STEVE DEACE: Now, we’re getting the worst of both worlds. We’re creating sheeple who just want to be lied to and given a mask like it’s some kind of totem. Or, we’re telling people: “Don’t believe anything any expert tells you. Put your head in the sand. People are dropping dead across the street, but it’s fake news. Don’t believe it.” That’s a dangerous place for a culture to be.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: My guest today is Steve Deace. Steve is the host of the Steve Deace Show on BlazeTV, which gets 85 million views per month. Steve didn’t start out at the top — far from it. His mother was only 14 years old when she became pregnant.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: When Steve was three years old, his mother remarried. His stepfather was abusive to both him and his mom. After successful high school career, Steve attended Michigan State University, but he later dropped out. Hoping to change his fortune, Steve bet all his money on a college football game but lost.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: It was then that he pushed the reset button. He moved in with his grandmother and talked his way into a job at The Des Moines Register as a part-time assistant.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: After a few more bumps along the way, he became the host of the highly successful Steve Deace Show. I recently sat down with Steve to talk about where he found the strength to overcome adversity and the challenges he saw our nation facing over the next four years.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: Steve, I want to thank you so much for being on the show. I greatly appreciate it. I’ve been looking forward to speaking to you for a while.

STEVE DEACE: Good to see you, brother. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: I have one question right off the bat. You have a show that attracts 100,000 people per episode, correct?

STEVE DEACE: Yeah. When you look at podcasts — and the TV show — it’s probably around 100,000.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: You’re on five days a week for two hours a day, talking about politics, current events and everything. You’re on Blaze Media. I think TheBlaze has around 85 million views per month. It’s huge.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: I know you didn’t start at the top. You started with every single hurdle in front of you. And they weren’t one-foot hurdles. They were 10-foot hurdles. Then, when you jumped over those, there were 20-foot hurdles.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: I don’t want to talk to you about politics. I don’t want to talk about your show very much. I want to talk about you because you’re the American dream. You have overcome to be where you are.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: Did I miss anything there? Was I overstating the case?

STEVE DEACE: No. That’s not even counting my own bad life choices and mistakes. [Those] made it even harder. But yes, you’re right.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: So, you took a hard game and made it harder because you liked the challenge?

CHARLES MIZRAHI: You started off without a silver spoon — and definitely without an advantage. Your mother was 14 years old when she got pregnant with you and 15 when she gave birth, right?

STEVE DEACE: Yes. My mom found out during Christmas break in 1972 that she was pregnant from her high school senior boyfriend. She was scared. She was what we used to call “white trash” back in the day. She lived in the poor “white trash” part of Des Moines, Iowa. Her mom was twice-divorced and a single mom — which is a tough life today, let alone in the early 70s.

STEVE DEACE: [She asked herself]: “What’s going to happen? What am I going to do?” Then, January 24 rolled around, and Roe v. Wade occurred. She didn’t think she could do one of those back-alley abortions like other girls did. But now that it was quote-unquote safe, legal and rare, she wasn’t sure if it was something she could go through. She considered it but decided she couldn’t kill her own kid.

STEVE DEACE: So, on July 28, 1973 — at 11:59 a.m. — a 15-year-old girl named Vicky gave birth to a baby boy at Iowa Lutheran Hospital. That son was me.

STEVE DEACE: When you look at what typically happens to children born into that socioeconomic environment — especially to teenage moms — it’s just providence that I’m where I am today. I was on food stamps. I remember eating government cheese.

STEVE DEACE: Growing up, I was on reduced lunches in school. I hear so much talk about white privilege and all that kind of stuff. I don’t know when I got my white privilege. I’m not sure which welfare check, food stamp or trip to the grocery store it was. I didn’t see a lot of that when I was growing up.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: So, your mom has you 15 years old. Talk to me about the stigma in a small town. What is that like?

STEVE DEACE: Well, she ended up having to move away. She ended up moving away to California with my grandmother. They took me with them to get a new start in life. She got her GED and finished school. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do with the rest of her life. She helped my grandmother manage a hotel in Anaheim, California — very close to Disneyland.

STEVE DEACE: A group of petty officers from San Diego came up to visit Disneyland. One of them was a guy she kind of liked name Dave Deace. They ended up meeting that weekend, and within a couple of weeks, they got married in Las Vegas. I was three years old. Suddenly, I had a new dad. That was where my name came from.

STEVE DEACE: He taught me a lot of good lessons about hard work that have helped me to this day. I don’t — pardon the expression — half-ass anything. If I can’t do something at 100% — to the best of my ability — I don’t even try it. Those are all lessons that Dave imparted to me.

STEVE DEACE: But unfortunately, he came from a very abusive background. His father was a violent alcoholic and abusive to him. When Dave would get angry or frustrated, he would become very abusive as well. Growing up, I lived with a lot of really high highs and low lows based on his mood. We moved a lot. I went to 11 different schools, K-12.

STEVE DEACE: This has helped me in my work today. I don’t need to be a part of your tribe. I don’t need you to rub my belly and tell me that I’m liked. I don’t care. I’ve lived in a basement to hide out from Dave’s outbursts. I’m used to being a loner. That has given me sell-out insurance in this line of work. It has prevented me from taking the numerous offers I’ve had to sell out — or [avoid] threats that I needed to. On any given day, if you don’t know what kind of mood your old man is in, you learn to get by on your own — without people’s approval.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: Your mother married him when she was 18 or 19 years old, right?

STEVE DEACE: Mm-hmm.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: She moved away, but your grandma stayed where she was?

STEVE DEACE: Yep. We were in California for a little bit, but then we moved to Michigan — where he was from. I’m wearing my amazing blue Big Ten championship T-shirt today.

STEVE DEACE: We lived in all kinds of places, Charles. I lived in Orlando, Florida for three years. I lived in Syracuse, New York. I lived in Houston, Texas. I lived in Iowa — where I was born — on four different occasions. I lived in Michigan on three different occasions. We moved back to California a second time. We moved all over the place. He would go where the construction market was booming in the ’80s.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: So, he abused you and your mom?

