Stephanie Ruhle: CEOs Not Only Have an Open Line to Trump — They Know How to Work Him

Stephanie Ruhle didn’t start her career in television — she started on Wall Street.

That background, she says, shapes how she views President Donald Trump’s administration today. To Ruhle, many of the most consequential decisions in Washington are best understood not as political strategy, but as business transactions.

On a new episode of Mediaite’s Press Club, the host of The 11th Hour and senior business analyst for MS NOW sat down with Mediaite founding editor Colby Hall to discuss the network’s post-NBC transition, the modern media ecosystem, and why the real story of Trump’s presidency is often found not in speeches or campaign rallies, but in boardrooms and private phone calls with corporate leaders.

“Politics is business,” Ruhle told Hall. “Because at the end of the day, what are all of these politicians on both sides of the aisle controlled by? They’re donors.”

Ruhle’s perspective is shaped by a background few cable news hosts share. Before joining Bloomberg and later MS NOW, she spent more than a decade on Wall Street, working at Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank in structured credit.

That experience, she said, now informs how she approaches covering Washington.

“When Donald Trump won the first time, the unplanned benefit for me was that I knew [former National Economic Council Director] Gary Cohn. I knew [former Deputy National Security Advisor] Dina Powell. I knew [former Secretary of the Treasury] Steve Mnuchin,” she explained. “I knew Donald Trump, who had never worked in politics before.”

Those relationships — and the broader overlap between business and government — have only intensified in Trump’s second term, she argued.

In particular, Ruhle pointed to the administration’s tariff policies as a case study in how corporate access can shape outcomes.

Large corporations, she explained, were able to front-load shipments and leverage political relationships to mitigate the impact of tariffs, while smaller companies struggled to survive.

“For those big box stores, what they did — because they control the supply chain and they have the money — they front-loaded all of their orders,” she said.

The result, she noted, was that consumers rarely saw the empty shelves that some executives had warned about.

“But you know what was?” she continued. “Small businesses in America.”

Ruhle described the dynamic as part of a broader pattern in which the Trump administration operates through personal access and transactional relationships — something many CEOs have learned to navigate.

“They know how to get to him,” she said of corporate leaders. “They all have his phone number. You can pick up the phone and call him.”

That access, she added, can translate directly into policy influence.

“Many CEOs in the last year… are trying to get exemptions from the tariffs,” Ruhle said. “How do you get an exemption? Well, you pay a lobbyist. You pay a fixer to get you a meeting.”

“It’s not an insult to say that Trump 2.0 is not necessarily America First,” she added. “It’s Trump first.”

Still, Ruhle pushed back on the idea that explaining this system amounts to defending it.

“Covering someone and accurately explaining what they’re doing and how they operate isn’t cheerleading,” she said. “It’s telling you the damn truth.”

That analytical lens — focusing on the intersection of money and policy — has become a defining feature of her nightly program, where one recurring segment is explicitly titled ‘Money, Power, & Politics.’

For Ruhle, the goal is to translate complex financial decisions into terms ordinary viewers can understand.

“Everybody needs to understand money,” she said. “The thing that people vote on more than anything is the cost of living.”

That philosophy also shapes how she thinks about the broader media landscape in an era dominated by algorithms and viral clips.

Ruhle expressed skepticism about the current incentives of digital media, arguing that virality often rewards outrage rather than substance.

“Going viral is making us sick,” she said.

Instead, she points to journalists like Savannah Guthrie and Lester Holt as models — reporters who prioritize clarity over attention-grabbing moments.

“There’s no magical clip of them,” she said. “They’re just the best at what they do.”

She suggested that journalism now operates in an information environment where economic realities — grocery prices, gas costs, and everyday expenses — often speak louder than political messaging.

“You can scare people,” she said. “But you can’t lie to people about their lived experience.”

That belief, she said, is why her reporting often returns to financial questions rather than purely political ones.

At the end of the day, Ruhle sees her role less as a partisan commentator and more as a translator of systems that many Americans feel shut out of.

“My goal in television is, I wanna be your trusted source,” she said. “To explain what’s happening and what it means.”

Subscribe to Press Club on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Read a transcript of the conversation below, edited for length and clarity.

Colby Hall: Hi, I’m Mediaite funding editor, Colby Hall, and on today’s Press Club, we have the original New Jersey girl, mother of three kids in New York, and the host of MS Now’s 11th Hour, Stephanie Ruhle. Steph, thanks for joining.

Stephanie Ruhle: Thank you for having me.

Do you prefer Stephanie or Steph?

Whatever you want to call me.

All right, I think Steph seems to sort of flow right off, right?

Whatever works.

