Murdoch’s TikTok Gamble: Can Fox Avoid Another MySpace Disaster?

The Murdoch family circles TikTok. The deal in the US bid takes shape. Broadway musicals hit a profit wall and a thinner slate ahead. Kamala Harris comeback tour reopens Democratic wounds. Fox News turns on air promotion into a bestseller selling book machine and Trump ramps up pressure on critics in a widening free speech fight. All that and more today. Welcome to Filtered with TJ Walker. Hello and welcome. I'm tj. Thanks so much for joining me today. Welcome to Filtered. Welcome our friends on TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitch and a whole host of other platforms, especially our new listeners on podcasting platforms around the globe. So happy you've joined us here as we sort of entering our third week of this daily Show. It is a daily show and by that I mean seven days a week. I am trying to analyze the news for you every day here. Top business stories, technology stories, media stories, and culture stories, all filtered through the lens of communication and personal development skills. Here's my promise to you. If you spend some time with me each day, you'll not only learn more about the world and important stories that could affect you, but you'll also learn how to improve yourself, how to be more successful in your professional life as well as personal life. So it's kind of a hybrid news commentary, personal development show, and I hope you find it useful. Please take a moment to like the page if you're watching it, Follow, Subscribe Sign up for notifications if you are listening on a podcast and you hear anything you like here, please subscribe or follow. Let's dive right in to the first story. According to the New York Times, Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan are weighing a bid to invest in TikTok's US operations as Washington pressures bite Dance to divest. It would be a bold move into social media for a family that has repeatedly stumbled in the digital Space. Back in 2005, Murdoch paid $580 million for MySpace, once hailed as the future of online networking. Within just a few years, Facebook eclipsed it. By 2011, Murdoch sold MySpace for only $35 million dollars, losing more than half a billion dollars. He later admitted, quote, we screwed up in every possible way. Another failed experiment came in 2011 with the Daily, an iPad only news app marketed as the future of digital journalism and featuring voices like Gary Vaynerchuk. I remember it well. It folded less than two years later after losing tens of millions of dollars. Those failures raised questions about whether the Murdochs are the right partners to shepherd and TikTok's American future. Still, the platform's value and reach make it irresistible. If the deal goes through, Fox Corporation would join other high profile investors like Oracle's Larry Ellison, Dell's Michael dell in reshaping TikTok under US ownership. What's the real message here? If you're worried about your kids spending way too much time on a place like TikTok, this is good news for you. Because when Rupert Murdoch and his family get involved in digital online communities, all of a sudden no kid ever wants to go to it. Look at what happened to MySpace. The same could happen with Tick Tock. Let's dive a little deeper, okay? I'm having a little fun at Rupert Murdoch's expense. I, I admit it. What the deal looks like is Michael Dell taking a piece of this pie. Larry Ellison, who, depending on the the day of the week, is the richest man in the world. Andreessen Horowitz, the famed venture capital firm taking pieces and some relatively small piece would be controlled by Rupert Murdoch. So I don't really think that Rupert Murdoch has such a stain on his fingers that it's going to ruin Tick Tock, because any deal that is struck is most likely going to say, let's continue doing what they've been doing. Let's let that Chinese algorithm continue to do its magic and put stuff in front of people. So all of a sudden, former members of your family, formerly productive members of your office, who are now staring at their screen every second of the day and every night watching Tick Tock, they'll probably still do it because the owners of TikTok want that huge, huge audience. And those of you not Familiar with it, TikTok is a little different. Now, supposedly all the social media platforms are trying to mimic TikTok now. They're getting away from sending out your content to your subscribers and instead they're looking at every piece of content saying, hmm, who would find this interesting? Who's likely to watch it for more than an eighth of a second? And then they're pushing it out. So TikTok to its credit, really took that idea and implemented better than anyone in the history of the world. But we're now seeing YouTube doing that, we're seeing Instagram doing. They're all trying to do that because that is the way to get in front of more people, to sell more eyeballs to more advertisers and to make more money. Here's the really wretched thing about this TikTok deal. United States Congress, Republicans and Democrats got together, agreed. They passed legislation saying, we don't want the Chinese government To have this much of a direct line, basically hardwiring how Americans think, and hardwiring especially how America's youth think, we think this is dangerous. And China essentially agrees. They don't let Facebook, they. They don't let all of these American social media firms push whatever they want. They certainly don't let American social media firms push the idea that there should be two Chinas and that there should be independence for Taiwan. No, no, no, no. China understands firsthand that you want to control the realm of acceptable debate, so they keep all that out. Now, here in the United States, we're supposed to be in favor of free speech. But is it free if an outside foreign, sometimes hostile, sometimes enemy government, can manipulate algorithms to make you hate your own government, to not support your own government? That is certainly the fear that many politicians across the political spectrum, Republicans and Democrats alike, were worried about this, rightfully so. They passed legislation. Trump was all in favor of getting rid of TikTok back when there used to be criticism. And the Chinese, whether you want to call it shrewd, cynical, or evil, I'll let you decide. But once Trump got back elected into office, the people at TikTok, the Chinese government, whom they report to, said, let's do a little tweak in the algorithm. From now on, we're going to push content that makes Donald Trump look good. Can you find criticism of Trump on TikTok? Sure. But they tweaked it so that a lot more pro Trump, pro maga ideas, personalities were promoted. And all of a sudden, like Trump's thinking, wow, this is a great platform. How do we get more of this? Kick it off. No way. Let's. Let's have more of this stuff. So he kept on just flagrantly violating congressional risk resolutions, bills, laws, and pushing back the date of when he was supposed to force ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, to sell, to come up with new ownership or just to be eliminated from access to American consumers. He flagrantly violated Congress's wishes, which is unconstitutional. The President of the United States is supposed to administer the laws passed by Congress. That's the form of government we have. We don't really have a form of government that says the president is kind of like a king and can take under advisement what Congress said, but really he can do whatever he wants. That's not the form of