Remember them. Thank you. [applause] so we have like six events in a row, the Beautiful People from cspan book tv are here. See all the people moved. I like this. Thank you, we appreciate it. We want to thank our sponsors. Thank you. [applause] im the Program Director and we have one more of these coming up in july. If you go to speaker series, a brad event, he puts on a great show and a few more that going to announce after that. Thats the business, we really appreciate everybody for being here, without further due i would like to welcome Chris Stigall and eric bolling. [cheers and applause] all right. How are you yall doing . Thank you for the welcome. You literally left the set in new york. This is exactly how it went down. 6 00 oclock, my assistant said, we have to go. Right now theres a car waiting for us to take us from 48th and sixth to new york city to penn station, i get in the car, i press my ways app, it says youll be there at 6 37. I said kyle i have to run. I swear to god i get out of the car and its 90degrees, im running, holding the shirt and im running seventh avenue, sweating, it was like frogger. Cars are coming and im like stopping and going, running this way. I made it with like four minutes left to go and im so glad i did. [cheers and applause] what concerns me you running around in new york and theres a lot of new york liberal drivers. Any of them recognized me, i was done. Flat frog, frog legs. Thank you, guys, thank you for their Services Every chance you can. They jumped at this at the second we asked could eric come to host book talk. First stop on book tour. [cheers and applause] chris, a year ago we sat down and we did this at the train station, if you remember that, you guys are so much fun. I said we have to do it again. Whats the address of this venue . How about this . Not only i havent even shown you. I dont know if youve seen. Let me show you, i took this picture a second ago before i came in. I pulled in, yes, you probably know by now if you dont that you are on swamp road. [laughter] total coincidence. I came in on the intersections of swamp and liberty. [cheers and applause] wow, how about that . I said if there was more of a poetic intersections, swamp and liberty. All right the people of cspan are tellingtous sit down. To be honest with you, this is one of the crazy coincidences that i have been experiencing with this book. Maybe the cartoon and the movies. I happen to type in swamp dc and a picture comes up, ten pages in and its the Capital Building being built on a swamp and i just went, i said, this is the right project at the right time. Its that picture right there and thats the capitol building, part of the dome isnt on yet, they literally had to drain the swamp to build the capital but they drained the literal and let the metaphorical swamp. To make long story short, that was one of them. Fantastic. How about it . Everybody weave erics Facebook Live right now. I dont know if you follow me on facebook and twitter, social media, we have some of the most engaged fans the view crew. They watch the five, the specialist, they go online and they are just amazing. True patriots. They love fox, they love everything we are doing. By the way, top radio listeners. Oh, yeah. [applause] so wake up yesterday and i see that one of the first tweets of the day is from the most powerful man of the free world is buy Eric Bollings new book, rupert murdoch. Thats sean show and you see it with sean talking about your book. All in the same day. I have never seen a rollout like that. You sleep about three hours before you launch a book, monday night, we had the book party, our publisher lets get hype for the book, anyway, so we do this book party, we have cocktails, Facebook Live, wait, cspan is here. We have a few cocktails and then i take my wife and my four of my Close Friends to the party, they buy a bottle of wine, the publisher says great news, i have an interview set up for you. Got home at midnight or so and had me at fox at 6 00 oclock in the morning but here is the important tell me you were drunk on fox friends. No. No. I think doocy kind of is anyway. I love doocy. I make it by a minute. We do this thing about the news of the day, the travel ban, trumps travel being upheld and some of the health care stuff. Getting into a pretty heavily and then i get off the set and i tweet exactly what you just said, hey, get my new book, its out today, the president has a copy, which he does and it gets retweeted within a minute. A minute after im off the set, he retweeted that tweet. It blows up. People are calling me. Thats pretty cool. And like an hour later, the picture of the book, the cover with a link to barnes noble and amazon. Im like, really. It was amazing. The book was inspired by donald trump. He did have the first copy of the book and to be clear, eric was, ann coulter was the only one i know other than you that very early, early in the primary process said, trump is the guy. Day one. Day one. I watched this is true. [cheers and applause] ive known donald trump for a long, long time. Yes, hes going run. Can you talk about that . I dont want to interrupt the story. Can you talk to us to the leadup . Ten years ago he was doing apprentice before Celebrity Apprentice and i was on fast money on cnbc. Hey, you would like trump. Well, i dont know trump. Come on, you worked for mark who was producing the apprentice program, the brand. I go to some Cocktail Party and it ends up being a Cocktail Party on tv and a fundraiser. We are hanging out having some drinks. Make a long story short, i met donald, he met my wife, we were friendly and over the years i had gone to a lot of the apprentice and Celebrity Apprentice events, eventually i started working out at fox and interviewing donald at fox friends in the morning. He knew that i come from a financial background, so we had a connection and he would call before, call after say, that was good, that was great. I developed a friendship with trump over the years. When he first of all, i wasnt sure if he was going to run. I was surprised he did. I was shocked he did. When he came out the escalator in melania, every single human