STEVE DEACE: He was physically abusive, yeah. I think what was difficult about it was that there were times when he was a phenomenal dad.

STEVE DEACE: There’s no question that he gets credit for some of the success I have today. Some of it was unintentional. If I had lived with a good dad, I don’t know that I could have handled a lot of the pressure that’s on me today. He taught me good, constructive lessons. There were plenty of times when we had great times together. But he could get triggered — pardon the expression — and go dark.

STEVE DEACE: And when he went dark, it was bad. That’s what made it worse. I think we all hung around longer than we should have. Because when it was good, it was really good. So, you’d rationalize it. You knew you should have left. But that kept our family together longer than it should have been. At times, we had great Christmases. We took great vacations. I’d been to every meaningful amusement park in America at least once.

STEVE DEACE: A lot of my friends didn’t have a clue what was going on. From the outside, they thought I had the cool dad. He even dealt pot on the side. They thought I had the cool, hip dad. A lot of times, they didn’t know what went on behind closed doors when things got dark.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: How did you create relationships with friends? You moved around [a lot] …

STEVE DEACE: I learned that high achievement attracted people. I wasn’t born with a lot of obvious gifts. But our creator gave me a quick wit and the ability to absorb mass quantities of information and communicate it in a way that people would find compelling.

STEVE DEACE: I used those things to my advantage academically. I got really involved in sports. I was pretty good at every sport. I wasn’t a great athlete, but I was good at the skill side of the sport. In basketball, I knew I was never going to run faster or jump higher than everybody. So, I learned to be one of the better shooters in my school.

STEVE DEACE: I always tell people that talent is bestowed. In my line of work, you can be as smart as you want — much smarter than me. But if you’re not quick on your feet, you can’t host my show. That’s not a skill. You can’t learn to think quicker. That’s just a talent you have. Skills are what you acquire at home.

STEVE DEACE: Learning to shoot a basketball is not like throwing a 90-mile-an-hour fastball — where you either can or you can’t. Shooting is a skill.

STEVE DEACE: I spent hours in my driveway becoming one of the best shooters in my school so I could make the team and make friends.

STEVE DEACE: In the end, people respect achievement. People like success. If you’re good at things, that helps you get in with the crowd at a new school a lot faster.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: So, you did well in high school even though you jumped around like a jumping bean. Did you graduate at the top of your class in high school or the middle?

STEVE DEACE: I was somewhere right outside the top 10. I just thought that 3.5 to a 3.8 was good enough. I could have got a 4.0 if I worked harder. But I got a 3.6 or 3.7 for just showing up and having fun. So, I took the easy path.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: You were still living at home. You went to a community college at first, right?

STEVE DEACE: I went to a community college for the for the first year because I couldn’t get into Michigan. At the time, it was taking about as many out-of-state students as any major public university in the country.

STEVE DEACE: My math grade on my ACT… I’m trying remember how it works. There are three sections of the ACT, right?

CHARLES MIZRAHI: I took the SATs, so I don’t know. The ACT is a little fuzzy.

STEVE DEACE: I think there are three. I got a perfect score on two of them. But on math, I just bombed. [That’s] kind of ironic because today, one of the things I’m best at is analyzing data. Most data are not math. It’s people’s presumptions that they impose on the math to get the conclusion they want. So, you can spot B.S. that way.

STEVE DEACE: I didn’t score well enough on the math part of the ACT, so Michigan wouldn’t let me in. I ended up going to Grand Rapids Community College for a year. My plan was to get my math score up, so I could get into Michigan. But then, I got the chance to get into Michigan State right away instead of doing a second year of community college. So, I went on that path. Plus, the women were better at Michigan State. And there were a ton of Michigan fans at Michigan State. I went to Michigan State and rooted for Michigan the whole time.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: You continued on after a great high school career with academia and…

STEVE DEACE: Well, not exactly.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: What happened there?

STEVE DEACE: What happened was I ran into a video game called Tecmo Super Bowl — which was the first time that a video game kept all the stats in real time for an entire season. I ran into intramural basketball. I ran into parties. I [realized] I didn’t have to impress people anymore. I didn’t have to impress my dad. I didn’t have to impress all the new students and teachers to make friends.

STEVE DEACE: I hate to sound like a cliché, but I didn’t really know who I was. I knew what the expectations were for me. I was the first kid in my family to go to college. Everybody always told me that I had a special talent that God had clearly gifted to me.

STEVE DEACE: But I didn’t really own any of that. I felt like I did a lot of that stuff because it was what was expected of me. And when those expectations weren’t on me anymore, and I was on my own for the first time … I needed and missed Dave riding my rear end. Like I told you, it wasn’t always bad. Sometimes, he did it the right way. I missed it. Without it, I crashed. I probably went from the freshman-15 to the freshman-150. During my final semester, I didn’t attend a class the entire time. They ultimately ended up throwing me out.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: What did you do? Where did you go from there?

STEVE DEACE: I went back home to Grand Rapids, Michigan — where my parents were. I rented out a guy’s basement. I got a job at Manpower. That was a temp agency, not a gay bar. I wanted to clarify that. I was doing odd and menial jobs that were terrible.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: I remember they used to hire [people] for manufacturing or moving stuff.

STEVE DEACE: I’d assist loggers for three days, and then I went to a factory for another couple of days. I did a lot of that. I got in touch with a local bookie through one of my best friends in high school. I was pretty good at college football wagering. I made some extra money with it. I got a little cocky one day and decided to let everything I had won ride on one game.

STEVE DEACE: I didn’t win. I was out of money. With the juice, I couldn’t actually pay what the bet was.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: The juice was the extra commission for the bookie.

STEVE DEACE: Yeah, exactly. Yes, I’m sorry.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: We have some people here who never gambled.

STEVE DEACE: They’re good humans.

STEVE DEACE: I did what every self-respecting 20-something did when they hit rock bottom. I called my grandmother in Iowa. I said, “I have to get the [heck] out of here. Can I come live with you?”

