Robert Karpeles

Notice the people who are prematurely dancing on @realDailyWire’s grave after news of some layoffs. They’re posting things like “Why Daily Wire failed,” etc. Yet DW is still a massively successful organization and the only one of its kind. It’s pretty obvious that DW is undergoing a restructuring away from entertainment and toward investigative journalism. If their foray into entertainment didn’t pan out, then they should still be applauded for trying to single-handedly take on the Hollywood behemoth. And you should cheer them in their pivot back to a journalism-heavy model. The people wishing for the DW’s destruction are truly wishing for the destruction of conservatism as we know it. Most of them are ppl who will never achieve a fraction of the DW’s success, nor will they even try. They only critique and tear down.

One thing about Millennial managers is we’re gonna approve your PTO with no questions asked. Go spend time with your family for the holidays, not circling back on Cheryl’s emails

Ilhan Omar saying “World War Eleven” is perfect content for SNL and yet they didn’t even touch it. Instead, hey mock an assassination attempt on Trump.

The problem with Rogan isn't that he focuses on the absolute worst Jews of our time (though it is does say something), but that he speaks of Jews as a single entity, transferring the sins of the individual onto an entire people. Substitute any other group and it becomes obvious.

An infographic about the Daily Wire layoffs. Daily Wire risked a lot on Bentkey, and it failed because they sold the wrong person. Here's what I mean. I've spent 15 years inside the conservative / faith baed streaming business. I talk to investors, I talk to other founders, I pitch content, raise capital and I watch what works and what doesn't. And the single biggest mistake I see over and over again in the faith and conservative media space is that they market their products to the parent and forget the kid is actually the customer. Kids' entertainment doesn't work like adult entertainment. A 35-year-old man decides he wants to watch a documentary and he opens an app and he pays for it. That's a one-step transaction. Kids' entertainment is a two-step transaction. Step one: the kid sees something and wants it. Step two: the parent pays for it. If you skip step one, you don't get step two. You just get a parent who subscribed once for ideological reasons and never renewed because her kid kept asking for Bluey. Bentkey skipped step one entirely. I know because Jeremy Boreing said so himself. He told The Christian Post the problem he was solving was that "parents can't trust any of the platforms out there." Not that kids didn't have great shows. Not that children were underserved creatively. The problem he identified was parental anxiety. So that's what he built for. And look, I get it. If you're conservative and you're watching Disney pump ideology into every frame of every show, parental anxiety is real and it's a legitimate market pain point. But anxiety is a reason to subscribe once. Joy is a reason to subscribe forever. Kids will beg their parents to keep a subscription they love. They will not beg for a subscription their parents chose for political reasons. McDonald's figured this out in 1979. Chuck E. Cheese figured it out in 1977. Toys R Us ran a jingle for 40 years because kids sang it, not because parents agreed with the values it represented. The kid is the customer. The parent is the wallet. You have to sell the kid first. Bentkey gave kids Chip Chilla, some redubbed European cartoons from 2015, and a French tween fantasy show. None of those kids were begging for any of that. The parents paid $99 to feel safe. The kids asked for Bluey. Nobody renewed. I made a 10-card breakdown of all of this. The Boreing quote alone is worth reading.

Got this surgery at 14. Tore my ACL two years later. Wouldn't recommend either step to anyone. The meniscus is the knee's load distributor. It transmits 50-70% of compressive force across the joint when you're standing. Trim out a piece and peak contact pressure on the underlying cartilage spikes 71-273% depending on which side and how much got removed. That's accelerated cartilage wear starting the day you leave the OR. The biomechanical second-order effect rarely makes it into the consult room. Cadaveric and finite element studies show partial meniscectomy transfers more load onto the ACL during knee flexion. The ligament ends up absorbing forces the meniscus used to handle. My ACL tore in a routine cut on a soccer field at 16. Two years post-op. The randomized evidence has been brutal for over a decade. Sihvonen 2013 in NEJM split 146 patients between real meniscectomy and a sham procedure where surgeons mimicked the motions without cutting tissue. No difference at 12 months. The 5-year follow-up confirmed it. The 10-year data published last week showed 81% of the surgical group with radiographic OA progression versus 70% of sham. 12% of the surgery group needed a high tibial osteotomy or a knee replacement. Roughly 500,000 to 700,000 partial meniscectomies still get performed annually in the US at $4B in direct costs. Largest knee surgery category in seniors. Medicare pays $5K to $10K a pop. The procedure loses to placebo and accelerates the disease it claims to treat. Wait 30 days. The body fixes more than the OR does.

