling back and forth at each other. That's not news. That's why? I'm trying to do something different. I'm just a person who has no reputation, or I'm building one at this point. But when I started this, I was no 1. I have no celebrity friends. And so I felt that the best way to legitimize myself is to do what the TV anchors are not doing and provide links to all of my sources. So on congressionaldish.com for the show notes of every episode, you can see all the articles I read, the books I used, the documentaries I watched, the hearings I watched. That's all for the listeners to do their own research or to check my work, whatever you want it for. But I don't just put information out there and expect people to trust me. I think you have to trust but verify in the age of the Internet.

And you can ask Jennifer directly where she's getting this. You can just find her on Twitter and Enbriney. That's E N B R I N E Y. We'll put that in the show notes. You can also check out her podcast by going to congressionaldish.com that's three W's, congressionaldish.com we're listing that in the show notes as well. By the way, Jeffrey, I have a lot of listeners here who hear you and me talk about show notes. What are you talking about? Because they are experiencing this. Because many of them have been on my newsletter list by email for 15 years. They're seeing something in my email. They click, and now they're hearing it come out of their computer. Walk us through what are. Sorry if this sounds absurdly obvious, but what are show notes? How much time do you put in them? What do people get out of them?

Well, I mean, the show notes are really just a webpage that goes along with every episode where I can put any extra information, which in my case is all of my sources, and they actually take the majority of my time. So, for instance, my last episode, like I said, was about the Federal Aviation Administration's most recent funding law. And so what I did is I read that bill and I linked to every provision that I talked about. So if someone wants to, you know, let's say they're interested in the provisions about drones, they can go to congressionaldish.com, look at the page for that episode's webpage. That would be the show notes. And you just look through the bill and you'll see the stuff about drones, and you can click on it and it takes you to the actual provision of the bill. Because I've noticed That by putting out sources, people will link to the whole bill. Well, that doesn't do you much good. And so I create these very detailed outlines. It allows people to go and then read the articles that I've already curated for you. So if you're interested in this particular topic, like the Libya topic in particular, there were dozens of interesting articles in there. And so I've found that people use the show notes to further their own reading and learn more about a topic. Because I can't obviously talk about every detail. So that's how I use them. A lot of other people, a lot of podcasters don't have show notes, which I think is a big mistake. But I think you and I probably use. You probably do things with your newsletter which are similar to what I do with my show notes. I actually don't have an email newsletter. I probably should, but yeah, it's just an extra way for me to give people more information.

Now, we have a couple of different types of listener. I'd like you to perhaps address their concern. We have one kind of listener who's been saying, you know, for years I've had this hobby on growing, you know, roses without thorns, if that exists. I'm sure it does. I'm not a gardener. And wow, I'd love to somehow reach out to a larger community, learn more, talk to people in the community. A podcast might be the right fit. I want you to put sort of your advisor's cap on for someone like that. The other group I'd like you to talk to would be someone who is in charge of public relations, let's say for a small or mid sized company, let's say it's a mid sized or even a small jewelry manufacturer. How could they use podcasting to advance either their passion, their hobby, or their cause?

Okay, well, for the first person, the gardener who has a specialty that he can teach other people about, I definitely think that that's a great avenue for a podcast. And what's great about that is it doesn't just have to be a hobby. Even if you only have. And not only. I mean, let's say you have 100 people that listen to that podcast. Well, imagine having 100 people sitting in a room and coming to that room week after week every time you speak. That's really what a podcast is. And so you can have a very small but powerful audience, even for a very specific niche. And at that point you can reach out to advertisers and say, Listen, I have 100 people listening. I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but they're going to buy everything I tell them to buy, because your product is one of the only things that helps me grow these flowers without thorns. And so I have found podcasting the way I feel about it, it's the new talk radio because it's on demand. And so many of us are now listening to audio content through our phones, as opposed to the radios in our cars. And we're now getting to the point that podcasts, in all of the new generations of cars, podcasts, are in your radio console. So I think it's an excellent opportunity. And if you're someone who has a PR aspect of your job, I mean, I can't recommend it highly enough. There's a lot of advertising power in podcasting because the listeners connect very closely to the host and they trust their host. And so if a podcast host recommends your product, that's very important. And it also allows you to have conversations about your product or your company or whatever your company does to engage people more and just kind of drag them into your universe. I think podcasting is powerful for just about anybody, whether it's a hobby that you're into or if you want to make a business out of it. I mean, I can't promise that you're going to make a full living. I am doing it now, but it took me four long years, and I do it full time. But you can make a little bit of extra cash, and if you already have a business, it's a an excellent way to drive more customers to yourself.

