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Clay Travis is a Guest Worth Booking Sooner Rather Than Later

Clay remains well informed about the political, economic and sports news cycles.

Chrissy Paradis

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A champion of cutting through the ‘noise’ and recycled material that lacks factual material, has become inconsistently consistent for many news and sports audiences alike, Clay Travis has no qualms with exposing the dangers of promoting this toxic behavior in the media. Travis’s company, OutKick has been built by an individual that believes in his vision so strongly that he chose to go all-in and invest in promoting honest, objectivity, consistency, free speech and political opinions, whether or not they are unpopular at the time.

Travis has proven to be a fierce defender of free speech and insists on setting and honoring logical and practical precedents, and has no intention of abandoning this quest for providing the best possible content space in the broadcast industry.

The reports of a more reductionary broadcast entering the broadcast industry with the blueprint solely described as the “strategic opposite of Clay Travis’ Outkick” targeting specific members of the media for the business venture—individuals who’ve made their political agendas and tolerance for opposing ideologies clear.

“OutKick is straight down the middle. We cover sports and we cover it in an honest way and we give you our opinion on a wide variety of subjects. We seem like we are ‘right-wing’ because the rest of sports media is so far left-wing that there is a perpetual knife fight for the woke audience.” Travis addressed the reports immediately and unapologetically as he welcomed the competition as it would merely make OutKick stronger in the long run. “If anything it’s only going to make us look more reasonable the further left-wing the rest of the sports media community goes.” Signing off, Travis made sure to welcome and wish luck to what seems to be a reductionist amalgamation designed with OutKick at the forefront of the venture, as outlined in the report.

It is very clear that Clay Travis has no fear of competition as it pertains to the sports broadcast industry and there is a refreshing confidence that he brings to audiences that have felt alienated by other media outlets. Those who want a dose of sports news, current events, sharing opinions unapologetically on a wide range of topics from reverse sexism to the presidential election with a star studded guest lineup—look no further, Outkick is the landing space for you.

News talk stations that want to OutKick their own coverage by way of covering a sports/news or sports/politics story by bringing in one of the uniquely entertaining voices currently dominating the broadcast marketplace, try to book an interview with Clay Travis or arrange regular guest hits. The refreshing and thoughtful reasoning Travis has provided the broadcast media world is an appreciating asset that is worth investing in as soon as possible. The opportunity to up your game and promote the content that has been blocked on social media and attacked by other hosts because it doesn’t fit the normalized narrative to which they’ve confirmed—the answer is Clay Travis and OutKick. Here’s to OutKick for the commitment to developing a platform that provides a voice for those who have been silenced and surpassed the goalposts as outlined in the company’s mission: fearless and authentic coverage for an audience that has set the sky as the limit for the growth and expansion potential.

Why? Talking points below:

“Stupid stories seem to trend on a regular basis. Tom Brady’s friendship with Donald Trump became ‘huge controversy’ yesterday on Twitter. I don’t understand how this is remotely possible, and now all the talking heads out there are debating whether or not Tom Brady’s friendship with Donald Trump should be a major issue going forward. Since when did who you were friends with dictate whether you should be judged by whatever opinions they might have? This is all insanity. What’s going on is People are trying to slice and dice identities to such an extent; where you’re only allowed to have friendships with people who are exactly like you. It seems awfully boring to me. My family is half Donald Trump voters and half Joe Biden voters. This idea that you’re not allowed to be friends with a Democrat if you’re a Republican, or friends with a Republican if you’re a Democrat is pure insanity. This is where social media is driving us. This is why I keep circling around and our audience continues to explode. My precedents that I set are logical. I don’t think it’s smart, in football, for statements to be made about politics of any sort, in a uniform, at work. I think that’s bad for the overall interest in the league. It’s been my position ever since Colin Kaepernick took a knee. The same way I don’t think it would be smart for somebody to take a knee because they protest gay marriage. Or because they’re pro or anti-abortion or whatever you want to argue. If Tom Brady took a knee before this Super Bowl to protest Donald Trump losing the 2020 Election, people who have been defending Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the Anthem for years would immediately demand that Tom Brady no longer be allowed to be a quarterback in the NFL…”

“This is cancel-culture moving into who you can not be friends with. I think it is fundamentally broken. It is a failure of epic magnitude and I just think it’s shameful that stories like these are allowed to turn into massive controversies with controversies.. in quotations.” Clay Travis on the inability for those with different political opinions and ideologies to be able to coexist peacefully or be respectful enough to be friends with those who disagree with them on January 26.

