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Hi, I'm Jason Chaffetz. Thanks for joining us on the Jason in the House podcast. Really do appreciate it. It's very kind of you to set aside some time. And we're going to have a good podcast for you today because we're going to talk to Juan Williams. You may agree with Juan on everything. You may be like me and disagree with Juan on just about everything. But I can tell you what, he's got a fascinating background, inspirational in what he's done. He loves his country, loves baseball, loves his family.
And I think his story is going to be illuminating. You know, I always like hearing from people who grew up differently than I did, different viewpoints, different. I'm not afraid of different. I'm not afraid of somebody who maybe comes to different conclusions than I do. I take it more of a as a challenge and an opportunity to talk.
to get to know them, to understand them, but also to try to break bread with them and maybe convince them on some things that my perspective is the right way. But, you know, you've got to also have an open mind that maybe they're...
They've got, you know, good ideas that we can learn from. I kind of, I was very inspired as a young person with Ronald Reagan. And I think that was the more I've studied him, read about him, watched him on, you know, the old tapes and whatnot. That's what I learned and gleaned from him that go find people that agree with you 80% of the time. Those are your really good friends.
and that you can wrap your arm around somebody and actually embrace them and have a good dialogue with them. And I think part of the success of Ronald Reagan was his working with a speaker, Tip O'Neill, and others who,
even though they disagreed vehemently on all things politically, that they are actually able to get some really good stuff done for the country. So I think the dialogue is something we should have and appreciate. And I think you'll...
I hope by the time we get through the one Williams interview that you really have a better understanding of who he is and where he's come from. And I find him to be a delightful human being and a friend. And, um, it'll be interesting to see what you think because, uh, you're going to, I think, see a side and hear a side about one Williams that maybe you didn't know. And his perseverance, I think is inspirational to a,
to a lot of people. We're going to get into a bit of the news, and then, of course, we're going to highlight the stupid, because there's always somebody doing something stupid somewhere. So before we get to the conversation with Juan, I wanted to talk a little bit about what's really coming up, what people are talking about. It seems like every few days or so, there's a new presidential candidate on the Republican side. My goodness, how many could there possibly be?
And then on the Democratic side of the aisle, I want to start there because I've got some predictions. Don't know if they're going to come true, but I think it's also illuminating. I use that word a lot, trying to shine some light and remember some things that, I don't know, maybe people haven't seen or thought of in the past.
Last time we went through this presidential cycle, Kamala Harris was doing quite well. In fact, she was leading in many of the early things. I remember her rollout, big crowd, raising good money. Here's this senator from California, and she's suddenly on the scene and on the march and making progress. But by the time we turned the corner into November, then December, then January, it
it became really evident that Democrats did not like her. And I think this is part of their ongoing problem. In California, her home state, she was polling in eighth place. Eighth in her home state. It wasn't as if there were nine Californians in there. No, this was...
This was her in her home state pulling. I mean, she was way, way down the pecking order here. So much so that she garnered zero delegates on her quest to become the Democratic nominee for president. She dropped out of the race and she was out of there.
And only then did, you know, through the series of debates and discussions and certainly James Clyburn came in, the congressman from South Carolina, gave an endorsement to Joe Biden and that really propelled Joe Biden. My analysis, my post is that I think what happened is Democrats saw him as very safe. Certainly the call was if Barack Obama can trust him, you can trust him.
There were some choice quotes from Barack Obama about Joe Biden later on.
But nevertheless, he became the nominee. But here going into this 2024 race, Democrats have an interesting choice. They have the oldest president in the history of the United States, somebody who's struggling with their cognitive decline, somebody who is literally stumbling his way through the presidency. It's embarrassing. It does not project strength for this country. I would defy anybody to think of
What is Joe Biden's plan to tackle the inflation and grow the economy? The projection of ourselves as a country on the world stage is abysmal. It's a huge, massive contrast. The economy is not doing well. Immigration is out of control. There is no plan other than spending and taxing more money. It's very stereotypical, the Democratic side of the aisle.
And you couple that with a Joe Biden who cannot articulate and communicate on a forceful, repetitive way. And you have Kamala Harris, the vice president, who is not garnering the confidence that she can accomplish anything.