I think you're right on target with this idea that it's the new political talk radio. Now, I've been a lifelong political talk radio junkie ever since I got a crystal radio set for Christmas when I was, I think, 10 years old in 1973, and I started hosting shows in the mid-1980s. But I can tell you it was only a couple of years ago. I was on a major, major talk radio station in New York City, the number one media market in the country, arguably the most important in the world. And the producer, during a commercial break, was telling me, tj, nobody's listening anymore. We don't even show up in the ratings anymore. You're hearing our host beg for callers. It's because there's no one there. The advertisers are buying out of habit, not because there's any actual audience. So I agree the transition is moving to the digital podcast world now. You have an interesting revenue model. You have people give contributions. And while that sounds different or strange to some people. Just look at Charlie Rose. He has people, large, wealthy family foundations give him money. So in a sense, it's always been there. But tell us how that works.

Well, I decided that I didn't want to do an advertising model just because what I've witnessed on the television in particular is that there are stories that are not being told because these people are making money through companies. Say, for instance, you're on television and there's an interesting story about pharmaceutical companies, but every ad you're seeing is pharmaceutical companies. So people might not even realize they're doing it, but they don't want to bite the hand that feeds them. So I decided that I don't want to bite the hand that feeds me. So I think that the listeners should be the ones that feed me. So that's what I decided to do. And it definitely took a long time to build. I haven't been making. This is the first year that I've made a decent living now in five years.

So we're not going to see a lot of commercials on your show for Lockheed Martin, other major defense contractors, Archer Daniels Midland, all the advertisers who support the Sunday morning talk shows.

Exactly. No, exactly. And it makes me sick when I watch those and I see those advertisers on there. No, you'll never hear that on Congressional Dish. And so the way that I do it is I do the entire show and then I thank my listeners at the end. And we're actually building a pretty amazing community.

And.

And what's really cool is I have a wide range of people that are donating whatever amount they think is fair. And so, like, for instance, I have a subscriber who's contributing $250 a month, and then I have the Burns family, who's giving me a dollar a month. But it all adds up to the point now that I don't worry about offending anyone or telling any stories. Like, I did an episode on GMOs, which is a very hot button issue. Some people were very upset with me because I didn't see what they were expecting to hear. And I didn't have to be afraid of that because there was no company that could pull their funding and really hurt me financially. If I lose one person, that's not going to bring the whole business down. It's not a funding model that will work for everyone because you have to produce something of value. But for my show, where I am doing so much research and telling stories that you can't find anywhere Else it's working really well for me.

Is that the key phrase there? You can't find anyplace else because there are so many copycat shows of I'm going to do a show that brings you the top entrepreneurs every day and it's just like Entrepreneur on Fire or it's a show just like Tim Ferriss. There's definitely an explosion of copycats. I haven't seen anyone else doing exactly what you're doing.

No, and I would welcome it because one of the things that keeps me up at night is that there are too many things for me to talk about. So I was having a lot of trouble figuring out the scheduling, like finding a good work life balance for this because I've been working 60 to 80 hour weeks and it wasn't sustainable. And so I would love to bring people a weekly show, but I was killing myself to do it. But I wanted to produce that much content because there's so many stories that are flying by me. So I would love for more people to pick up what I'm doing and run with it to the point that when I do get listeners saying, hey, how do I do this myself? I send them equipment, I give them advice, I do everything I can. And we actually have. There's some kids in Nebraska who are trying to do this with their state legislature. I've been contacted by people that want to do it with California. So, I mean, there's so much content, especially at the state level, that I welcome copycats and I will help them in any way I can.

Well, speaking of state stuff, I'd forgotten about it till now, but 30 years ago I used to do commentaries for the Florida public TV because during the legislative session they would have their own TV network covering everything, gavel to gavel committee hearings. And somehow I talked them into letting me do a point counterpoint debate segment and that went on. We actually scripted it with a teleprompter and truth be told, it was probably awful. It went absolutely nowhere. Our guest today is Jennifer Briney. She is the host, producer and star of Congressional Dish, an online podcast. You can find it at itunes. You can also go to her website, Congressional Dish. She's also very down to earth, as you can hear. She just laughs when I called her a star.

No one's ever called me that before. It feels very weird.

And you can, you can tell her whether you think she's a star or what you think of her. Just go to Twitter. Jenn Briney. J E N B R I N E Y And give her feedback on the show. You can thank her for appearing on Speaking with TJ Walker. We do appreciate her her time. I want to dig deeper into this whole can of worms of listener based funding because the funding mechanism has historically been the biggest problem for a lot of would be talk show hosts and producers. Whether you were talking about TV shows 50 years ago, talk radio shows 30 years ago, how do you get an audience big enough to get someone to care enough? Whether it's a traditional advertiser, a sponsor, patrons walk us through the various steps. You have to seem sincere. You've got that, you've got original content, you got that. Do people have to hear you week in and week out for two years before they feel comfortable? Do you specifically have to not have traditional advertising? Because I do see some people have both regular ads and patrons and I don't know if that works as well. I haven't experimented with it yet. So if you could share with us your thoughts there.