government we have. So we're not supposed to have, unfortunately, is the form of government we do have today. So here's the big fear. A lot of people, thoughtful observers, across the political spectrum are saying, okay, Trump's making it really easy for the Chinese to continue to control things. Yeah, you can have board seats, but if everything is still being controlled by the algorithm and the engineers of that in China, what happens if one day Trump is no longer president and they don't see him as the vehicle for bringing down America and sowing distrust and destroying our infrastructure in our economy? Because Trump seems to be doing a pretty good job of that on his own. What happens if you have a typical mainstream centrist administration, as you did 2021 to 2025 or as you did 2009 to 2017? If you have a centrist administration, then the fear is that the the Chinese government essentially does what the Russian government did with RT is they push a button and they force out a huge, huge amplification, a sharing of any message, right or left, that attacks the administration in power. And you destroy any government's ability to mobilize public support for its initiatives. You therefore weaken America. That's the whole reason for why Congress actually passed this law and why it's horrific that dear leader thinks he can thumb his nose at it. Now, finally, it looks like there is going to be some sale going to various Trump supporters, which is kind of how mobsters run things. It's how Putin divvied up the economy of the former Soviet Union. It's happening here. It's crony capitalism. Is that better than the Chinese running it? Maybe, maybe not. We'll see more in a moment after this commercial. Word Filtered is brought to you by the following get the deeper takes. I don't post anywhere else. Subscribe now@subsat.com J WalkerSuccess and stay in the loop. For years people have asked how they could get one on one coaching from me inexpensively. Well, now you can, anytime, anywhere. With the TJ Walker AI clone, it's like having me in your pocket, ready to help you prep for a speech, polish a pitch, or calm your nerves before a big meeting. You talk to it, it responds like I would, based on my real world coaching of thousands of leaders and communicators. Check it out at TJ Walker AI. It's not just smart, it's personal. Want to support the show? Skip the ads and buy me a coffee. That's buymeacoffee.com TJ Walk. Hi and welcome back to Filtered. I'm your host, TJ Walker. Musical theater, long the bread and butter of Broadway, is struggling. None of the 18 commercial musicals that opened on Broadway last season has made a profit yet some still could. But several have been spectacular flame outs. The new musicals, Tammy Faye, Boop and Smash each cost at least $20 million to bring to the stage and and each was gone less than four months after opening. All three lost their entire investments. Lavish revivals of much loved classics are also fizzling. On Sunday, a revival of Cabaret budgeted for up to $26 million and featuring a costly conversion of a Broadway theater into a nightclub like setting, threw in the towel at a total loss. A $19.5 million revival of Gypsy that starred Audra McDonald and earned strong reviews closed last month without recouping its investment. Even a buzzy production of Sunset Boulevard, which won this year's Tony for best musical revival, failed to make back the 15 million it cost to mount. New musicals are particularly endangered. Since the coronavirus pandemic, 46 new musicals have opened on Broadway costing about $800 million to bring to the stage, according to filings with the securities and Exchange Commission. Only three have become profitable so far. Strong reviews, word of mouth and in some cases Tony's have not been enough. And this falls. New musical offerings are sparse. They're just two. One of which has only two people in its cast. Andrew Lloyd Weber said in an interview, quote, broadway is not a business anymore. The statistics are terrible and I'm very worried. I look at the economics of this and I just don't see how it can be sustained. Okay, what's the real message here? Disruption is coming for Broadway, specifically Broadway musicals. You can't put yourself out as a real business when virtually everybody, 100% of their time, loses all their money. At some point investors are going to say, absolutely not. We're going to see the same thing that's happened to network television news comedies being replaced by TikTok videos and YouTube shorts. We are going to see new economies of scale taking over Broadway. And I hate to say it because I'm a big fan of unions. It's going to be non unionized. It's going to have electronic digitized music. There's going to be some AI involved and we're going to see sprouting up things like Broadway shows throughout Manhattan and other places, but at 1/10 the cost, sometimes 100th the cost. It's the only way musical theater can really thrive. Okay, let's look at some of these details in at a more granular level. Now I was certainly aware, and you probably were too, that investing in a Broadway musical is not usually something you do because you think, wow, I gotta have enough Money to pay my kids college fund next year. What's a surefire way to make money? No one was under the illusion of that. But now it's looking like virtually everybody who invests in Broadway musicals is losing money. At some point you're going to run out of suckers. And there's been some, some people saying well the price of musical tickets have not gone up with all the other costs. Well, a ticket now to the new revised Hamilton is fifteen hundred dollars. I gotta tell you, I've spent a lot of money on Broadway tickets over my lifetime, but I'm not ready to spend 1500 bucks for me, my wife, my daughter to go see Hamilton. Which we did see it, we spent considerably less than that. So it is interesting and this is a pure coincidence. The three Broadway musicals that have recouped their investment, they're not profitable yet. The three that have recouped their investments got government handouts in part. I don't mean that derisively, but MJ, Michael Jackson show six about King Henry VIII's six wives and Juliet. Sort of an alternative version of what would have happened to Juliet if she hadn't killed herself at the end of Romeo and Juliet. All great shows. My family and I have seen all of those and maybe that's a part of the problem is they did a better job of marketing. They brought me into the show. The others have not done well at all and there's no new blood. Yes, Hamilton's still around, Wicked's still around, the Lion King around. I mean those shows have been around a long, long time. More than 20 years in some cases. This is not sustainable folks. And look, I have friends who work on Broadway and are able to have good livings because they work in the orchestra of Broadway shows and they can make a decent income and afford to live in New York City, which is an expensive town, there's no doubt about it. But you can't expect investors to continue willingly putting their money in knowing it's 100 loss. At that point it will all have to be non profit nonprofit foundations. Have you personally seen any Broadway shows in the last year? Or if you're in London, West End shows or live theater, wherever you are, whether you're in Mumbai or anyplace else. Post a comment and let me know what you think because I'd like to know. Ben says Hamilton and Lion King still printing money while everyone new tanks. No wonder Broadway feels stuck. You know, a lot of people don't know this, but the world, one of