Charles Payne: Focus Determines Reality
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It's time to take the quiz. Five questions, five minutes a day, five days a week. Take the quiz every weekday at thequiz.fox and then listen to the quiz podcast to find out how you did. Play, share, and of course, listen to the quiz at thequiz.fox. Welcome to the Jason in the House podcast. I'm Jason Chaffetz. Thanks, sir, for joining us. We're going to have a good conversation today. We've got Charles Payne, making money with Charles Payne. You've seen him on Fox Business. You've seen him on Fox News.

really a dynamic individual. I've had a chance to interact with him, be on his show. Just a great guy, happy guy. I love people that are just perpetually happy and that's the way Charles strikes me. But I've never dove into his background and how he got to where he got to because he's risen to the top of the food chain. And I'd really love to hear his story and I hope he'd

Hope you enjoy it as well. So I'm looking forward to that conversation. But I thought we'd give a little riff on the news and then bring on the stupid because, you know, there's always somebody doing something stupid somewhere. But let's start with things that are in the news. I'd like to try to highlight some of the things that maybe don't make Tier 1 headlines but a way that we should think and look at things. One thing that was really bothering me, as you know, I served in Congress for eight and a half years and –

It's a hard job. It's a difficult job. I think one of the hardest things to do is be away from your family. I happen to love my wife and adore our kids and to spend more than 300 nights away working in the office in D.C. and you have to go out and raise money too is very, very difficult. But the way Nancy Pelosi has this structured right now with what's going on, what happened with COVID, it's just absolutely wrong.

If you remember, COVID, everything was just, hey, slow down, wear a mask, don't show up to work, don't have close proximity. And then the Congress did something that it really hadn't done before, which allowed for proxy voting. That is, you could be at home in Tennessee or Florida or Alabama or wherever you might be, and you could just literally dial it in and take votes that way.

There's a case to be made that with COVID that had to happen, but it was optional. I don't think they should have done that. I think they should have forced those members to be there and there could have been a very safe way to do that. But if you also remember that when Nancy Pelosi's vote came up, when she was going to become the Speaker of the House,

You have to be there per the Constitution. You have to be there to show up. And so they had several Democratic members who had covid and they came to the Capitol and they voted in person with covid. And, you know, so somehow when it was Nancy Pelosi and I got to have your votes in order to be the speaker, they had no problem showing up.

But then they morphed into this idea that you didn't have to show up. Now, there are Democratic members, and I don't believe there's a single Republican that falls into this category. And if I'm wrong, somebody correct me and I will correct the record. But there are multiple members of the House and some in the Senate on the Democratic side of the aisle that still do not show up for work. They have not been there the entire Congress since the COVID situation happened because they

They're just dialing it in. You can walk by their offices there in Capitol Hill and you will see empty offices with signs. Now, are they doing fundraisers? Yes, they are. Are they doing some things on Zoom and whatnot? Yes. But you can't tell me that you can do constituent services in your district, that you can go out and do personal in-person fundraisers online.

And then you cannot show up for work there in Washington, D.C. That is so fundamentally wrong. Let the body gather together. They did for the State of the Union. People were sitting side by side. No masks. You saw them all mulling around, milling around there with the president, shaking hands, giving a hug.

Come on. Now, they should also be getting rid of the mask mandates on airplanes and other things. Little kids. I mean, there's the whole thing you can talk about. We've talked about it in the past, but there's no reason why congressional offices should be continue to be closed and they're not coming into the office there in Washington, D.C. All right. Next thing I want to talk about, and I've kind of alluded to it before, but the president still continues to fall into this trap. He continues to tell the world that.

and our adversaries what he won't do. Leave all options on the table all the time. The point of having the biggest, baddest, strongest military on the face of the planet with nuclear weapons that can destroy anybody is to use them as a deterrent and have your adversary guessing as to whether or not or what you might do. When you continue to tell people what you won't do...

You put yourself in a box. You're negotiating against yourself. Quit it. Stop it. This is the problem. I don't think that Joe Biden has had to negotiate anything in his life. You know, I was less than 10 years old when Joe Biden first came into office, and he's never had to be in this position, and he doesn't know how to do it. But quit shortchanging the United States of America by telling people what you won't do.

The other thing that just recently, in the last few days, the president had announced additional sanctions against Russia. Now, I do not understand why there's always still more sanctions. There is nothing more egregious than a country, Russia, invading another country, Ukraine, killing, maiming people indiscriminately for the sake of overtaking their country and literally taking their land and doing who knows what on the human toll.

So if you think there's something worse than that, I'd love to know what you think it is. But why not levy every possible sanction you can and even against their oil production? You are fueling the war with Russian blood oil is what I call it. It's just when you purchase any gallon or any barrel of their petroleum products, that money is used to buoy up Russia.

That is to buoy up the country that's doing the invading. Cut them off from the world. Cut them off. Make it hurt financially in every single way. Now, you don't mean ill to the people of Russia. There are good people out of the hinterlands of Russia that...

don't deserve to go through this. But if their country is going to do it, they have to suffer the consequences. And the oligarchs and Vladimir Putin personally, they all need to feel this pain. But there's still more sanctions coming out? Come on, Joe Biden, you should have used them as a deterrent. First, you said they were going to be a deterrent. Then you said no right-minded person would believe that they would be a deterrent. They should have been done ahead of time. You did not prevent this war from happening and breaking out.