Travis even managed to have a very candid and thoughtful interview with the President at OutKick, President Trump and Travis had a great conversation about a variety of topics.

Of Tom Brady, President Trump said, “He’s a winner. He knows how to win. He’s been a great quarterback with a great coach in a great organization, with a great owner in Bob Kraft, frankly. I think he’s going to do well in Tampa Bay.”

“You have to stand for the flag and respect your country you’re making millions of dollars a year to be playing a sport that you’d be playing anyway but they’d be playing on the weekends, and they have to respect their country. And if they don’t, frankly, if the NFL didn’t open, I’d be very happy; if they don’t stand for the flag and stand strongly I would be very happy if they didn’t open. And with that being said, I’d love to see them open.” Trump replied to Travis about the NFL and their season opener.

“Some sports I see, I think golf has not been hurt, in fact I think it looks more beautiful if you want to know the truth. UFC works really well, I watched that the other night. And they light up the stage, they light up the cage.” Trump shared with Travis, citing the details of the sports he has followed and supported, hitting all the major team sports, UFC and PGA.

In the final question, Travis asks the President,

“The number one sports fan among sports fans for the last ten years has been who is better as a basketball player—Michael Jordan or Lebron James? Which do you think—”

“Michael Jordan.” Trump replied, quickly.

“No doubt in your mind?” Travis asked.

“Well I’ve seen them both, plus he wasn’t political so people like him better.” Trump finished, both of them sharing a laugh.

Clay remains well informed about the political, economic and sports news cycles.

“One of the challenges of sports has been talking about serious topics and in general, I don’t think sports lends itself to talking about political topics. I think that’s been really exposed In the coronavirus era. One of the reasons why this show has grown so much is because we can talk about sports, but we can talk about the impact of sports particularly as it pertains to the virus. But one of the challenges is talking about difficult topics, in a smart and sophisticated way for large-scale audiences.” Travis identified the issues with sports media falling flat with audiences, especially with certain topics.

Travis tackles divisive issues like defunding the police, supporting Charles Barkley’s sincerity and his willingness to speak out about social issues.

“Maybe I shouldn’t be stunned by how poorly informed people are, but it’s the lawyer in me who always says ‘what matters is the facts, the facts the facts.’ I think sadly what you are coming to realize is that common sense isn’t so common, and that it’s rare.” Travis spoke of the willful ignorance that’s adopted by many issues and the number of those who have become entrenched with an unequivocally false narrative yet continue to advocate the defunding of the police. Largely due to what Clay so aptly identified as “the overwhelming political one-sidedness of the media.”

In his latest mailbag released Tuesday, Travis tackled this issue. “What you have is a broken marketplace of ideas where some people are not comfortable with sharing what they truly believe, for fear that it would cost them their jobs. And I understand that.”

Travis spoke on Curt Schilling’s Hall of Fame snub saying, “It’s only left-wing political opinions that the sports media actually wants. If you share anything other than a far left-wing political option, in fact, not only will it be used against you but you won’t be able to make the Hall of Fame.” Travis defended the political discrimination and increasingly hypocritical dynamic that has exposed a serious flawed foundation that is covering the truth of why Schilling has been snubbed as a direct result of his unpopular comments amid his pursuit of a career as an analyst. The sheer implications of using your voice to share political opinions integrity “Why is there not a content neutral application here?” The athletes/analysts who have shared left-leaning political opinions have been rewarded while those with right-leaning views and opinions have been met with condemnation effectively eliminating the opportunity to have the conversations protected by the First Amendment. While Travis is well-aware with the reality of the climate and inability to pursue the challenges for non left-leaning individuals who have been thrust into a survival or self-preservation mode out of fear to retain their jobs and the ability to provide for their families but still want to be represented in the broadcast space will always have OutKick as a resource for the content that they feel is so neglected. Travis’ sincere pledge to the listeners makes him a genuine and long overdue hero to the average news/sports media consumer who’s felt alienated, silenced or forgotten due to fear of retribution or retaliation.