It's almost become a joke that she's now going to suddenly take on artificial intelligence. I have no problem with her. I understand how artificial she is. It's the intelligence side of the equation that I don't think she can get right. And immigration, essentially you're going into the fourth year of this presidency and not able to point to a single success story, multiple staff turnovers, quite embarrassing, uh,
But then the Democrats are with the question, what do they do? Do they go with Joe Biden or do they make a switch? Here's my prediction. And again, we're about to hit the midway point of this year. But I'm guessing and I just want to be on the record. This is a pure guess. By the time we turn the corner and the end of the year, Joe Biden will not be the Democratic nominee for the presidency going into 2024.
Will it be Kamala Harris? Will it be Gavin Newsom, the governor of California? Will it be Susan Rice? I don't know. I think those three names, as much as anybody, will be in the mix. But I think the Democrats are going to have to come to grips that they nominated somebody who cannot communicate in today's day and age. And they just can't play it safe like they did in COVID and hide in the basement. They just can't do that. That's not going to be a formula for success.
So my guess is by the end of the year, they will have made the change and they'll take a younger, more dynamic person who can truly articulate the message. And I think those three will be in the mix somehow, some way. Don't know how the mix is going to be. Don't know what that's going to look like. But I think those three are going to be there. Now, on the Republican side of the aisle,
I think Republicans have shown that they have a deep bench, that you have a number of people highly competent, good at articulating the conservative message that are ready to grab the reins of the Republican Party, the conservative movement and move it forward. Certainly at this day and age, Donald Trump is right near the top of that pack.
In many ways, he's lapping people given how much strength he has given on the poll numbers. Poll numbers are important because that's what drives donations. What drives donations? How likely do we think it is that this person is actually going to become the nominee? Odds on favorite? Donald Trump. Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley.
These are all people that have significant qualifications to become the president of the United States. Governor DeSantis, for instance, as the governor of Florida, I mean, he barely won his race for governor by like less than 1% or right about 1%. And then comes back four years later and wins by 19%.
That gets to a key point that I want to drive, which is it's one thing to win the nomination. It's different to win the general election. In order to win a general election, you have to be able to attract voters.
The Democrats, you have to be able to track true moderates, people who don't affiliate with the party, who maybe aren't listening and paying attention day in and day out. That type of thing is what's going to be able to drive somebody forward. Who has the ability to do that? I'll let you come to that conclusion.
So I'm not going to make a prediction as far as who the nominee is going to be. It'll be a vibrant debate. Starts on Fox News in August when they have their first presidential debate. They're going to have to figure out how to weed out some of the others. There are some really good voices out there. Vivek Ramaswamy has as strong of a conservative message as I've heard. Somebody who is literally in his 30s.
Who's going to be a player for a long time because he understands the message. He understands America and he understands, I think, what the future is looking like. I don't agree with him on everything, but I do agree that he is aggressive. He is young. He's hungry. And he's going to be an impact player one way or another, somehow, some way.
I have served with Ron DeSantis. I have served with Tim Scott. I find them to be exceptional people. Nikki Haley, I've interacted with a little bit and hear good things. Some of these others that are in the race, good people by all accounts, as best I can tell, just haven't spent a lot of time with them. Larry Elder, I think is a good person. I don't want to just go down the list and say something nice and something...
But this is certainly going to be the race to watch is who is the Republican nominee going to be. And then certainly all the down ballot races. In the United States Senate, the Republicans have a strong chance of taking over. If they can figure out the presidential equation and they can take back the Senate, that pendulum will swing and swing in a big way. So that's the presidential race. I think that'll be the big driver.
And now I want to transition to something that's maybe a little bit different, maybe not quite as important. But I almost put it in the stupid category, but I left it out because I actually like Pete Davidson. Pete Davidson, remember him from Saturday Night Live and being with Kim Kardashian and some other famous celebrities along the way? I'm a little partial to Pete Davidson in a funny way in that
One day I woke up and people were tweeting at me and sending me text messages and whatnot that on Saturday Night Live, Pete Davidson was playing this member of Congress and it was Jason Chaffetz. And it was pretty funny that he had a character. And he did it a few times on SNL. He got this little curly hair and the gig was that he's just always smiling and laughing and everything was just always wonderful.