being in the news room, there had to be thousands of people who were working, hustling, no one could Pay Attention to anybody else. Everyone staired at the tv, hes got something. You can love him or hate him, hell got something thats going to get americas attention. Hes going and he did. And so here is the thing, throughout the campaign there were bumps that john mccain thing was an issue, the reporter for the New York Times was an issue, the video, the audio from billy bushs thing was an issue but i stayed with him and i got my television, lets call it teeth kicked in, my butt kicked in on a daily basis, if you watch the five, it wasnt easy being protrump on the five for a very long time. There were probably six months where it was four on one and it wasnt because i was the liberalist because i was the protrump guy. He knew that. He watches a lot of tv. After the election, he calls me, i didnt even though, im driving home with my wife from dinner and the phone ring and its caller id is blocked and its donald, eric, its donald, im like hey, i put him on speaker so my wife is listening. You know, you were with me from the start. I know, i saw this coming. I always had confidence in for the first time, mr. President. You know something else, when it didnt look so good for me you were there and so here is the point, the reason that was relevant to me was that you never saw that on the campaign trail. You never saw a doubt in his mind, but thats donald trump. He didnt want to portray, he wanted to show the confidence straight through and he was thinking that there was a point where it dipped. I just i knew i just knew he was going to win. I dont know how to explain other than he has the it factor that i knew he was going to win. You know the media business. Ive been honest about this. I confessed it as often as i can because its important to be honest about this, i voted for donald trump but i never in a million years thought he could possibly weather bill you bush thing. I said its over. You know the news media, how did they weather it . Wow, this is very this is the moment. If he survives this, hes definitely going to be president and i went to tv the next day and people were just waiting for me to show up on tv so they could beat me up and i went and said, look, the guy isnt a politician, he says things that most politicians would never say or get caught saying or admit to saying, however, think about this for one minute. Think about if its not donald trump, is it going to be Hillary Clinton, and are you sure you want a Supreme Court thats going to move far left for probably the next three or four generations and it was the one thing, i think, that no one could ever argue with. You can despise donald trump but he was the guy who was going keep the Supreme Court center right and maybe even further right. Neil gorsuch is a rock star and [applause] and when Justice Kennedy retires, we thought it was going to be this month, he may stick around for another year, probably next year. He will have another conservative on the court and youll probably get a third in next seven or eight years if Ruth Bader Ginsburg decides to retire which i think she should. [applause] think about that. Thats a truly conservative Supreme Court and that matters for many, many years. That will undoubtedly be his legacy without question. Have you been to the white house . I have. You have . Yeah. Like a private visit . You want me to go through the change in tv schedule which prompted the visit . Ive got the juicy fox questions coming up. Okay. The day we launched the specialist which was may first, i called him up and say, listen, i have a new show going, it would be really cool if the first day i could launch with interview of the president. No problem. Like that. No problem. Come on down. It went from we are going to do it on friday, aired on monday, do it on saturday or air on monday, monday first day of the show but it ended up coinciding with 100 days, 100th day on saturday, 100th day of presidency. I department didnt i didnt want it to lose value. I went to dc sunday night, got up, crack of dawn monday morning, interviewed the president , had a great 15 minutes with him, got on a train, rushed to union station, got in train and made the 5 00 oclock show. They sent it ahead, they cut it and we aired it on the first show. The interesting thing about the whole event is you sit down you set up. You have people, advance people who set up the room, they have cameras everywhere, the white house has their cameras and their thing and we have ours as well. Its whole production. This is going on a couple of hours. The president walks in, sit down, we bang out 15 minutes. 30 people in the room watching very tightly scheduled. The west wing and not in the oval office and he does something that no one expected and probably no other president has done or would do, he said, eric, you wanting to in the oval office and i said, yes. Then he says, hey, all you sound people and camera people and hair and makeup, you guys wanting to in the oval office too, we said, yeah, we want to go in the oval office. [laughter] thats donald trump. Eric, i have to tell you thats donald trump right there. It wasnt the tv camera or host that was going to give him a favorable interview or not. Everyone in the room, come to the oval office and you can tell your kids youre in the oval. Yeah. [applause] the American Association of sheriffs met pretty early on in his presidency and one of them was from chester county, she and i talked about her meeting. She told a similar story, theyre all in the roosevelt, hey, wanting to to the oval and they walk in and even his staff is kind of, do you want to clean the desk off, they take the picture, i said to the sheriff and i say to you, thats what i take away from him, he really believes thats the peoples house. He really believes that. [applause] one step further, one derivative of that, hes believe hes one of the people. What billionaire do you know who is so friendly with a regular person it doesnt matter who you are, Say Something crazy or tell you youre pretty if youre an attractive female, that catches his eye, i