I mean, sticking with it as long as I did was definitely a key because I really didn't have a lot of listeners until the beginning of 2015. So we're talking a year and a half of the show actually getting some attention. But that means that I had over two years of really talking to a very small audience. But the thing was, the people that were listening were really passionate about it because even, I mean, the beginning shows were not great because I didn't really know what I was doing. But I was working so hard on them, I was putting the effort into them as if I had thousands of people listening, even when it was just my friends and family. I think that's really important. The content is the most important thing. People ask me all the time, what do I do for marketing. I've done nothing, to tell you the truth. This is just. In the past couple months, I've started going on a lot of different podcasts. I hired an agent. That's actually how you and I were connected, to help me get introduced to other people to go on other podcasts. I found that to be the most effective way of marketing. But other than that, I put all of my energy into producing a good show when it comes to advertising. And this is just my personal opinion, but I do feel like too much advertising makes a show unbearable to the point that there are shows that I used to listen to that I can't anymore because every 10 minutes they've inserted an ad and I can't stand it. So I've stopped listening. So I think that if you're going to do advertising, you have to make sure it doesn't diminish the quality of the show. And if your show is crap, it's just not going to grow. I mean, that's just the truth of it.

Are there people doing both traditional advertising and sponsorship through patrons working, or do you have to sort of pick one side or the other?

No, actually, I have a couple friends. Jay hosts Best of the Left, and I've met him before. He was actually. He was amazing in the very beginning. He came and talked to me when I had no listeners and didn't know what I was doing. He spent some time with me, so I'll always be grateful to him. And he does. He actually has a quite large subscriber base, but he'll put in one ad in the middle. And he does have an Amazon affiliate link. He has advertisements, but he charges a lot for them because they're rare. Then my friend David Pakman does the same thing. He has subscribers, but he'll do a couple advertisements. But the key is he doesn't saturate the show with them. Same with Dan Carlin. He has subscribers. He'll do an ad in the beginning and ad at the end. He never inserts them in the middle. So you have to find a good balance that works for you and your audience. You know, Joe Rogan, he doesn't do the subscriber thing, but he only puts his ads right in the beginning so that if people don't want to hear it, you can fast forward. But then sometimes he'll go off the rails in those 10 minutes and you miss something pretty funny. So people are experimenting with different advertising models. And I think that's the great, yet most frustrating thing about podcasting is that you really have to figure out your own way. There is no perfect recipe. It really depends on you and your audience.

And Joe Rogan, of course, one of the superstars of podcasting. Huge audience, allegedly in the millions. I have started listening to his show from time to time and interesting, clever takes on things. Also, David Pakman, someone I'm hoping to get as a guest here soon. For those of you who aren't familiar with him, he is a political commentator on the liberal progressive side of things and has really done a fascinating job of putting together a whole media empire for himself. And when you think of political commentators and empires, you think of, you know, pat Buchanan, John McLaughlin who just passed away, guys in their 70s and 80s who worked for presidents until their 50s. David Pakman is. I don't mean this in Any disrespectful way. He looks like he's 11, and I guess he's still in his mid-20s. And he's put this all together. To me, it's fascinating how his media talents, passions, and entrepreneurial expertise have melded together to create something really quite impressive.

Yeah. And he's also. He's done it on podcasting and with YouTube. So he's now in Boston and he has his own studio. And he has. And what I really like about his show, something that I've modeled mine after, is his. He's covering important topics, but he's speaking to the audience as if they're intelligent adults who can handle imperfections in their hosts. And so that's why, you know, I actually got a little angry in my last episode because someone told me they didn't like my sarcastic tone and that I heard that a couple times. But I think the time of needing to have the person giving you your information be perfect and never express an opinion, I think those days are over. And David's been a trailblazer in that. So I really look up to him, and I'm happy to be able to call him a friend because he was really one of the first people that proved that you can give good information and given it in a way that's entertaining and not, you know, I don't feel like it's info. I guess it is infotainment, I don't know. But I feel like that diminishes some of the real, like, journalistic work that's being done by people like myself and David when it's called entertainment. But I don't think that we need to have information come from a dry source anymore. You know what I mean?