And now we're trying to figure out how to give them lethal weapons when we should have been accelerating that before the invasion. But that's the frustration. Don't tell your adversary what you don't do. That's my take on things. All right. Let's bring on the stupid because you know what? There's always somebody doing something stupid somewhere. ♪

All right. Courtesy of Breitbart, I read this story here about a Florida man. I always love it when you see the headline, Florida man, Florida man. Well, Florida man was arrested after he called 911 and requested a deputy to show up and test the methamphetamine that he had purchased. He worried that it was actually bath salts.

The allegation is that Thomas Eugene Colucci, 41, called the sheriff deputies to his home in Spring Hill about 7 o'clock on some random Thursday a couple weeks ago. And the Hernando County Sheriff's Office issued a press release. They said when they arrived on the scene...

Colucci told them that he was using a bit of the methamphetamine that he had purchased from a man at the bar, but he thinks he got ripped off, that it was actually bath salt. Unfortunately for Colucci on several fronts, including being stupid, the product actually tested positive.

So he was charged with possession, two counts of possession of a drug, paraphernalia. Bond was set at $7,000, which is $5,000 for the methamphetamine possession charge and $1,000 for each of the paraphernalia. Yeah, maybe not a good idea to have your meth tested by the sheriff, but kind of glad you did. Took yourself off the streets. So that, to me, is bringing on the stupid. ♪

All right. Now it's time to talk to a phone a friend and call Charles Payne. Charles Payne, you know him from Fox Business. But let's get his story. Let's dial up Charles Payne.

Hello, this is Charles. Charles, Jason Chaffetz. Hey, thanks so much for joining us on the Jason in the House podcast. Jason in his house. Can't wait. That's right. Jason in my house. I'm always coming on set with you. You know, you got a fun set. People don't know. You're like rocking, having a little fun before the show starts. You got the music up there. Gets the atmosphere going. It's fun. You know, I miss going on set with you because...

It's actually got a good vibe, a good upbeat vibe to it when you walk on set there. But with COVID, we haven't been able to do that in a while. No, we haven't. But we're starting to get them back in now. So that's good. And, you know, you're right. I love having the music on. Love having the energy up. You know, we take our jobs very seriously. But by the same token, you know, I'm a rose-colored glasses kind of guy. So, yeah.

You know, I always instinctively look for the most optimistic solution, perhaps. But I also just love music to sort of set the mood and always kind of brings you back from the brink, no matter where that might be for any individual. So everybody has that thing they do to help clear their mind, clear their head, get away from it all, kind of recharge the battery, etc.

Is that what it is for you? Is it music or do you like to go out? Like I like to go out and do wildlife photography. If I really want to, hey, I got three, four days and I want to get out and just not think about a care in the world. That's what I like doing. What's that for Charles Payne? Music is there. You know, I would love to say art or drawing because that's a passion of mine, but I just don't do it enough.

You know, I don't get a lot of three or four days off, unfortunately, because of all the box stuff. I also have my own business as well, you know, stock market research business. So I've been pretty busy. But reading, I love learning. Jason, I made a promise to myself when I was a teenager, I would learn something new every single day. And it's so funny because doing what I do for a living, you know, I have a lot of people who say, man, I feel sorry for you. You're always working.

But it's what I would do, right? It's what I would be doing if I had some other job. It would be my hobby. So in that way, I'm pretty blessed. And I love learning something new every single day. And then what I love also is helping people. If I can help people in any kind of way, particularly every day, and particularly strangers, I love to do it anonymously when I can. That's something I strive for.

All right, so let's go back to little Charles Payne because once upon a time, there was a very little Charles Payne growing up, right? You're a little kid, little boy. Tell us about your family growing up. I don't know how hard or how easy it was, but just tell us. Start with those early memories, where you grew up. Tell us about your parents, brothers, sisters. Well, I had two childhoods, and one was easy, one was hard.

And the easy one, the idyllic one, was growing up on an Army basis. My father was a career Army man. He loved the military. He loved the Army. And he fought in Vietnam. And we traveled. Jason, we traveled so much. My high school was the first school I went to two years in a row. Wow. So, yeah. Yeah, I was born in New York City. Then we moved to Pittsburgh. Then we moved to Texas. Then we moved to...

Germany, back to Pittsburgh, then we moved to Japan, back to Texas, Alabama, North Carolina, and then Virginia. And it was just an amazing life. It just, you know, and particularly back then, you know, we're talking the 60s, early 70s. It was shielded from a lot of the issues that were going on in America. You know, that was obviously a very volatile time. It was shielded from all of the race issues, you know, all of the countercultural issues,

I would go outside. The last space I lived on with my dad was Fort Lee, Virginia. We lived in a two-story house. I had my own room. My brother shared a room because it was so big. We had a guest room. We had a staircase very similar to the Brady Bunch. We'd go outside, play all day, get on our bikes, come home, make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, go back out. I don't remember locking our doors.

You know, my father was a strict army guy in the sense that he, you know, he believed in hard work. I did have to cut the grass. We had a big lawn. I couldn't use a motor, you know, a lawnmower with the engine, you know, so that kind of stuff. We had discipline in that sense and things like that. But we went from this amazing life, came home from school one day. My mom said we're leaving.

