My next guest has spent decades getting people to tell him things that they probably should have kept to themselves, secrets that they should have kept. And Mari, I have to tell you, Washington could keep you in business for another 30 years.
But Mari, before he became a talk show legend, he was a newsman. And now he is back with season 3 of On Par with Maury Povich launching today. His guests include Nick Cannon, Leila, Joe, uh, how do you say that? Manag, how do you say that? Manelio,
Joe Maninelo, Harlan Coben, and my good friend DL Hughley. The legendary Maury Povich joins me now. Mari, good morning to you. We're in... You're all fired up, Don. I mean,
I am fired up. I'm a little bit late.
You can find great material every day in, you know, as a newsman, it used to be difficult. You'd have to go through and wade through the stories and now they just kind of come to you and there's so many of them because there's so much, I will say, malfeasance or so much BS that they put out. Uh, and as you know, I'm sure you know who Steve Bannon is. Steve Bannon is a Republican now. He's not happy with the Trump administration and he's going to vote for a Democrat for the first time ever, maybe. Um, and he says at the beginning of this, he said the strategy was to put out a fire hose of BS every single day and that seems to be happening and it's infecting the American public and also, um, the news. Do you disagree with that?
No, not at all. I just love the fact that you wake up on a Monday morning and you have five 1:00 a.m., 2:00 a.m., 3:00 a.m. Truth Socials. I love that when this guy is putting out all kinds of stuff early in the morning.
Mhm. Do you think I believe this? I think that some... By the way, before we get into that, did you... Look, you did a show for a long time in New York. You live in New York.
Did you know Trump before he became president?
I did. I didn't know him well, but I did know him. I knew of him from being... I've been a full-time New Yorker since the early 90s. And before that, I would come and house-sit for my aunt in the summers in the 80s, high school and then early college.
So years ago when I was doing... years ago, yeah, when I was doing A Current Affair, I mean, these were the... we were in the same building. Remember, I worked for the 10:00 news, right? And you worked for A Current Affair. Yeah. Channel 5. So, uh, you have to realize in the late 80s, Donald Trump was on the cover of the New York Daily News and the New York Post every single day with the Marla Maples, Ivana Trump, all that going on. And so, uh, Donald's been, uh, you know, tabloid fodder for so many years. And quite frankly, I don't recognize the guy who I knew in the 80s.
Don't know. I don't either. Look, um, not to... I mean, people thought he was... they didn't take him seriously as a politician. They just thought he was a New York character, right? And some people thought he was kind of a clown, but he was always in the tabloids. He's always on Page Six. He's in the, as you said, the New York Post or New York Magazine or whatever it is, or in the, uh, what was it called? Not Gotham, but The Observer. Was it the New York Observer? I forget what it was. Yeah.
Yeah. Which by the way ended up being owned by Jared Kushner.
Yes. True. That, um, and so you're right.
And I wonder if it's because... and then so he sort of... that's how he got into the ecosystem, the media ecosystem, and then came The Apprentice and now president. But I think that many of us, many Americans, have become inured to it, anesthetized to it. And I'm wondering, have we gotten so accustomed to Trump's behavior that the media is losing the ability to explain just how serious some of this stuff is?
Well, it depends on what particular media you go to. I mean, if you're going to the traditional media of the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Washington Post, those outlets, uh, you're getting a pretty fair description of what's going on. Uh, I think quite frankly, uh, the broadcast networks and CNN, uh, are playing it fairly straight. Uh, you've taken a completely different approach. I mean, you are what is called an independent journalist and there are, what, dozens of you, uh, that are now... I mean, Don, I watched you and Tim last night, two hours of you making a Sunday meal and I'm looking there and you got 150,000 people watching you make a meal, I mean, beef and broccoli and, uh, shrimp fried rice. I mean, think about it.