He's definitely not dry. Although, I mean, I sort of know what you mean. And I grew up in an era of the big three broadcasters, Walter Cronkite, and there was really no political commentary other than Firing Line with William F. Buckley on PBS on Friday night. And then you had CNN start with its Crossfire show, early 80s, and then with MSNBC, Fox, you really saw an explosion commentary. So there is a world where a lot of people give opinions. And I've. True confession, I've done more than a thousand appearances on major networks giving my political opinions, not reporting a single fact. So I've been a part of that world, too. But again, what fascinates me about you and David Pakman and others is you're not a guest on other people's show. Most of the time you've got Your own show, your own base. Now, I'm curious, though. How did you get over the initial hump? You said initially it was your friends and family. I could not pay my friends and family enough to listen to me. They love me, but they just have different concerns. How did you get over that initial hump before you even started to get feedback? And again, I'm not saying you gotta have millions of listeners and views, but to the point where you were getting a dozen comments or tweets or questions or posts on your blog in a.

Month, you know, it was just a slow roll when it started. When I say friends and family, it was really my dad and my friend Ryan. I mean, I didn't advertise to my friends and family. I still don't. My personal Facebook page, I think you can go back four years. I don't say anything about Congressional dish on it, so I don't push it on people. I just think that one person found it and liked it and they told two people. And then those two people found it and like it, and they told two people. And then a real catalyst, like the biggest jump, which was in the beginning of 2015, is that I did a Reddit AMA. And this was after I had read over 250 bills at the time. So I did a Reddit AMA where I said, I've read this many bills, ask me anything. And I had never used Reddit before. I sat down at like 10 o' clock in the morning, started answering questions. Eleven hours later, I'm still at it thinking, oh, this is great. This is normal. You know, I didn't realize this would take so long, but whatever. It turned out that it made it not only to number one on the AMA section, it made it to number one on Reddit. So I basically, that's a big deal.

For people who are not familiar with Red.

Yeah. And the thing was, I didn't know that. So I was getting. I had my phone on airplane mode, as I have it now, anytime I'm doing something where I don't want to be distracted. And when I took it off airplane mode, I was just blown up by people I hadn't heard from in years, saying, oh, my God, I just saw you number one on Reddit. That's amazing. I had 30,000 downloads of the episode that had just been released. It changed everything. And so I still get people to this day that are like, hey, I just found you on Reddit. And so, yeah, that was a big jump. And I think the slow and steady growth that has continued from There is just a word of mouth type of thing.

So 30,000 people downloaded your show after one appearance on the website Reddit. Any idea how many of them subscribed and then became regular? I mean, I would certainly be happy with, you know, one out of 30. If they really stuck, that's an extra thousand forever. But I'm curious as to what actually happened.

You know, that's a really good question. Before that happened, I'm going to say I had about 3,000 downloads per episode. And then, you know, what happens is you kind of come back to Earth. So I had 30,000, and then it.

Was like you revert to the meme.

Yeah, you, like, come back down. And I settled at around 8,500 when it was all said and done. So that's 5,500 people, I think, stuck around from that Reddit. And now I'm getting a little bit closer to the 10,000 per episode mark. So it's slowly gone up from there. But that was a huge spike. That was the biggest spike for sure.

We should point out for our listeners who are used to hearing about Bill O'Reilly with his 3 million viewers a day, and Rush Limbaugh with his 20 million, 10,000 downloads, according to Libsyn, I believe, puts you in the top 90, 95% of podcasts.

It did. The top 5%. Yeah.

So you're in an elite group right there. Congratulations.

Thank you. Thank you.

When you started this, was it a hobby? And you said, well, let me do this two hours a week and then balloon to 60 hours. How did this evolve?

No, I was delusional from the very beginning and was like, I'm gonna make a career out of this, and I'll never forget it. My dad had had a really nasty heart attack. And so we were having one of those, like, hey, dad, like, if you could do it all over again, what would you do? Type of conversations where we're both crying, you know, and he said, I had told him that I was thinking about doing this podcast thing. And he said, how are you going to make money? And I said, I don't know. And he said, how are you going to get listeners? I said, I don't know, but I will. And he said, okay, well, this sounds insane, but I'll support you in any way I can, because I had a dream and I didn't go for it. And so while he was recovering, I moved in with him for a month to just kind of help with his recovery. And so that's when I downloaded a lot of episodes of Daniel J. Lewis, Audacity to podcast. I downloaded about 30 episodes, took notes on what he said, and I launched it a couple months later. But from the very beginning, I said, this is what I want to do. I kind of knew when Air America was a thing. That was kind of what I was looking at. I wanted to do talk radio. I'm definitely not. I'm not on either side of the red blue divide, but I'm definitely not. Like, if you're on the right side, like, if you're working for the Fox News type people, you have to fit into their little box. I feel like Air America was one place where I could stray outside the lines and just be myself if it existed. But then it didn't. And so it wasn't until podcasting became a realistic option where I said, okay, the technology, I can understand this now I can do this. And my goal was to be. I had been told this was 2012, that almost no one makes a full time living in podcasting. And I just said, okay, well, I'll be the first. So I've always been a little nuts thinking that I can do this. I'll just figure it out. And looky there, I did.