And it was pretty funny. You know, I'm one that can take a joke and I thought it was pretty funny and just honored, honestly, that Saturday Night Live would parody me in kind of a Fox News skit. I'm sure maybe some at Fox didn't quite like it, but I thought it was pretty funny and, you know,
It was parody. It was just joking. And they're doing that because Fox is the biggest audience and the most people watching it. And the idea that Pete Davidson would play Jason Chaffetz, just a little surreal for me along the way. Um, and so Pete Davidson was in the news evidently, according to TMZ, which is, I think, owned by Fox News Corp. I'd have to check that to confirm it, but I'm pretty sure it is. Um,
He left a rather scathing tirade. I have not heard this swearing up a storm at PETA, you know, people for the ethical treatment of animals, I think is what PETA stands for. They were mocking him and giving him a hard time and really laying into him online because he had purchased a puppy dog in a puppy store as opposed to getting a rescue dog.
Of course, the Pete of Pope people sat in judgment of Pete Davidson and they made judgments. And Pete was mad because somebody in his family had recently been through the death of a dog and they wanted to get something similar, something that was going to be compatible to the family and ended up buying it from a store. Yeah.
And they just went nuts on him. So he figured out who at PETA and he left them a voicemail, which then went viral. Maybe that should be in the stupid category, but you know what? I guess it's a little bit newsy because PETA is part of this cabal of organizations that believe that they can just abuse people to drive home their point rather than winning arguments.
And they do it in an aggressive way that I don't think is conducive to driving the overall narrative. All right, so maybe you could put that in the stupid category. I didn't. I put that in the news category. I think people should understand this. The second thing I wanted to get to is something that is stupid. There's always somebody doing something stupid. Let's get to the stupid.
All right. I'm going back to a resurfaced photo of Democrat governor of Kentucky, Andy Beshear, however you pronounce his last name. I don't know what is with this anti-Christian LGBTQ activist group called the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. But they resurfaced a photo that the governor took with these people. Now,
I'm somewhat sympathetic as a politician who's been high profile. People come up with you, stand next to you. You don't know who they are. You haven't vetted them. They just take a picture. And then people surmise that your buddy's hanging out with them, that you know that you've done some. No, it never works that way. But it certainly looks like with this photo that this was a little bit staged, that they were actually standing next to each other.
for a reason. And I don't know, maybe they weren't, but I, I'm just telling you, everybody's going to have to come up with their own decisions. But I think this is the same group, if not the same group, similar group as to the Dodgers game where the Dodgers were recognizing. Now these people were mocking nuns and I, you know, you can mock a lot of things. You can go do whatever you want to do, but I find this absolutely unbelievable that,
that people are going to attack our kids and our religions. And that's where you start to step over the line. That's where you're going to get pushback. You know, that's where I think it's fundamentally wrong. I think it's absolutely stupid what they did. And for the governor to do this, he's got to come up with some sort of explanation. But I don't think we should count out all these organizations. All right. The second one that I want to highlight is the chief experience officer. Yes, there is such a person, the chief experience officer.
for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority in Washington, D.C. She posted a picture of a man's lower body on her Twitter account. And it says, quote, D.C., do we really need to do a man-spreading campaign on our trains? I thought we were above this. Basically, the guy was sitting with his knees pretty far apart. Appears to be fairly robust and full-bodied.
You know, he's eating well. Let's just say that. He's maybe weighs a little bit more than a lot of people. But chief experience officer, do you really need to go out and embarrass this person and put that out there? Come on. That sounds a bit stupid. That sounds a little over the...
But she wrote, my apologies for this tweet. It was meant in jest, but I understand how it might have offended some. I will do better and keep focused on what matters. Better service communications and wayfinding. Yeah, you think? I don't think you should have been posting up somebody's
you know, surreptitiously taking a picture and posting it on the internet for any reason, let alone as a campaign for the Metro on how it should work in Washington, DC. And that to me is the stupid. All right. So it's time to bring on Juan Williams. Like I said, I've known Juan, I've interacted with Juan, I've seen, been with him on the five and Fox news Sunday, never been to a ball game with him, but I'd like to. So, um,
Let's ring up Juan Williams. Juan Williams. Jason Chapitz. How are you? Hey, so good to catch you. I really do appreciate it. Thanks for taking the time with me. My pleasure. It's always the case that I take a call from a friend. Well, yeah, but if the Nats were playing, I wouldn't catch you, would you?