So let’s get right into this network kerfuffle. You left your old network en masse with everyone else, leaving MSNBC to land at this new network, MS NOW. And this rebrand seems to be going very well. I’m curious, like, has the divorce from Comcast and NBC freed you up? It seems like you guys have a little bit more freedom to do things that you weren’t doing before.

So I wouldn’t characterize it as a kerfuffle, and I wouldn’t say it was a divorce. I would say for me personally, the hard part is that I did a lot. I’m also the business analyst for MSNOW, and I did a lot of work for NBC. I did Today Show, I did Nightly News, and those are my dear friends and colleagues.

Got it.

So on a personal level, I miss working with them, but from a work level, from what we make, it’s been great. I mean, do I miss working in 30 Rock? In theory, when I have family who come visit, and they wanna see the tree, sure. But I love our studios, I love working together, I love being with the team, and kind of the beauty is, it’s a 25-year-old company, MS, right? We have the legacy, we have the brand of all that we’ve built, and now we have the nimbleness of not necessarily having to ask NBC’s permission, right, and we don’t have the responsibility of, do we have to get this person on air or that person on air? When you watch my show at night, every night at 11 o’clock, I say, “What are the most important stories that happened today, and let’s analyze them.” And we’ve got reporters from The Washington Post, The New York Times, Bloomberg, and MS NOW. And I feel like now we have sort of the nimbleness. And in terms of like, what’s the downside, I don’t know what it is yet, because I haven’t seen a hiccup, right? We’ve also had the benefit of so much news to cover. There’s not really any time to say like, “Woe is me. How do I feel?” How do I feel? I feel like I got to put on an important show tonight because people need to understand what’s happening in Iran.

Yeah, I mean, there is — to call it a fire hose of news sort of doesn’t do justice to fire hoses. I guess what’s your biggest surprise that’s come from the nimbleness or almost the startup ethos that MSNOW has had?

There’s no surprise, it’s just been great, right? It’s great that here we are together. I like our new offices, I like where I sit with my team. We know what our mission is. Our mission is to try to help people get better and smarter and make sense of this fire hose of news that comes at us. And so for me, I don’t just cover politics, right, I cover politics. I cover business. And all that’s happening in this administration, right — Donald Trump’s biggest policy move last year was the tariffs. Right, and so for me, every single day we’re dissecting that. So I’m on the phone trying to talk to staffers from Congress, trying to talk to Congress people, trying to talk to business people. So there’s not really time to say like, hmm, like, what are we making that’s different? I think we’re just making something that’s important at a time when it really matters.

So, your background, you worked at Deutsche Bank before you went to Bloomberg and worked with the esteemed Erik Schatzker. And I would suspect that that particular expertise and discipline in finance business has suited you particularly well. Do you find that at MS NOW, being the sort of, not the one person, but a person — I know Ali Velshi has his expertise, and there’s a ton of smart people in your network. Do you find that your expertise is a burden that you have to explain, or that you see things that aren’t quite —

I love it. I love it. Especially because I love doing business TV. I worked at Bloomberg for five years, and it’s great when you don’t have a journalism background because one of the most important things to understand is your audience. So when I went to Bloomberg, journalism was hard for me, but understanding the audience was easy. I was the audience. And when I came to TV — I worked for Andy Lack at Bloomberg and at NBC — and Andy said, “In the new world of TV, you have to know the content, love the content, and the audience has to want to have a relationship with you.” And so it was easy for me to make the move to Bloomberg because I said, I have one and two better than anybody else. Three, that’s gonna be a risk. And the joy for me at MS and when I was at NBC is to now cover business and explain it to the general public. Because oftentimes people are like, I don’t speak money, I’m not a finance person, I’m a business person. And if you watch business networks, they’re speaking in a finance language to a finance audience. But now people are starting to understand. Everybody needs to understand money, right? The thing that people vote on more than anything is the cost of living, right? It was Kellyanne Conway who once said, “People vote what affects them, not offends them,” and that’s finances. And so to get to do that at MS and to have an expertise is a gift.

Right, well.

The burden is that you have to go on so many people’s shows. But that’s a gift too.

Honestly, like, that’s a high-class problem.

It’s nice to be wanted, yes.

It’s good to be, I mean, get airtime. You know, it occurs to me that, you know, MS had long been the place for politics, and much of the programming is focused on sort of political lenses. Does the business acumen tether you to sort of harder news and make it more or less strident, for lack of a better term?

