Doug Brunt

Cheers, honey. Happy 1000.

It's amazing to think back to more than four years ago, a little room, no video, it was audio only.

I mean, if there was no video, but if the camera happened to pan, you know, four feet to the right, it would have been a magnet tiles tower and blocks and stuffed animals.

It was like, I knew. You have so many gifts that are suited for this that any one of them is rare to find. But to see them all in one person is amazing. And so I had no doubt you were going to be amazing.

Some have been with you way more than a decade. You're all running in the same direction. Everyone on the team is tough and hardworking and believes in what you're doing. It believes in the show.

What was the feedback you got from that one viewer? It was... Relentlessly factual. Relentlessly factual.

Yeah.

Well, you paid it back this week with a triple drop, taking care of the kids as I was out of here. But you you've provided so many opportunities for the kids, too. They're getting a richness of education through experience of getting out and seeing so much in this political season, which has been amazing.

Yeah. Now, listen, I'm just a short timer here this morning or this afternoon. I'm here for the champagne. But we also, if the crew is ready for it, I know there's a video. Bet some friends of the show would like to say congratulations as well.

Well, it is. I was just going to say happy 1000. It's much easier to say it that way. A little champagne to celebrate.

Good job, Art.

There is one more thing. I'll let you see it before the audience. There's one more thing from your brilliant EP, Steve Krakauer. Oh, painting that captures a recent moment.

Let me put this out here. Can you guys see this?

All eyes are cast downward like a dead president.

This is the Louis Rotor. This is the same maker of Cristal. This is not Cristal.

So you can see where some of the sense of humor is behind the scenes in the show.

Well, you guys were top of the mountain. You were the most talented, most energetic broadcasters out there. And you got to come over here and do it exactly the way you want to do it, which made it even better. And once people got a chance to sample it, it's just taken off.

Thank you, honey. Love you.

Congrats.

We had a little celebration this morning. The kids were all fired up for you.

Do you want a champagne topper?

Into the mic.

Abby and I did not. We've been planning.

We will not back down. We will be relentless. I apologize to the American people that President Trump decided to have an unprovoked attack on our country, on families, on jobs, and it's unacceptable.

I mean, we keep talking about elections. We're at a greater national security risk today than we were on Thursday because the commander in chief showed that he's not capable of serving.

Hi. Happy holidays.

I don't want you to do that.

I think you do an excellent job, but I prefer things up here kind of as they are.

No, maybe you can zoom in. If you can zoom into the house, that would be great.

We're having eggnog. I saved the nutmeg till the very end. We can't have soggy. nutmeg with our eggnog. And I actually poured out the very last bit of our Jack Carr Warrior Proof Whiskey here. So Jack, if you're out there, it would be a real Christmas miracle if another one of these showed up.

The whiskey? Yes. It's great stuff.

He came on my show and we had that and we were flying by the end of the show. It was an hour and a half of drinking whiskey on the rock.

Yeah, gosh, yeah.

There's always snow.

Might not always be skiable, but there's snow.

Yeah, but there's a ton. There was something like 30 inches the other day. So there's tons of snow. Runs will be open, and I think they're getting snow right now.

I did a little today. I've got a little more coming. Yep, I did, truly.

He's going later with me.

Today wasn't a big shop. It was like a little stocking stuffer for you. Just FYI, doing one thing.

That was not in response to that. I just, I remember last year I wrote a letter. So this year, you know, it's, there might be something in addition to a letter.

Yeah.

Yeah, I agree with that, I think. And you were always that way. You're fine with flowers, but flowers in the absence of a card or something like that is just sort of a... Too perfunctory. And I agree that the turkey thing, that could go. I'm not that big on the turkey. Half of it's always overcooked and dry. And you're like, oh my God, to get this white meat down, you got to cover it with gravy.

Like a burger would be fine. Eat whatever you want on Christmas.

It's gone a little hallmarky, but I do love certain movies. Like there is something about a fire and a tree and the smell of pine needles and some of those old movies, like the really old time movies. That is awesome, especially in the run-up. You've got to start those early in December.

That's true.

Yes.

It's memorable. This is foreshadowing for later in the show.

Yeah.