No. We can only go so far. I'm a big baseball guy. Where did that come from, Juan? You love baseball. I know you do. Someday my goal is to sit by you at a Nationals game, but until then, where did the love of baseball come from?
Wow, that's such an interesting question, because, you know, I was born in Panama, but I grew up in Brooklyn, New York. So from age four and I played streetball, stickball. I don't know when that started, but I played that through, you know, my teenage years. And it's such a sort of.
Odd thing to say these days, because I don't see anybody playing stickball anymore. But it used to be a staple of New York City life. And then I was in Little League and Pony League as a teenager. And I played, I was the captain of my high school baseball team. And did not play in college. What position were you playing? I was playing shortstop or second base.
And then, you know, for me, no matter where I went, I played a little baseball. Always, you know, intramural or that kind of thing. But just loved the sport. And part of it, I think, is...
that even when I was in high school, remember, I don't know if you can remember this, Jason, because you're a young pup, but in 1969, the Miracle Mets occurred. And so as I was growing up, the Mets were starting. The Brooklyn Dodgers had left, and the replacement eventually was the New York Mets. Casey Stengel, the manager, famously said, can anybody here play this game? So,
I was rooting for a bunch of losers and underdogs. And then in 69, suddenly they win the World Series. And I was like, you know, my eyes filled with stars. It's just unbelievable. Well, now you get to go back to the beginning and root for a bunch of losers again. You ain't lying, dude. Well, that's what's great about the game of baseball, though. I do love it.
I remember early childhood, we didn't play so much stickball. We played wiffle ball where you could just smack that thing with this big plastic bat and it still wouldn't go that far, but you could run the bases and you could play with three people. It wasn't like you had to have nine a side and the whole bit. You just kind of rotate around and hit the ball and
It was fun. It was fun. It is fun. You know, I mean, the funny thing about it now, you know, I'm 69 years old and I can afford good seats at the baseball park. In fact, you know, you mentioned, you know, one day we'll sit and watch a game. But Charles Krauthammer, you know, now deceased. But Charles and I used to go and Charles was a huge fan. But Charles was in a wheelchair.
But the owners used to make accommodations for him so he would sit on the first base side behind the dugout, but way up, you know, like on the concourse. But they had an area roped off for Dr. Krauthammer. Pretty cool. That would be pretty cool. I think sports teaches you a lot about life and camaraderie. What did it teach you along the way?
Well, I don't know how to sum it up. I mean, clearly, you know, for a kid...
who was growing up pretty poor, I mean, the back pages of any newspaper are an entry into the world of sports, and especially tabloids in New York City. And they were filled with fabulous stories about how people lived and how people lived as teammates and how they aspired and how they achieved greatness and excellence. I loved those stories.
Jason, I can't tell you. To me, that was the way that I learned to be a man, a human being in this world. And to acknowledge that people who strive sometimes fail, but sometimes succeed. And even if you fail, that you can get up and try hard again. To me, this is the basics. I once did a piece about the basketball coach, John Thompson.
who was the very successful championship coach at Georgetown University here in Washington, D.C. And Thompson said to me, people talk about all my success. And Thompson had not only been a good college player, but he had been in the NBA on a championship team with the Boston Celtics.
and then, of course, gone on to be a championship college coach. He says, people talk about all my success. He said, people should talk about all the failure. It's the failure, he says, that defines him, and the success is the exception. It's delightful, but it's exceptional. You're listening to Jason in the House. We'll be back with more of my conversation with Juan Williams right after this.
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You would be a legend.
This year in the NBA playoffs, the superstar for the Milwaukee Bucks, Giannis Antetokounmpo, I hope I pronounced his name correctly, after his team was knocked out of the playoffs, one of the reporters said, do you view this season as a failure? And he said, why would you ask me that? He said, Michael Jordan won six games.