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BNM Writers

Dagen McDowell Is Ready For A New Adventure With Fox Business

“Every decision in America is born of policy, On the show, we bring that to our show. Talk about the news of the day.”

Jim Cryns

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To know Dagen McDowell, you must understand what she comes from, where she comes from. You won’t know her until you know the lessons, kindness, and determination set forth by her parents.

Her parents operated a small grocery store, LW Roark and Company. Charles and Joyce McDowell were high school sweethearts and both went to college but decided to go back home and open a business. “This is in the middle of nowhere,” McDowell said. “It was a wholesale grocery store. They sold it in the late 90s.”

She said her parents were smart, encouraging, and took every opportunity to teach McDowell and her brother.

“They’d constantly talk up people who came into the store. Both of them have and had an insatiable curiosity about everything. They felt they learned things through their customers. It was more fun to learn about things from other people.”

McDowell’s parents never took a week off work. Never. The family took no vacations as most families would. Once while McDowell was in college at Wake Forest University, the family visited the Air and Space Museum on the Mall in D.C.

“Both of my parents were very interested in architecture and landscapes. We’d go to Williamsburg and just look at the buildings.”

McDowell joined FOX News Channel in 2003 and helped launch FOX Business Network as a founding anchor in 2007.

Her mother passed away three years ago and her father is still very much a part of her life. Her father was a constant teacher.

“One time my father, who we called Dowell McDowell, was putting up an outbuilding and asked me how long one line should be if the other line was such and such. He taught me the Pythagorean theorem when I was about 4 years old.”

McDowell was nurtured by parents with endless curiosity.

“I was raised by parents who would always debate and converse around the dinner table. We shared breakfast and dinner together every day. They loved learning, were always inquisitive, never afraid to ask a question. My parents shared a fearlessness and passed that on to me. I’ve never been embarrassed to ask people questions. I love talking to people and finding out about things.”

For a long time, McDowell had no idea what she wanted to do for a living. She knew if she worked at different jobs she’d eventually figure out what she was good at.

“I knew I was a decent writer, but I always tried to get information out of people, what they were doing. Ask if they were fulfilled and happy.”

At Wake, Forest McDowell majored in art history and had every intention of working in a museum, possibly as a curator.

“I interned at the Center for Contemporary Arts. I lived in Venice, Italy for a while. Wake Forest owns a house in Venice.”

After that it was Colorado. She moved back to New York during the recession of 1991 with a duffel bag. She took the Amtrak to New York City and sublet an apartment for six months.

“I had no TV, just a radio. I knew I could find something good to do in New York, there were so many jobs. I always wanted to live in the city. Either the city or way out in the country. Nowhere in between.”

She said being in New York made her feel anything was possible. This was January in 1994 when job ads were still in the physical newspaper, like the New York Times. McDowell interviewed at Institutional Investor through a referral from a friend.

“It was a brilliant magazine with terrific writing,” McDowell explained. “Very prominent in the industry. They were looking for someone to work with the newsletter written for the financial community.”

She’d cover topics like the bond business, Wall Street, and money management. The magazine made her take a reporting test where you’d make up a story and write it. She was offered a job and worked there for three years.

“I learned to be a journalist there,” McDowell said. “I could write but I became a better journalist. We’d break news, create our sources, and learn more and more about finance. People love to talk about what they do if you show interest.”

The next big job was SmartMoney.com, a resource and web newspaper for private investors. There McDowell wrote a personal finance column. She started doing commentary on television shows, the way a lot of people in different professions tend to do. “Then I started making more appearances on weekend financial or business shows,” McDowell said.