Yeah. Well, it's what the people want. And here's the thing, though. You know how they say... So, we don't always do it, Mari. But, you know, they say sometimes, uh, a little bit of sugar helps the medicine go down sometimes. Yeah. But or a little bit of starch and fat and salt, and shrimp and beef. But, um, sometimes we do talk about stories that are in the news, issues, politics or whatever and we just discuss them as people are discussing them at home. I'm sure as you and Connie are in your kitchen or at your dining table discussing issues where you talk about them as a couple and many times we don't agree or we do agree but I think it shows people how, you know, that I am a normal person, news people are normal people and that we have discussions and we come to conclusions about things just the way many folks do except we have producers, right, and we're maybe a little bit more into it. But look, it's a different time right now and I think that I can give a point of view, um, as an independent person and sometimes it penetrates... not sometimes, I think a lot of the time it penetrates more than traditional news. I don't know if that's good or bad, but I think it's good.
Well, the good news is that you have more time to do it. You know, most shows don't, uh, they don't have an hour or a half an hour on, uh, various subjects during the day. It's, you know, it's 10 minutes for this story, five minutes for that story. You know how it is on traditional, uh, news outlets. They're always giving you the wrap sign. Keep on going. Let's go to the next.
They say this is a six-minute segment we're producing. This is an eight-minute segment. We're going to go long. This will be eight minutes. We're going to go long. And then by the time it's like, they're like, wrap, wrap, wrap. Got to get to the break. Got to pay the bills. Get to the break. Get to the break. Wrap. Yeah. But, you know, I watched something yesterday. Believe it or not, I don't know about you, I watch these polls every single day in terms of, uh, Trump's approval, what's happening in each state.
Uh, I met Frank Luntz. You know who Frank Luntz is, right?
Of course I know Frank. Yeah.
Okay. Uh, I have... Frank is a longtime pollster. Uh, fairly conservative, but, um, pretty much a straight shooter. Yeah. But he was making a great point the other day about polls and why it's very difficult to, uh, rely on polls every week before an election. He says because the most important question is not being asked, and that is, it's not who you want to vote for. Are you a Republican? Are you a Democrat? Are you an independent? The questions that should be asked are, are you going to vote? How, uh, are you lackadaisical about voting? Are you sure you're going to vote? Not who you're going to vote for. Because knowing you're going to vote is the most important issue in the election.
You know what, I'm out there all the time. I'm sure you see... if you're watching the cooking show, then you're seeing my man-on-the-street interviews.
I learned so much from people as you did when you sat in that studio and you talked to real people, right? And I got to tell you, just this is a real moment if you allow me.
So Tim and I, um, went to a wedding in Hershey, Pennsylvania this week and, you know, when you know the Hershey thing, it's like the whole town is Hershey and everything, but we got a little bit outside, um, and we had, uh, range anxiety because we got in this electric car and we're looking for, you know, a place to plug in. We're like, 'Oh my god, oh my god, we got to 3% on a battery.' That has never happened. And talk about anxiety on the interstate and trucks are passing. You're like, 'Oh my gosh, we got to get there.' But we sat there and charged and watched the people walk around and we were outside of our New York, you know, city urban bubble. And we realize again, not that we're unaware of it, but like how much we live in a bubble. And so I love to get out and talk to people from all stripes of life. And just this is just a real observation. I sat there and there were people, you know, with different kinds of cars, electric, they had their dogs coming in. Um, there was a lady who, you know, um, was an amputee who walked in and talked to me for a little bit. Um, guy working in the thing talked to me for a little bit and then we saw guys coming over on their lawnmower, right? Getting gas at the gas station. And it was just an interesting slice of life, something that you would never really see if you just live in a bubble in New York City or LA or Chicago or whatever it is. And so that's why I get out and talk to people. And what I had noticed is that, um, there's a real issue, and I talk about it in my newsletter this morning. There's a real issue with these candidates, with the voters who are the backbone of the party, and especially, this is just me, when I talk to men in general and Black men, they feel like the Democratic Party is not really looking out for them. Whether that's real or not, that's how they feel. So I'm not saying it's real, but that's how they feel. And I think that that needs to be addressed in this moment. And it's not particularly... I don't believe that it is specifically being addressed among the candidates right now. That's my thing.