No, because I think the idea of pure politics is outdated. When Donald Trump won the first time, the unplanned benefit for me was that I knew Gary Cohn. I knew Dina Powell. I knew Steve Mnuchin. I knew all of these people in this administration. I knew Donald Trump, who had never worked in politics before. Right? And now you have an administration where the president, the way I see it, is putting business first, his personal business first. And so the fact that we can cover that, right? We do a segment on my show called White House for Sale, question mark. And so one could say, people don’t care about the grift. They don’t pay attention to the grift. They pay attention to it if you stop and say, ” Let me explain to you what’s going on.” You could say, “I’m not an investor in crypto. It doesn’t matter to me.” You don’t have to be a crypto investor to understand that the president is pardoning a person who’s deeply invested in the president’s crypto business, while at the same time deregulating the whole industry. The American people should understand that. And that content shouldn’t only exist in business television.

It’s rather shocking that the whole news cycle and story is, well, perhaps by design, the firehose of news that distracts, keeps coverage from what could be the biggest story five years from now, looking back.

Well, that’s why we have to walk and chew gum at the same time. And I’m not saying that it’s not newsworthy when the president says something offensive, hurtful, or insensitive. But I think that can go in a category over here, right? That’s what — you can say like, “Oh, there’s an onslaught of cable news.” We have a lot of time. And in that time, we can cover all of that. On my show every night, the second segment in my show, every night, is called Money, Power, Politics. And that’s what we cover. And so you can say — you can get distracted in the firehose and only cover one thing, but I think people who believe we only cover one thing are people who don’t actually watch it.

Yeah, I think that’s fair. So let’s pivot, stay on the politics side of things, and go back through time and —

Now, let’s be clear, politics is business because at the end of the day, what are all of these politicians on both sides of the aisle controlled by? They’re donors.

Right, I mean, we’ll get to that.

Look no further than Citizens United 15 years ago, and that’s what brought us here.

Tread lightly in the house that Abrams built.

There you go.

So the 2024 election. I think that there was some reasonable criticism, and not just from the right, that it was an election year and that there were at times commentators on MS, then MSNBC, may have sort of tilted towards advocacy and were maybe even hyperventilating a little bit, sort of casting, sort of a true good versus evil. In fact, during the New York Times DealBook Summit, Charlamagne tha God, who sat in that chair with me and is an old friend from iHeart.

And mine, yeah.

Yeah, he’s lovely. He said that he knew that when he turned on MSNBC, he was going to get a perspective from the left. And you pushed back on that. And how did you push back on that? Because I think that’s an interesting thing to revisit.

Because I think there, I just talked to Charlamagne yesterday —

Good for you.

— complimenting something that he said. Because I think there’s a difference between opinion and bias. And I think that you can look at a set of facts, and you look at that set of facts, and then form an opinion at the end of it. That’s how society works. That’s how business works. That’s how mature individuals communicate. And I think it’s totally reasonable to look at a set of facts, and at the end of that set of facts, form an opinion about them. That is different from an ideological bias, where you will contort yourself into a pretzel to get to a conclusion.

I like the physical —

And I can tell you what I cover. At the end of the day, right, so at eleven o’clock, we say here’s what’s happened today, and here’s the best experts and analysts that we have that are going to tell us what it means to you. And so the situation we have with the current president, where he thinks things are hyper-biased, is that if you’re critical of him in any way, he dismisses you and says, ” This is biased,” right? I would love to have more Republicans on my air. And the predicament that many find themselves in is that they’re in two categories. Either you’re a Republican who will be critical of the president. And if you are —

Exposed.

He’ll come for you. He will come for you. And then there’s the other category of Republicans who are hyper-willing to go on television, but the only reason they want to go on television is to “own the libs.” And I don’t wanna bring anyone on television on any side of a political aisle who wants to own anyone. If you can’t be decent and respectful, then you don’t waste my viewers’ time and certainly don’t waste mine.

I admire that. I think that’s good to avoid trolling at all costs, and I will say that your network does seem to have adopted a slightly different tone. And I don’t know if that’s because the election year ended, or if that’s under Rebecca Kutler’s leadership? Or I’m imagining things, but it does seem that the network is less strident over the last year than it was, say, in 2024. Maybe you don’t see it that way. Is that a fair observation?

I can only speak for myself and the show that I make. And I can tell you, since the minute I came to MS, every day we look at the show beforehand and look at every segment after and say, did this help people get better and smarter? And if it didn’t, then we did it wrong. I can tell you, for me, and this is not unique to this year, but there are times when I regret when I go too far, when I get too sassy, when I get too liberal with my words. And the funny thing is, when I look back on those times, it’s always a Thursday or a Friday, and it’s because I’m tired. It’s because I’m tired, right? When I look at times when some independent outlet will come for me over something I said, and you know, they’re always successful at doing that because they can take one shred of truth and then push it, and where they have the right to do it is that shred of truth. They’re right. I did get too sassy. I did get too, you know —

Cocksure.