STEVE DEACE: I ended up sticking a friend of mine with my gambling debt. Years later, I had a faith conversion, and I felt really convicted about that. So, I went and tracked him down. He was managing a grocery store in Grand Rapids. I called him out of the blue. I figured out what the interest rate would be — as if it was a credit card — and paid him back all the money with interest to make good on that loan.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: So, he covered your debt to the bookie?

STEVE DEACE: I’m assuming he did because he’s still walking.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: So, he vouched for you to the bookie. You made a bet. You lost. You couldn’t pay. You were done. You hightailed it out of there. And you never checked back in on this guy?

STEVE DEACE: I never did. I ejected. I ran for the hills.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: Wow.

STEVE DEACE: Years later, I had a spiritual awakening. I was convinced that I [made] a [bad] move. So, I tracked down my former buddy. I didn’t blame him for not wanting anything do with me, but I made sure to make him whole from a financial standpoint.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: Where did you see him? Was he working at a grocery store?

STEVE DEACE: He was in another state. I hadn’t seen him since I left. I found him in another state.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: You have this money. How many years has it been?

STEVE DEACE: It has been at least 10 years.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: Wow, OK. So, it’s probably a distant memory for him. You show up, where? At his doorstep? At his house?

STEVE DEACE: I tracked him down [through] a bunch of our high school friends until I finally got ahold of [his number].

CHARLES MIZRAHI: He picks up the phone. “Hey, it’s Steve. How are you doing?” How does that conversation go?

STEVE DEACE: It was a little icy — as you might imagine. It was a little frosty. It got a little nippy over the phone, but I don’t blame him for any of that. I just wanted to make sure I got his address. I think he thought there was no way I was going to pay him back. But I did.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: You told him: “I’m going to pay you back — with interest — every nickel.”

STEVE DEACE: With interest. I figured out what the interest and everything would be. Yeah. I had a check in the mail the next day.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: Did you ever find out what happened with that debt after you left?

STEVE DEACE: I did not.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: Wow, that’s something. Have you been in touch with him since?

STEVE DEACE: I have not been in touch with him since. What do you do with a situation like that? I did the best I could after I pulled [that stunt].

CHARLES MIZRAHI: I’m just saying that if it were me, I would have written you off. I wouldn’t have picked up the phone. The fact you wrote out a check and paid him — that guy really wanted to make whole. 

CHARLES MIZRAHI: Whatever it was, you did what you thought was the right thing. You made him whole. But it must have been pretty terrible to go through. Who knows? That sounds like a real tough deal.

STEVE DEACE: It was. When I moved here to Iowa, my aunt worked in the telemarketing department at The Des Moines Register. She told me who the sports editor was. I called him out of the blue. I grew up in reading Mitch Albom in the Detroit Free Press. I read in his biography that he got started volunteering at his local newspaper.

STEVE DEACE: So, I called Dave Witke — the sports editor at The Des Moines Register — and said, “Hey. You don’t know me from Adam. I have no experience, but I want to be a sports writer. I think I have talent. I’ll volunteer. I will work for nothing. I’m living rent-free at my grandma’s house. I want to start at the bottom.”

STEVE DEACE: Now, you think you know what that means at 22 or 23 years old. But you don’t really mean it.

STEVE DEACE: I came in. Dave interviewed me and thought I had potential. But when they started me at the bottom, I was swabbing the poop deck. I thought I was better than those menial news assistant tasks. But I had no credibility to make my argument. It was all ego. They gave me an assignment. Finally, after months of pestering them to give me a shot…

CHARLES MIZRAHI: Wait a second. Were you getting paid during this?

STEVE DEACE: Yeah, I was making minimum wage.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: But you got your foot in the door, which is amazing.

STEVE DEACE: I did.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: I just want to give a shout-out for that. I’ve interviewed young people right out of college. Immediately, I know if I’m going to hire them or not. If the subject of salary comes up within the first three minutes, I know they’re not the person.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: At your first job, you should be paying them. You should be paying the boss because you have no experience. They have the money. They have the experience. You hope this exchange works so, in the end, you have their experience.

STEVE DEACE: Correct.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: Warren Buffett hired one guy who wrote a check. He wrote out the check for what he would be paid — Social Security tax and everything. He sent it Buffett. He said, “You have zero risk.” And Buffett hired him.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: How many people say, “I’m going to work for free”? If you want something… In fact, if I was starting out, I would say, “I will pay you.” I would do the same thing. I would give you a check. “Here’s the money. If I don’t earn this money in 90 days, keep it. You have zero loss. Just give me a shot.”

STEVE DEACE: So, I did. I worked minimum wage. I also worked in the mailroom full-time at Blue Cross Blue Shield. I was slotting mail for grade-two pay. That was the lowest full-time grade-pay that they had at the time.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: But let’s be real. You had a college degree. What job skills could you even offer? You knew how to bet on college games?

STEVE DEACE: Yep. Pretty much.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: OK. That doesn’t look good on a resume.

STEVE DEACE: [I had] untapped potential that no one had any clue how to how to frame or monetize. That was my resume at the time.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: So, anyone who said no to you was doing the right thing. They were looking at your numbers. Anyone who said yes took a leap of faith. They did a good service — even if they only gave you lunch as payment.

STEVE DEACE: Correct. I would work 7:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. in the mailroom at Blue Cross. Then, I would have a little break. And then, I’d start at the news desk at 5:00 p.m., two nights a week — part-time. I was literally just above swabbing the poop deck. I pestered them to give me a shot for months, and they finally did.

STEVE DEACE: They wanted me to do a report that compared the Iowa state meet high school track and field results to those of bordering states. I thought to myself: “The only thing worse than track is field. I’m not covering track. That’s for losers.” So, I never did the assignment.

STEVE DEACE: One Saturday, I was supposed to come in and help prepare the Big Peach. That was the name of our Sunday sports page. At the time, it was printed on paper. It was kind of a tradition they used to do. I didn’t make it into work that day because my buddies and I were out partying the night before.