the very first businesses Donald Trump ever invested in was a Broadway show. He was in his early 20s, we're talking about, you know, late 1960s, and he invested in a Broadway show and it tank. Roger Ailes, the guy who founded Fox News Channel, was a Broadway producer and had some successes to his credit. He did know how to put on a show. The there's no doubt about it. Now, if you've spent much time in New York City or Manhattan, as I have, yes, there's the Broadway shows, there's Off Broadway, there's Off Off Broadway. And those things have a lot of different meanings in terms of the size of the venue, in terms of how unionized the cast is, how unionized the orchestra is. I think we are going to see a lot of these Broadway venues just shut down. There's simply no way they can do it. And what we're going to see is creative people. The next Lin Manuel Miranda is going to start from scratch, not trying to make it a Broadway show. In the very same way you see former stars like a Trevor Noah of the Daily show go from having a huge staff of 100 or more people to a lean staff of five people for his podcast. You're going to see the same thing happen with Broadway shows. You're going to see a cast go from 20 or 25 or 30, sometimes down to a cast of maybe three plus more one man, one woman shows instead. And I hate to say this, I love musicians, but you're going to see shows mounted that have the veneer of Broadway quality and it's going to be recorded music and you are going to see people build sets where it's the producer and maybe the star, and it's not going to be unionized staff. Am I saying that's a good thing? No, but the whole, the whole point of unionized workforce is to share the profits. You shouldn't have a system whereby the capitalists make all the money and all the workers are treated like oats and serves, happy to just survive on a few scraps. But now we flip things. There are a lot of professionals, set designers, costumers, actors who do make six figures a year, which is not a lot of money in New York City, let's be clear. And meanwhile, the investors who wrote checks for millions of dollars get nothing. That doesn't make sense. Now, I do think there's a possibility for some enlightened real estate executives in New York service providers, unionized professionals who work on Broadway to look at this in a new way and say, look, let's have a profit sharing aspect of this. Let's get the upfront cost as low as possible, let's get this show up and running and then let's have revenue splits with an understanding that, okay, maybe the capital is to put their money in, deserve more than a 20% return on investment, but they have to get something before other people get above minimum wage. I'm just tossing this out here. I'm thinking, I'm trying to think creatively. I don't have the answers. I'm not a Broadway star. I'm simply a fan. I like to go see Broadway shows, I like to go see off Broadway, off off Broadway comedy. I like the creative atmosphere of real people, not here, just on a screen. Although I'm happy you're here with me on a screen, I like it when I see real people trying to create in real time in front of people and show their craft. And this is just not sustainable. In the same way you don't see people just starting new small town newspapers anymore or mid sized town. You don't see someone, you don't see an investor saying, you know what I like Durham, North Carolina. I'm going to start a new daily newspaper in Durham, North Carolina. Never mind the fact that nobody started a daily newspaper in a mid sized town in 50 years without going bankrupt. I'm going to do it. No, you don't see that. And at some point you're going to see exactly the same thing with Broadway. People are just going to say, not going to write the checks. And it's not going to get off the ground. A few more Sunsets, Sunset Boulevard revival, great Praise. Guanatoti failed. They lost their 15 million. I did see Sunset Boulevard, oh probably 25 years ago on Broadway. It was fantastic. It took my mother, we enjoyed it, we had a great, great time. But these costs, the labor costs, the set cost, the rent cost, the technology costs, everything, everything is escalating. Plays are better in terms of economics. You don't have to have all the musicians. You can often have a lower, a lower cost structure. And there have been some plays that have done well recently, but they have a lot of celebrity now. I like George Clooney, I think he's a great guy. His play Good Night and Good Luck ran on Broadway and it was profitable. Othello ran, it had Denzel Washington, Jake Gillenthal in it. These broke records, but that's not really sustainable. These big stars can't really take more than three months out of their life to be on Broadway. That's not sustainable. And at some point no matter how good a play is, and I like plays, there's something about the sheer spectacle of the Broadway musical. It's something that I find it's easier to bring a whole family to. It's easier to bring. If you're like I am and you have family members where English isn't their first language, you can't really take them to a play. You can take people to a musical because the music is a universal language, the dancing is a universal language. So that's why I'm rooting for Broadway. But am I going to pull out my checkbook and write a million dollar check for what I think is a guaranteed loss of a Broadway musical? I don't think so. Let's check in with you. Some of you are writing and I appreciate you do that. AJ says Murdoch's TikTok Gamble could well be avoided being another MySpace disaster. Talking about what we were discussing in the earlier issue, in today's show, Unique says $20 million down the drain for a show that closes in three months. Who's financing these things? Well, really rich people are financing these things. A lot of times someone makes so much money on Wall street, you know, if you, if you're worth half a billion, a billion dollars, writing $10 million checks to fund a Broadway show can kind of feel like buying. What I did yesterday, I bought lemonade from local kids in the neighborhood. Do I want the lemonade? No. I'm trying to actively avoid intake of sugar. But I also wanted to support my neighbors, my neighbor's kids, youthful entrepreneurialism. So of course I bought a glass of lemonade when four or five boys came by and rang my doorbell. At some level, that is what's happening today with Broadway. You've got people who are so wealthy that losing 10, $15 million is the equivalent of me spending $3 on a lemonade. But even really rich people have their limits. And there's still a lot of ways you could help. I mean, you could endow so many university professorships in singing and drama with that kind of money, you could give scholarships to so many kids. So at some point, Broadway is going to have to look at their economics. People are going to have to somehow come up with a profit sharing version of things, such that capitalists don't always lose. And let me tell you, capitalists do very well, especially in America, but they're also pretty good at sniffing out. Is it time to leave this industry? Is it time to exit this sector? And I think that is exactly what is happening with Broadway. It hasn't been great for a long time, but very few people I know, no matter how wealthy they are, say I will invest money in a guaranteed loser. And increasingly, that's what Broadway musicals sound like. Filtered is brought to you by the don't need a new degree. You don't need another expensive coach. You need the right communication habits and I'll teach them to you in just