So me and my mom and my two younger brothers got on a bus from Fort Lee, Virginia to Harlem, New York. This is in the early 70s when it was like the poorest, most dangerous neighborhood in America. And it was completely night and day, completely night and day. How old were you? Twelve years old. I had two younger brothers. We arrived in Harlem with no money. I don't know. My mom might have had 10 bucks on her. You know, we stayed with the childhood friend of hers.

who let us all four of us live inside, stay inside of a room inside of the apartment. And, you know, it was really amazing. It was sort of like, I mean, it was definitely a different world, right? I mean, even though I lived all over the world and all these different army bases, I hadn't seen all these kind of skyscrapers before and the energy. Oh, my goodness. We got out that train station. We started walking toward this building.

I just, the, the, the amount of energy it was, you just never felt that it vibrated through your body and the music, you know, you would talk about how much I love music. I definitely, I always liked music before, but I loved it, you know, and it's coming out of cars. It's coming out of windows. It's coming out of boom boxes. And a lot of it's stuff I hadn't even heard before, you know, it's,

Yeah, I'm, you know, some of these groups and the, you know, the stuff that they were playing, it was just absolutely amazing. And then, you know, I looked across the street and I see these girls double dutching. I never saw anybody double dutch jump rope before. What the heck? That was absolutely amazing. And I'm seeing kids playing skellies, you know, in the street. So, yeah,

That part was just, it was just amazing. It just, it was absolutely wonderful. It felt like it was going to be an amazing adventure. But there's the other side to it that I wasn't prepared for. None of us were. And that was the poverty and the violence. And, and, and that's, that's like the tough, tough part where,

You know, I had maybe one or two fights. I had two fights in my whole life up until that point. You know, one was with a good friend of mine. And I don't know, we started fighting in the middle of a football game and we stopped and we were friends by the end of the football game. Right. Right. And that wasn't a real fight. I didn't realize, you know, I mean, people, when you fight, when you fought in my neighborhood, you fought to the death. You know, it wasn't a skirmish. If you somebody else had a fight.

You tried to kill each other. I'm serious. And it didn't matter what started the fight. So I never knew that kind of violence, that kind of anger before, you know. And of course, like I said, the poverty, which which was heartbreaking. You know, we finally got our own apartment a few months after we got there in our first winter there. We had no heat or hot water.

So you can imagine a New York City winter without heat or hot water. And, you know, we lived in so many different places throughout the time. So I was used to moving to new places and fresh painted coat, fresh coat of paint, always hot water. You know, everything worked. And so I was naive. I thought I thought that was the way of the world. I had no idea you can go through an entire winter.

without heat or hot water. So it was a huge epiphany for me. It changed my life in so many different ways. And it was weird because it was two distinctly different childhoods. You're listening to Jason in the House. We'll be back with more of my conversation with Charles Payne right after this.

From the Fox News Podcast Network. I'm Ben Domenech, Fox News contributor and editor of the Transom.com daily newsletter. And I'm inviting you to join a conversation every week. It's the Ben Domenech Podcast. Subscribe and listen now by going to FoxNewsPodcast.com. Did you, you know, you're a big guy. I don't know if you were always a big guy, but did you lean on comedy? Were you the guy that's always talking, interjecting? Were you, were you, I

You don't strike me as being bashful, but did you rely on sports? Or, you know, oftentimes kids find themselves in a tough spot, but then they find a niche that allows them to get through, make friends, kind of protect their own, you know. And what was that for you? I got to be honest, in this environment, you know, some of that stuff that works in a Disney movie just wasn't applicable, to be quite frank with you. I mean, I was really amazing at comedies.

I was always the class clown. I was always great. I think I have a great sense of humor now. People even tell me that I'm doing the wrong thing. So many of my friends have known me say I should just try to go on stage and do what I do best. So, yeah, you know, you make friends like that. And, you know, it helped me particularly in high school. But, you know, that's that just doesn't curb the violence. You know, there's just there's something different. And again, I'll give you an example.

So we're in our first apartment and there's a couple of groups of kids who always pick on us. And, you know, one day I'm on the stoop and one of the leaders of the group has gone by with his bike on his bike. Kid named Andre. He was all by himself. I never really seen him by himself before. So I just raced across the street and I jumped on him, knocked him off the bicycle and he ran.

Now, if this was a Disney movie, the credits would have come up. But it wasn't. So later on that night across the street at that same right in front of that, that was in front of a big playground. I was out there, you know, somebody else playing basketball. Here comes Andre and his crew and they caught me. And, you know, it wasn't a one on one fight. They were beating the hell out of me. And I don't know. I'm not I you know, I don't want to exaggerate and say they would have killed me. But one guy was choking me so bad that I was beginning to black out.

And I could see this woman coming out of the building, my building, in a nightgown and a butcher's knife, a kitchen butcher's knife. And it was my mom. So unfortunately, Jason, some of the things that might have worked in other places just, you know,

I think maybe if I was a great basketball player and I could dunk, maybe that kind of thing would have gotten me over. But I was just really good. I was great at football, but football wasn't really popular per se in my neighborhood. You know, you have to go far away to watch the games. We didn't have big attendance, you know. So I was athletic, but I was in the wrong sport, I think. So, I mean, it's pretty easy in that setting, given the background. You got younger brothers. You just, you know.

to shy away and not pay attention to what's going on in the classroom. I mean, and you know, there's times I think probably in every kid's, not every kid, but a lot of kids' lifetimes where, yeah, you know, I mean, I didn't focus on certain things at certain times, but somehow I found my way and got a little bit more focused, you know, went to college, got my degree. How did that roll for you?