I love that when it just brings back those memories of lying on the floor. Where I grew up, we had a fireplace. It was a small little family room and there wasn't enough seating for everybody. So a lot of times we just had throw pillows on the floor. We'd all lie on the floor like cats. We watched these old movies by the fireplace and the tree especially made it crowded.

You know, we're all sort of barely fitting in there. But that Heat Miser, Freeze Miser, Year Without a Santa Claus movie, I just love the song as a little kid. And it's just always stayed with me. And even though it's really for the little kids, it brings me right back to those moments of, you know, early, well, sort of mid late 70s of, you know, lying on the floor by a fire in the Christmas tree.

Love those guys.

Yeah. I was confusing it with another one. Fred Claus, I was confusing it with.

That was terrible. Yeah. Oh, my God. That was when John said. John Sharp was like, I wonder what those lucky staffs down in Guantanamo are doing. John is this Australian guy.

Yeah. And relatable in some ways. Yeah.

Just going back to all the different families and all the dysfunctions, like the special dysfunctions that can happen.

Well, you know, like fun, beautiful dysfunctions. Not as dysfunctional as that. It was hyperbolic.

There's something so atmospheric about it. It just takes you back and makes you feel a way.

Yeah, that was nice. And I did not make the connection that you later told me about, about You Got Mail. It was the inspiration for that movie. But it had a great, it was a Jimmy Stewart movie that I'd never seen. And there's something so charming about Jimmy Stewart on the screen. Yes. It was awesome.

Yeah, it's distinctive. His voice is unlike any other voice in the movies. You immediately get it. You know, some people have a fairly like Morgan Freeman's got an amazing voice. You pretty much know his as well. But Jimmy Stewart has one of those. You know exactly who it is. And it it sort of turns you into that that place immediately.

Oh, that's right. That was a good one.

Oh, my God. When it when that fact dawns and it's like our mothers were born in this era, you know, and and when that dawns and you know how old it is, you know, how long cinema has been a thing in America. You know, go back to the early days. It's all they're all dead. They're all gone.

Yeah. Well, you know.

It's totally crazy, which reminds me, the Sikorsky helicopter, people, anyone who's looked at military helicopters. I just met this guy, Igor Sikorsky Jr. He had read the Diesel book and he emailed me and he said, hey, I've got all these stories about my dad. He was a contemporary of Rudolf Diesel. And, you know, let's meet. So I went and went to the New England Air Museum.

And there's a whole Sikorsky wing there. We walked around and got this total, I mean, Igor Sikorsky Jr. walks in there and he's like a rock star. Everybody was running out to meet him. And how old is he? He's 95. And he looks at this photo and he shows me, it's of Tsar Nicholas II, a young Tsar, years before World War I even started. And Tsar Nicholas II is talking to some other man in the photo.

And my new friend, my new pal, Igor points at the man in the photo and goes, there's dad. And I'm like, oh my God, he has some personal connection to so much history going back. And he's like, you know, you really need my brother, Sergei. He's got, he's a treasure trove of information about aviation and the, you know, the interwar period and the pre-war period. I'm like, oh, that sounds great.

And he goes, he turns a hundred in a couple of weeks. He's flying in for the party. I'm like, oh my God, what are these Sikorskis eating?

Yeah.

He remembered everything. He was rattling off dates of the interwar period. You know, in 1938, this was happening. In 1928, the Bremen flew across and, you know, they met Babe Ruth at Yankee State. He just knew all this incredible information. It was at the at the ready.

It's still selling pretty well, and events keep popping up here and there that I'll go do. It's gotten a little bit more into the diesel community. I did a trucking uh, radio show the other day. It's been big with the Marine community and yeah. So it's, it's been really fun to see that story get out there.

By the way, these are the Al Smith dinner glasses. I don't know if you can tell all that frosting on the outside of the glass now, but.

I don't want to give her this.

Like,

You do all the holiday shopping. Kids aren't listening to this, I'm assuming. You do all the holiday shopping around here for us.

I did a little bit this year. I did some. I did a couple.

You're starting to get angry.

You've got your system. I'm happy to see your system soar.

Yeah. And they'll get used. There's such a volume with you that they like, you get lost in the amount of presents. They never get used. You see like three years later, there's a closet full of stuff we never opened.

That's right.

Right, like the Who's at a Whoville. There's got to be volume down there.

You and I, are you talking to me or Debbie?