But it's worked. You're not having to practice law 14 hours a day and come home and do the show. You're doing this full time.

Well, now I am. But it was not an easy road because my husband and I decided that I would do it for a year and see if the audience came, see if I enjoyed podcasting and I wouldn't worry about money. So I did it for a year. One year was September of 2013, and two months later, he was laid off. And that was our only income stream.

Oh, boy.

So we had to make a call right then to figure out what to do. And so we moved from Boston to Oregon, where we had an empty vacation house. I mean, lucky. We're privileged people in that regard. We moved into the vacation house on a golf course. I waited tables full time and did Congressional Dish full time, which it worked. We had no friends, so what else was I going to do? Joe worked on the golf course while he looked for another job. We rode out that storm for about nine months. And then he's a solar power engineer and he got a job here in San Francisco. So that's now why we're in the Bay Area, but we live an hour outside of the city because it's so crazy expensive here. I'm still podcasting in my living room. And so, I mean, I'm Making a living, but it's not a glamorous one.

But, wow, you really wanted this. And you didn't have to resort to fetching coffee for John McLaughlin, as Kara Swisher had to do in her early days, the famed Silicon Valley reporter, or have to, well, fetch other things for Roger Ailes, which we don't want to go into. But there's a lot of. A lot of things people had to do to launch their media careers.

Yeah, I didn't have any gatekeepers to deal with. It was great.

And that's the key phrase, whether, I mean, it just hits us every day. Just moments before this interview started, I was doing a commentary on Frank Ocean's rise to number one on the Billboard charts, where he sold his new album, sold more than a quarter of a million copies, 65 million downloads. And it's the first time ever where someone went to number one, not only without a major record label or any label, but no major distributor, nothing. He just delivered his album on itunes. That was it. And it soared to number one. So we definitely are in a new era.

The era of the meritocracy is what I like to call it.

Yes. Now, here's a question I'm not sure you have thought of. If I could be so presumptuous to think, oh, I'm going to ask an original question. But when I see what you're doing, and in some ways, and what I'm trying to do, too, is not that dissimilar to what many of the early TV evangelists did. Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, they weren't getting any corporate sponsors or advertisers. They had support from just people who believed in what they did. And while that their particular niche is not my thing. But I do remember the time Jerry Falwell was, I guess, kind of struggling. And somebody said to Jerry, I really love you. I'm going to croak in a few years. Here's $80 million, and all of a sudden Jerry's building universities and a whole new empire. So my question to you, what would someone do? What would you do if someone said to you, jennifer, you're great, you're wonderful, I'm going to die. My kids are already rich. Here's $100 million. Do what you do and expand it to other institutions and other government entities and the UN and parliaments and state legislatures. What would you do with that money?

Wow. What a good question. That is an original question. I've never had to think of that before. The thing that just popped in my Head is I would definitely want to have a congressional dish for all the states. I couldn't do it myself, obviously, but I think every state government needs one because there's so much that goes on there. I'm sure the stories are even crazier in the state government because people pay so little attention. In fact, I'm guilty of it myself. I don't know the name of my state representative. I'm not practicing what I preach when it comes to the state. I would also take some of that money and get myself into Congress so that I can do this on the House floor. Because I would love to get up there and be able to debate these people in person and be like, listen, I know you're getting paid by this industry or that industry. I know this is in the bill because there's the debate.

That's right. You're saying you want to get into Congress, meaning run and hold a seat, be a member of Congress.

Yeah, for at least a little while. Just. Well, and that's the thing. I would love to prove to people that we don't need the money to get into Congress. So I guess getting $100 million kind of takes that away. But the thing is, as I watch C Span, I get so frustrated because I will have read a bill and I know what's in it. I know that these people don't know what's in it. And so there is a need for at least one person to go up there every day and say, this is what's in this bill. This is the repercussions of this bill. This is how it affects the American people. And this is who's paying the author to write it. And that's really what I do in congressional niche that people are liking is I follow the money, and no one is speaking about this stuff on the House floor. They're all very kind to each other, like the good sir over here and my good friend. Whatever. Well, I'm not their friend, and I'm pretty mad about what they're doing, and I feel like someone needs to get up on the floor and yell at them. And we made a joke about Anthony Weiner because, like, his situation is so tragic, but I miss Anthony Weiner as a Congressman because he did that. And there's no one that stepped into that role since he resigned. He used to go up on the House floor and say, this is unacceptable. This is what's in the bill, and there's no one doing that right now. And so if no one's doing it, might as well, be me, you know, So I would like to get in there and just try and change this stuff for real. Because commenting on this stuff and reading the bills and informing people there is a role for that. And I can continue to do congressional dish from Congress, but at a certain point, someone needs to go in there and actually change what's going on in the halls of Congress, because what I'm witnessing is horrifying. So, you know, I'm desperate to change it.