Do you get the feeling that, uh, and you would know better than I when it comes to Black men particularly, that they haven't been galvanized, uh, since Obama?
Uh, yes, I do believe that and I do believe it is, um, as much as I really like Obama and admire him, um, I do believe that people don't feel, again, whether it's real or not, that it happened. They feel that he didn't do enough for their community. They feel that the party is doing more for women and LGBTQ community and other minorities or other folks more than they're doing for men and Black men. That's the problem.
And believe it or not, it is with every president. When you get to the last two years of a second term, you're not going to be able to get anything done. You just can't. I mean, you're over. You're lame duck halfway through your second term. I mean, if you don't get something done in the first year of your second term, I mean, think about it right now with Trump. You know, he gets his, you know, so-called big beautiful bill done last year. He's toast from now on, other than these silly announcements that he makes every other day about what he's going to do.
Ridiculous.
Ridiculous. So, look, um, I love having this... we could talk all day. You guys want to hear us talk?
Well, I mean, I go so far back, Don. Um, you know, I started covering news in 1962, 1963. And, uh, my first big assignment on radio for radio news in 1963 was Martin Luther King giving his classic speech at the Lincoln Memorial and I am on the other end all the way down at the monument grounds. I am covering the demonstration by the American Nazi Party led by George Lincoln Rockwell. There were all of 10 American Nazis, uh, and about 50 cops. And that's as I hear the loudspeaker speech of Martin Luther King. That was my first big story. My second big story was at Andrews Air Force Base on November 22nd, 1963 when Jackie Kennedy comes back in Air Force One with that bloody pink suit and her husband's coffin is in the back of the plane. Those two stories to me, and this is 60, 70 years later, 60-some years later, memorable. I mean, stuck in my mind. I can tell you the exact... what the temperature was, I can tell you, uh, every single little morsel of that event is in my memory 60-some years later. Wow.
Sorry, what a wealth of knowledge that you had and the history that you've had. And look, when I was on your show, we discussed... you talked about me making the pivot.
But you were the example. You made the pivot. You went from news... Right. To, I mean, I guess it's entertainment news and some people call it tabloid news with A Current... Tabloid journalism. But look, it became the thing. That was a whole thing. And then you went from that. You did your talk show and now you've gone to podcasting. One has to pick. Look at that handsome face with that beautiful lady right there. Wow.
Yeah. Can you imagine that? I was her second banana for a moment doing news in LA in 19... what year was that? 196...
Is that how you guys met?
No, we met... There's a great, great story with Connie. I grew up at Channel 5 in Washington, which is now the Fox station. And, uh, that was my first TV job. And I was... WTTG, that's right. And so I was doing a local, uh, talk show called Panorama, which was a big-time kind of a news... and I was doing the sports at night and I was anchoring the news on the weekend and I was kind of a local whatever, you know, not star, maybe half a celebrity. And so in 1969, the news director, Mike Buchanan, who ended up being a great crime reporter, Mike hires this assistant of his right out of the University of Maryland. Her name was Connie Chung. Nobody paid any attention to her. But about six months later, the first job that opens up is a weekend writing job. And Connie wants the job. And she goes to Mike and says, 'I want the job.' 'You're my assistant. You're my secretary.' 'No, no, no, no, no. I want the job that... you know what I want to be. I want to be a journalist.' 'Well, you have to replace yourself.' Connie walks out of the newsroom across the street into the bank, gets the first woman teller. Says to the woman teller, 'I want to be in TV.' She says, 'Yeah, come with me.' Walks her down into the newsroom, gets to Mike Buchanan, and Mike Buchanan says, 'Okay, you replaced yourself. Now you can have a job.' And that's how it ended up. And that's when we first took notice of the indomitable Connie Chung.