She got a call from Neil Cavuto about 20 years ago and he told McDowell, ‘Kid, you want a job? I know you don’t have much professional TV experience. We’ll give you some training and you’ll figure it out. If you do, you stay. If not, you go.’

McDowell said she was glad she was a writer first before she arrived at Fox. She writes her own scripts and has a background in finance and business writing.

“Before the business network was launched, they had only one business reporter and two senior business correspondents,” she said. “I’ve gotten to do so many different jobs, use different muscles, so to speak. As the years have passed I’ve discovered other talents I may have and I’m incredibly grateful for that.”

There’s a new show in town. McDowell and Sean Duffy will co-host The Bottom Line which will air on weeknights from 6-7:00 PM ET.

McDowell said she and Duffy come from extremely similar backgrounds. Duffy is from rural Wisconsin and McDowell is from Virginia.

“We know what small-town living is like, “McDowell said. “I might live in New York City but where I grew up affects the way I view the world. I’m still grounded in my hometown. On the show, we look south and west with everything we cover. You have to think of your audience. Rather than talking about them, we talk with them. That’s our shared background and vision. Sean is extremely down to earth and generous.”

McDowell said the show is not financially based, but steeped in business.

She said Duffy’s experience as a former U.S. Congressman, he understands policy as well as financial matters.

“Every decision in America is born of policy,” she said. “On the show, we bring that to our show. Talk about the news of the day.”

This is different from anything McDowell has done in the past.

“It’s a two-anchor show in the evening,” she explained. “This is not taking place during market hours. We tie all the business happenings together from the day. Again, it’s not about Washington or New York. It’s about the people we grew up with. We talk to them. Build a relationship with them on the air. For me, this is not just sitting in front of a camera. I can run off at the mouth as well as anyone, hang in there with the filibuster.”

McDowell says she is blunt, but hopes she isn’t rude. During a recent interview for the new show she used the terms ‘pig potatoes’ and ‘chapped backsides.’

“Those are terms I just made up,” she said. “I make up a lot of phrases and don’t always know what they mean. I have an entire repertoire of those kinds of phrases.”

Duffy assumed they were southern phrases he had to learn from McDowell, but she assured him she’d never heard them anywhere else.

“I’m just making stuff up,” McDowell said. “You can’t curse. Can’t say BS. At least you shouldn’t say BS on television. You don’t want to say manure. You never want to say something that makes people wince or evokes a smell.”

Dealing with people directly and bluntly seems to come from her mother.

“My mother had grit,” McDowell said. “She was also very kind, never syrupy. I used to say she had no magnolia-mouth.

That’s got to be a southern phrase.

McDowell said her mother was not a servile flatterer, but she was kind. Always there when somebody was in need.

“She had real grit. She’d stand and fight for her friends and family members.”

Her mother passed away after being diagnosed with stage-four cancer.

“She went through unimaginable pain,” McDowell said of her mother. “For nearly six years. You want to talk about somebody who was tough. There was nobody more pugnacious than my mother.”

She explained even with her illness, her mother was always on the go. Continuing to live her life. When questioned about being so active while she was ill, her mother continued to show grit.

“My mother would say she didn’t want to walk around looking like she had cancer. She asked, ‘What choice do I have? I could lay in bed and wait to die, or I can get up and do what I can .’”

McDowell said her mother’s illness taught her to be a caregiver in ways she never could have imagined. Her mother taught her to find moments of joy every single day, in the smallest of things.

“It can be as simple as telling a stranger to have a great day. Treat a perfect stranger with kindness. I do it all day long. I know it sounds corny, but I want to be known as a person who brings a casserole to a friend when they’re ill.”

A one-sheet from Fox tells you McDowell and the culmination of her background is perfect for The Bottom Line. The fact is, it’s true.

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Airing The Tyre Nichols Video Was A Necessity

There were hard moments to watch in those videos, hard sounds to hear. But they aired.

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Far be it for me not to address this outrageous and embarrassing instance in humanity. After the videos of Memphis police brutally beating Tyre Nichols were shown on television there really seemed to be more outrage emerging from society this time than from the media, for a change. One would think that’s how we wish things to be.