NBA championships, but he played for like 16 years. He said, so do you consider every year that he didn't win the championship a failure? How ridiculous is that? I saw that and it was like the pitch perfect answer to, yeah, a question that I'm sure the reporter...
thought was going a different direction. So now walk us through a little bit of your career. I mean, you've been a staple on Fox News for a long time, but walk us through those early days. So you're going to school. You're, you know, playing stickball along the way. But tell us about kind of those early years, first job, how you got into broadcasting, how you got into reporting. Walk us through that. Oh, sure.
I hope it interests you. But, you know, I was the editor of my junior high school newspaper and then the editor of my high school newspaper. And after I left. But why? Even while I was. Why did you do that? Why did you do that? Like that. Well, I told you. Not everybody does it.
Well, I told you, you know, the back pages of the tabloids in New York City were an eye-opener. They were a window to the world, initially sports, but then, of course, you go towards the front of the paper and you come to the real games, the power games known as politics. And I was fascinated by it, just fascinated. My mom used to bring me newspapers off the subway. She was a seamstress in lower Manhattan, worked in the garment district, you know, and
you know what people some people would call a sweatshop poor woman working in a sweatshop but she would bring the kid sub newspapers off the subway and I ate him up and then what happened was that
In the, you know, getting into the junior high school newspaper thing, I was pretty good. And then they made me the editor. And then I went off, I went off to high school, went to a prep school in upstate New York. I got a scholarship and I was the editor there. And even while I was there, I did some work, some freelancing for the newspaper in Poughkeepsie, New York. And then I went off to college, Haverford College, right outside of Philadelphia. And after my freshman year, got an internship there.
at the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. And back then, Jason, that was the biggest paper in Philadelphia. Today we don't have any afternoon papers in America. They're defunct. Everything is a morning paper, and even the morning papers are on hard times.
So I was working for them that summer, and there's a little bit of a story there because they were only supposed to hire seniors and graduate students, but I had sent in the clips from my previous jobs, and they had accepted me without noticing that I didn't fill in the age. So when I showed up, the man in charge of the program said, hey, what are you doing? You lied to us. I said, I never lied. You accepted me, and
He kicked me out, and it was only after some people back at my college called and said, you know, you should give this kid a chance. You accepted him. They said, okay, he can come back for two weeks. Well, after two weeks, they said, fine, stick around. And I stayed that summer. They hired me to stay two days a week during the school year, which was a thrill for me. And then after my junior year, I got a...
internship from the Dow Jones newspaper fund. Dow Jones used to own the Wall Street Journal. And so I went to work for the Providence Journal as part of that program, went back to the Evening Bulletin. And then after that, the Evening Bulletin wouldn't give me a full-time job, but I got internships, one at the Philadelphia Inquirer and one at the Washington Post. And I thought the Washington Post was famous. That's a big-time newspaper, Watergate, Woodward and Bernstein. So I went to Washington, and I've been in Washington ever since.
Well, I'm sure those early jobs were paying you a very lucrative amount of money. Come on. I mean, you obviously do that because of the money, right, Juan? Oh, man. No, I'm going to tell you something. I remember they used to have a digital clock at the corner near the Washington Post building. The old Washington Post building no longer exists.
but i used to think i'm still here and what does that say i guess that i was a pretty insecure pup and you know i just i was so hungry for the opportunity i mean really i and you know even i remember when i met my wife and you know she would be like do you ever not work but for me it was like you know i'm just i'm hungry you know i want to succeed and i don't want to fail yeah well that's what it takes right
Young people, they think those are just old stories. They're current stories, too. You know, they're not. That's what it takes. You've got to pull yourself up by the bootstraps and, you know, show your worth before you get paid what you're worth. Well, yeah. I didn't have any connections, and I barely had bootstraps, but I had a real...
I guess a real desire to succeed in the newspaper business. You know, today, I don't I still think back then, even it was the case that most people did not read bylines. But for me to see my byline in the newspaper. Oh, my gosh, Jason, what a thrill. Well, there's you know, and there's significant publications and it's it's the body of your work. And, you know, it's been signed off by an editor and there it is in black and white. I can see that. Tell me about meeting your wife. Where and how did you meet her?
Oh, how did I meet my wife? Well, so I had graduated from college. I'd come here as an intern.