Let's dig a little deeper, though, because certainly most Americans agree with you. There's a problem with all the money that pays for members of Congress, the sheer vast amounts of time. I mean, most people don't know that the average senator has to spend about seven hours a day just on the phone begging rich people for a couple thousand dollars at a time. But here's the problem. If you run for office saying, I want to clean up Washington, let's ban contributions and let's have taxpayers support the campaigns the way it does happen in most countries. It's very Voters are fickle. It's like me with weight loss. I can tell my wife I'm absolutely committed to dropping 30 pounds. And at the same time, I'm eating another dessert fudge bar. So human beings are hypocritical, and I'm a hypocrite. People say they don't want their members of Congress to take the campaign contributions, but when you give them the alternative of you, the taxpayer are going to have to spend money for their campaigns. People say, oh, no, because it's so easy for you an opponent to say, my, you know, Jen Briney wants to take your tax dollars away from schools and roads and spend it for her slimy TV ads. And guess what? Then that person beats you. And here's the thing that, you know, having worked in politics and for campaigns and members of Congress, certainly doesn't give me any unique insight into human nature. But what I have noticed is that whether you like a Democrat like Chuck Schumer or a Republican Like Mitch McConnell, I have one of those I like and one I don't like. But I won't get into that. But either one of those men could be making tens of millions of dollars a year on Wall street as a managing director fundraising for a hedge fund, and they're making 200,000. All the time they spend raising tens of millions, it's not going to their own pocket. They're doing it because they're then turning around and taking that money and buying ads on Google and NBC and cnn. And until you solve the problem of how candidates can communicate with voters, it's a bit of a shell game to just say, oh, you shouldn't take campaign contributions. They've got to figure out how to communicate with voters. What's your take on that?

Well, you brought up an excellent point, which is that I think those are both bad options. Allowing. Well, I mean, here's the thing. I don't think taxpayers have to fund people's campaigns. I don't want my taxes going to that either. I think with the Internet, we don't need those television ads anymore. And I think what's going to happen is one person is going to show us the way to get into Congress without taking money. You know, it's possible. You can have, if people really believe in you, what my experience has proven. They'll make their own lawn signs. They'll make ads for you on YouTube and talk to their own friends. Everybody can do Facebook Live. Now we're getting to the point that people can communicate with each other digitally. And my generation isn't watching tv. So right now, to appeal to the baby boomer generation and the older generation, which is the generation that's voting, let's be honest, my generation is still sitting at home, which is huge part of our problem. But that's why they're. Those are the people that are still watching tv. Those are the people watching the Big Bang Theory. I don't have cable and neither do any of my friends. All of us, like, we all watch football, and so we just get the Sunday ticket. And that's the only type of television we have. Everything we watch is over the Internet. So things are changing to the point that that money is no longer needed, or at least I don't think it will be 10 years from now. But one person needs to prove it.

Agreed. That TV ads are certainly not the deciding factor they once were. But there's a lot of things in campaigns that cost money that aren't necessarily corrupt. I mean, it takes money. You're running for governor of California. It takes a lot of money to just fly or even drive to all the different cities. At some point, you need some people to work for you who had to be paid something. I mean, it's very hard to really run a serious campaign. And it's 100% volunteers.

Well, too bad. I don't know. Someone's going to have to figure it out. You're going to have to have volunteers that believe in you enough, or you can take money. But in a way, that's you know, the Bernie Sanders route of you take it in small donations. You don't have to take money from giant corporations. Yeah. Hillary Clinton has to travel around. She doesn't need a billion dollars. There's no justification for that amount of money being in the system. And another thing that you said is that these people that are in office and the people that are campaigning.

I.

Don'T think it's necessarily true that they're not putting it in their own pockets, because, yes, they make about $200,000 a year. Check their stock portfolios. They are making plenty on Wall street with the insider information that they get. And then also, if you look at the amount of money that they collect for their campaigns, think about what it goes to. It does go to television ads, but it also goes towards their travel and their fancy meals. It goes towards clothes and haircuts and babysitting. I mean, that's a lifestyle that they are funding. It does go to fund them. And there are so many things that you can justify using campaign cash for. So, yeah, they're calling rich people and dialing for dollars, but they're able to use those dollars on themselves. It's like, for congressional dish, I got to go to a political conference and to a podcasting conference. I really enjoyed that. I enjoyed having meals paid for, like, mind you, I'm eating at Chipotle, not Morton's. But, yeah, you do get benefits when you get to spend money on yourself in campaigning. They do a lot of parties for themselves. It's a nice way to live.