In instances like this, where the video and audio images are far from brief but are instead chaptered as they unfold, there are few options other than to let them run their course. Clocks — breaks hard and soft — are out the window, just as in live coverage.

Because that’s what this was, only the live this time was us, and as we all absorbed and reacted to actions disapprovingly familiar yet somehow foreign at the same time, the impact was still becoming apparent even though we already knew the outcome.

It’s happened before.

Not always like this but we’ve seen it before, police encounters shown on the news overtakes and become the news.

It takes effect as the sights and sounds are digested, dissected, and discussed, often before their potential impact could really be imagined.

In 1991, when the Handycam footage crossed screens for the first time and we learned Rodney King’s name, we didn’t know then but we had a feeling.

We were on the right track, though as newsrooms evolved and street reporting incorporated a different type of storytelling.

I was a cop in 1991. Changes came. Some.

It’s 2023, I’m no longer a cop. Changes will come again. Some.

Turning points — or the overused watershed moments — mean just as much to the news media as they do to law enforcement.

The “why’s” that make this a turning point are more society and community based this time around than they were in 1991.

At least I think so. And I don’t think it makes a bit of difference who’s involved this time.

There were hard moments to watch in those videos, and hard sounds to hear. But they aired. Where they couldn’t air, they were described in great detail; descriptions sometimes can be worse than the real thing. Sometimes, not this time.

And they should air, they shouldn’t stop airing. This is what happened and this is what people need to see and hear and this is exactly why we are here.

Warn them, provide them with a heads up that they’re not going to like what happens next. It’s life and we show life, and we show what some of us do with it when it’s someone else’s.

Overall, I would say the news platforms held their composure, even after the videos were released. I saw, read, and heard some refreshingly neutral coverage, even from outlets where I expected hard turns into the lanes on either side of the road.

Legitimate questions were asked by anchors and reporters and much of the time, the off-balance issues were raised more by those on the sidewalks and those on the other side of the cameras and microphones.

As much as I find myself in disagreement with what I often see on the cable networks — all the cable networks — I did find a sense of symmetry watching CNN’s Don Lemon speak with Memphis City Council Chair Martavius Jones in the hours after the videos were released.

Regular protocols be damned, Lemon and producers lingered patiently as Jones, visibly overcome by emotion, struggled to regain breath and composure enough to be able to speak. Rather than cut away or move to other elements, they stood fast and it became an example of what often requires no words.

There were fewer punches pulled on other platforms as well.

The sounds of the screams, the impacts, and the hate-filled commands were broadcast through car radios.

As were Tyre Nichol’s calls for his mom. They aired. They had to.

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Does the Republican Establishment Get It?

For many it seemed that the Republican establishment stood idly by as Democrats changed the rules and worked behind the scenes to alter elections.

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In a move that seemed to go against the wishes of the patriotic American grassroots, the Republican party on Friday re-elected RNC Chairperson Ronna McDaniel. 

The media immediately took notice, as many on television and radio are now wondering why the party would re-elect a chairperson who has been so unpopular with the base of its party. 

Grant Stinchfield discussed this issue Friday night on his program, Stinchfield Tonight, which airs on Real America’s Voice network.

“Ronna McDaniel holds on to her chairmanship of the Republican Party. By a whopping total of — what were the numbers– 111 to 54. Harmeet Dhillon only received 54 votes. Mike Lindell 4 votes. This is proof to me that the Republican establishment is dug in,” Stinchfield — formerly of Newsmax — said. “Don’t tell me they’re out of touch. See, you tell me they’re out of touch, that implies ignorance. They’re not ignorant about anything.”

As sentiment for Dhillon grew in the days leading up to Friday’s vote, many influential politicians and party donors publicly offered her their support and endorsement. These included Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), as well as donors Mike Rydin, Dick Uihlein, and Bernie Marcus.