a few minutes a day. @mediatrainingworldwide.com I've created the most comprehensive library of online communication and personal development courses anywhere. You'll learn public speaking, media training, persuasion, executive presence, and more. These are the same methods I've taught to world leaders, but now they're affordable and accessible to everyone. You can start for free and upgrade anytime. Go now to mediatrainingworldwide.com confidence isn't a personality trait, it's a skill. And it's trainable. Most people can't afford a full time coach, and even if you could, good luck finding one who's available when you need them. That's why I created the TJ Walker AI clone. It's built on my 40 plus years of real world coaching and training. You get my exact advice, style and frameworks instantly. Ask it how to handle a tough question. Get feedback on your elevator pitch. Rehearse your next big talk. This is the next generation of communication coaching. It's smarter than an app, more personal, personal than a course, and always ready. Start using it today at TJ Walker AI. You'll wonder how you ever did without it. Kamala Harris is back in the news. She's set to relive her failed White House bid with the release of a new memoir. But Democrats fear her September book tour will reopen old wounds and drain energy from a party still staggering under $20 million in campaign debt she left behind. Her book. It's called 107 Days, debuts on Tuesday. She kicks it off with a 15 city tour that some allies worry will become an I told you so exercise against Donald Trump, rather than a forward looking moment for the party. And even those close to her doubt it will help her buttress her chances for repeat candidacy. Early experts show Harris painted herself as a tragic heroine in the brief period after Biden was forced from the race, reflecting on how and why Democrats collapsed spectacularly. For critics inside the party, her reappearance threatens to repeat the Hillary Clinton playbook after her 2016 defeat. A book, a tour, bitterness and more division. Democrats are also frustrated that Harris admits to failing to act sooner as Biden stumbled, and even reveals she avoided picking Buttigieg as her running mate because he was gay. Her public reappearance could help the party grieve, some Democrats say, despite the awkward timing. But others see it as one more reason to move on as governors like Gavin Newsom and JP Pritzker step up as future leaders for 2028. Okay, so what's the real message here? Kamala Harris is back. She's going to be everywhere for a while promoting her book. And, hey, I hope she sells some books. I hope she makes some money. Is this going to rehabilitate her image and make her the front runner for the Democratic nomination in 2028? I don't think so. Michael Dukakis didn't get another chance. John Kerry didn't get another chance. She had a shot. She had the support of the party. It didn't work out. Next, let's go a little bit deeper here. I am not one of those who thinks that Kamala Harris was a horrible candidate. I mean, it was still a pretty close election. Everyone likes to forget that. Was she a superstar? No. In retrospect, would it have been a lot better, obviously, if Joe Biden had simply announced two years earlier he wasn't running? Let the Democrats fight it out and find the strongest candidate. Obviously, at this point, you don't need me to tell you the stunningly obvious that most people now would agree with. She's written her book. She's talked about it. I got to tell you, I'm a real political junkie. Not that excited about reading it. Part of it. It's depressing for those of us who are centrist and who fear the right wing capture of America, the disintegration of the fundamental pillars of democracy. It was very painful to live through last year, much less having to live through it again by looking at the book. So I for one, won't be buying it. But I have to tell you, I'm long past the time when I buy a lot of campaign memoirs now. When I was younger, growing up, the Boys and the Bus, and there were a lot of great books about campaigns and they were helpful in part because there wasn't cable TV news. You couldn't consume non stop punditry and political insights the way you can today. But still, these books do sell, there's no doubt about it. And these books can help candidates. Here's the problem for Kamala Harris. A lot of people thought, okay, this is our big chance. The Republicans have been captured by this culture. They're nominating someone who's the most unpopular candidate in the history of the United States, the Democrats have to win this. It's one thing for Hillary to have lost to Trump in 2016, all the country really knew was, here's a guy, charismatic, TV performer, businessman. Okay, a lot of people didn't know much about him. But in 2024, everybody knew what Donald Trump was about. His negatives were sky high. And so the Democrats were thinking, okay, we don't really want Biden, wish he'd gotten out earlier. But now, now we have someone who's young, who's articulate, who's good looking. This is going to be a slam dunk. And no, it didn't turn out that way at all. At all. So I don't know whether Trump is running again or even if we have an election. I think a lot of people who liked Kamala Harris, certainly all the people who voted for her, who like her, are still going to be thinking again if we even have a Democratic primary. If the Democratic Party has not been outlawed by 2028, which is not a sure thing. But if we have an actual primary, I don't think there's much demand for people saying, if Kamala Harris had just had more time, if she just had more money, she would have won. Because let's assume for a moment that our entire democracy has not collapsed, that Trump is either gone from the stage for one reason or another, or accepts reality that the Constitution prevents him from running for a third term. And the Republicans have some kind of an open forum and a free for all. And maybe you have Marco Rubio, Maybe you have J.D. vance, maybe a Tucker Carlson, they get in, they slug it out, and it's a new face. Maybe It's Donald Trump Jr. Who knows? But it's a new face. Whoever that new face is, it's highly unlikely that that person's negatives. The people who say this person is a horrible person and is likely to destroy the country, it's highly unlikely that person is going to have negatives anywhere near as high as Donald Trump's negatives right now. So the argument against Harris would be, look, you couldn't beat Trump inheriting a great economy, a surging economy, a growing economy, at a time when Trump had astronomically high disapproval ratings. How in the world are you going to deal with a relative fresh face like JD Vance or Marco Rubio, which nobody seems to know really what he stands for, if anything, other than working a lot of long hours in every cleanup job Trump gives him? So it's arguably going to be much harder for a Democratic candidate to win in 2028 if they do have a candidate who doesn't have the same astronomical negatives of Trump. So I can't imagine there being a huge constituency for Kamala Harris getting another nomination. So where does she go? What does she do? I think if you're Kamala Harris, you say, look, I wanted to be in public service. I wanted to be, to have an impact. I frankly got higher than I ever thought I would get. And get. Let's not take away from her, you know, saying that. So saying she's not a great politician is like saying someone who won the Heisman trophy in college but flamed out their first year or two in professional sports wasn't a