Well, the one thing I loved was learning. I've always loved to learn. And, you know, when I first got there to Harlem, I went to went to school on 136th Street. And, you know, it was it was great in the sense that I, you know, I was I was rocking, you know, and the only problem was, you know, you get you get in trouble for doing great. You know, I got beat up for getting A's. I got beat up for sounding like a white kid.

You know, so, you know, never deterred me from learning. It did kind of deter me from necessarily getting straight A's though, you know? So, and then I kind of drifted a little bit to your point when I first got to high school, you know, the high school was my sort of a refuge for me because it was not in my neighborhood. It was downtown on 57th street. It was an amazing high school, high school of art and design. And, you know, it was a seven story building with an escalator in it and

All of these different people and all very creative. You know, it was a specialized school in New York. You had to take a test to pass it. So I had taken a test for three different schools, including the one that was based on a movie fame. Well, the movie fame was based on this school. So I passed them all. So I had my pick of specialized school to go to.

So that was not nearly as bad. You know, that was not, I was a refuge from the violence in my neighborhood. And then we moved to another neighborhood that was less violent. It was still rough, but it was nowhere like where we initially landed in central Harlem. This was technically more Washington Heights. So things did get better for me, and I always kept up with learning. But then other frustrations set in, particularly being poor.

And that brings a whole different set of anger and animosity and frustration. That's the big thing. That's when you want to drop out. That's when you want to join the gang. That's when you want to do something because, you know, what did I do to deserve this fate in life? You know, and so that's the real challenge. It was a challenge for me. It's a challenge for every parent, particularly parents whose kids, you know, who live in these rundown areas.

And, you know, it's just, you know, one thing about black parents, they're really tough, particularly black mothers. And, you know, you go to a supermarket, you see a black mom with I don't care how many kids you have. They're all under 10 years old.

They're not going to no one's going to be acting up. But when you get 13 and the boy starts to go through puberty and he's hanging with his brothers and, you know, hanging out late, you know, hanging out with his friends and you got two more younger kids. You can't really intimidate this kid anymore. He's not going to listen. The streets are going to beckon. And then you've got to focus on your other two kids. And that's a classic dilemma.

You know, my mother handled it well, I think to a degree I handled it well, too. You know, I never was lured into the most crazy schemes that were offered to me. You know, let's go rob this person. Let's go hurt this person.

But, you know, I would be lying if I wouldn't say that that was the struggle, you know. And in that environment, it's hard to be a student, even if you want to be. So, but you are doing something with school. What point did you think...

Hey, you know those things called numbers? I kind of understand that. Not every kid goes to school, understands math and algebra and the complications of what you're analyzing now. But how young were you when you thought, I like money, and I like making money, and I like to understand how money works? I loved numbers before I thought about money. But I tell you what, when I was...

I think it was third grade. We lived in Okinawa and our teacher, either her or her husband had gotten an order. So they were leaving. And this was my math teacher. And she used to do this thing where she'd have two kids stand up at the same time. And she would ask a question. Whoever answered the first, the other kid would sit down and then she'd have another kid stand up. I used to run through the entire class. I would crush them all. They just couldn't keep up with me. And this is third grade.

And that was really interesting because when I first moved to New York, one of the things that always used to confuse me is when, you know, we hear my neighbors and, you know, people in my building and other people I went to school with, when you did well, say you're trying to be white. You know, they equated being good at school or an A student or speaking proper English with being white. And that kind of self-defeatedness is still very prevalent. It's heartbreaking because

You don't equate that with being black or equate that with being yourself. So I was good with math from day one almost. I don't know why, but I was really great with it. I loved it. And then, of course, I said when I became, when we moved to New York and we had no money, I had to step up. I was the oldest. So I started cleaning windshields and stoplights and stop signs and red lights. And I get a pack of paper towels and some Windex.

I did that hustle. I shoveled snow. I did get a job at a bodega. And so now I'm making money. I go home. I take all the cash out, give it to my mom. I'm contributing. Even when I was in the Air Force, I used to send most of my check home to my mom. And then I just started thinking, how can I help more? What can I do to help my family? How can we get out of this poverty? And just bingo, the stock market. Everybody equates Wall Street wealth. I did the same thing.

And so I was around 13 and I started reading the Wall Street Journal. And I got to tell you, I would tell anyone who listens to this not to look at today's Wall Street Journal.

But go look at the journal back in 72, 73, 74. Different paper. It was all lines, little lines and small numbers. It took me a long time to figure this stuff out, Jason. I'm like, you know, you can turn it upside down and you can even tell the difference, right? But I did it. I kept chipping away. I kept chipping away. I kept chipping away and kept learning more. And finally, when I was 14, I told my mom, I'm going to work on Wall Street. Now, what did mom say? Because, you know,

Hey, Charles, that's cute. Cute. Why don't you go ahead and go play with your brothers? I mean, was that kind of the reaction or was she one of those that said, all right, let's let's roll with that. Let's let's get you there. She was saying, let's do it. She believed in me a thousand percent. She was the only one who sincerely believed that I can do it. You know, by then, of course, we were separated from my dad and, you know, talked to him on the phone sometime. And I remember the first time I said, Daddy, I'm gonna work on Wall Street.