Yeah. I mean, we have eggnog, kind of right up to it. And then, I don't know, it kind of depends what we're feeling. It doesn't have to be like a special thing. It could be a martini or Manhattan or whatever.

Are we doing the quiz right now? Let's do the quiz.

Okay.

I guess I should tell you how I answer it. It was like, it's our family... You're never going to get this really. It's sort of.

There's too many. You want me to tell you?

I'll give you a hint. One Christmas Eve. You got a buzzer. Let's see if you can get up to this hint. One Christmas Eve, there was an 11th hour, literally at 11 p.m. Christmas, the one, the only thing that matters. Oh, I know it. I know it.

Yeah.

And we asked this weeks in advance.

And it's the only thing I want. It's the only thing I care about.

It was a Christmas miracle. Bell.

Yeah, like the little add-on was a perfect silver bell. Exactly what he wanted. It was amazing.

I think the buzz was unjust. Yeah. You kind of nailed that with like a little help. It was premature. Nice. All right, good.

This goes, all right, another hint goes back years. Think more holistically.

Yeah.

The entire wardrobe gift that you gave me? Yes, this is that.

We're two for two.

Yeah, exactly. So it was box after box of new clothing and new clothing. By the way, so the ending of this story is full vindication for me because you're reading the Wall Street Journal one day. So you would say back then, like, you know, your ex, she was blocking you. She was just trying to make you look bad.

So for all these years, I'm like, wow, I look so much better now that I'm dressing properly. And then you're reading a Wall Street Journal article that's talking about men's fashion and the low, there was sort of, gold sexy or silver sexy, gold sexy, platinum sexy, and it sort of described outfits at each tier.

And then it gets to black diamond sexy, which is the most sexy you can be as a guy to dress. And under black diamond sexy was literally khaki pants and yellow, it was like a hundred percent, like weirdly, you've always phrased it in this weird way. It even got the phrasing right. It's as though you wrote it. And I'm like, you're the saboteur. You've been sabotaging me for the last 20 years.

So that was, that came around.

Hello, where's my bell? I'm waiting for the ding, ding, ding. There we go.

Ding, ding, ding. Oh my God. We're three for three.

It's like we actually know each other. This is not the big Crosby version.

You know, they got the right song. But yeah, you're right.

Dean Martin instead of the other thing.

Yeah.

Are we five for five?

No, I mean, it was- Is it shopping at the last minute? No, it's just like the annual big trip that my- Yeah, no, no, I know about it.

Oh, no, that. Well, I meant like a vacation trip, but also that. Oh, I think I ruined the ding.

That's awesome. Yes. That was not the one though. This was more like day to day. This is less Christmas theme. Just, just the fact that we have dinner together as a family, six plus nights a week.

Hopefully they do that.

I feel like that counts. I said we stay on the same upward trajectory as a family.

Oh my God. You got it right. Yeah. This is going to bring the room down. But I said for both of our moms to be in better health. Yeah. That's amazing. You got that right away.

I guess it's pretty obvious, but not to diminish how amazing it is that you got that.

Not good. What?

Oh God. Is this where we're going? Yeah.

I don't remember. It's the one.

Roller coaster. It was rough.

You know, as you get older, like the inner ear goes a little.

Yeah. You know, I've been developing this nice relationship and friendship with Jack Carr. He's going to see it and be like, I'm out, buddy. I can't, you know.

Lost all respect.

85. We get off, and we wander over. Like, you know, it was one of the rides. Not every ride has the thing where you can go buy the photos afterward. So we wander over, and you see it on the wall. And that was the end of it. Like, there was no talking to you for like a week. You were doubled over laughing for the rest of the time we were there.

I'm like, I just need to distract her for like 20 minutes. Because you can only buy it for a certain window of time. I'm like, let's go over that way. And you're like, no, no, no. We're going to buy that photo right now. And then for the rest of the trip, you just, any, like, anything could spark the memory. And you were gone for 20 minutes laughing, doubled over.

At which point I realized you had become my bully.

Yeah. It was just like, and then, so I, I was like, I can do better. I'm going to go back on that damn thing and I'm going to look composed and good. And I whiffed again. The second time is still like, got me going.

It took me three times to look like I was, you know, enjoying it.

Oh my God. Yeah.

Check. Christmas this year already.

