RUSH: I have to tell you something. It is not often that I, El Rushbo, get surprised. Yesterday I ended up surprised. One of my closest friends, Roger Ailes — you know, I met Roger Ailes in 1989 or ’90 in New York, a couple of years after I had moved there, and he ended up being the executive producer of my TV show. He used to have these absolutely fabulous Saturday afternoon summertime water volleyball games with all the crowd at his house. At the time he lived at Croton-on-Hudson. And I’ve maintained a close relationship with him.
Yesterday this news story hits that Ailes’ right-hand man, the only executive at Fox that dares to offer a contrary view — but he does wait in private to do it — had been fired, a guy named Brian Lewis. He was the PR executive. I mean, he was in the executive suite, and he was in charge of PR, not just for Fox News, but Twentieth Century Fox, and so forth. I never heard of this guy, is the point. I didn’t know the guy existed. Don’t misunderstand, I’m not — it’s how well you can know somebody, and this guy is apparently Roger’s right-hand man, and he handles all the PR. There’s a book coming out. Zev Chafets wrote a biography of Ailes, and there’s another book coming out I guess in January by a guy who writes for New York Magazine, and apparently this right-hand man, this Brian Lewis guy, has been leaking all kinds of critical, unflattering stuff about Roger, for a number of years now.
So two weeks ago he was fired and walked out of the building, escorted out by security. There was some talk of financial irregularities and so forth. So the news today is that Ailes is all alone. Snerdley, can you believe that? Roger Ailes, all alone, hunkered down in the corner of his office, huddled in fear, unable to face the day because his chief number one right-hand guy was fired two weeks ago and is gone.
Roger Ailes doesn’t need a right-hand man. I mean, all of this is a little bit trumped up. I’m not denying that this guy Brian Lewis worked there, don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying that he wasn’t important, ’cause I didn’t know him. That’s a whole different story. I mean, I don’t know a whole lot of executives at Fox. It’s not that I know everybody and have heard of this guy. I don’t know hardly any of them. But Roger’s never talked about this guy to me. I do not know, did not know he existed, and yet it’s being portrayed that Roger cannot face the day without this guy. I just wanted to assure everybody that Ailes isn’t alone. I know a lot of you are Fox News devotees. Ailes isn’t alone, and it wouldn’t matter if he was. He can handle it.
Anyway, I did feel strange. I mean, the guy’s name is Brian Lewis. And when you look at a picture of him, he looks like a Brian Lewis. That’s not an insult. Do you look at people’s names and wonder what they look like? Well, this guy looked like what I thought a Brian Lewis would look like. That’s all I’m saying. It’s neither good or bad. (interruption) What is so funny about that? Well, there’s no prejudice involved because it’s not a critical view. I mean, he just looked like what I thought a guy named Brian Lewis would look like. (interruption) No, not nerdy. I’m not gonna describe it. He just looks like, you know, an average, run-of-the-mill white guy.
Brian Lewis, how many of them are there, 1,500 in America? He looks like one of ’em. That’s all. If Roger Ailes had a son, he’d look like Brian Lewis. But Roger does have a son named Zachary, by the way. Anyway, there is such fear of Fox News, like there is of this program, and really fear of Ailes, that they’re just — you know, the real point of this is nobody as successful as Ailes could really have done it on their own. Isn’t that one of the fundamental aspects of liberalism, that nobody really ever does anything by themselves. Everybody has help. Everybody has assistance.
Nobody does it by themselves, and so here comes this opportunity for these guys to portray that the guy who really made Ailes who he is, the guy who really did Ailes’ thinking for him — and they’re also portraying him as the guy that kept Ailes in line from being a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe extremist. That’s how they’re portraying him. This guy, the guy who got fired for some financial — they’re not being very open about this. There are gonna be lawyers going back and forth. But apparently he was leaking stuff to this other biographer whose book is coming out. I don’t know how this was discovered. (interruption) What? I have no idea if the NSA was involved. (laughing)
I do not know how whoever found out what here. It was two weeks ago when this happened. I do not know what the leak was.
But, I mean, the message is Ailes didn’t build that. See, that’s what the left wants to pull off here with this whole story. Ailes didn’t build that. Nobody builds anything on their own. Nobody is single-handedly that smart and that effective. Everybody needs assistance. Everybody needs help. It takes a village and all of that. And I’m just telling you, I know Roger very well, and he never mentioned this guy to me, ever. Well, he didn’t, ’cause I didn’t remember it.
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