STEVE DEACE: The next morning, I was going to Hardee’s to get everybody breakfast. I wasn’t wearing my seatbelt, and I got slammed by a car. It broadsided me. My whole steering column went to the passenger side of the vehicle. The back windshield ended up 20 yards away across the street. I had glass in my head. I was taken away on an ambulance. I should have been dead. I walked out of the ER that night with a minor concussion.

STEVE DEACE: I remember sitting in the ER that night. I hadn’t had a spiritual awakening yet, but I had a personal one. I was voted both “most likely to succeed” and “teacher’s headache” in my senior class. [I thought]: “Right now, I work in a mailroom. I do the Agot section and Photoshopping for the sports desk every night. What the hell am I doing here? This is a waste of potential. So, I’m going to go back in there after I get better, and I’m going to be the best damn part-time news assistant they’ve ever had.”

CHARLES MIZRAHI: Let me ask you a question. It’s much easier to avoid stupidity than seek brilliance. You might not have an answer for this.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: What self-destructive thing was going on your head that made you think: “I have an opportunity here. Let me try to screw it up as badly as I can. If they told me to write about track and field, I’d write articles about how grass grows. Anything they needed me to do, I’d do it.”

CHARLES MIZRAHI: You finally have the opportunity. Your foot is in the door, but you blow it up. Why?

STEVE DEACE: That’s a great question. There’s a reason we’re told to humble ourselves in the scriptures.

STEVE DEACE: Like most people — particularly at that young age — I had an over-inflated view of myself and what I was owed. Frankly, that was what I missed about Dave. When he wasn’t drunk or high — and when he was a good dad — he made you toe the line. You had to explain yourself. You had to be disciplined. There were expectations you had to meet. I was dispatched from that.

STEVE DEACE: Then, what happens is I use his abusive side to justify why I don’t need discipline. He hasn’t taught me any good stuff. So, you just throw the baby out with the bathwater. And then, you don’t want to be held accountable for any of your actions.

STEVE DEACE: I really believe my accident was the first step that God made in sticking his foot up my backside and getting my attention. I had a purpose for my life — a calling. He gave me my talents and abilities to do something more than play Tecmo Super Bowl and intramural basketball. It was a wake-up call.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: Where was your mom during all of this?

STEVE DEACE: By this time, she has a tumor on her spine, and she’s undergoing surgery. I’ve told you she has her GED.

STEVE DEACE: When I got a little bit older, and my brother was old enough to be in school, she went back to college and got a nursing degree. She went from a 15-year-old mom to a nurse. She worked in the ER. She ran the local walk-in clinic in Grand Rapids. But they discovered a cyst on her spine.

STEVE DEACE: It got really difficult for her to work. They tried to figure out what to do with it. They finally determined that, even though it was benign, they needed to take it out. It was a dangerous surgery, but they were concerned about what would happen — long-term — if they left it in. A nerve was severed when they took it out. Ultimately, she became disabled from that point on. She couldn’t work as a nurse anymore.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: So, what happened to her? Did you take care of her?

STEVE DEACE: I took care of her for a bit. She got remarried. Dave ended up leaving her in the hospital. He didn’t want to take care of her anymore. My wife and I — we were just married — helped her for a little while.

STEVE DEACE: Then, she met another guy — a wonderful guy named Jim. [He] has taken really good care of her for the last 15 years or so.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: That’s great.

STEVE DEACE: When I got back to The Des Moines Register, I showed up in a neck brace. I didn’t know that they were going to fire me that Saturday for not fulfilling my assignment. They only told me that several months later. They told me that the reason they didn’t fire me was because I showed up with a neck brace, and they just didn’t have the heart to do it.

STEVE DEACE: So, some of that liberal media bias actually worked in my favor for a change. But when I came back, I went to work. I kicked ass and took names. I did everything. I worked every hour I could.

STEVE DEACE: Months went by. I met the woman who would become my wife, and we were thinking about getting married. I was trying to figure out if I had a career in media — or if I was just going to work at a company like Blue Cross and work my way up through its chain. I decided to push the issue at the Register. We had the No.1 boys basketball team in the state of Iowa. It was outside the Des Moines area.

STEVE DEACE: So, even though we were the largest newspaper in the state, we hadn’t covered them yet. I called them up and pretended to be the new reporter assigned to high school sports. I interviewed the coach and star players. I was going to write a massive profile on their team for the paper. I didn’t tell the paper I was doing that. I figured no companies had ever fired somebody for taking initiative.

STEVE DEACE: I wrote a long profile. I was working at the sports desk as an assistant on a Saturday night for the Sunday paper. I had the story done. I waited until everybody left and filed it in our digital system — like you would if you were a reporter assigned to a story.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: Why’d you do that?

STEVE DEACE: I wanted to see if I was good enough to be a writer or not.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: But they wouldn’t give you the opportunity?

STEVE DEACE: I thought they’d never give me the opportunity because of how I had done it before. I had to take the bull by the horns and take charge.

STEVE DEACE: So, I did this on a Saturday night. Monday, I’m in the mailroom at Blue Cross Blue Shield — slotting mail. A call comes in, and it’s my assistant editor at The Des Moines Register. He says, “Hey! You are not allowed to violate protocol like this. You get your blankety-blank over here. As soon as you’re done with your shift over there, we’re going to have a talk.”

STEVE DEACE: Right after I got done with my shift at 3:30 p.m., I went across the street and into the newsroom. The deputy sports editor was waiting for me. It was just him and me because the crew hadn’t come in to do the nighttime paper yet. And he just berated me for what I did. I misrepresented myself.

STEVE DEACE: Everything he said was true, but I wanted to push the issue to see if I had earned another chance. He berated me for several minutes, and I started contemplating which mic-drop, snotty one-liner I was going to say before I walked out of there and told my buddies — years from now at a bar after my Blue Cross shift — about how I told off the editor of The Des Moines Register.

STEVE DEACE: So, I’m trying to think of what my walk-off shot’s going to be. While I’m thinking about it, he looks at me and says, “But… Your profile is really good. So, we’re going to run it on the front page of the sports section tonight.”