think it happened yesterday, there was a reporter and he said, wow, youre pretty, attractive and the news media went crazy. Thats bad to say now . Anyway, hes the president , the most powerful man on the planet, a billionaire and if you didnt know, if you were sitting next to him, you would think its one of you, except for the hair. Its real. I still take that hair, by the way. I bet. I would even take that hair. [applause] so i have to ask you the tumolt that fox news has gone through, we have to shut anybody and everybody down that had to do in their minds helping this man succeed to get to the white house . Was it coordinated . You mean the turnover at fox, the events that led yes. Fox was a very different place a year ago. I cant even count one hand the amount of very, very highrated hosts that are no longer at fox. No, i dont think its that. I think it was it was a time that had comment, i was absolutely shocked to understand what was going on with the boss with gales. They did the right thing. They did the right thing. Do you believe there was merit to it . You dont think it was a totally meritless witch hunt . Again, i dont know the details. Apparently there were tapes and pictures, leading up to it there was no indication. Now, do i think and this is my personal opinion, just an opinion, do i think that there are a lot of satellite lawsuits that popped up, they probably have no merit but interested in lets just get through this period, bad time, its a bad time for all this happening and lets get through it and settled a lot of the lawsuits, maybe they wouldnt settle if they had been one or two. May i ask you over certain individuals . You can always ask. Im not answering. [laughter] her ratings arent doing so well, arent they . [cheers and applause] can i qualify that . I dont think you need to. Lets be honest for a minute. Megyn kelly is talented, shes a lawyer, ive seen her take apart guest and leads them into an ambush, they walk right down to the corner and she takes their legs out. Including many people feel the president. Fair enough, fair enough. Okay. Hes the one who sat down with her. Okay. So but ive seen her shes done it to people on the left, i saw her do it to lou dobbs. She doesnt discriminate based on your ideology is. Here is the point. I think shes extremely talented. Shes in the wrong place right now. Shes at nbc, they want to make her soft, touchy feely, shes not soft and touchy feel yes. Theres no question that that time in history that roger and fox news felt that she was their biggest rising star other than oreilly at the time that she was on a trajectory to be their new benchmark. She was 25 years younger than oreilly. She would come on shows like mine and i have the audio, i played it and sang rogers praises and all of a sudden, roger is a no good dirt bag and shes going to nbc. Yeah. That i dont know. Look, i do think megyns accusations were what took rogers down. They were going to settle. When megyn kelly got involved, that was the end of roger ailes. Oreilly. Good man. [applause] what is the moment when you find out the guy that literally the entire network was built on is not coming back to work . What happened there for you . For me personally you filled in for him . For the better part of four years. I probably did 2 or 300 oreilly factors. I spent a lot of time with that crew, with his staff. When he took time off to his credit, he left. He went and, you know, he had a very capable staff and so i spent a lot of time with that crew. It was a shock to a lot of us that that went down. 12 05 in jeans and polo shirt and murdochs secretary says mr. Murdoch wants to see you now. I put on a suit and tie, i ran up to the office and he sat down and said, look, here is the deal, we have to our attorneys have said that we are going to have to part ways with bill oreilly and we have an issue at 8 00 oclock at night. I want you to know, murdoch, i want you to know you will stay at 5 00 oclock, i really, really need to maintain the audience into prime time. I want you there. Okay, thank you very much. Very positive. Im going to do the 5 00 oclock show still. Im not show if im on the five anymore but originally 8 00 oclock but they put the five at 9 00 and so theres a press release that comes out two hours later, eric bolling to 5 00 oclock hour and im looking for my name at the five, juan williams, jesse watters. He found a home. They are doing great. Rachel maddow has new wind in her sail, somehow being antitrump has given her a pretty strong audience. They have a tall order going up against rachel but they are doing great. They are hitting fox, its not going to be the fox that we used to be, but our we just ran her numbers. I just looked at these two. June of this year versus last year at 5 00 oclock, we are up 19 . Up 19 . [applause] i think the whole network is actually up. I looked at mondays numbers and every one of your shows lit. Cavuto to sean. It just kept getting bigger as the night wore off. [applause] the tucker addition. Do you like that . [cheers and applause] i cant wait to talk with him about this but because i cant imagine and im wondering what all of you thought, who in the hell is going to take bill oreillys chair and he gets the call, did everybody say, yes, or, i dont know you mean inside fox . Everybody thought they were going to get it. That too. Did you think that . You saw tucker doing something very unique at 7 00 oclock. I had never seen that before. He was bringing liberals on, people would tweet something, College Professor somewhere, theres ablock of 7 00 oclock show. Thats brilliant and aggressive. Tucker was named to the 7 00 oclock. He comes on the five to do the thing. Tucker, why did the liberals come back on the show . You destroy them. Im going to keep doing it till they stop. They havent stopped. Its amazing how they all think they are going to take tucker down. Everyone thinks they are going to do that. Any sports fans, its like going into the other teams stadium, the other teams refs, theyre on call, its insane. You have no shot. You have your own stage, own scripts, cameras, lighting, you could play a lot of games. Tucker is w