@CoffeeBlackMD Most of Ben’s podcasts were about American topics. Yea, he sprinkled in Israel stuff too but that was a very small percentage.

I used to subscribe. Dropped it years ago. They are unable to read the room. Even if they “improved” I would never go back. They aren’t the “good guys.” They are the problem. Part of it anyway. It’s healthy to see the market respond like this. I don’t wish bad business on anyone but this one is a stinker and needs to be allowed to pass naturally.

The Daily Wire is the case study of why personality-driven media companies can't compound. Peak in late 2023: Shapiro's YouTube alone pulled 170M monthly views. Daily Wire+ subscriptions, a Nashville studio operation, Bentkey kids streaming, an e-commerce arm with razors and chocolates and cigars. The company was running a billion-dollar conservative Disney bet. Then they made the studio bet bigger. Pendragon Cycle, an Arthurian fantasy series of the kind that has bankrupted larger production houses. Bentkey trying to compete with Disney for kids' attention. Daily Wire+ chasing Netflix. Running a newsroom, a film studio, a children's streaming platform, and a private-label consumer goods business simultaneously requires either limitless capital or extraordinary discipline. Some of it worked. Matt Walsh's "Am I Racist?" was the top-grossing documentary of 2024. Most of it didn't. In March 2024, they parted ways with Candace Owens. She walked into the open market and built a show that competes with theirs. Today she has 5.5M YouTube subscribers and added 10.9M followers across platforms since January 2025, generating roughly 805M views in that window. Daily Wire converted its biggest distribution asset into its largest competitor. Early 2025, co-founder Jeremy Boreing stepped down as co-CEO and launched a solo podcast outside the company he co-founded. Bentkey was shuttered the same year. Entire team cut. Then the audience math hit Shapiro himself. 170M monthly YouTube views in late 2023 to roughly 22M in early 2026. An 85% collapse in 18 months. Another 60K subscribers gone in the last 90 days alone. Layoffhedge.com estimates cumulative workforce reduction above 60% over the past year. Tucker Carlson left Fox in 2023, kept his audience, runs his shop with a fraction of the headcount. Megyn Kelly's network drew 138M YouTube views in February alone. The personalities figured out they don't need the platform. The platform discovered the opposite. Daily Wire built a billion-dollar valuation on names that can walk, take the audience with them, and run a competing show from a laptop the next morning. 170M views to 22M. The company kept the overhead. The audience left with the people.

Here’s Mayor Pete announcing the Biden administration’s decision to fight the Jet Blue and Spirit merger so they could protect consumers and ensure low fares. Now the airline doesn’t exist and passengers are stranded across the country.

AI is Services as a Software. 85% of AI will be plain deterministic software. Must read.

@Mollyploofkins Triumph owns the WHCD. Hi Molly! youtu.be/7ps7sBAHKNM?si…

Let’s gooooo

Proof that it really did 'used to be different'.

Greg Gutfeld just delivered the single most succinct and cutting indictment of the leftwing media's complicity in Saturday's WHCD attack: "This guy did hear voices. They were Ted Lieu's, they were Brandon Johnson's, they were CNN's, they were The View, they were MS NOW." "I think this is a helpful assassination attempt because it is the first one that shows you can be radicalized by liberal smugness." "He wasn't a crank. He was not deranged. Don't buy into that narrative ... He was just following orders." Greg nails it.

Imagine Barack Obama surviving three assassination attempts and 18 hours later, a Republican sent a fundraising email like this

Guys maybe the reason leftists think everything is staged is because THEY STAGE EVERYTHING.

If that had happened to Obama we would have had to embark on a six-month National Conversation on hate, racism and gun control. Legislation would be proposed. Scarred kids would have the day off school. Obama would be a living martyr. The pundits…

@yashar She’s right.

First Lady Melania Trump has issued a statement demanding that ABC fire Jimmy Kimmel.

@brianstelter @whca You’re finally doing journalism.

Leaders across the political spectrum are being rational and responsible in the wake of the @WHCA dinner incident. But there's a lot of ugliness bubbling up from the fewer swamps of the internet, including left-wing conspiracy theories about this all being "staged." Just stop it.

@BarackObama We don’t know the motive?! Liar 🤥

Although we don’t yet have the details about the motives behind last night's shooting at the White House Correspondents Dinner, it’s incumbent upon all us to reject the idea that violence has any place in our democracy. It’s also a sobering reminder of the courage and sacrifice that U.S. Secret Service Agents show every day. I’m grateful to them – and thankful that the agent who was shot is going to be okay.