Well, so our listeners don't think I'm too Pollyannish. I do want to point out there have been certain years, like 1990, it was either 92 or 94, where the new members of Congress, it was proven that half of them were actually making a salary as a member of Congress, twice as much as they'd ever made in the private sector before. So I don't want to sound like every. I'm saying every single member of Congress would be making, you know, 20 million, $30 million a year. That's not it. In my experience, working up close with a lot of these people, I don't think they're in it for the money. Some are corrupt, and certainly there are county commissioners all over the place where it's an extra way to line their pocket. But if you look at the national leadership, you know, Mitt Romney, I'm not a Mitt Romney fan. I don't think he entered politics and raised $500 million to enhance his lifestyle. He was Already rich, he was already successful. And same with again, my own senator here in New York. Chuck Schumer is a guy who works seven days a week. When you and I are resting on Sunday, he's holding a press conference every Sunday morning because he knows there's no competition. He's a guy who graduated in the top of his class from Harvard Law School. And there's just no doubt that he could be making 50 million a year on Wall street with his, with his educational background, his work ethic, his drive. And believe me, if you've ever seen him up close, he ain't spending that money on fancy suits or fancy haircuts or anything else. He looks like a low level accountant who's making about $35,000 a year he's working. And Mitch McConnell, again, I'm not a big fan, but he could have cashed out a long time ago. Like, you know, like Senator Graham of Texas who left, became a managing director at a big Wall street company. He basically ruined the banking industry when he was in office and he's made tens and tens of millions of dollars now that he's, now that he is a guy on Wall Street. So we'll have to, I guess, agree to disagree on that.

Oh, I don't disagree with you. There are definitely people in there that are in it for the power and there are people in Congress that want to do good. I may disagree if they are doing good. A lot of those names that you listed, I'm horrified by what they're actually doing. And so ultimately the blame for this is not on those individuals. They have their own motivations for being in Congress. It's on the voters. If we're not happy with what's going on in Congress, we need to show up and vote and change Congress because the incumbents come back almost 90% of the time and that's on us. That's not on them. I mean, if they're, if we don't think they're doing a good job, which the vast majority of us don't, we need to change who's in Congress, even if that means we run ourselves.

Well, there is that long standing phenomenon of people saying, I hate Congress, but I love my Congressman. Yeah, that, that still is often in play in many congressional districts.

Well, they don't know their congressmen and that's what I'm exposing to. People don't know what goes on. So, you know, I was raised Republican and I was always told that they're fiscally conservative. And one of the things that's been bothering me so much since I started Congressional Dish is the number of times that I've seen very expensive bills be exempted from the Paygo budget. So they pass this thing that says you have to pay for whatever. You know, if you have a bill that's worth a billion dollars, you have to make up the billion dollars and they just exist, exempt themselves from it over and over and over again. So there's this idea, and there's examples on the Democratic side, too. There's these ideas of who these parties are that are just not true. Like the Democrats are supposed to be the anti war party. Please. Hillary Clinton is their nominee. So it's like the reality and the myth are so different that until we figure out who these people are and what they're actually doing, we can't be informed voters. And so that's why I'm doing Congressional Dish, because we have to know what's actually going on.

What's an example of an issue of complexity where you feel you've really done a good service for your listeners? Because it is a hard thing to get people to pay attention to complexity. For example, one of my pet fees, and by the way, I was brought up in a Republican household too. And it's interesting to hear someone like Paul Ryan get so much media attention, positive media attention, attention of, oh, he's the young reformer who cares about fiscal discipline. He's a good fiscal disciplinarian. He's all about balanced budgets. There's only one person I've ever seen with prominence in the media really analyze Paul Ryan's budgets. And what he concluded was it was all smoke and mirrors, that every single proposal Paul Ryan had ever proposed would have created nothing. Massive, massive increases in deficits. There's all sorts of magical asterisks. And the only one doing that is Paul Krugman, the famed economist and columnist for the New York Times. And of course, if you even mention his name, any Republican or conservative will just start frothing at the mouth and saying, you're insane. How could you possibly listen to Paul Krugman? And yet he's actually giving real numbers.