Yeah. And that is on me because people don’t have to shift what they’re doing, necessarily, but we got to get it right. Okay, like our democracy in many ways is at risk. One of the reasons we’re the most exceptional country, one of the reasons investors from around the world come to the United States, is because we have three separate but equal branches of government. Right now, that’s in question. So I don’t think Rebecca or anyone is saying tighten up your game. I’m saying we need to tighten up our game because the stakes are too high.

Good answer, and going back, you had a really good read on Monday explicitly about this difference between bias and opinion, and, you know, I don’t want to go down this sort of philosophical sort of rabbit hole of like the end of subjectivity and — because that will kill every interview — but I do think that, yes, you are fact-based, your network is fact-based, and I think you do a terrific job on your show. But some may argue that some of the bias creeps in when you choose what facts you want to — you and I both know that cable news is built on pretty black-and-white points of view. Nuance is not something that people click on, so to speak, right? And so there, you could list all the facts about the many different sides, but — and I’m not suggesting that MS does this, I think cable news does this in general. It’s — the bias reveals itself by choosing which facts you’re going to bring up. Is that a fair criticism?

Like what? I think I —

Well, it’s too abstract, but, you know, talking about, sort of, tariffs and, you know, I —

Tariffs are a great example, and we talk about this regularly. Most economists last year thought that tariffs would be economically catastrophic. They weren’t nearly as catastrophic as people expected them to be, but that doesn’t change the fact that the administration is lying when it comes to who pays them. The people who pay the tariffs are American businesses, and then many of them pass it on to the American consumer. Does that mean that we were incorrect in saying that the tariffs would be catastrophic? They didn’t have as bad an impact as we thought they would. Great. But it doesn’t change that they’re lying about who pays them. Those things are both true.

Those two things can be true at the same time. But I remember reading, a well-respected, I think it was the Wall Street Journal, reported that big box CEOs met privately with Trump in the Oval Office in May, a month after.

Yes, it was Walmart, Target —

I think Home Depot?

It was definitely Walmart, yes.

Yeah, and they said, you know, in six weeks that we’re going to have empty shelves. And then, you know, the tariffs were delayed, and then they were brought back, and it was, you know, this sort of back and forth, back and forth. However, the shelves were never empty.

Okay, so remember, when those CEOs met with the president, he then backed off the tariffs. We didn’t face the draconian tariffs we would have. But for those big box stores, what they did, because they control the supply chain and they have the money, they front-loaded all of their orders. And it was May, and they were ordering the Christmas toys and the Halloween presents, all of the Halloween costumes. They did that. So those shelves were never empty. But you know what was? Small businesses in America. Look at the number of small businesses that went out of business last year — devastating. And when you think about those same businesses were the ones that struggled to stay alive during COVID, they got kicked in the teeth during COVID, they found their way back up, and they got kicked in the teeth again. So the story remains true, but sort of the sad part about it is, if you were worried that the big were getting bigger before tariffs, well, during COVID, we saw it. When COVID happened, the big got bigger. That only happened more because of the tariffs, because if you’re one of those massive companies, you can absorb the cost. Even now, if the government has to repay that money, you know that the biggest companies out there are going to get paid first, because they know how to pull all the levers, and the little guy will get it last.

We’re jumping all over the place, but this is terrific, and I’m going off script, but you had an interesting moment to this very point last night on a podcast with Alex Wagner, and it got clipped, and it was, you know —

Did you notice Alex and I were accidentally wearing the same outfit?

I did notice you were both wearing denim chambray shirts, and I also noticed that you looked like you were on your laptop at home.

I was.

And I thought that was authentic. And I also thought, like, how much airtime does this woman need? Like, she’s doing podcasts. But it was great. But you surprised Alex by saying that, I’m paraphrasing, that CEOs and business leaders are actually much happier under the Trump administration.

I didn’t say that.

Okay, I’m paraphrasing.

Okay, so I didn’t say that.

What did you say?