I can't remember everything I said. I listed a couple of things here, like watching Wonderful Life and watching Family Man with Nicolas Cage.

Um... Not good enough. I can't even remember what else I said. Even I failed that one.

Thank you for including me.

Yeah. I think I said within December you start everything.

Yeah, Jimmy Stewart at the best.

I mean, this is really you drive this. I love it. And you make sure it happens every year as you do with all this stuff. You make sure the family is doing all the all the good things. But we throw salt. You know, is it Martinelli? What's the name? Martini. Martini. Yeah. So we throw salt and we just have all the traditions and we.

And we ring the bells when the angels, you know, all the, all the fun little traditions throughout the movie and the whole, the kids get into it. And it's one of those things that brings us all five together. It's so fun. Really magical sort of Christmas moment.

You boo. You hiss.

It's a bell.

I love how I'm like the kindergarten. What do you do? What's in comma?

Yeah, it is fun.

Jimmy Stewart.

I mean, you have a great sense of humor. I think you find humor in just about anything.

Oh, my God. I know you have to laugh or cry.

He ate chocolate-covered popcorn out of a sealed bag.

Yeah, like how do you even smell it out of a sealed bag? But he finds it. He eats it. It's supposed to be life-threatening, but he's indestructible. He's fine. He's totally fine.

He'll be thrilled to know Strud enjoyed it.

We'll save the $5,000. Thanks.

These are my Christmas recommendations of great reads. It covers the gamut of reading interests, I believe. The first is our friend, Nelson DeMille, who recently passed away, a dear friend and a mentor to me and a great friend to you. He wrote a book called The Charm School, and this came out in 1988. Just after the war came down, ironically. But the Russia stuff is back in vogue.

So it's about a Russian spy training school. So it's almost like the show American, the Americans with Kerry Russell and the other guy. Matthew Rhys. Matthew Rhys, which is a terrific show. But this is even better than that. And it's just a great read. There's so many people writing thrillers now. Um, no one, and they all revere Nelson as, as just such a great inspiration to them.

And no one does it as well as Nelson has done it.

It's great. I mean, this one, I just cannot go wrong. It's one of the best thrillers ever done. Nelson DeMille is awesome. We miss him. We love him. We truly sad when he left. He was a real inspiration to me.

Yeah. The next also by a friend. So this is different. This is a bit more of a literary work. Amor Tolles, I think, is one of the best writers working today. He's written a number of novels that people might recognize. A Gentleman in Moscow or Rules of Civility or Lincoln Highway. And a friend of yours. And a good friend. And just a terrific writer.

Oh, by the way, as you know, for writers whose work I respect, I like to get the hardcover first edition of the book. So this is the first edition of The Charm School by Nelson. It came out in 88. This is a more recent book by Amor. And it's one novella and a few short stories. It picks up on Eve, who is a character in... um, rules of civility. It's called even Hollywood and some short stories.

So it's easy to, you know, pick up and read a 30 page short story in here. And Amor's writing is really, it's just so good. He's a little more literary, uh, type, but it's just fascinating. Still page turning. And then the last one is Barbara Tuchman.

She is the OG of narrative nonfiction, narrative history, the stuff that Eric Larson and David Grant are doing so well now, what I'm trying to do with Diesel.

Thank you. Plug, plug. And she is just amazing. She's sort of the godmother of that whole genre in modern narrative fiction. And so this is called the Zimmerman Telegram. And it's really the biggest reason we got into World War I. People say the Lusitania and the submarines, but Lusitania happened long before we entered the war. This actually happened right before it.

And it's about the foreign secretary for Germany named Arthur Zimmerman, who sent a telegram down to Mexico saying, go invade the U.S., And distract them over in the Western Hemisphere while we fight this war over here. This is World War I. While we fight this European war. And if you do that, we're going to give you, you know, Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico back.

And so he's trying to enlist the Mexicans to fight us in World War I. And the British intercepted and let us know about it. And, of course, that gave us all the reason to enter the war. But her writing is so it's like crackling, incredible prose, just really beautiful writing and a great, great ripping story.

A movie. A movie. That's what it's going to take. If the book gets adapted to the movie, then it just sort of breaks into a whole new stratosphere. But it's true. He... Everyone... Passes the word diesel multiple times a day at a filling station, on a train, on a marine outboard engine or something like that. And not an outboard, more a marine engine inboards. They tried outboards.