STEVE DEACE: That was the first gift my wife ever bought me. She had my cover story on the front page matted.

STEVE DEACE: I still have it hanging in my man cave today. And that’s how my media career got started. I got into radio by writing a feature about the first sports talk station in Des Moines. The guy who ran the station called me a few months later and asked me if I wanted to be on the air. I said, “Are you going to pay me?” He said, “Yeah.” I said, “OK.” For every radio or broadcasting job I’ve ever had, somebody I hadn’t previously known called me and offered me the job.

STEVE DEACE: One time, I actively tried to get a broadcasting job. Amy, my wife, was originally from Michigan, too. We initially thought that our goal — when I was just doing sports talk radio — was to get back to Michigan and work in Detroit. It was a big market that covered all the teams that I used to grow up watching.

STEVE DEACE: At the time, WDFN was the big Clear Channel sports station in Detroit. Its program director was a guy named Gregg Hansen. Every day, for a week, I sent him a pizza — long distance — from Iowa. It was to be delivered with his name spelled out in pepperoni so [he would] listen to my demo tape.

STEVE DEACE: After several days, he finally got back to me and said, “We don’t have any openings, and I don’t think you’re that good anyways.” I didn’t get the job.

STEVE DEACE: Not that I’m bitter, but I believe he’s now on his fourth or fifth radio job since he told me that. Let’s just say I’ve kept track of how that has gone. Some of your viewers/listeners may know Dave Revsine. He works at the Big Ten Network. He’s their lead anchor.

STEVE DEACE: Years ago, when I was starting in sports talk radio, he would come on my show as a guest. He went from the Quad Cities in Iowa to ESPN. He said, “Dude, if I can jump from the Quad Cities, with your talent, you could do that from Des Moines. Let me put you in touch with my agent.”

STEVE DEACE: I sent his agent the best material I had. Two weeks went by, and he hadn’t followed up with me. I finally called Dave Revsine’s agent. I said, “Hey. I just wanted to know if you got my stuff.” He said, “Hey, kid. You’re not that good. It’s great that you got a gig at 26 years old in Des Moines. You should probably settle in for a nice life in Iowa, meet a good woman and settle down. But from what I’ve heard, I don’t really see you going bigger than that.”

STEVE DEACE: Those were the things I learned after being out of Dave’s home. I needed motivation. I needed the sober Dave — who would push me the right way. So, those little slights or grievances … I used things like that to motivate me throughout the course of my career.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: What do you think these guys heard in your demo tapes that made [them think] that you were not what they needed?

STEVE DEACE: That’s a really good question. I think part of it was that I was raw. When I started co-anchoring a radio show, I’d never done it before. I had no idea how to format a show, and I hadn’t discovered my own voice. I think Revsine just heard my ability to analyze a game. That’s not the same as hosting a program, formatting it and everything else.

STEVE DEACE: I think I was just really raw. That’s most of it. But I think the other part of it was that I was a non-conformist.

STEVE DEACE: That hurts me sometimes in conservative media — [especially] when I’m expected to be a mouthpiece for the Republican Party. I think B.S. is B.S. — regardless of whether you have an R, D, I, Z or Greek alpha after your name. A producer on CNN once told me: “I don’t really care what your opinion is. I want to know what side of the argument you’re on.”

STEVE DEACE: What if I think both sides of an argument are full of poop? I think there’s this notion of fitting people into the narrative — where there’s always a hero and heel. It’s like everything is pro-wrestling. My nonconformist streak has had people in my industry wonder: “Even if I think he has talent, if this guy alienates both sides of every argument, how can I make money off of that guy if he doesn’t build a loyal following and everybody hates him?”

CHARLES MIZRAHI: How did you end up where you are now?

STEVE DEACE: I ended up getting switched from sports to news in Iowa. On the big blow torch there, WHO, a lot of people gave me credit — though they shouldn’t have — for Mike Huckabee’s surprise win in 2008 over Mitt Romney. My show basically did all the research and advertising that he didn’t have the money to do. Mike won the caucuses. Candidates win elections, not hosts.

STEVE DEACE: I might have been the reason Romney lost. I did the opposition research that Mike didn’t have the money to do. That gave me a lot of exposure and grew my show. A couple years later, we had a historic election — where we took out Supreme Court justices. My show was a big reason why we were able to do that locally.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: Can you explain to me how that’s possible? I’m in New York. You’re in the heartland. How is that possible — based on the way our system works?

STEVE DEACE: We have retention elections for Supreme Court judges in Iowa. The only time it’s ever been done in American history is when we did it in 2010. They tried to amend the Constitution on the marriage issue, which they weren’t allowed to do.

STEVE DEACE: So, we went after them on my show. On a 50,000-watt blow torch basically was the air war for that movement. We ended up beating three state Supreme Court justices in a retention election by almost 10 points — which had never been heard of before.

STEVE DEACE: After it was over, somebody came to me and said, “I know a group of Christian businessmen who were very impressed with the influence you’ve had in Iowa. They know how Rush Limbaugh got where he’s at. He was sitting in Sacramento, California, and a couple of successful businessmen spotted him in a mid-major market and said, ‘Hey, we think this guy could do big in New York. Let’s get him on in New York.’ Likewise, they’re willing to put the seed capital around you if you want to see what’s beyond Des Moines. They’re willing to give you the financing to try to get to that point.”

STEVE DEACE: My wife and I thought and prayed it over. I had a great job at WHO and security. But we thought we’d regret it 20 years from now if we didn’t see what could happen.

STEVE DEACE: So, we took the gamble. I honored my six-month non-compete to the letter of the law. When it was over, I wasn’t sure what to do next. I had some political contacts because I was very involved in presidential elections. I knew some people. I got a call one day from a guy named Stu Epperson Jr. He said, “My dad is the founder and chairman of Salem Media Group” — which is the No.1 Christian media company in North America.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: Wait, hang on a second. These guys come and say, “We’re going to back you. We want to see how well you’re going to do.” Do they have a deal on the table?