good football player. Happens all the time. Think of one of the best collegiate basketball players that ever went to your college or a college you like the most. Someone who just seemed like it just dominated. They got all American status, they got to the pros, didn't work out. Sometimes it just happens. Kamala Harris was the equivalent of a collegiate all American in her state of California. Now remember, California is not any state. It's the largest state in the country. Its economy is bigger than all but about four or five countries in the entire world. So there's tremendous competition to get into anything and get elected to anything. And she had a series of elected posts where through her talent, her charm, her intelligence, her political savvy, she was able to work her way up the political ladder of California. Guess what? That takes a tremendous amount of skill and savvy and intelligence. You do not get to be a senator from California without having world class political skill. It's one thing to be a senator from wyoming. There's only 500,000, 400,000 people there. So you probably know anyone who could ever run for office because they were in your high school student government. It's such a small state, California, with tens and tens and tens of millions of voters. The competition is fierce. And she did well there. She won there. And it's true, when she ran For President in 2020, campaign wasn't very impressive. She dropped out early. It just didn't take off. But you know what? As much fun as it is to laugh at Joe Biden, I, well remember when he ran in 1987, 88, very unsuccessfully. Didn't work out. I remember when he ran unsuccessfully in 2008, didn't work out. And yet he ended up present. Ronald Reagan flirted with the idea of running in 68, didn't quite pull the trigger, but a lot of things were in motion. Didn't happen. Ran in 76, didn't win. 80 won big time. 84 won big time. So you can't necessarily scratch someone off just because they've lost. Here's the difference, though, between Kamala Harris, Donald Trump and Ronald Reagan. The two gentlemen, and I'm using that term, and I do think Ronald Reagan was a gentleman. The two men in this particular case had clear cut, unique ideological agendas, frameworks, perspectives, and a brand image. They had a reliable lane within their party. Trump, you could say, was really the only one in that lane. He spoke for a lot of Republican voters in 2016 and in 2020 and 2024 who don't like the old Republican Party of just tax cuts for the rich, cut social spending, balanced budgets. Trump had a very distinct lane. Ronald Reagan positioned himself as the most viable conservative voice in American politics and is a great communicator. Kamala Harris doesn't have a specific lane. She ran sort of on the, more on the left when she ran for president, then she adopted the Biden platform as vice president and then ran as more or less a centrist in 2024. So she doesn't have any kind of distinct brand, therefore no extremely loyal base within the party. So my prediction for her, she knew her team will take polls. They're going to say this isn't going anywhere, and it's going to be a whole lot of travel and begging people on the phones for money and a lot of unfun stuff, and traveling to Iowa, staying and Holiday Inns. There's another potential future for Kamala Harris, and it frankly looks more like Michelle Obama. And I'm not saying that because they're both black women. I'm saying because they're both famous and have goodwill with a lot of people. I think Kamala Harris's future is gonna look more like Barack Obama's future. And that is high paid speaking gigs, highly paid book deals, maybe her own TV show on Netflix, a podcast that's highly, highly lucrative. Because while I don't think Kamala Harris has a great political future in elective office, and she did sort of famously take herself out of running as a potential governor of California, I do think as a brand, she has a lot of fans and a lot of supporters and a lot of people who admire her. And I could easily see her putting together a multimedia company conglomerate in the way a lot of politicians and former politicians do. And, and you know, Prince Harry does this. If you have some level of fame and it's not because you were a criminal. You can just monetize it in a lot of ways. And I think you're going to see her more books, podcast, Netflix shows, speaking gigs and having the time of her life, enjoying herself and keeping her hand in politics, but not running for office. She had a great run. It didn't get to the absolute top. But I mean, do you consider yourself a failure? If you're a professional baseball player your whole career and you win the pennant several times, you come in second place, third place several times, you, you have some records but you don't quite win the World Series, do you consider yourself a failure? I don't think so. And I realize this, what I'm saying is probably going to alienate me from everyone because some of you think how dare he say something good about the former Democratic nominee. And others of you are upset because I'm not saying of course she should run again and be the front runner. It's her turn. I'm calling it like it is. That's what I like. I perceive it objective based on my own sense of reality, with the understanding that nobody's 100% objective. What we try to do here on this show is analyze the top news stories of the day filtered through the lens of communication skills and personal development skills. So the real lesson here, I think Kamala Harris is a good communicator. I don't think she's a world class communicator in the sense of Bill Clinton in his heyday, Obama within his context of his heyday. And in the modern world, the skill set is different. It's more about being more like Donald Trump. Yes, I said that. And like Zoran Mandani, people who really understand how to capture attention. Social media say interesting, provocative things not daily but hourly. That is the new skill set. More in a moment after these commercial words. Imagine having a communication coach who never sleeps. Meet your new secret weapon, the TJ Walker AI clone. Go to TJWalker AI and start getting custom coaching 2024 7. No scheduling, no hourly fees. I train presidents, prime ministers and Fortune 500 CEOs. But the same exact communication I've delivered to world leaders is now available to you online anytime@mediatrainingworldwide.com whether you're speaking on camera, pitching a client or handling a crisis, you need these tools. These aren't fluffy motivational videos. They're practical, battle tested techniques to help you speak clearly, confidently and persuasively. Go to mediatrainingworldwide.com and take your communication to the next level. Welcome back to filtered. I'm TJ Walker and this is the show where we look at the top business, news, technology news, culture, news of the day and filter it through the lens of communication and personal development skills. One of this fall's breakout debut novelists isn't a romance writer or a recent graduate from the prestigious MFA program. It's Trey Gowdy, a former Republican congressman and current Fox News host whose crime novel the Color of Death debuted at number two of on the New York Times bestseller list. And no, I didn't read it. Gowdy says he can't take too much credit for the book's success. That's the work of his publisher, Fox News Books. The imprint has found tremendous success, capitalizing on the popularity of Fox personalities and the loyalty of its viewers. Most of its books are not expressly political, but they align with the