So, during the Biden administration, a lot of the CEOs that I spoke to, while they may have been happy with continuity and no big surprises, they didn’t feel like their voices were heard. And this could also be their egos, right? They love to get phone calls from the president; they love to spend their weekend and say, “I just talked to him, X, Y, and Z.” And during the Biden administration, many that I speak to didn’t feel that way. And I remember speaking specifically to one tech CEO who said, ” You understand a president’s priorities based on what their calendar is, who they speak to.” And I even told somebody at the White House that. I said, you know, “I heard this. What is your response to this?” I had an off-the-record meeting with someone in the White House. And they took that point, and it was funny, they came back, and they pushed back on me. And somebody in the White House said, “This person is the liaison to talk to business leaders, and look at all these business leaders they spoke to.” And I said, “These CEOs aren’t looking to speak to the business liaison in the White House; they want to talk to Joe Biden.” So fast forward to Donald Trump. Many, many CEOs are frustrated, are devastated, are pulling their hair out trying to figure out his policies, trying to figure out what the regulations are, trying to figure out the tariffs. The upside is, they know how to get to him. They all have his phone number. You can pick up the phone and call him. And while they don’t necessarily like that he’s transactional, they know he’s transactional, so they can get what they want if they pay for it. Look no further than the AI CEOs. You could say, I can’t believe all these tech CEOs love the president. Of course they do. If you ran an AI company, AI is going to change every element of the way we work, live, and play. They have buttered up the president, and now this industry, which is the wildest new frontier, is facing little to no regulation. So they have figured out how to game him, and you can game him in that he’s transactional. Many CEOs in the last year have been trying to get exemptions from the tariffs. How do you get an exemption? Well, you pay a lobbyist. You pay a fixer to get you a meeting with Howard Lutnick. And Howard Lutnick is going to say, “Great, what’s in it for us?” It’s not an insult to say that Trump 2.0 is not necessarily America First. It’s Trump first. And I wouldn’t say that CEOs love it. They know what they’re dealing with. And they know how to play this hand.

Do you think that is sort of abject corruption, or is that sort of just how DC Beltway access lobbying has worked forever, and it’s just amped up to a greater degree right now?

I think both are true.

So it’s amped up lobbying that is corrupt.

I think there are instances where it’s amped up lobbying, where the president doesn’t have guardrails this time. And so there are instances where it is amped-up lobbying, and then in situations like in crypto, I would say it’s corruption.

So, the reason I brought this up out of order is that you previously talked about how the CEOs and the major corporations have a big advantage during tariffs because they were able to frontload their shipments, and they were able to sort of grease the wheels and have access to Trump.

Lots of companies got exemptions.

Right, and so now, you know, the thing that you said to Alex I thought was great, and it took her aback, and I think it would make you somewhat of an iconoclast on the network —

God, I was hoping you were gonna say icon, but I’ll take iconoclast.

And an icon. No, but —

I’m kidding.

I know. Did you feel, though, that like that — do you ever have concern that maybe you’re cheerleading for the rich guys or the powerful people?

I’m not cheerleading for them.

Well, okay, that’s right. Okay, forgive me. I didn’t mean to say that.

I don’t because I think this is important. Covering someone and accurately explaining what they’re doing and how they operate isn’t cheerleading, it’s telling you the damn truth.

Yes, okay. I retract the cheerleading line.

And some — but I guess I’m passionate about it because sometimes people don’t like it, and people say, “You are cheerleading.” I’m not cheerleading for you. You have two choices. You can listen to somebody who’s talking to them, who’s telling you this is how they operate and this is what they’re doing, or you can put your head in the sand. And I would argue that if you don’t know how these CEOs operate, fine, get rid of them. Let’s change the way corporate America operates. But if you think that they’re gonna operate in any other way than to say, if you’re the CEO of a company, you need to make sure you are charging the most amount of money that your customers are gonna pay those prices, paying the least amount of money to ensure that your employees will stay, but you’re not paying them more than you need to, and keeping your shareholders happy. That’s the triangle of priorities for CEOs, and that’s just what it is. You can hate it, or you can hate the person who’s telling you this, but that just is what it is.

So this is your world, and you’re very good at this. However, there is this huge distinction between what you just described, which I think is very accurate, and sort of on the nose, this administration and Trump basically ran on sort of re-enfranchising the disenfranchised sort of lower middle class sort of C and D rural people who felt isolated and now — like he made the RNC like kind of a redneck celebration with Hulk Hogan and Kid Rock and Dana White.

But you’re hitting on the most interesting thing because that base is the people who are the most wronged by him.

Right, and who will tell them what you just explained?