But, you know, you never misspell Ford with a lowercase f or Chrysler or Benz. A lot of people don't know there was a Rudolph diesel behind the diesel engine. And, you know, as people who are familiar with the book or the story know, he disappeared right before World War I. And he was a huge celebrity at the time, even though his name has really been kind of scrubbed from history.

And there were theories about what happened. He disappeared on an overnight passenger ship going from Belgium to Great Britain in the middle of the night.

the north sea and there was there were new headlines in newspapers around the world some speculating murder that it wasn't an accident or suicide that he was murdered either by john rockefeller or kaiser wilhelm ii the emperor of germany for reasons that the book gets into you could not have a u-boat or submarine without diesel power so every navy was scrambling for diesel and this was 1913 in the middle of the anglo-german arms race everyone was needed diesel's help to build a navy program

Separately on the Rockefeller side, Diesel advocated flexibility with regard to fuel. You can run the diesel engine on recycled kitchen grease, as Willie Nelson did, or on vegetable or nut oil. And he was saying, I can break the American fuel monopoly, and I don't need a law to do it. I can do it with my technology. And so he was a threat to both. There were theories of murder.

The book is sort of a biography, but it also turns into this Agatha Christie murder mystery in the last quarter of the book that solves the case.

I hold a grudge a little longer than you do, perhaps.

She's the longest. She and I are pretty aligned on this. I think, you know, particularly when it comes to attacks on you, I think you're pretty quick to shake that stuff off. I take a little longer, but I do view Steve Bannon a lot differently than I did nine years ago. And I think a lot of that came from an interview Trump did in this campaign season that you and I have talked about privately.

which I can't remember who the interviewer was, but I can paraphrase both sides of it. He was asked, why are you like this? Why do you behave like such a bastard half the time? And he answered, you don't understand. Nobody gets attacked the way I get attacked. Nobody faces as much incoming and oppositional bias that I face, and I have to fight it my way.

This is how I fight, and that's how I'm going to have to do it. And I see Bannon somewhat in that light now too. He's fighting these wars. I mean, look at the Stephanopoulos disgrace most recently. You know, he clearly knew the distinction between what was true and what was a lie. He, as the judge sees, deliberately chose the course of lying to gut Trump. And so he faces that stuff all the time.

But, you know, even seeing it in that light, you know, so I see Bannon more through a tactical lens than a personal lens. I saw it more personally back then. He did make a mistake back in 2015, 16. You know, when you had that debate question for Trump, the one that led to the Rosie O'Donnell flare up, that was a legitimate question. You know, you asked him on the woman issue.

Trump was about to get a year long hammering from the Clinton campaign on that issue. And any good journalist would have gone after it. And so it was a fair question. You hit every Republican on the stage that night. You hit all the Democrats too. And I can see how Bannon, because not only did he perceive you as an enemy at that point, he named you enemy number one and declared war.

And I can see how that went down. You know, he's he's fighting a war. He's got all these hot zones. And someone asked a tough question like that. The reaction is it's on. Now I'm coming after you. So I can see how it happened. But if he had taken a beat, he would have recognized you were not an enemy. You were a honest broker and a tough journalist doing the job.

And that at that time was a huge opportunity for him because the only places Trump could go then was either sycophants or enemies, right? You know, and neither was going to move the needle for him in a big way. You were the only down the middle fair place you could go to make the case. And he should have said, let's go make the case there.

Because the reason he correctly perceived that you are the most powerful voice in news then. And you remain that today because like if Trump does something stupid tomorrow, you'll hit him. And if he does something great, you'll praise him.

And that's why you remain, you know, it's, it's not, uh, I think he was right to, to find you the most powerful, but I don't think he was right about why it's not charisma or your oratory skills. It's your credibility.

Look, I get it. And listen, if if Steve Bannon hears what I said. a response you could have is I just had a better 2024 than anyone could ever have imagined. You're going to second guess anything I've ever done. You got to be joking, you know, and that would be a fair point. I just, I feel like there was an opportunity there to make the case.

You know, you were the one place where they actually could have made a case where millions and millions of people, you know, Because you will call balls and strikes, people know that what you say on this show is true. And if he comes on here and makes the case, he could say, look, there's plenty of people. There are plenty of wrecking ball opportunities.