And I was working like a crazy person. And in fact, I was covering the police in Washington, D.C. And so I would come in late. I mean, my shift would start around 7 p.m. technically, and I would get off around 2 a.m. But in reality, what happened is I would come in around 10, 11 in the morning because I knew if I came in at 10 or 11, more chance of me getting a story that would get in the paper because, you know,
between seven and two in the morning, you get small stories, but nothing big. I could get a bigger story if I came in. And so I was working crazy hours.
And a friend who had graduated after I did from high school, he was at college, still in college, came to Washington for a fun weekend. And, you know, Friday night, he doesn't see me all day. Saturday, he doesn't see me. I show up late, late on a Saturday night. He says, man, what are you doing? I said, I'm sorry, man. Let's go out. You know, we didn't have any money or anything. And, you know, we couldn't get into any of the nicer clubs. But there was another club on the side there.
And we went into it, and standing in line to get a beer, I heard two other guys talking about, hey, there's a good-looking woman over there. So I looked over and thought, yep, she's good-looking, and there, everybody else is in line. So I walked over, and sure enough, we went dancing, and we got married. We've been married this year for 45 years. Well, congratulations. That's awesome. Thanks. So the story of your life is being bashful, I can tell. You just kind of fell into things. No, you...
That's good. You go out and approach somebody, you want to talk to her, you did. And when you wanted to go get a job, you got after the internship. You want a story, you got to show up and get there early and get the story. That's admirable. So again, walk us through the timeline because, I mean, you had a great career. You've been highly successful everywhere you've gone. So you get married. I don't know how long you dated, but you got married. It was pretty quick because actually...
We met in like August and we were living together by like October. And then we got married the following July 1st. Well, that is pretty quick.
That was pretty good. As long as you're working it through the baseball season, I can understand. As long as it didn't interrupt, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's the all-star game and that sort of thing. There was no baseball in D.C. then. If I wanted to go baseball, boy, it was really hard because you'd have to drive all the way up to Baltimore. That's not too far. But, yeah, I get it. Okay, so, but then walk us through the career because, you know, there was a little...
got a little tumultuous right and you came in and made the transition to fox but walk us through all that oh sure so i mean what happens is i was i started at the washington post as an intern then they hired me full-time uh i started on the local desk as i said covering police writing obituaries but then worked my way up to covering politics local politics and then went from there um
to writing editorials for the Washington Post. And then I went back to news in the national news department at the White House as a White House correspondent covering Ronald Reagan. And then I was covering politics in general, people like then Vice President Bush and the Congress, and then doing analytical pieces for our Sunday News and Review section, then writing for the magazine. Then I got an opportunity to write a book about
a book called Eyes on the Prize, America's Civil Rights Years, the History of the Civil Rights Movement, and that accompanied a TV series of the same name that got a lot of attention. And then I went back to the Post and was doing more magazines and analytical news columns in the news section.
And then had an opportunity to interview Justice Thurgood Marshall. And that led, first of all, to a huge magazine piece, but then to a book about Thurgood Marshall. And then when Clarence Thomas was nominated to the court, I had written about Clarence Thomas and all the controversy about Thomas. That caught me up and people were saying, oh, Juan Williams tells jokes and he's this and he's that.
It was so awful. I just tell you, it was one of the more painful episodes of my life. And but I stayed on at the Post, finished the book on Thurgood Marshall. And then I got to say, in the midst of this, I started doing I had been doing the broadcast work for The Washington Post. They own the local CBS affiliate at the time.
And they had a Saturday night news and review program. And I did that program. And then that led me to a contract with CNN to do shows like Crossfire, Capital Gang, Capital Gang Sunday. I remember all those. Yeah. Right. And then the man who started Fox, Roger Ailes, came to me and said,
He had been a source for me when I was covering Reagan and Bush. And he said he would give me a seat on the Sunday show if I would agree to come and work for Fox, the startup. And I remember my wife and friends said, man, are you crazy? CNN is the brand name in news. Why would you go to work for these guys? And I said, you know, I just think Roger's a smart guy and I believe in him.
And so I'm going to do it. I'm going to get in on the ground floor of this operation. And that's what I did. So right from the start, I was working for Fox News. And, you know, I've been here ever since. You're listening to Jason in the House. We'll be back with more of my conversation with Juan Williams right after this.