network's conservative bent. The subject matter is often dictated by market research into what appeals to Fox's audiences, topics like faith, family, patriotism, criminal justice and military service. Executives sometimes pair a subject with a Fox host or contributor. Then the books are launched into the world with a cascade of TV appearances, a publicity bonanza that is rare in today's media climate. Since it launched five years ago, all 16 Fox News book titles have become national bestsellers. With only a few releases each year, the network can give each of its authors ample airtime, particularly on shows like the Five and Fox and Friends. Critics say rival conservative publishers no longer get the same attention on Fox's airwaves. But inside the Murdoch empire, the formula works, and Fox executives plan to expand further into children's books and comedy. Okay, so what's the real message here? The Fox News Channel average audience might be 110, but make no mistake about it, the Murdochs understand corporate synergy. And that's why their book publishes publishing company is arguably the most successful book publishing company in the world right now. Everything they do goes to the top of the bestseller list, in part because if they anoint one of their own on air contributors and say, you're going to be an author, they then give it essentially millions of dollars of free publicity on all their other shows. It's cross promotion, weaving in and out big, building their brand, building their news personalities and making more money for their publish company. Depending on your perspective, it's either brilliant or diabolical. Okay, let's dig a little deeper here. I do think this is the future of media at many, many levels. Now I'm somebody who likes books. I read books. I try to read at least one or two real books every week. I've written half a dozen books. But I'm always in a tough situation when I have friends, colleagues, others come up to me and say, tj, I've just written a book, I'm going to be publishing a book. And my first thought is, oh, because if you're not already famous, if you're not a well known brand on Fox News or ABC or CNN or msnbc, if you don't have a podcast with a million viewers, if you don't have an email list of a million names, guess what? You're not going to sell any books. DJ My book is different. My book is the best book ever. Nobody's going to hear about it. So many people I find are stuck in this mentality of it's the 1970s when only 40,000 books were published a year and one lucky break and you could be like Dr. Wayne Dyer who got on the Tonight show and Johnny Carson promoted the book and boom, overnight he was famous. Overnight, he was a celebrity. Overnight, from one talk show appearance, it became a New York Times bestseller. And that fed his entire career until he died just a few years ago. With dozens and dozens and dozens of books making collectively more than $100 million. That's still the model so many people have about publishing. It's broken. It doesn't work anymore. If you want to sell a book, you've got to find a platform. Now, really smart, savvy Internet influencers, podcasters know that and they do that and they build a list. Someone like Scott Galloway knows and his publishers know the next book he publishes, even if it's blank pages, it's going to be a New York Times bestseller because he's in front of book buyers every single day in his podcast. Same with Tucker Carlson. Same with Mark Levin. It's, it's not about ideology. It's about how do you get attention for people. Bill O'Reilly, now formerly a Fox News Channel, had created a publishing, a mass publishing empire. It's something like 20 books, the Killing of Lincoln and the Killing of Jesus. And he got this formula and he knew he could slap his name on anything. And there are varying accounts about how much he really wrote of any of these books versus his ghostwriter. But let's for the sake of argument, say he did write some of it. He knew that because he was in front of people every single night on fox, because he was in front of people with his newsletter, because he was in front of millions with his website, he could sell any book. I'm frankly surprised that cnn, msnbc, the New York Times don't actively have larger public and they may even have publishing imprints. But if they do, they're inconsequential what Fox does now, which is shrewd. They tell their paid contributors, you want to be on our airways, you want a paycheck from us on a regular basis, okay, but you have to get, you have to give us the next book you write. A first look. That means the publisher at the Fox book imprint can look at a book first and decide if I want to publish this or not. Only if they turn it down can they then go to another network. Now normally you might say, well, that seems unfair to the authors. Well, every single book they publish becomes a New York Times bestseller. So it works out pretty well for their on air staff. I think this is the future and we're already seeing it with countless, countless bloggers across the spectrum. Bloggers, podcasters. I'm dating myself now. But you can look across the spectrum on the right side, whether it is Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, certainly Rush Limbaugh made a fortune from his books. The Way Things Ought to Be, I believe was one of his titles. And I did read his books and those were ghostwritten by John Fund of the Wall Street Journal. That's pretty well documented. But you need a big brand to get in front of people. And institutions like Fox News are a brand. The personalities who are on every day become a brand. But it can happen for you and me as well. And again, there's so many people in politics especially who do this across the political spectrum. Look, it's like someone like David Pacman, who is known as a liberal Democratic YouTuber and podcaster, wrote a book, pretty good book. I've read it and became a bestseller. Look at Michael Tyler Cohen, another liberal Democratic podcast, wrote a book, I've read it and became a best seller. And I also, by the way, I read conservative pundits books going all the Way Back to God and man at Yale by William F. Buckley. So I try to follow best selling books talking about culture all across the spectrum so I can give you a better perspective on it and just give myself a better sense of what's going on in the world. Too few more facts about this. Dana Perino's book featured a mariachi band. It sold 100,000 copies. Johnny Joey Jones, behind the Badge hit number one with a fox push. Shannon Bream's Women of the Bible Speak became a franchise. Now Harper Collins is also owned by News. So it's All a part of the same family and they are doing the distribution. HarperCollins, of course, a famed, famed book publishing company that has connections with, with everyone in the world. But here's the thing. A lot of conservative, a lot of other conservative publishers are not happy about this. The regneries of the world. We used to be able to get all our people on Fox and Friends and now we can't. I can tell you I've heard from many talk show producers over the last decade who say we don't want authors. If it's not somebody really famous, nobody cares. So if you want to sell your book, here is my communication skills advice to you and my personal development advice to you. If you want to write a book and sell a book, don't do it until you have built a community and an audience. And that these days probably means you need to start a daily or a weekly YouTube channel, you need to start a podcast, you need to start a newsletter, you need to start