He's like, man, I saw it on TV. Not a bunch of white guys don't pay for an air. I see no brothers down there. So, so, so you probably were up against, but you probably, I mean, look, that wasn't the glide path that most of your peers are taken, right? That wasn't the natural way out of where you were living. So how did, I mean, how'd you do that? I don't know, Jason, you know, it's so funny. I was having this conversation the other day. Someone was saying like, you know, you know, how did you get to where you are? And,

And some parts of it, I'm not sure. I mean, really, I'm just, you know, when the chips were against you and you put yourself back in that position, you're like, how exactly did I get out of that? You know, I know that the main thing I did is I pursued it. Right. I mean, that's what you got to do. And when I got out of the Air Force, I went downtown and I went to some of these employment agencies and I got an interview with EF Hutton and.

you know, I got the job. And what was that first job? What was the job that you put in? It was actually mostly going over the analytical work of others. It was more in the compliance area. But Charles, how did they, so you go from school, you get in the Air Force. What in the world were they looking at that said, yeah, Charles can do this?

I think I just think the guy, you know, his name was Gene Pacey. I'd love to catch up with him. I just I got to Google him. I got to find him. He was amazing. Just something I said. I was always kind of lucky in that way, too, Jason, to be honest with you. And I'm not sure it was luck per se. Honestly, I tell people I was I was lucky not to have to travel the world. Right. That I say so many things. And it's at a young age that.

You know, my first best friend was a white guy. I had white girlfriends, black girlfriends. You know, I grew up in a sort of, you know, the shielded society. And I don't know, something, there was something about me that was obvious that, you know, that to a degree, I had something a little bit different. And I'll tell you one example of that is when I graduated from high school and I was going to join the Air Force, there was a

It was like a four month, five month delay. And so I was a little nervous. And it's like, you know, you don't want to be eyeing on this hood.

for four months, you may do something stupid or something stupid may happen to you. Right. So there was an advertisement in a paper for a job at McDonald's. It was in the new McDonald's. This is like 1980, maybe three blocks south of the brand new Trump building. Right. The Hyatt Hotel. I think that was Trump's one of Trump's first big buildings in Manhattan, if not the first. It was a bustling area and that far from Grand Central.

And they had three openings and about 300 people showed up. And so they said, we're going to have to do this in rounds. So they did the first round. And then I think they cut it in half to like 150 people. So when the guy called my name and I went over, he says, you don't have to worry about it. You're already hired. You just wait over there. So I had to wait another two hours at least for the rest of the rounds to go. They had already determined they were going to give me a job. And so I, you know, I don't know what I necessarily said to Gene, but

but he saw something in me and he took a shot at me with me you know there's a common denominator there that i see where not only do you need to find a mentor but there is something that that radiates out from people who really want it who who just say look i am going to make it i am going to be successful you know and whether or not i'm on your team or somebody else's team because it is going to happen for me and i think that

You know, it's natural for a young person to be intimidated, to be bashful, to be shy about it. But there's also something to be said about the tenacious young attitude that says, yeah, I want to do it. I want to work. I want to pay the price that needs to be paid. And I'm going to be successful because...

If we were in the reverse and you were interviewing me, I'd tell you, I mean, our stories could not be more different, Charles, but the principles here are probably the same about, I don't know how I got that. How did I weed myself out of those 500 people? Like what? Somehow I just did it. Yeah.

Yeah. And you're right. I think, you know, you got to go forward and you got to believe it. Right. And I think, you know, for me, one of the goals is to get people to believe that they can do it, you know, and then to go and do it, knock on the doors, make it happen. You know, it's I just think it does happen. It's, you know, a lot of people say I tried, but they didn't try.

And and and so well, and if you get a no, you got to keep going. You got to just understand, hey, yeah, I'm going to fall down. That's part of learning. Then just don't keep making the same mistake. Keep keep going till you do find that right. That right door, that right answer. And things will pop. Well, you know, that was my that was my experience as my first job as a stockbroker.

So tell us about the graduation of that level. Well, so I was working at AF Hutton, and it was a dream come true. I was making $13,000 a year, which I was thrilled to make. But, you know, you go down the organizational chart, you've got to scan all the way to the very bottom and then flip it over because that's where I was. So it was a long journey up, right? Right, right. And I still always had this dream of actually being a stockbroker.

So an opportunity came up for me to become a broker at this small brokerage firm. And the catch was 100% commission. So I took the test, passed it. I blew it away. It was a six-hour test. I passed it in less than four hours. There were hundreds and hundreds of people there. Only one person finished the test before me. I knew I blew the test away. I passed the test, and I became a broker.

And when I walked in my first day of work, they said, okay, there's a desk and a phone. In the back are some old yellow pages. So you want to talk about knocking on doors. Oh, my goodness. So you go in the back and it's all these old phone books that people have used. You know, every new person that ever came through there, they're all marked up. They're dusty. Oh, so I grab a couple, some big cities, New York, some others, and I'm going through them.

And I'm saying, hi, this is Shookahen. Like they're hanging up on me before I can get two words out. I'm like, hello, this is. Hi, this is. I mean, I think a few people broke their wrists hanging up the phone so hard. They're like, what? Right. I'm just grinding it out. But then you close somebody, right? You got somebody. I got somebody. But I got to tell you, it was.