Wow. That is an amazing story. You've had such a rich history in this. I wish we had more time to kind of plow through this. The reality is we are taping this right before special report and Brett bears on a time, certain schedules. So I've only got like, I've only got like three and a half minutes. So I've got, I want to tell you, let me tell you one quick story. Yes. Cause I, I just want to, I just, Jason, I want to share this with you. So
I didn't mention this, but so at the year 2000, NPR hired me to be their radio talk show host, their afternoon talk show host. And so I went to work for NPR. I was working for Fox News and NPR, conservative and liberal. I left the Washington Post at this point. I finished the book on Thurgood Marshall. And then between 2010, 10 years, I was working at NPR.
And then I said something on Bill O'Reilly's show that the NPR bosses hated. I said that when I was in an airport after the terrible events of 9-11, I said, if I see someone dressed in Muslim garb, it makes me nervous, makes me anxious. And they said that was a bigoted remark, and they fired me. And that became like front page news. It was another terrible time in my life.
But I wanted to mention it to you because I wanted to tell you that Fox at that point said, you know what? And this was Roger Ailes, Murdoch, all those guys said, look, we don't think that you're a bigot. We don't think that you are toxic and you have a home here. We're not firing you and we'll find other ways to employ your time. And so we don't want you to go home embarrassed and crying or anything like that. I just so appreciate it. Yeah, that's...
I hear good stories like that, and it's good to hear. I know you take some slings and arrows and shots, being not as conservative as, say, a Jason Chaffetz. Absolutely. I get that, but I've always enjoyed the dialogue and the back and forth. I mean, I know you're a good person, and we don't agree on anything.
all things political, but love of country, love of baseball. There's a lot more we agree on than we disagree. I truly believe that. I believe it. And I got to say, I got to believe Jason Chaffetz loves America. I love America. I love my family. I love my community. I believe in people, in the goodness of people, even people I disagree with. So to me, you know,
I have a friend who said to me, "Juan Williams, you go to church on Sunday." I said, "Yep." He says, "You've lived in the same house for most of your life." I said, "Yep." He says, "You've been married to the same woman, one marriage." I said, "Yep, that's true." He said, "You know, if you weren't black, I'd say you were a conservative." And of course, people say to me all the time, they say, "You know, you got a son." One of my sons worked for the RNC.
I worked for Ben Carson, another ran for city council as a Republican in the very Democratic District of Columbia. So they're Republicans in my life, but I'm a Democrat. But the point I'm trying to make to you is that love and people and affection and understanding.
It goes way beyond the political definition. That's the way it should be. That's the way it should be. They'd be able to break bread with each other and you can argue, debate, but then you put your arm around each other and
you know, share a meal, share a baseball game. That's the American way. Are you kidding? My brother, I have a brother, and my brother and I fight as much as anybody, please. I know how that goes. I believe you. There's another thing we agree on. Our brothers are both wrong. Check it out. Juan Williams, thanks for joining us on Jason in the House podcast. We do appreciate it.
Man, Jason, it was a pleasure. Thank you for inviting me. Oh, thank you. I wish we had more time, but we'll catch more of you later, Juan. Can't thank Juan Williams enough. I really do appreciate him taking time on the podcast and spending some time. I wish we had a little bit longer, but he was due on special report. There's no way we could have gone past that, and I totally understand. But thanks for listening. Hope you can rate the podcast. Would love it if you subscribe to the podcast.
share it with others. We're going to have another good dynamic person coming on next week, but thanks for taking the time to listen. I'm Jason Chaffetz, and I want to remind people, by the way, that you can listen
Ad-free with a Fox News Podcast Plus subscription on Apple Podcasts. And Amazon Prime members can listen to this show ad-free on the Amazon Music app. Thanks for listening to the Jason in the House podcast. You can find more on foxnewspodcast.com. A lot of good colleagues. Will Kane, for instance, has a really good one. Trey Gowdy's got a good one. Ben Dominich, Dana Perino,
There's a lot of good ones out there. Brett Baer, Shannon Bream, there's a lot of good stuff out there. Janice Dean, she's got one. And Kennedy Saves the World, I think that is one of the really fun ones too. So I want to go over and take a look at those. Again, thank you for your time. I'm Jason Chaffetz. This has been Jason in the House.
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.