gathering email lists. You need to figure out how can your ideas and your face and your name, regardless of whether you have a big ego or not, get in front of a million or more people a month. Sadly, I think that's the only way to sell books or yeah, there's always going to be someone who's going to win the lottery. Somebody is just going to be a hermit, write a perfect novel, mail it off. It somehow gets accepted, somehow gets great reviews. But that's like saying, I'm not going to plan for my financial future future. I'm not going to save any money, I'm just going to buy a lottery ticket. Lottery ticket is not a safe, conservative, guaranteed way of generating wealth for your long term. And simply focusing on writing a book isn't either. You need a platform now. You don't have to use a ghostwriter like a lot of these people I'm talking about do. You can write your own book, but you need to first communicate with people in a way that's easier than buying a book. Buying a book is a big commitment. You gotta pull out money, pull out your credit card, sit for 2, 3, 4, 5 hours with someone's ideas and you don't know them yet. It's kind of like asking people to get married on the first date. It's much easier to ask someone to maybe watch a TikTok video of yours or a Facebook video or a longer form YouTube video. It's a lot easier to get them to maybe listen to your podcast for six months and then you can go steady and they can buy a book of yours. I want you to think of it that way, not as some big horrible travesty of the modern world. More in a moment. We'll be right back after this break. Want more? Grab my Five Book Success Library for $9.95 at tjwalker.com books. It's the fastest way to level up your communication. Imagine being the most confident person in the room, whether you're on Zoom or on stage. That's what thousands of professionals are learning to do right now. Through my online communication courses at Media Training Worldwide, you can access my complete training library on demand. Affordable and actually effective. Whether you're preparing for media interviews, client presentations or TED style talks, I've got you covered. Check it out mediatrainingworldwide.com you'll never wing it again. Welcome back to Filtered. I'm TJ Walker, your host. Thanks for spending time with me today. Issue 5 Trump and free Speech As President Trump threatens a wide ranging crackdown on mainstream media, institutions and political opponents, his aides and allies have cast the administration's moves as critical to staunching misinformation and hate speech that could lead to political violence. But Trump himself has repeatedly made clear in recent days that he has a different goal. For him, it's not about hate speech, but about speech that he hates, namely speech that is critical of him, any criticism of him and his administration. He suggested that a clutch of protesters who yelled at him in a restaurant be prosecuted under mob laws. He demanded that multiple late night comics who mocked him be taken off air. He threatened to shutter television broadcasters that he deemed unfair. He sued the New York Times for allegedly damaging his reputation. And that was just last week. When threatening government action against those who anger him, Trump has been strikingly transparent. He talks regularly about how journalists, commentators and political actors should not be allowed to be so harsh toward him. Having installed a partisan ally to run the FBI, he muses openly about which critics he would like to see investigated. The tension peaked after ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel under FCC pressure for comments about Republicans response to the Charlie Kirk assassination. Trump celebrated the move and demanded that NBC do the same with Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers. Historians note past presidents clashed with the press. But usually in wartime or national crisis, Trump's actions stand out for happening in peacetime and for being driven by personal grievance. Okay, so what's the real message here? America, you are no more. The idea that this administration is against hate speech is laughable. That's the only way they ever got into office was pouring Jet fuel on hate speech. What Trump and his minions are really after, what they really hate, is any criticism of Donald Trump and his administration. And if you criticize them, they're coming after you. I better make a run for it right now myself. Okay, let's dig a little bit deeper here. This is. This is troubling at so many, so many levels for what Trump did earlier this week. Basically berating his own attorney general for not prosecuting his enemies. He's basically saying, I'm a mobster, you're my henchman. If I tell you to make Joey Fatpants disappear in the marshes on the way to the Newark Airport and not have any signs of it, I expect it to happen. That's essentially what he's saying. And it is utterly appalling. It's utterly American. It's happening at so many levels. The Pentagon is restricting press access. Military reporters are warned. Any criticism, you're going to lose your credentials. Here's the part that is particularly scary and horrific right now. Arguably the leading Democratic candidate for President in 2028 is the incumbent governor of California, Gavin Newsom. So Gavin Newsom the other day sent out a message on social media that Kristi Noem is going to have a bad day. Day. Now that you could say, well, a, anybody can have a bad day. Everybody has bad days occasionally. He's probably referring to some political decision, legal decision, that won't go her way. That was enough to warrant the Trump administration saying we were officially going to investigate him as a threat to our high officials. Yeah, they're equating that with making an active death threat. And again, I oppose death threats. I don't make them here. I abhor anyone who does across the political spectrum. And, yes, there are limits to free speech. If you make an active death threat against a government official, that deserves investigation and merit. But you know what doesn't investigate merit? Investigation? Criticism. Complaining. Whining. That is what Donald Trump does about 98% of every waking moment. Whining, complaining, talking about what a victim he is all the time. And to use the full force of the federal government and to try to intimidate someone against any criticism. That's utterly despicable. There's no two ways around it. That is a pure taking a play from the dictator's handbook. That's saying, Viktor Orban of Hungary, I bow down to you. I'm going to do what you're doing. I want to intimidate anyone in the media, anyone in the political system from ever criticizing me. Okay? I'm going to make a prediction right here. I hope I'm wrong. I hope you call me up, write text, six months from now. Because I'm making this prediction as it will happen in six months. I'm hoping I'm wrong. I'm predicting that within the next six months, this administration outlaws membership in the Democratic Party. I'm predicting that within six months, this administration outlaws the Democratic Party in America. We are seeing inch by inch every single day, the Overton window is sliding. Things that even a month ago people would have said, that's insane, that could never happen. You're being hyperbolic are now happening. Talk show host getting canned. Sitting Democratic governors are being treated as if they are terrorists. This equation of taking a principle we can all agree with, no one should endorse political violence, threats to political officials. No one endorses