This was maybe a different kind of place where he could have made the case. There was nowhere they could have gone. Really, everyone was in one of the two camps. Everyone was either Stephanopoulos. I mean, another thing that's so crazy about the Stephanopoulos thing Only by hair was he not moderating that ABC debate. Can you imagine?

I mean, it's always David Muir and George Stephanopoulos fighting behind the scenes for who gets the big political gigs. And maybe Muir edged him out by hair because he's never worked in the Democratic machine. But Stephanopoulos gets plenty of big political gigs where he's supposed to be a straight journalist. It could have been him. And you're right. Practically, it didn't really matter.

Muir, I'm sure, feels the same way about Trump that Stephanopoulos does. And I would love to see his text messages around the debate, you know?

So that is why, you know, Bannon is fighting. And again, fair point. He's like, he may say exactly what you just said and he'd be right. I mean, how can you question a guy who just had the 2024 that he had?

The other thing that people are talking about a lot now is how Trump was not... He won in 16, but he wasn't set up for success as well. And what if... you were not enemy number one, but they had made a case there because by fighting you, they did alienate a lot of people and they lost some support.

Among us, yeah. We're two of the most important, of course.

But if he had made a case there... Trump banning the whole campaign.

That's my point, though. The first years, he was not set up as well as he could have been. I mean, there's a lot of talk about how those years were rough. What if he had articulated his case in a way that he had more support going into the administration?

Exactly. He's got a lot of clear air in front of him now. He did not in 16.

Yeah. You know, and he's smart, man. He knows the landscape. He knows how all the pieces are moving together. He sees a few steps ahead. And I like you, the personal feelings. Yeah.

That did not require a Nostradamus level of foresight to know that you're going to light that up.

Yeah, the idea that every morning news anchor is putting in a ton of hours of prep and work is a joke. I mean, Strahan is probably working pretty hard on the NFL side of what he's doing. And the amount of time he puts in on his GMA gig is tiny, but about what every other network morning news anchor is putting in, it's not a big lift. You're handed all these cue cards of the questions to ask.

If you have an author on, they don't read the book. They're handed a couple of questions that the producer writes for them about the book. It requires almost no prep. I remember reading something Katie Couric would sort of prep the morning she got in or something like that. I don't know all the stories, but it's not a big lift.

So Stephanopoulos probably works harder than the average morning network anchor, you know, because I think he cares about knowing the news and knowing who the politicians are. And, you know, he's got to have some expertise and you got to stay abreast of all that. But really, once you're steeped in it, it's just incremental each day. It's not a huge lift each day to prep for that.

You sort of you've got your sort of standing start already there. Going. So that whole, and by the way, I don't believe that the salaries are, you know, it's hard to bring somebody down. Stephanopoulos is already up at those levels, thanks to having been in the game for years and years. I don't think people who are newer to it, whoever replaces Hoda is not making that money.

That's the overall, right? So the demo number is probably even uglier.

It doesn't support those kind of salaries at all. I mean, the big three anchors of the network, so that's been a long, long decline. Cable news really had its heyday from like, oh, I don't know what you think, but I would say 05 to really 15, 16, 17, something like that. That was sort of the main period.

The Trump administration, the Trump show of 2016, 17, 18, really hid an underlying systemic problem.

People were leaving, people were cutting cords and leaving cable. You know, the Trump show sort of kept the numbers looking good for a little while there, but now we're seeing it, you know, how, how bad the problem is. Agreed.

Yeah.

Sometimes the neighbors don't if they attend.

Costume night? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

We had a few people. If you come over, I mean, you got to participate. So some people are not really comfortable putting on some ridiculous costume, but we love it.

We did the Ten Commandments.

Did like the zoot suit riot.

But we're all... The Incredibles, that was another good one. Oh, yeah. All the kids were sort of age-appropriate, too. Thatcher looked like Little Dash.

It was perfect. Yes.

Oh, my gosh. Can I have a hint? No. Is it connected to anything we've done recently?

Oh my God, is there like a rollercoaster theme?

No guess.

Maybe we could all be political leaders, like we'll have a Speaker of the House.

Pleasure to be here. Merry Christmas. Love you, babe. Love you, honey.