This is nip and tuck because I've been out of the Air Force now for a little over a year, a little bit under a year. I had this job at EFM that I loved, but I left it to go roll the dice on this broker job. My daughter is about a year old, still in diapers, and we were running out of food. So one day, I think it was in my first week there, maybe like let's say I started on a Monday. Maybe it was Thursday, Wednesday or Thursday.

I go through the pitch. This guy didn't hang up on me. I go through the pitch they had written out for me. And then he says something that changed my life. He said, you read very well, but what do you want? Hmm. Epiphany. Yeah. So I told him. He said, all right, I'll give you a shot. After that phone call, after I filled out the new account form, I ripped up the script. Yeah. Got to talk from your heart.

Yep. Yep. So, and my first full month at the office, I opened more new accounts than anybody else. Wow. Yeah. That, you know, to hear you say it is inspirational, but it's also at the same time, you're just like, yeah, there's a difference between people who are talking from the heart. I see it in politics all the time, right? I see that person who runs for office and maybe they even win and then they get to Congress and you're just like,

They don't really believe it. In fact, they don't even know it. They said all these rehearsed lines, but they don't know what that actually means. And I think America sniffs this stuff out. Authenticity wins the day every time. And it's true in politics. It's true in life. It's true in relationships. It's true in everything. Yeah.

Yeah, I agree. I agree. You're listening to Jason in the house. We'll be back with more right after this. So at some point you're having success. Now you've kind of figured out you're talking from your heart. Now you've got confidence, right? And confidence builds, right? It builds upon itself. At some point you say, or somebody else says to you, hey, Charles, you know what? You should do this on television. Like when did that, how did that happen? So I'm really, to your point, I'm really rocking and rolling.

You know, here's the thing, though. I was frustrated as a stock because I had romanticized the job in a different way. I thought, you know, I would go home, do a lot of research on my own and discover amazing opportunities for my clients. In fact, when I first started opening new accounts, I was opening new accounts on a company called Burroughs Wealth. And they had a treatment for this new disease called AIDS. Yeah.

And I thought this was wonderful. I remember reading about the first time I read about AIDS was a tiny column in Time magazine, probably on page 90. And it just kind of struck me, yeah, there's a new disease making its way around. So I'm opening new accounts on this thing, and it's an amazing company, amazing potential, a worthwhile thing to own. And then Payday came around. I raised a lot more money than a lot of people in that office.

My check, Jason, was minuscule. It was so damn small. You would not believe it. The other guys, they ordered limo. They hung out. They took me with them. They let me hang out with them. And the difference was that they were selling house stock. I wasn't selling house stock. I thought the house stock was too risky. I didn't think it had as much potential as Burl's Welcome, but I had it alone. So I ended up selling house stock. It's something I'm still kind of sad about, but I had to do it.

to feed my family. And some of the companies worked out, most of them did not. So I was always kind of, there was always something that even though I had this sort of childhood dream came true, it wasn't what I thought it would be as a child. So I eventually decided I'm going to start my own thing. So I took my research skills and my knowledge of the brokerage industry, and I started my own company and my own independent research firm. And I would do the research at night

put the paper put it together then i would be the salesman in the daytime and you know that was tough when i started started to do it and next thing i know i was able to hire one person next thing i know i started actually ironically enough out of a um out of a one bedroom apartment in harlem as an office

And back then, it was right in the midst of the crack epidemic, so the rent was so cheap. It's a brownstone that's probably worth $9 million now. Back then, it's like you could have taken a place. They would have paid you to take it. And, you know, Jason, the bottom line is it really started going extremely, extremely well. And I started getting these clients, these brokers from all over the country. And I don't know what happened, but someone must have told CNBC about it. Because I get a phone call one day.

and they say, we'd like you to come on. So I race out of there. I go to the store. I buy my clothes. Here's a wild, crazy story. So I get to the store and there's about 200 people in front of the store. And I'm like, what the heck is going on here? So I weed my way through the crowd. I look through the door. It's all glass, you know, big glass doors and windows. And I see Mike Tyson. Oh, yeah. So everyone's there watching Mike Tyson. So

So I bang on that knock on the glass door and the guy comes in, he lets me in. I said, oh, I'm going to go on TV in a couple of hours, man. I need a brand new shirt. He says, no problem. So he goes to look for a shirt. And then Tyson is wondering because they kicked everyone out the store, you know. And so Tyson asked someone else, who's this dude? You know, why is he in here? So anyway, they introduced me to Mike Tyson and me and Mike Tyson. We must have talked for about 35 minutes. Yeah. And.

I was not a Mike Tyson fan up to that point. You know, I was shocked at how intelligent he was and how compassionate he was about things we talked about. He was a lonely man. He knew he was being used, but he didn't know where to turn. So he was leaving the store. I was in the back trying on shirts. And I said, yo, Mike, take it easy.

He turns around, Jason, he walks all the way to the back of the store. And I'm like, oh, OK. You know, I thought he was going to come coming back to, you know, shake my hand. And so I went to shake his hand and he hugged me. So anyway, that was my first day on CNBC. And I started going on a lot after that. And then I started going on CNN. And, you know, some point people were saying, you know what, you're really good at this. You probably could do it.

And then this guy named Neil Cavuto left CNBC for this place called Fox. Now, I got to tell you, at the time, I thought he was nuts.

