I'm sorry if ‑‑ for those people who want to lick their wounds and have a pity party, this show is not for you today. If you want to talk just about politics, you want to talk about the Republican strategy for, you know, 2016, this is not your show today. This is not the one. This is not the place you should be. I am not interested quite honestly in hearing the concession speech of Barack Obama. I turned it off. He could be the nicest man in the world; he could be the Antichrist. Doesn't matter to me anymore. I am really, really ‑‑ you know, I've been saying to you for a while and I've been saying it even stronger off air to my business partners and everybody else: I don't know how we survive. If he doesn't win, meaning Mitt Romney ‑‑ and I didn't think Mitt Romney was the savior. I disagreed with a lot of Mitt Romney's policies. But what I agreed with an Mitt Romney was he was a decent, honest, honorable man. And half of the country doesn't put value in honor anymore. In honesty. It seems half of the country, they voted for assisted suicide, and it's funny because we're talking about actual physician‑assisted suicide and then figurative national suicide.
So I sat there on my set last night and what I said, I think about this time yesterday, was I caught myself halfway in the middle of a monologue and I think I cleared my throat and I said, I'm biting my tongue here to say things that I ‑‑ hopefully I won't have to say tomorrow. But I got up yesterday at 3:00 in the morning and I knew. And I couldn't sleep and I started to say my prayers and I got up and kneeled down by the edge of my bed and I knew that ‑‑ or I suspected that my mind's not God's mind, and the peace and the comfort that he had given me and so many of my friends was not about an election. God's about a bigger picture than an election or a candidate. God is about the freedom of mankind. God is about the Constitution, which is a divinely inspired. Just like those Christians that rolled up the Dead Sea Scrolls and put them in pots. I don't know what happened to those Christians but they hid them. They hid them and they preserved them because it was important. The Bible was never wiped out, but the people who originally wrote the Bible were scattered. I don't know what the future holds for the country, I don't know what the future holds for business, I don't know what the future holds for the dollar but I will tell you this: Do your own homework. I said over the summer, you know what really scares me is I'm always wrong about politics. I can't ‑‑ I can't tell you what's going to happen in politics, and I guess my arrogance or misunderstanding of the peace and comfort that I felt in my prayers that I thought I did understand politics. No, I didn't understand politics and I also didn't understand God, and I also didn't understand the American people, or at least half of them. But the other half I know. The other half I know because I'm just like the other half. There are times that I'm afraid, there's times that I'm discouraged. There's times that I don't want to go on. I said to my wife, this is what led me to wake up at 3:00 in the morning yesterday. I had said to my wife, "Honey, when Mitt Romney is elected, things will settle down a bit and we'll be able to ease up a little bit." I hadn't seen my wife really for more than five minutes a day or spoken to her on the phone for more than five minutes a day in the last four or five weeks. I was always on the road, she was on the road. I was busy doing other things. And I went to sleep that night with the comfortable feeling that I believed the lie that I had just shared with my wife and that is that things would calm down. And when I woke up at 3:00 in the morning, I realized, boy, that's not going to work because we have way too much work to do and we haven't fixed it for that cliff, if you invert that fiscal cliff or the cliff that we have made for ourself on almost every front, the educational cliff, the societal cliff, not just the fiscal cliff. If you invert that, it's a mountain. And we hadn't even begun to climb the mountain yet. How could we possibly take the steam out of our shovel? We can't.
His work and his glory is not for a presidential election. It's for the salvation of all mankind. And that requires freedom. So his agenda is freedom, and we have esteemed it too lightly.
Last night literally minutes after the election was called, I went to ‑‑ I went to work, first understanding what we had just witnessed and then quickly moving into what needed to be done. By 6:30 this morning I sat in my studio and brought my staff in, and some had red, puffy eyes. Some of them just because they were tired and they're like, "You are a slave driver!" And others because they had a very bad night.
At the time where there is a reason to tell you right now to hunker down, at the time when there is a reason to tell you pull in the oars, pare back to essentials, prepare for the worst, I came in this morning and I ‑‑ first thing I said to the president of my company: Double down. We're going to double down.
As our meeting broke this morning, I instructed my staff to develop a plan to expand, and I ask anybody with business sense to try to grab me by the shoulders right now and say, "What, are you nuts?" But I know I will look you in the eye and say probably. But it's suicide to sit back. And not just for my company and your company but for the country. We don't have the luxury of time. I've been telling you for a while and I've been telling my own staff, if the president wins, I don't know how we survive. I don't know how we survive the regulation that is coming from my country. I don't know how we're going to survive the pressure and the tactics because he has more flexibility now and they remember their enemies I don't know how we're going to survive because I won't compromise. I won't make a deal with the devil. And I urge you to hold me to that because I have a feeling it's going to get tough. My faith in God and the continued promise of this country has led me to take other steps other than to cower, other than to pare down. I thought we would have two to four years to be able to get this to be a voice of truth, and if you have been following at all on TheBlaze, I have ‑‑ I have stuck a stick in almost everybody's eye, in the book publishing world and the radio world, as we are now our own publishers and now our own radio network as well, in the Internet world, as we are now just Buzz Feed just said that we are the equivalent of the Huffington Post in so many words. We're much smaller, but they're AOL Time‑Warner. We're the rights, the Huffington Post, and we're only a year old. I have stuck a stick in all of the networks because I believe that they are a thing of the past, and the only way for them to survive is on government dollars which will eventually make them the government shill.
