"People Are Dancing On Daily Wire's Grave" - What REALLY Happened When Ex-Daily Wire CEO Left

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Stories came out, I think, the last 12 months, they had two sets of layoffs. One layoff that comes in, then the last one that comes in, and hey, it's not as many as you guys say it is, it's not 100 people, it's not 80 people, it's really only 40 people, 50 people. And as a guy that operates, it's very hard to run a business. So you're gonna go through your season, so I know what it is to be on the inside and how difficult this is. So it's coming from a guy that's on the inside. So if that's the case, and it's grown after campus, after Brett, why are the layoffs happening?

**Jeremy Boering** (0:27)
Well, I can probably speak more to the first round of layoffs because they came very rapidly on the heels of my departure. The second round of layoffs happened more than a year after I leave, and as I say, I don't have a view. I have more of a view than most because I still know a lot of people there, and I know how things have historically worked, so I can make certain inferences, but I don't have visibility into the company that you might expect me to have.
The first round of layoffs are consistent with me leaving the company. It was a huge change in the structure, the fundamental structure of the company, the fundamental business model of the company, the fundamental relationships that sort of undergirded the company. And so, some projects became orphans. And so, it makes perfect sense that when the founding CEO of the company, the founder and CEO of the company, the guy who sort of conceived of the thing and has led it for a decade, leaves, there's going to be other turnover that happens as a result of that.
As my business partners and their consultants pursued their new strategy, that new strategy is going to leave some orphan situations. And so, my top two lieutenants left within a week of me leaving. They both left, weren't fired, but...

**SPEAKER_1** (1:49)
So, they were loyal to you, meaning they liked working for you. Because that's typically what happens. CEO leaves, the leadership team that reports that has a close relationship, they leave.

**Jeremy Boering** (1:57)
I think that they obviously had loyalty to me and they work for me now in my new venture. I think also they had loyalty to the strategy that we had been unfolding for the last five years. And to the extent that that strategy was changing, they didn't see the new strategy as being one that they wanted to invest in.
So, they leave. But then, of course, those people who were in some of those other departments, like the Children's Department was one of the things that was largely shut down in the days after me leaving. So, of course, there were quite a few employees just of that department who no longer had value that they could add to the company because the company was no longer pursuing that strategy. So, I think that initial round of layoffs that happened was mostly about a pivot into a new strategy, which, you know, as you say, that's just part of business. You have to be able to adapt. You have to be able to pivot. You have to be able to change.
Obviously, I disagree with the new strategy or I would still be there running the old strategy. That doesn't mean that the new strategy can't be effective. Doesn't mean that the new strategy can't succeed. But in pursuing that new strategy, they had to make a lot of sort of foundational changes to the company and some people lost their jobs as a result of that. The new round of layoffs, I can only speak to what's been said publicly. You know, Ben says that they've seen challenges over the last year. Some of them are very obvious, like Jordan Peterson being sidelined. To lose Jordan Peterson is a huge blow, I think, to the entire conservative movement to lose his voice. But he's a major part of the economics of how the company was working before he took ill, so you're going to see challenges there. And then I just also suspect that any, I think a lot of conservative media companies have seen some attrition during the second Trump administration just because conservatives tend not to do great with victory. You know, we're a great opposition party, we're a great opposition movement, we win, and everybody kind of breeds out, exhales for a minute, and they don't pay as much attention to conservative media for a season. And then I suspect that there's just the realities of a transition. If you're implementing a new business strategy for the company, you're implementing new governance strategy for the company, a new leadership team for the company, new executives at almost every department of the company over the last year. Even if that strategy all bears out to be successful, there's just going to be some rough patches in the transition. So I suspect that that's all you're seeing. I think a lot of people are kind of dancing on Daily Wire's grave because Daily Wire's been ascendant for over a decade, and nobody, you know, America loves underdogs, we don't really love number one. So I think there's a lot of people who are kind of eagerly dancing on Daily Wire's grave.