Because Fox was in the style, you know. No, it was nothing. It was, yeah. Rupert had an idea. He hired Roger Ailes. And Roger Ailes was like, okay, I'll do it. And they bring Neil over. And I remember getting the call. Yeah, Neil wants you to come do this show. I'm like, the Fox thing? Okay, what the hell? In the back of my mind, I'm like, what the heck is Neil thinking about? So, you know, we come in. We go downstairs. Take the escalator downstairs. We're in this, you know.

you know, the studio, it's all dark and whatnot. I swear the table had three legs. I'm holding one end up with my knee and I'm looking at Neil the whole time like, man, you blew it. You should have never left CNBC. But anyway, after about a couple of years, someone did approach me and say, hey, listen, we'd like to make you a paid contributor. I was doing all the network's

And, you know, someone at Fox made me an offer and I was I was glad to take it, you know, and I've just grown along with Fox throughout those years. Well, you know, again, to hear that story, I think it's not only the authenticity, but knowing your stuff. I mean, you know, when you know your stuff and you know your background in that context,

Television is hard in that you've got to be nimble. You've got to be quick. There's a lot more going on than anybody realizes. But to make it as smooth as you do, especially when you've got breaking news, you've got markets on the – swings happening in all different sectors. I mean the fact that you're every night going and studying and doing your own analysis and built a company around that, I mean that's just –

that has to pay off in a big way because you got so many years to lean on now of experience and perspective that that's what people want to see. I mean, I see the finished product. When I first got to know Charles, I saw you on TV, and then I'm a Fox News contributor, so come on. Then I started coming on set with you a little bit. But now that makes so much sense on why –

You're able to make it so smooth because you know your material. That's what it takes. Yeah, it does. And I got to tell you, you know, for me, I feel a duty to the viewer. And, you know, one of the things, the hardest part for me, honestly, is getting my guests right at this point.

Because a lot of people have figured out how to BS their way through three minutes. And, you know, this is too important what we do. And the stock market has its own sense of importance in the sense that people are listening for advice on what to do with their hard-earned money. And because I do the work and I kind of know, you know, I'm always sifting around. I'm always looking for new people. I'm always, you know, making sure I challenge folks that they're mailing it in or, you

You know, there's no necessarily thing is 100% right. You know, I can have a theory that could be completely wrong and vice versa, but at least knowing, you know, knowing history, knowing what the facts are, that helps a lot. Well, and what to ask, you know, that's the other thing is,

You can ask an infinite number of things, but how do you get to the nub of the issue? And that's another part of television that's really hard is to get to the nub of the issue because you don't have an hour to just talk it through. You know, you're moving from boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, because there's such a dynamism that's happening there in the market and in the world and all the other factors that come into play there. Yeah, that's...

the versatility, the, you know, being able to juggle with a couple different issues at the same time. And keep a smile on your face. I also think, you know, one of the secrets, you know, I can say this from afar to Utah, people like being around happy people. You strike me as a very happy guy. Like I've never seen you like mad or upset. And I don't think, I bet off to that he's really a grumpy guy. I bet you're as fun and jovial as anybody.

I'm mostly a rose-colored glasses guy. I'm really happy. It takes a lot to really get me truly upset. You know, when that happens, I speak my mind and I try to get back to my, you know, happy, upbeat self because life is a blessing and, you know, we're blessed. And my goal is to, you know, to be a better person every day in many different facets and to help as many people as possible. But I, you know, I just, I,

I feel almost bad. I wouldn't say bad, but I just wish there was more joy and more realization that things could be worse and there's always a chance you can change your own fortunes, your own future.

Yeah. Life is delicate and can go about, you know, not every ball bounces your way. Sometimes, you know, hard, awful things happen, whether you want them to happen or not. But how you deal with those is the key. So.

Charles, I appreciate you opening up, kind of sharing the insight. I had no idea about that, but I do have to ask you a few questions. Okay. These are the rapid questions. These are the ones that trip people off, so I don't care how many hugs you've had with Mike Tyson. You're not properly prepared for this one. You ready? I'm ready. All right. First concert you attended. Earth, Wind, and Fire.

1978. That's legit right there. That's good.

That's really good. They are so good. They've got such great music. I mean, they have withstood the test of time and rightfully so. They still are bringing a lot of joy to a whole other generation. It's fun to kind of watch the different generations come to understand. And I saw them once years after you did and in person. Oh, that was such a great concert. It was really fun. It was really fun. All right. Did you have a pet growing up?

Yeah. What was the pet? A dog. I had a dog. Well, I had a lot of pets. You know, I had a pet lizard. I had a pet turtle. I found a cat one time. But...

But you were moving. That's kind of hard. Did you have to leave the pet every time you made a pet? Yeah, that's why it was always kind of good to get something wild like a pet lizard. You can just let go, right? And let them loose. Let a gerbil loose in the barracks. Yeah, that would be good. In Okinawa, Japan, they're crawling all over the house. So you just let them go. Take them out to the coffee can and let them go. Life's most embarrassing moment. I'm not sure. That's a tough one. Most embarrassingly.

I'm not sure. That's a good one. All right. Well, judges. Let me maybe maybe one time I got drunk and I was at the we were at this club and I got drunk and there was a guy that he was a big dude, a big bouncer. And so this is me and my buddies. And, you know, he's like kind of pushing us out and I'm talking smack.