So, there’s something, if you cover Trump and Trump 1.0, if you ever went to a Trump rally, a Trump rally is a community event. Right, lots of them are held in places. I remember when I went to one near Beaver County, Pennsylvania, where there aren’t a lot of movie theaters anymore. There aren’t a lot of county fairs. There aren’t a lot of concerts to go to. And if you want to get Steelers tickets, there’s a good chance you can’t afford them anymore because a lot of those businesses are shut down. But a Trump rally is where you can come as you are. And they’re playing music, and they’re partying. It was sort of a community event. How many Trump rallies do you think he’s had this time around? Two. I think that this time around, and I said this after I went to the White House, I think he’s in a gilded cage this time. I think the president spends all of his time at the White House and at Mar-a-Lago. And at Mar-a-Lago, now on any given night, it’s a million-dollar dinner with him. It’s a five-million-dollar dinner with him. It’s people who are extraordinarily successful, who have become more successful, potentially because they’re Trump adjacent. I mean, think about the night we struck Iran, they still hosted a multi-million-dollar fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago. And it was Karoline Leavitt who said this was hugely important. And so I think in some ways, he is in this gilded cage, that he himself is more financially successful than I would guess he’s ever imagined. His family business is through the roof. Howard Lutnick’s family business is through the roof, I mean, their sons have made millions and billions of dollars. And I think that Donald Trump’s original base has not been served in any way. I mean, and I wonder how that’s going to come out. Like we haven’t even talked, I haven’t even heard the president mention the price of healthcare this year. And it spiked in January. And those are the things, right?

Well, because it spiked because they stopped funding Obamacare, and I mean, to me, I wrote about this, that it seems to be clear sabotage. Prices go up. Obamacare sucks. Well, prices went up because you sort of voided out the — you never tried to improve it. You just let it sort of spin out of control.

And listen, we have a flawed health care system in this country. I mean, deal with your insurance company, deal with trying to get your medical coverage. I mean, it’s brutal. If anybody’s had to deal with a health insurer, it’s brutal. God bless you. And so there is a clean opportunity, if the Republicans wanted to put forth a replacement for Obamacare, have at it. Let’s go. I got my calculator out. My notebook’s open. They haven’t presented anything.

So this is really fascinating because it leads me to this next conversation. There’s a famous William Greider book, Who Will Tell the People. And I find that I think about that a lot because across the cable news partisan spectrum, you have various points of view and the top rated, most lucrative outlet, Fox News, it exerts its opinion or bias by not talking about — I wrote an article about this today — that they haven’t talked about the Iran bombing of the school, the school which is a tragedy. They haven’t talked about the terrible polling. They haven’t talked about him wearing a cap at the dignified transfer. These are things that, had any of these things happened under Obama or Biden or Clinton, how do we get out of this — I mean, this is a very complicated question — but like how do we really get out of this really siloed, balkanized, misinformed realm?

So I would say two things. I think that things are not as divided as people think they are. Right, people assume that we have a super, super liberal audience. Fifty percent of our audience identifies as independent or Republican. I would guess Fox News does not have a split like that.

They do have a lot of Democratic, I mean, they have a lot of viewers that —

They have a huge viewership. I think the idea for anyone to be super biased, and I’m not necessarily talking about Fox, maybe I’m talking about the administration, and to not even identify or talk about the plight of the American people, eventually it doesn’t work out. So my mom, for example, is a Trump voter. And you can scaremonger my mother into thinking that there is a caravan coming from South America. And they are going to —

They’re down the block.

— do all the worst things you can imagine. You can, and she’ll believe you, and that’s okay. And that will work for you. You cannot lie to Louise Ruhle about the cost of London broil at ShopRite or gas prices on Route 17. And that will come back to haunt you. And so, from a point where the president likes to say, affordability is an old-fashioned term, we’re not having that problem, everything is A-okay, that’s just not true. You can’t deny people their lived experience. You can scare people. And I think that in the sound-bitey world that we have, it’s easy to scare people, right? Like, I’m no stranger to doom scrolling. Like, my goodness, my entire algorithm is Heated Rivalry. Like they figure out what you’re into and they just keep feeding it to you and feeding it to you. But you can’t lie to people about their lived experience. And so I just don’t think, like yes, Fox News might not cover what polling is, or they might not talk about affordability. I actually do think they talk about affordability, and I think the media landscape is changing, and the more media outlets that exist, the better. The more voices there are to listen to, and you could say, well, the media’s declining. I don’t think it is. All I can say is when I was 17 years old, I was not paying attention to the news. I was not paying attention to world events or cultural events like my 17-year-old is.

It’s crazy how my son will come over and be fluent on — and it’s largely through things he gets on his phone. He doesn’t watch TV.

Yes, and listen, I then will argue with my son about where he’s getting that information from or if the facts he has are true, but we’re talking about it. Right? I wasn’t having those conversations with my parents, so I think it’s great.

So one of the things I noticed about MS, it seems that MS NOW is being more aggressive with social media, streaming, sort of podcasting, and I think that’s smart. Do you, I mean, impossible question to answer simply, but as cable ratings sort of — how do you see this breaking out?