I don't owe a man a dime, and I'm building a network that is very different, and I'm building a network and the things that I will show you in March, I'm building a whole system, an ecosystem that will be afraid of no man because we will help each other. And it's way beyond news and information and entertainment. It is all really truly about small business, and I'll reveal those plans to you as we get closer in March.
I told my staff this morning over the next few months we have to add programming to our television and radio network and expand our news‑gathering capability on TheBlaze.com. We are no longer going to be a blog site. We are going to be a news site. We are no longer going to be a fledgling Internet and small satellite‑driven television network. We are going to be a real television network with a real news department. We are going to hyperfocus our attention. We are going to provide courage and inspiration and truth. We will expose and we will lift up. We will not tear down.
I asked this morning the head of our news programming to develop the following: First, a Nightline‑style show that tracks the elements in the world that works toward the demise of our country and the Western way of life and our most precious ally Israel. This is something that I have been quietly working behind the scenes for a while but it's going to cost me about $4 million a year to do it and do it right. It will have assets in Israel, it will have assets in Europe, in Canada, in South America, in Asia, and here in the United States. The production cost alone is $4 million and that's if I cut corners.
I told my news developer today that I want to launch a replacement for 60 Minutes. Not today's 60 Minutes but the ones from years ago that actually pursued the truth regardless of politics and held those accountable based on right and wrong, not left and right, one that doesn't have to worry about sponsorships, one that holds people accountable and to hell with the consequences; it's the truth. You'd be shocked to learn how many influential people contact TheBlaze, either directly or through intermediaries with stories the mainstream media chooses to ignore, and I mean every, every corner of the mainstream media, stories of tantamount importance to you and the country. We must expand our ability and we must do it now. No one is going to tell the truth soon. Have you noticed the changes and the drift in the media? And I'm not talking about MSNBC. Have you noticed the drift in the media? You have to ask yourself why. The answer is fear. Sponsors. Investors. Debt. And did I mention fear?
I also ask for a show concept that teaches the real history of our country, that will focus on the Constitution. I ask this morning to have an actual banner made will that will hang from the studio of my offices here in Dallas and also in New York and soon in Washington D.C., our studios there. It will say these words: The Constitution now and forever. We're not going to look at the revisionist and apologist version of history contained in our textbooks but real history and actual constitutional principles. We have to know it. And finally one thing that I hadn't planned on debuting really truly for about 18 months, not in a show form, and I don't know. It might be 18 months, it might be two years from now, unless I have your help. But the American Dream Labs television show. This is a program that will highlight the dreams and dreamers of this country, that are absolutely essential and key. We must teach them to our children. We must show the way out. We must find the way out together. I'm tired of talking about green energy. Real solutions that are here, now. Who can build them, how can we build them, and education. New and sometimes outrageous ideas. Any one, any one of these could transform an economy and restart the magic furnace of innovation that defined this country for so many years.
I also ask to look immediately at expanding the reporting capabilities of TheBlaze.com. We are not going to be a blog site. We are not going to take other people's work and just mirror them on our site much longer. And I am asking you for your help on a couple of things. These steps are vital, but I have to have your help. This network, this company is funded by me and by you. That's it. And I'm at my limit. It cost tens of millions of dollars. I've been told not to say how much but it's ‑‑ I was told, and I said, good God almighty, what? I'm not the guy who does the finances. I'm the guy who spends the money unfortunately. I need you to help me on this. We have to double our subscriptions. I wasn't planning on asking you this until this morning, but I thought we'd have more time and I'm telling you we're going to run out of time. I need to double our subscriptions. I promise you I'm going to spend every single dime on innovation. I promise you I'm going to spend every dime on telling the truth. I am not doing this to get rich. Believe me I don't think money's going to be worth an awful lot very long. The truth is going to be worth a fortune.
If you haven't subscribed, I need you to go to theblaze.com/TV and sign up now. Please. Please. Please. Right now about 300,000 people keep this network up and running, and may God richly bless your sacrifice, as you give us the strength and the power to deliver value for your investment. Find a friend or two or three and introduce the network to them. If you have friends or family who would benefit from the service we provide, maybe they can't afford the expense; give them a gift subscription. I guarantee one of the most meaningful gifts you'll ever give it to your kids, your friends, anybody. And let me give you my word: This is about expansion and investment, not padding the bottom line. I give you my word on that. Expansion and investment. To date we have poured every single dime that has come in through subscription right back into improving our network and it's not going to stop. Already I've lost quite a tidy sum, in fact figures that I never thought I would earn in my lifetime, let alone lose. But I have walked around these studios now for the last few months making plans, drawing some things up, and I thought I had time. I need your help. Please subscribe. TheBlaze.com/TV.