Yeah, yeah, that's true. And that's incredibly frustrating because it's really about ideology. I've read Paul Ryan's budgets and they're the same every year. He has things he wants to do and it's not about the numbers. It's just about he doesn't want people on welfare and he wants Medicare to be privatized. And it's just, it's the Same ideology over and over again, but his numbers don't add up. I think I've done a service like that. When it comes to the Trans Pacific Partnership on Congressional Dish, I think a lot of people. I think a lot of people don't even know what that is. They've never heard of it before. And it's a trade agreement between US and 12 other countries that has something called the investor state dispute settlement system in it, which is an international legal system that we have absolutely no say in, that allows basically corporate lawyers to be the lawyers and the juries, and it allows corporations to sue government through for laws that limit their profits. It sounds extreme, but it's in there. And it's in the World Trade Organization, it's in nafta, it's in cafta. It's a system that is getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And the Trans Pacific Partnership is the biggest of these trade agreements yet. And it just expands this to more and more countries who would be able to sue us if we had regulations that limited their profits on our land. That's something I've been following very closely this whole Congress. That's the story of the 114th Congress. They passed something called Fast Track last year which allows these, they call them trade agreements, but they're treaties. These are international treaties. And the Constitution has very specific rules how a treaty is supposed to be passed. The most important one being that the Senate is supposed to have two thirds of a majority pass these things into law. Well, Fast Track says that it only has to be 50%. And then it also says that they can't amend these international treaties when they come up for a vote. And it limits debate. And for something this serious, something that trumps our laws, we shouldn't be limiting debate. We should have a minimum amount of time for debate. And so Fast Track became law. It's not only for the Obama administration. This goes until 2021. So it's for whoever the next president is, will have this for four years and then six months of the next person's administration. So, you know, this is a very, very big deal. People don't know that it's happening. They don't understand the.

Let me question that. Hasn't the, at least at the top presidential level, hasn't your viewpoint been accepted? Because Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, at least now and Donald Trump have all come out against that treaty, haven't they?

Donald Trump does seem to be against it. Bernie Sanders definitely was. But Hillary, I think she's lying, to be honest. I have quite A bit of audio of her going as well.

She was for it. There's no doubt she was for it. But she now says she's against it.

Yeah, she says it again.

Against.

She says, okay. She never said she's against the Trans Pacific Partnership. She's very careful with all of her words. She says that it's not good enough. Which tells me that as president, she might call for another negotiation, tweak a little bit and then sign it. But the investor state dispute settlement system, the big picture stuff, the World Trade Organization, all of this stuff she's in support of. So I think that the only reason she even said anything about the TPP is that she was running against Bernie Sanders. And so she says she's not for it in its current form. That's very different from saying she's not going to sign it. Very different. So I don't believe her. I don't trust her as far as I can throw her on that one.

Well, I think a lot of people share your concerns. There's absolutely no doubt. But I also think that there are a lot of people who don't believe a single word that Donald Trump says either. And at some level, aren't we now guilty of doing the same thing to shouting heads do on cable tv, of just sitting around not talking about facts, but impugning people's motives and trying to read their minds? I mean, if a politician says they're no longer for something, don't we have to accept that? Isn't that the factual basis at that point?

I mean, I think that if she's running on her experience, I'm looking at her experience, and her experience says that as Secretary of State, she helped craft this thing. And she went on a world tour with President Obama convincing other world leaders that they should be on board with this thing. So that is what I'm trusting. I trust her actions more than her words when she was talking to Bernie Sanders. So I'm looking at her experience, I'm looking at what she was saying to the President of Singapore. I trust that more than I trust her speaking to us in debates, because she's just. I don't think she's been honest with us on so many different levels. She told us that the email server was allowed, it wasn't allowed. So it's like she does not tell the truth to the American people when we're paying attention to her. And when it comes to the tpp, I watched her tell presidents of other countries that this is a good deal, that they should be on board with it. I think she'll go right back to that once she's president. And yeah, that's just my opinion, but I'm backing it up with her actions.

Jan. And by the way, I'd love to have you back and dissect her podcast. Hillary Clinton, as I'm sure you know, has entered the podcast in fray. I've listened to a couple of them. It's one of the top hundred podcasts right now, I guess, as far as the ratings coming out in some podcasting services. So Hillary is now joining you and me, I guess.

Good. I think she should have to talk to us more. I would love for her to answer questions.

Sure. Jen Briney, thank you for being our guest today. If people have questions about Congress or about Congressional Dish, they should reach out to you directly On Twitter jenbriney. You can go to the website congressionaldish.com that's 3W's congressionaldish.com youm can also go to your podcast app on your iPhone or any other phone you have and type in Congressional Dish. You can subscribe to her program. You can review it. You can even contribute to it in a pretty easy, quick way way. Jennifer Briney, thank you for being our guest today on speaking with T.J. walker.

Thank you so much for having me. This was great. Thanks for listening to Speaking with TJ Walker, where the communication skills and practices.

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