STEVE DEACE: No. None of them were radio guys. And I told them, “You guys need to know that I don’t know how to get from point A to point B. If you’re willing to pay me to figure it out, I’ll try it.” They were all very successful, wealthy men in other industries. They didn’t know anything about radio.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: Were they putting up any money?

STEVE DEACE: Yes.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: So, at least you were getting paid during those six months.

STEVE DEACE: Yes.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: You quit your job, and for six months you basically did nothing.

STEVE DEACE: I was allowed to do some online things. That was the 2012 Iowa caucus cycle. So, I did some things for Politico about what was going on in Iowa — just to keep in the game and my name out there. But that was about it. That was about all I did for six months.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: These guys have money. They’re backing you. They think you could be somebody. For six months, you’re in the wilderness. Six months is over. Now, what happens?

STEVE DEACE: I began calling every political contact and calling in every political favor I had. I was owed quite a few. But I wasn’t getting anywhere.

STEVE DEACE: Then, one day, I got a call from a guy named Stu Epperson Jr. He said, “My dad is the founder and chairman of Salem Media, and we’re looking to see if we can find someone who can do what Glenn Beck does. He fuses religious elements with current affairs. We have a company with evangelical convictions. So, we’re looking for somebody who’s like-minded. We’ve been trying to find that person, and a friend of mine sent me your stuff. They told me you were the guy. I listened to it, and I think it’s spectacular. I think it might be you.”

STEVE DEACE: One of my investors had his own plane, so we flew down to Winston-Salem, North Carolina to meet Stu Epperson Sr.

STEVE DEACE: If you remember Gone with the Wind and “Tara.” I don’t know what you would call it. It’s gorgeous.

STEVE DEACE: Stu Epperson Jr. was instrumental in getting my foot in the door in national media. A couple years later, Salem decided to go ahead and syndicate me alongside Medved, Prager and Hewitt. They created a time slot for me.

STEVE DEACE: By that point, another company had been founded called Conservative Review. That was started by some former conservative Capitol Hill staffers and activists who wanted to hold the Republican Party accountable from the right. They wanted a media guy on their team, and they reached out to me. I was working for them and Salem.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: Hang on a second, Steve. What happened to the guys who were backing you?

STEVE DEACE: They’re still with me. They don’t have to back me anymore. We’re making enough money now.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: When Salem called you up, those guys were still part of that deal?

STEVE DEACE: Yeah. They’re still part of the deal to this very day. They’re more of my elders now. They hold me accountable and make sure I don’t make dumb decisions.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: But you had to go in with them?

STEVE DEACE: I took my investors to Winston-Salem with me.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: That’s what I’m saying. So, the deal was that you were partners with them in any deal going forward, correct?

STEVE DEACE: Correct.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: OK, good.

STEVE DEACE: Our show had reached about 80 affiliates — including New York City and a lot of other big markets. Conservative Review decided that it wanted to start its own video product and podcasting platform. So, I decided to go exclusively with them because it was better for my family to avoid doing this from 8:00 to 11:00 p.m. with school-aged children.

STEVE DEACE: About a year later, they merged with TheBlaze. Ironically, I’m now doing the show right after Glenn Beck. Here we are.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: The rest is history.

STEVE DEACE: One of my books was just sold. It’s being scripted for a motion picture as we speak. I got that deal. Movie producers called me out of the blue and said, “We heard about your book on Glenn Beck’s show. We want to buy the movie rights.” Every opportunity I’ve ever gotten that has worked, someone just called and offered it to me.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: So, Salem is still part of your deal, or are they out?

STEVE DEACE: I’m just with BlazeTV now — Blaze Media.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: And they were okay with letting you out of that deal?

STEVE DEACE: I didn’t really work for them. This entire time, I’ve maintained that I have my own company. And all these other companies contract with my company for my content. I’ve never been TheBlaze’s employee. I was never Salem’s employee. For the last 10 years, I’ve only been an employee of my own company. Then, these other companies decide if they want to purchase my content. Basically, I work as a vendor.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: Gotcha. How long have you been doing this show?

STEVE DEACE: We started the current BlazeTV show about two and a half years ago.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: And you’re up to 100,000 listeners per episode?

STEVE DEACE: Yeah. When you factor in listeners, viewers and podcasts I’d say that’s a fair-to-conservative estimate.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: Why are people tuning in to listen to you? There’s so much competition out there.

STEVE DEACE: There’s a meta-macro reason, and then there’s a contemporary micro one.

STEVE DEACE: When I started the show, I wanted to do for a biblical worldview what Rush did for conservatism. Rush showed us that we didn’t have to water down conservatism. It could be an entertaining product. That’s the No. 1 thing. As the great prophet Snoop Dogg once said, this is “show business.”

STEVE DEACE: No one cares how smart you are, how righteous your idols are or how virtuous your virtues are. It’s irrelevant. It’s got to be an entertaining product. I think Rush has shown that we could do that with conservatism. I’ve wanted to take this to another level. Now that we’ve established kind of a baseline, politically, there’s a missing spiritual element in the country that I think people are craving as we drift away from it.

STEVE DEACE: I used to go to trade shows when we first launched our national show. I’d hear program directors say to me, “I don’t know if I should put you on my conservative or Christian station. Which station should I put you on?” I would always say, “Well, is it a good show?” They’d say, “Yeah!” I’d respond: “Then put it on your best station. Don’t worry about whether it’s a Christian show or a conservative show.”

STEVE DEACE: I’m not trying to do a Christian show. I never have been. I’m not trying to do a conservative show. I’m trying to do a damn-good show.

STEVE DEACE: If I do a damn-good show, then the values I have will shine through. I’m not plotting which parts of the scripture I can infuse into my program. I’m plotting a good show. If that happens, my belief system is going to shine through. I don’t have to contrive it. I don’t have to force or coerce it.