I don't know. This guy punched me so hard, Jason. And I sobered up like, like, like I was like, Oh man, I'll, I'll beat you. He punched, like he punched me so hard. I was like, Oh, have a good afternoon. That was a very real answer. Charles. I, you know, most people will go with something. I, I, I give you the judges, give you, I give you, and the judges give you all complete A's for honesty. Yeah.

That's an incredible answer. All right. You get one person, dead or alive, historical, whatever it may be, and that person's going to come over and you're going to have dinner. Who is that person you're going to invite to come on over for dinner? Yeah. I would say Muhammad Ali in his prime or before. Yeah. Yeah. You know.

But I also, honestly, too, you know, one thing that bothers me, Jason, is I never appreciated my grandparents the way I should have. And when I was growing up, we would go down to Alabama and I'd look at my grandfather, you know, and his shoes were turned up. He only had one set of clothes and he ate with his fingers. And I didn't appreciate how elegant of a man he was, his accomplishments to be a black man on the farm, the things he overcame and how he raised his family. If I ever had a chance, if I could,

ever take my grandfather and my grandmother in their prime and tell them, you know, you two are amazing. The foundation you set for your kids and then, of course, your grandkids, that would be the dream come true. That's a great answer. It's a great answer. And you know what? Bringing Muhammad Ali along wouldn't be so bad either. Why not? Maybe invite Muhammad in for the cash is clay for the dessert portion of the day.

That's great. That's very sweet. And I think that's very real. And I think that's true with a lot of people. It's interesting how the older you get, the more you wish you'd spent time with your parents or your grandparents or that uncle that really did, you know, reach out and care for you. I mean, my aunt Louise, for me, was just that sweetheart of a person and

She was frail and she, you know, didn't have a lot of money, but she loved me and she cared for me. And, you know, I watched her get sick and have to go through a lot of illness. And, and, uh, but I just had so much fun with her. And, you know, when I'm a teenager and she's seemed like 300 years old, um, she was always there for me. And, you know, it's great. You know, one time I felt, I still feel guilty about,

I said, oh, I want to get a pizza. And I was playing coy like I had no money. And she reached in her wallet and

and gave me the 10 bucks or whatever to go to pizza. And, you know, my mom came to me afterwards and said, you know, that's all the money she has. Like she bought you that pizza. That means she's probably not going to eat tomorrow. And it made me such an impression, you know. But you learn those things as you get older, and hopefully you do learn them. And I think it's a valuable lesson to younger generations of people who

Yeah, you got to spend time. There's no substitute for that. All right. Speaking of pizza, my next question is pineapple on pizza, yes or no? No. Judges love that answer. It's the only acceptable answer. I'm glad that you came up with that conclusion. All right. Last question. Actually, I have two questions. Favorite childhood toy? Classic Army Man.

I had plastic army, man. I'd throw, I'd line them up. I'd throw dirt clods out on my, I would, I did all that stuff. I loved it. I loved him, man. I used to, I used to wait for everybody to leave the house on Saturday mornings and I would rumple up all the blankets and I would have wars. And my favorite was the guy with the flamethrower. Yeah. And my second favorite were marbles. I was really a great marbles. Really? Yeah. Oh, very good. Yeah. All right. That's, that's, I can't say I ever did that, but,

I played my share of army men, that's for sure. All right, last question. Best advice you ever got? I guess from my mom, just never give up. She was a warrior. She overcame a lot. She sacrificed a lot of, I think, things she could have done. A lot of happiness, a lot of pain for us. My mom...

Jason, on Sundays in particular, she would play gospel music and she would clean the house and she would cry at the same time. And I knew she had a lot of pain, but she didn't tell us about the woe, right? She didn't really share. She's a few things, you know, that happened before.

But really, she didn't go into a lot of like things that would have made us more depressed or would have made us feel hopeless, you know. And she was sort of, she drew the line there, but absorbing that pain, you know, was tough. And I appreciated her for doing it, especially as I got home. Well, that's good. And Charles, thank you so much for kind of opening up and tell us a little bit more. You got a lot of fans out there. A lot of people admire what you do and how you do it. And

And people look into you to make decisions that are going to really affect their families. So Charles Payne, host of Making Money with Charles Payne, Fox Business, but you see him on Fox as well. And Charles, I'm glad to call you a friend. And I appreciate you taking time to join us on the Jason in the House podcast. Really do appreciate it. My pleasure. My honor. Thank you so much, Jason.

I cannot thank Charles Payne enough. You know, what a great guy. What a great story. I mean, that's inspirational. You know, it's just, you see some people really pull themselves up by their bootstraps and make their family, you know, situation better than they had it before and, and work hard and,

So that's an inspirational story. And I think a lot of people should look at that and say, wow, I could do that with hard work and perseverance and focus. I once had a boss who told me, he said, focus determines reality. And I think that's so true. And it sounds like Charles was focused and obviously enjoying great success with that business and what he's doing on air and sharing his insight and just being focused.

smart in his approach at a young age and getting focused on what he wanted to do and, and sharing that with others. So hats off to him. And I can't thank Charles for, for spending the time with us on the Jason in the house podcast. Well, I hope you can rate this, review it, subscribe to it. That would be great. And we'll be back with more next week. Have a look at Fox news podcast.com and for other great podcasts from the Fox news network.

I'm Jason Chaffetz, and this has been Jason in the House.