I think we’ve got an amazing television product and we’re gonna keep making that product, and we have the benefit and the budget to say we gotta go other places and do other things. Right before you and I were here, Ali Velshi and I spent an hour on our latest project, and our latest product is a YouTube show that’s just a Q&A. Because for me, sort of, we constantly hear, or critics would say, you’re disconnected. You’re not asking the questions, or what you’re covering isn’t what the people care about. And it’s always been my fantasy to do a call-in radio show, like an old-school call-in radio show. And that’s essentially what Ali and I are trying on YouTube, where once a week, Ali and I sit down and for the week leading we say, send us your questions. Tell us what you want to know. And it doesn’t just, it’s not just great fun and great for Ali and me to work together, it actually helps shape what we think about and what we cover because I can tell you this. Before, or what I learned during COVID, when we only existed in newsrooms, we were just talking to each other. And we were forgetting what stories matter. When COVID hit, and all of us had to work from home, I actually think we did some of our best, most interesting, most creative stories because we were living in communities. We understood, right? I understood because of where I lived that, oh my gosh, because of COVID, the big box stores were allowed to be open because they sold essential products. And the toy store and the surf shop in my town were forced to be closed. But at Walmart, you could buy toys, and you could buy a boogie board, and that was killing small business, right? And I’m just saying those little things, actually understanding what’s happening with people is the magic of being part of social media. It is the magic of doing a show on YouTube when everyday people, when we’re asking people on the street questions. And so I think that being part of an organization that’s nimble enough, they could say, here’s our platform that kicks ass, and now we have the ability to delve into streaming and see what we can do on these other platforms. I think it’s great. You have to be willing to work harder and do more. I think maybe that’s the catch.

Well, Mediaite was early on the sort of clipping of third-party video content, and — for better and worse.

For better.

And, well, thank you. But you see a lot of, you know, a lot of people will see your clips on Instagram Reels, TikTok. And I always wonder, like how much, not just you, but how is that a pernicious effect on television where talent are looking to say things that they know might get a headline or get picked up? Does that — is the feedback loop so sort of immediate, does it change the form?

Unfortunately, I think I’m your worst example. I’m not viral. I mean, I would actually argue —

Well, because I think you’re smart.

But I would argue that going viral is making us sick. And as much as you could be drawn to it, and it’s exciting, and the people who are the most exciting are getting the most attention, and they’re the hottest. But when I sit down, and I think about heroes of mine in journalism. When I think about, you know, my time at NBC, when I think about Savannah Guthrie — one of the smartest humans I’ve ever met. So, when Savannah and I worked together, sometimes I would have the privilege of just helping her when she would get ready for a big interview. I have never met a person who prepares with the amount of detail, care, and research as Savannah. I got to work with Lester Holt, right? Like, these are people you wouldn’t say go viral. There’s no magical clip of them. They’re just the best at what they do. And so if we now have the chance to make these great shows and make digital content great, I don’t do a lot of things that go viral, so maybe I’m not your hottest, wildest thing, but —

You need to scream more. Yell at people more.

No way.

Have your kid walking in the background.

Okay, let me be clear. I love when kids walk in there. I love it when there are cats. I love it when there are kids. Those are human moments, but when people go on TV just to put on a show —

There are shows like that.

And that’s fine. And I think that’s great for them. That’s great for them. But I think if you get to be on television, you have the privilege of being in people’s homes. They’re choosing to watch you. Right? I’m not in the back of a dentist’s office. People are saying, I’m in my pajamas. I’m in bed. I’m going to tune into Stephanie Ruhle. I want to respect them enough that every person who’s on TV with me, I respect. They respect me. They respect the other people there.

Even if they’re in pajamas.

Definitely, especially if they’re in pajamas, yes.

So part of the viral nature, and this is something that I’ve become really interested in, and I’ve written about it a lot, is how the algorithm is changing the way we are as people. Speaking of limited regulation, do you think algorithms are free speech? Are they protected by that? Should we, at some point, get to a point where we realize that algorithms are bringing the worst out of us?

They absolutely — this is where I get to —

It rewards conspiracy and confusion and conflict, and an algorithm can’t determine what’s fact-based, truthful journalism. It’s just the microsecond that you’ve watched and paused something that you can’t believe. You know, it’s embarrassing. I have a friend who plays Fortnite. He sends me Fortnite clips, and suddenly I’m getting a ton of Fortnite because the algorithm says, ” Oh, he watched a Fortnite clip.”

You need to take him out. You need to take him to play some tennis, play a little pickle, or go for a walk. Like, that’s something for you to work out.