STEVE DEACE: So, I wanted to do for a biblical worldview what Rush did for conservatism. I think that there’s a market of people who have never heard God’s word through any prism other than a pulpit or certain framework that they’ve stereotyped or dismissed. And they’ve have never seen it applied to anything other than explicitly spiritual or religious principles. But every day, [there are] ways that we actually live here in a very practical, material world. I think that’s the meta-reason.

STEVE DEACE: And the micro reason … Our audience doubled in the last year because, right away, when I read the Imperial College survey, I smelled a rat. The COVID-19 data and models weren’t congruent. The premise and assumptions did not add up to the conclusions. Our show was one of the very first to begin pushing back on whatever this last year has been.

STEVE DEACE: COVID-19 is — at the very least — the worst pandemic to hit this continent since the Hong Kong flu. That was a half-century ago. It’s probably worse than that. So, that would make it the worst since the Spanish flu — which happened a century ago. That cannot be dismissed. Much of what we’ve been told about that seriousness has been erroneous, unscientific, flat-earth, voodoo and B.S.

STEVE DEACE: Our show has been on the front lines. I think a lot of people around the country sensed something wasn’t right. Usually, when someone in leadership won’t let you ask questions about their truth, it’s because it’s probably a lie. Our show has doubled its audience in the last year because of the role it has played in pushing back on that.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: How did they find you? How did they know that you were doing that?

STEVE DEACE: A lot of it has been happenstance. People see us, we get shared or it’s word-of-mouth. I wish I could tell you it was some slick, sophisticated marketing campaign. No. It just kind of happened.

STEVE DEACE: How do you do it? It’s two hours a day, every single day. Forget about putting on the show. All the research. You always have to be ready — especially right before your show starts. If something breaks, you have to fix it immediately. How do you do that?

STEVE DEACE: It goes back to what I said from the very beginning. It helps that I’m very gifted. I have a quick wit. I have a near-photographic memory. I can absorb mass quantities of information, which makes me perfectly suited for my job.

STEVE DEACE: I also have a great staff of two. I can outsource everything technical to my producer, Aaron, with minimal supervision. He shares part of my brain. My editor/assistant Todd is the other half. I hand off a lot of the research to him because he understands what I’m thinking and where I’m coming from.

STEVE DEACE: Having a quality staff alongside my God-given giftedness helps me do a lot of work in a shorter amount of time than it would take the average person. I always make sure I have plenty of family time and everything left over.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: What’s your next step?

STEVE DEACE: We’re about to release a book. We’re about to drop a house on a witch named Anthony Fauci. The book is finished. It’ll be released. We’re going to rush it to paperback with the publisher. We’re going to bypass hardcover to get it in the hands of people like you — and audiences like yours — as soon as possible. It will be the layman’s compilation takedown of the biggest fiend and fraud in American history: Anthony Fauci. He’s the most dangerous and powerful bureaucrat we’ve ever seen. That book will be out later this spring.

STEVE DEACE: We’re also going to start shooting the movie version of my 2016 book, A Nefarious Plot, later this year. Then, I hope [my] show will continue to grow.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: What do you expect to happen when you come out with the Fauci book?

STEVE DEACE: I want two things. One, it’s a shame that we’re a year into this, and other than the two attempts Rand Paul made in the Senate, the first skeptical questioning this man has faced came from a Mexican comedian over the weekend. [We’ve had] nothing from our own media.

STEVE DEACE: If we hand this much power to somebody who is unelected, we deserve to have to have him face skeptical questioning. That’s No. 1. We’re going to do the work our uninquisitive media — who just told us to lockdown forever until there was a vaccine — hasn’t done for the last year. 

STEVE DEACE: No. 2: This can never happen again. I believe Donald Trump is not the president today because he surrendered his presidency to Anthony Fauci for four months and never recovered.

STEVE DEACE: That set into motion the mail-in voting and everything else that ended up creating the outcome we saw last year. We can never again allow an unelected bureaucrat — one singular figure — to have this much unaccountable power. How can you expect to remain a free people? This can never happen again.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: But shouldn’t the political system rein a person like that in? Why was he let loose?

STEVE DEACE: That will get covered in the book. All the potential answers to your question are bad. Self-government begins with the self. We have to assert ourselves more in this process.

STEVE DEACE: As a successful businessman, you know that there’s a limited amount of people you can trust to think for you. And they have to earn your trust. And once it’s earned, it doesn’t take a giant screw-up for that trust to be gone. You have to remain in charge. You have to be kept abreast of situations. You have to be in control. 

STEVE DEACE: I think that we have turned representatives and proxies into leaders. We don’t consent, we defer. Consent of the governed, makes you a citizen. Deference to a government makes you a subject. We have been far too deferent as Americans. And I think that’s reflected in the fact that 92% of incumbents get re-elected every year.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: We’re going to look back on this year as a disaster.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: Last week, I saw in The Wall Street Journal that Sweden didn’t have a lockdown. They’ve had the same amount of cases. I’m living in New York where we’ve had de Blasio and Cuomo make up their own numbers, edicts and restrictions.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: It was a disaster. What can be put in place to make sure something like this never happens again?

STEVE DEACE: The No.1 thing we need is a 9/11 style tribunal. And it’s not just because of fraud and gaslighting. I’ve never seen a subject gaslighted more in my career than Sweden. During most of my career in conservative media, I’ve been told by my lefty friends that we need to become like Sweden.

STEVE DEACE: Last year, I said, “Heck yeah. Let’s see what Sweden is doing.” All the rest of my lefty friends said, “Sweden? I barely knew him.” I’ve never seen anything more gaslighted in my career than Sweden.

STEVE DEACE: Sweden will get its own chapter in our Fauci book — which will have more footnotes than pages. This book will be airtight. I don’t attack when I’m not willing to kill, and I don’t step into the arena unless I know I have my facts right. So, we’re going to drop a neutron bomb on this issue. But what we need is a fully-transparent 9/11 style tribunal.