Also on board were musician and outspoken conservative John Rich, along with the state GOP of Nebraska and Washington State. Countless journalists and media personalities, such as Charlie Kirk, Miranda Divine, and Lou Dobbs, also came out publicly in support of Dhillon. Former President Donald Trump remained neutral, not making a public choice of either of the three candidates.

For many of Dhillon’s supporters, the deciding factor was public sentiment across the party’s base.

“They’re reading the same chat boards. They’re getting the same emails I’m reading. I will literally post something about this race when I was supporting Harmeet Dhillon. There was not one comment – not one – that supported Ronna McDaniel. Everyone wanted change,” Stinchfield said, noting that the party elite saw the same groundswell of support for change.

“Now, nobody has an issue as Ronna McDaniel is some evil kind of person. I don’t believe she is. I believe, though, that she is part of the establishment. She’s been around too long as far as the establishment goes. And she’s been ingrained in doing business as usual. It’s not working.”

In making their choices known, many Dhillon supporters simply pointed to the scoreboard during McDaniel’s reign.

“Think about where we are. 2018, we lost the House. 2020, we lost everything. 2022, we won the House, but we should have really steamrolled the House and we should have taken back the Senate, which we didn’t do,” Stinchfield said. “That means we’re on a real losing track since she took over. I don’t like being on a losing track. I like being on a winning track.

“Something has got to change when you talk about all of this. So how does Ronna McDaniel get 111 votes and Harmeet Dhillon only get 54 votes, when everyone, every Republican voter I talk to said it was time for change?” pondered Stinchfield.

And even more than the losses, for many it seemed that the Republican establishment stood idly by as Democrats changed the rules and worked behind the scenes to alter elections. The most recent example of which came in Arizona, where presumptive gubernatorial favorite, Kari Lake, was “defeated” when countless voting irregularities occurred in some of the state’s most deep-red areas.

“Under her watch, Democrats instituted a mail-in ballot scheme. That may be even worse than losing, when you talk about the House and the Senate and all these things. The fact that we now have a junk mail-in ballot scheme across the country under Ronna McDaniel’s watch is serious trouble. Very serious trouble,” Stinchfield said on Friday. “And so the reason it is is because the Democrats are rigging the system.”

For years – until Donald Trump descended the golden escalator and took the world by storm – the Republican party had the reputation of being the party of the rich. Rush Limbaugh used to refer to this wing of Republicans as “the country club crowd.” President Donald Trump flipped the narrative completely, offering a clear vision of hope and patriotism to working-class America.

Reputable polling — such as Richard Baris’ Big Data Poll — consistently showed Trump running well ahead of almost every Republican candidate during the 2022 mid-term election cycle. In other words, Trump still maintains considerably more support across the country than most of the individual Senate or House candidates experienced.

Many experts believe this is because voters still view Trump as an outsider, while they view the Republican party much less favorably.

“Let’s tell you how out of touch they are, how elitist they are,” Stinchfield said, calling out the GOP establishment. “This meeting that went on, do you know where it is? It’s at the Waldorf Astoria Monarch in California. One of the most expensive resorts in America. You’re lucky if you get a room for a thousand dollars a night down there on Dana Point. Now, it’s a beautiful hotel, but why is the Republican Party holding an event there? Then I went back and I looked at what RedState did. RedState went back and looked at some of the expenses that the Republican Party under Ronna McDaniel’s leadership was spending money on.

“Take a look at this. $3.1 million on private jets. $1.3 million on limousine and chauffeur services. $17.1 million on donor mementos. $750,000 on floral arrangements. Now you compare this to the Democrats. The Democrats spent $35,000 on private airfare. A thousand dollars on floral arrangements. A thousand. Not $750,000. A thousand. And the $17.1 million they spent on donor mementos, the Democrats spent $1.5 million.

“Democrats know where to put the money. It’s not giving donors gifts. Donors shouldn’t want gifts. If you give money, give money. You don’t need the fancy pin to put on your lapel.”

Following her loss, Dhillon warned her party that it must listen to the base, saying, “if we ignore this message, I think it’s at our peril. It’s at our peril personally, as party leaders and it’s at our peril for our party in general.”

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