I don’t need to be judged. You don’t need to judge me. No, but my point is that do you think algorithms should be — should we force these companies, whether it be Meta or Google or TikTok, to lift the hood and come clean with what the algorithm is? Should this be something that’s regulated?

Brother, please. Yes, of course it should be. But let’s get real. None of these companies is regulated. And Congress gets all proud of itself when they bring them in to testify. And Mark Zuckerberg cuts his hair, and he sits there, and he seems uncomfortable. And every member of Congress takes their three minutes, and they go after him. And then do you know what happens at the end of that day?

They get viral clips, they go viral for yelling, that’s what they do.

Their clip goes viral, and while that clip goes viral, that CEO gets on his G5, goes home, doesn’t tune into any of this, and doesn’t do anything. And that night, when those lawmakers are watching the internet, looking at their clips going viral, do you know what their staff is doing? They’re out to dinner with Meta, and Google, and Snapchat’s lobbyists, paying for them to have some expensive dinner in D.C. So when you say to me, do I think the algorithm should be regulated, hell yeah, it should. But do I have any faith that it’s going to happen? I don’t. So we have to take it upon ourselves to realize that going viral is making us sick. This goes back to Scott Galloway: go outside and touch grass. Listen, I like to doom scroll as much as the next person, but realize what you’re watching, why it’s coming at you, and make a decision of what you want your life to look like.

So that’s great, and I just want to wrap up. You made some headlines when you were on Bill Maher, and this was before the election. And you said some things that you said that the election was sort of a moral one. I think that’s maybe paraphrasing you. But you got — no. You said that the — I think I have to quote here.

No, it was Bret. I was on TV with Bret Stephens, and Bret was still undecided. And I’m not saying you should vote for Kamala Harris or you should go for Donald Trump. But he was saying at the time he hadn’t heard enough answers from Kamala Harris. And to me, I didn’t know, like, what was there left to not know about these two people? And I’m not saying you should vote for one or the other.

But there was ample evidence to make a decision.

But there was — but like what question hadn’t she answered yet that would make you say, “I’m not going to go with her, I want to go with him, I am not going with him, I am going with her.” That’s really what I am saying.

What was interesting was that it made some news, and you got a surprising defender in Sean Hannity. And he sort of said that, you know, it’s fair what she said, but it raises the question, do you consider yourself more of a journalist or a commentator on what’s going on in the news? And I think that those two things are kind of blurred in today’s ecosystem.

I think I’m a journalist and I’m an analyst, right? My title is I’m the business analyst for MS NOW, and that’s what I do. So I’m not standing outside a gas station saying, “I’m reporting and telling you that gas prices have gone from $3.45 to $3.75.” What I’m doing is saying, here’s this economic information, and I am going to analyze what it means for you. And I think that’s what I do.

So if you weren’t doing a TV show right now, what would be the other Steph Ruhle career path?

Well, I mean, I had an amazing, fantastic — I mean, I spent 15 years working in finance. I worked on Wall Street, I worked at Credit Suisse, and I worked with Deutsche Bank in structured credit derivatives. That was an amazing industry to be in. Being in television is not that different. Whether it’s finance or TV, it’s about building relationships. Mark Zuckerberg once said years ago that people don’t trust information; they trust relationships. And I think that’s the same thing in journalism as it was in banking. When I was in banking, there was no hedge fund out there that had, in their charter, that we get our investment ideas from our saleswoman at Deutsche Bank. No, but when I worked in banking, my clients knew, “I need to get from point A to point B, Stephanie Ruhle is the person I can trust to solve this problem and get me there.” And my goal in television is, I wanna be your trusted source, that when you turn on, you know, whenever I’m on TV, I’m the person who’s gonna explain here’s what’s happening and here’s what it means. So I don’t know what I’ll do in my next chapter. I’m so lucky to have the opportunity to have both of these careers, and whether it’s building a relationship with clients or an audience or viewers or readers. I mean, I’m about to spend the weekend with Hoda. Hoda has a new business, Joy 101, and she has a wellness conference. And for me, something I’m super passionate about because wellness is now this trillion-dollar business — people are constantly talking about their sleep, their eating, their steps. Financial wellness is a huge part of our overall wellness. And I love that in my current job, I’m explaining finance to people who don’t speak finance. And I think that whether I’m doing that on TV or whatever my next chapter is, everybody deserves the right to understand money. And I want more people to have that privilege.

That’s a good answer. I think this is a really good rehearsal. We should start recording.

Yeah, listen, nobody loves a camera more than me. Let’s do it again!

Steph Ruhle, thank you so much for coming in and being part of Mediaite HQ. Ladies and gentlemen, Steph Ruhle.

Yay! Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you, it was really good. I appreciate it.

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