STEVE DEACE: Charles, it’s not just about exposing the fraud of this last year. Think of the other side of the equation. Right now, there are a lot of Americans who don’t want to take vaccines because they don’t trust the media that’s telling them it’s safe. They don’t want to trust the media that has lied to them for the last year about masks, lockdowns, California, Andrew Cuomo and nursing homes.

STEVE DEACE: They don’t want to trust a media that says, “AstraZeneca’s vaccine is great. Ignore the fact that Italy, France, Germany, Norway and virtually every European nation are telling you they’re not going to give it to their people. Now, I don’t know if AstraZeneca’s vaccine is good or if it causes blood clots. I just know that Big Tech won’t allow me to talk about it on my Twitter account.

STEVE DEACE: When the truth is no longer attainable, it works the other way. There may very well come a time when we face a Captain-Trips-level contagion that does take precedence — even over our individual liberty — when mere survival is at stake.

STEVE DEACE: We’ve now conditioned an entire portion of the population to not believe public health officials at all because they’ve been lied to so much. They’re been told: “If you question why an anti-malaria drug that has been licensed since the 1950s is now being called dangerous, you’ll be banned from your Facebook page. You can’t get back your kids’ pictures from 10 years ago. You’re locked out forever if you do that.”

STEVE DEACE: Now, we’re getting the worst of both worlds. We’re creating sheeple who just want to be lied to and given a mask like it’s some kind of totem. Or, we’re telling people: “Don’t believe anything any expert tells you. Put your head in the sand. People are dropping dead across the street, but it’s fake news. Don’t believe it.” That’s a dangerous place for a culture to be.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: Do you think that’s where we are now?

STEVE DEACE: That’s where we are now. Ironically, of all places, the left-leaning Atlantic had a feature last week that totally nailed where we were as a culture.

STEVE DEACE: It talks about the fact that, as America turns from God, religion has not diminished. Instead, politics has been elevated to the level of religion.

STEVE DEACE: In America, we were having a nice, tidy culture war for 20 years. We were killing each other on op-ed pages, cable news shows and debates. But when it was over, we all went to the ball game together and rooted for the home team. We all went to the high school recital together and watched our kids play. You know what I’m saying? There were ground rules. It was not a zero-sum game. You didn’t feel like you were in a culture war when you took your kids to Disney World.

STEVE DEACE: We’ve turned this into a zero-sum game. There’s nowhere to go. We have to fight everywhere we go. That just creates bone-on-bone, no-cartilage division. Now that we’ve lost our faith in God, we’ve turned towards political idolatry. My tribe against your tribe. I have no standards. My only standard is that my side wins no matter what, and your side loses. Because life is over if your team wins. That’s a dangerous place for a culture to be, and that’s where we are.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: We went from coexist to zero-sum in a heartbeat.

STEVE DEACE: That’s exactly right. And we did it in 15 minutes. I really believe that the left — or a segment of it — did this. After social media companies were invented and went public, they thought that they could pressure them that way and be their thought-police. That’s No.1.

STEVE DEACE: What’s happened in the last few years is that on my side — on the right — our people have been like: “OK. If that’s we’re going to do that, then boycott everything.”

STEVE DEACE: I put up a post that invited people to join my NCAA tournament bracket contest and win show swag on one of my social media accounts. The first six posts were like: “ESPN hates me. Social justice. I’m out.” Now, both sides have decided: “I’m not living with anybody I don’t agree with and affirms me all the time.” That’s not good. If you have children or grandchildren…

STEVE DEACE: I have three teenagers right now. I’m worried about their future.

STEVE DEACE: Once Dr. Seuss is off-limits, everything’s game. Dr. Seuss is now Das Kapital or the John Birch Society training manual. But you can watch Cardi B simulate rubbing her [private part] against another woman. That’s not a healthy place for a culture.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: How do you see this ending?

STEVE DEACE: Revival or bust. There was a reason why we had great awakenings in the 18th century — before we had freedom and liberty. We saw more great awakenings in the 19th century to sustain that.

STEVE DEACE: I think we’re living on the fumes of that. I think that, without putting God — where our rights come from — at the center place of civilization again, we’re going bust. This is always what happens when cultures turn their backs on the God of the Bible. They turn towards idolatry. They devolve into sectarianism and tribalism. Each side debates whose idol is worthy of idolatry. Everything’s a zero-sum game, and we’re heading down that road. Sadly, I think we’re on it right now.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: Once we took the Declaration of Independence and God out of the school system, it was game over. It was just a matter of time.

STEVE DEACE: Yep. Absolutely.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: All right, Steve. When is your book coming out?

STEVE DEACE: We’re aiming to get it out by the end of April.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: Oh, wow. Pretty soon.

STEVE DEACE: Yep!

CHARLES MIZRAHI: All right. I’ll have to have you back on the show in May. We’ll have to talk more about this after I’ve read it — every footnote — and see what I’m missing. I was a recipient of this craziness in New York when, at Thanksgiving time, Governor Cuomo said houses of worship couldn’t have more than 10 people. We had synagogues that could hold 1000 people, but we couldn’t go. Our religious freedom was taken away in a heartbeat — until the Supreme Court ruled against it.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: Never in my life have I ever felt that our freedoms were close to being taken away from us — until this past year.

STEVE DEACE: Yes.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: I never would have thought it was even possible — especially in a place like New York City. I think maybe this is the shot across the bow to wake us up — not towards revolution, but I think reawakening is good. I think you summed it up best.

STEVE DEACE: Amen.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: All right. Steve, thanks so much for being on the show. I enjoyed this. An hour went by in a heartbeat. I could speak to you for another hour, but you probably have to prepare for another show soon. Thanks again for coming on the show. You’re welcome back anytime.

STEVE DEACE: You bet, man. Thank you very much. Take care.

CHARLES MIZRAHI: Thanks for listening to this episode of The Charles Mizrahi Show. If you’re a new listener, welcome! If you’ve been listening for a while, we’re glad to have you back. Either way, we’d love to know what you think of the show. Please leave a review if you listen on Apple Podcasts. Reviews make it easier for others to find the show. You can also see a video of the interview on The Charles Mizrahi Show channel on YouTube.