Barstool Sports owner Dave Portnoy joined Tucker Carlson for a 'Tucker On X' discussion that ranged from "the greatest business deal in history" to the problems businesses have dealing with regulatory bureaucracy (once its clear they don't like you) to a fight with a pizza store owner to media bias and finally, Tucker reflected on his exit from Fox.
Having sold Barstool Sports to PENN Entertainment, and pocketing $100 million, Portnoy recently took his company back for the princely sum of $1 and tries to explain what led PENN to make this decision.
"We underestimated the regulators... how difficult they could make this," given that they did not like some of the things that Barstool was saying.
“Everything we did was met with resistance so it made it really hard for this PENN-Barstool relationship to prosper and I think PENN got to the point where they said we are not getting the results we wanted,” he added
The powerful, appointed (not elected) regulators seemed to have a clear agenda against Barstool, perhaps, Portnoy says, because they did not know who we were.
"It's very hard to get truthful information... everything's so political, everything's got an agenda."
Portnoy, who interviewed President Trump during his term in office, said the liberal media makes him out to be "Hitler," even more so after he strongly opposed the COVID lockdowns.
"The rise of Trump has exasperated how people think in this country, He's broken a lot of people's brains."
"I was very pro-Trump when he started running because I thought he would break the political system," and that was that, the media proclaimed "you're pro-Trump, doesn't matter what you say for the rest of your life."
The media "crucified" him, he says, "you went on Tucker, you must be this... you interviewed Trump, you must be this... people don't listen, they just make snap judgments... it's a sad state of affairs."
Portnoy brings up the issue when Business Insider tried to smear him, "they just made shit up about me, there's zero truth about anything they said about me." The reason was simple, he explained, "they were a sinking ship, run by a crook" - referring to Henry Blodgett ("the greatest scumbag of all time") of dot-com-bubble-analyst-fraud infamy, "and they just needed subscriptions."
Portnoy also shared a video of him getting into a fight with a pizza restaurant owner - over a bad review that the Barstool boss gave him (around 31: 30 in the clip)...
“This is my spot. I hope you enjoy your pizza. But I don’t appreciate what you do to small businesses,” the owner said.
“Fuck you,” Portnoy responded, raising his middle finger. “Fuck you.
Then the pair discussed Tucker's exit from Fox, "I'm not exactly sure what I said that was bad... and one day for whatever reason they'd had enough."
Carlson says the Murdochs "were always nice to me... they never got in my way" but noted that he "was not expecting it," and added that "there were small minds... it's a company run by fearful women... second-tier people who would hassle my producers."
Carlson notes "my view on the war on Ukraine was really hated," explaining that he was never pro-Russian, but took the view that "this is not our fight, this is not good for us... we should put an end to the war, because people die in war."
That was considered "crazy pro-Kremlin propaganda, and they were very very mad about that."
Finally, Portnoy brings up Mitch McConnell's recent 'glitch', and asks "how are these people running our country?"
Watch the full interview below:
Ep. 21 Dave Portnoy founded Barstool Sports and just completed the most impressive business transaction of our lifetime. He also just got into an epic fight and shared the video with us first. Watch. pic.twitter.com/W7AJ10kZni
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) August 31, 2023