that. But to conflate that with, oh, you criticize Dear Leader, and that's the same as hate speech, and that's the same as calling out for violence against this person. That's a whole lot of connections that no sane person who has a functioning brain could ever buy into. But sadly, that is where we are in America today, where any criticism is considered of one side. Any criticism of Dear Leader is now considered hate speech. It's now considered dangerous. It's now considered a threat. Therefore, we have to come get you and investigate you. Doesn't matter who you are, how respected you are. Doesn't matter if you're James Comey, the former head of the FBI. Any innocuous comment, it doesn't matter how boring, how trite, how banal that comment is. We're now going to have a whole series of censors working in the Department of Justice and elsewhere, looking at things with a microscope, looking at every word, saying, wow, is there even one comma in the sentence from that Democrat or that moderate or that centrist that we could possibly construe is negative. That might hurt our feelings. That doesn't make us look good. Boom, we got him. Now we're going to target this person. We're going to attack this person. We're going to throw the Department of Justice at this person. And I really don't think we're that far away from just imprisonment of comedians, journalists, Democratic officials, elected officials. That's the next step. We've gone down so many steps in the last 10 months. That's the next logical step. And I don't mean logical that it should happen. But if you follow the strain of thought coming from this administration and you see how they work themselves into hysteria as they did in this mass mob rally over the weekend. It's the next logical step for them. So be ready. I hope I'm wrong. I really hope you call me as C.J. weren't you silly way back in September of 2025 to say the Democratic Party would be outlawed by the current administration? Well, that was silly. The Democrats ran a good campaign. They took back the Congress in 2026, and there was a free and fair election in 2028 where Trump didn't run. And TJ you were silly. I hope that's what you're able to say to me. I hope I could say you got me. Boy, was I wrong. I was way off. I'm hoping that's what I have to say. Hey, I want to thank you so much for joining me today. We're a little bit over time, but there's a couple of grab bag issues I did want to bring up to you. Senator Rand Paul blasted the FCC chair Brendan Carr for threatening ABC over Jimmy Kimmel's comments, calling the move absolutely inappropriate. Paul said networks can fire unpopular hosts, but the government has no business getting involved. Rand Paul, he's a quirky guy. There's no doubt about it. He is someone who does seem to have some set of core beliefs. He is the son of the father, Ron Paul, devoted libertarian. And Rand Paul is too, in many respects. He does seem to be more willing to call out the Trump administration when it egregiously, egregiously becomes a big socialistic government and runs like either a socialistic or authoritarian dictatorship. So Rand Paul is noting here that this was extraordinarily improper of the Trump administration. And so for that I do want to say well done, Rand Paul for speaking out. Now, before we get too excited about this, Rand Paul is someone, I would say he does have, you know, one bone in the backbone. He's got, you know, one disc in his spine. It never adds up to a full spine because he never seems to vote against anything Donald Trump wants. He never seems to connect his logic. You're saying this is against your principle and this is against your conservative libertarian principle. And this is against your principle we shouldn't have more bigger government. Yes, yes, yes. And then he votes in favor of whatever Donald Trump wants and he votes in favor of whatever henchmen who advances big government, socialistic, authoritarian impulses. He always seems to support those people. But at least he does speak out occasionally. And I know he gets a lot of guff for it. He gets vilified and attacked viciously in social media. And I can only imagine the personal security needs that pop up each time. So I give Rand Paul some credit. Not a full spine, but he's at least got one bone in his back. I also wanted to give a little spotlight to one of my favorite favorite publications, the Atlantic. One of my favorite columnist, David Frum, who's a former speechwriter for a conservative Republican, George Bush. He's pointing out that Donald Trump is really in a race against time, that Trump is smart and savvy. As far as reading the public, reading moods, reading polls, I agree with that. And he believes that Trump is doing all these activities we're talking about so quickly because he realizes he has to consolidate power now. Every single day, his political support is going down. His polling numbers, people who support his agenda for what he's doing in tariffs, what he's doing to fight inflation, what he's doing with ice. The support is going down, down, down. David Frum makes the point that he's trying to consolidate his power now because if he goes into the 2026 elections being this unpopular and we still have free and fair elections, then he might be able to keep the Senate. I don't think any fair minded person thinks it's going to be a slam dunk for the Democrats to take back the Senate. Oh, no. But any fair minded person will say, if the economy continues to go down, Trump's poll numbers go down. The House is already so close. We're only talking about a handful of votes different then at that point, the Democrats are going to retake the House. And at that point, his agenda is dead as far as getting anything through Congress. Now, he can still do all these executive orders, but at that point, the Congress most likely will start impeachment proceedings. And you say, well, T.J. what did he do? We don't have 89 hours straight for me to go through all the things he's done, breaking his constitutional oath of office right now. Just take my word for this. The Democrats win control of the house in 2026. By early 2027, you're going to see impeachment hearings. Is he going to be convicted? No, because the Senate is not ever going to convict Donald Trump. It doesn't matter if he literally does do what he said he would do to someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue in New York City. They're not ever going to convict him because they are afraid of the attacks they would get back from his supporters. They are too afraid to stand up to this tyrant. So I would urge you take a look at the column from David Frum in this week's Atlantic mag or the current online version of Atlantic magazine. He makes a compelling case that we are going to see increasingly bold, black, brazen attempts to take the reins of democracy and turn it into a full fledged Turkish style, Hungarian style authoritarian dictatorship. Because at that point, once you control the levers of power, doesn't matter what the polls say, you just get to do whatever you want. I'm TJ Walker and I'm happy for at least today I get to do whatever I want, which is spend time with you talking about the top news stories of the day. I appreciate your time. Please, if you saw anything you like, heard anything you liked or at least interested you, leave a comment, Sign up for notifications like it Interact on whatever platform you're on. If you're listening to this on a podcast platform, thank you. Be sure to follow us on that podcast platform. Subscribe and please, please leave a review. Thanks. I'll see you tomorrow.