B (2:27)

It perfectly does. The list, the movement, it's all there. All right, well, we could probably do a half hour or so on hair, but we'll talk about a bunch of other things. People know that since we're off for Christmas week, these are pre taped episodes where I'm trying not to do too much about just the fighting part of politics and everything else. So I mostly want to focus on the words right behind you there, born lucky. But let's do a little bit of political sort of general stuff. I saw an interview and it's a story that you've told many times, but I think it's worth telling again for my audience that maybe hasn't heard it because you were with Fox News for all you did a lot out of out of the Middle east and out of Israel specifically. And you at one point sat down with a Palestinian suicide bomber who. Well, you know what, I don't want to tell the story too much. Maybe you could just kind of recap that story because it connects to how you woke up about a lot of things happening in the world, in the media and much more.

A (3:19)

Yeah, I think it's a great point. And one of the things that I've been known for on NewsNation is a moral clarity about the Israeli Palestinian conflict, the Middle east, the rise of antisemitism in the United States. And people have asked me where that came from and we wanted to share that in Born Lucky, my book. The book isn't really about my time in the Middle east, but I think this story is illustrative in so many ways. So this is 2011. I've been a foreign correspondent for about a year and when I showed up in Israel, I didn't know anything. In my first interview for the job as a foreign correspondent, I was an anchor in Denver. I knew so little that I had written a crib sheet on my hand as if it was like, you know, a social studies test I hadn't studied for of the difference between the west bank and Gaza. And of course I'm in our bureau chief's office in Jerusalem in this interview and I sweating so much from being nervous. And as hot as it is in Jerusalem, the ink all melted on my hand. So that part didn't work out well. But I got the job and I've been there for about a year. And when I showed up, I kind of had this sort of conventional wisdom viewpoint of the Israeli Palestinian conflict that it was the root of all causes of evil and disagreement in the Middle East. If we solve that, everything will be okay. We need to have a two state solution. And you know, if the Israelis would just give a little bit more, then everybody could live in peace and harmony, because that's what really everybody wants. That's my worldview. That all changed the end of 2011. The Israelis traded 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for one guy for Galad Shalit, who was a soldier from Israel who had been kidnapped a few years before in the trade back to Gaza, back to Hamas. A few people went over, obviously many, but a couple of notable ones. One was Yaya Sinwar, the guy who planned the October 7 attacks. And the other was this woman named Wafa. And Wafa had been a failed suicide bomber. For obvious reasons, you don't get to interview a lot of suicide bombers. But the failed ones, that is an opportunity. So it was ahead of Christmas about. Actually probably right about now in 2011, and I put in a request to go to Gaza and interview Wafa. And Wafa's story went like this. She was a young woman in Gaza. She pulled a pot of boiling water or had some kind of cooking accident and got severely burned. Because the Gazans and Hamas spend all their money building rockets and buying weapons, they don't really have great hospitals. So they sent her to Israel, where the Israelis treated her for free, saved her life, gave her skin grafts, best medical care in the world. And then she would go back and forth from Gaza to the hospital that had treated her. And she had a pass, which during the second Intifada, was a big deal. So she was recruited by the Alaska Martyrs Brigade to be a suicide bomber. She was given a choice of three targets. A bus, a cafe, and the hospital that treated her and saved her life. She chose the hospital that treated her and saved her life. So Wafa gets to the border crossing between Gaza into Israel. They realize that she has a suicide bomb on her. They detect something's wrong. She tries to detonate the suicide bomb. It doesn't go off. She's arrested, she's thrown in jail in Israel. The Israelis continue to treat her wounds and burns and give her continuing medical care. They also give her a college degree. She gets back to Gaza. So I go to Gaza thinking, this is gonna be some great story of redemption. And for your viewers and listeners, I promise this is almost done. But the setup here is important. And we show up at her very awful tenement of a Gazan apartment, most gazin apartments are. And she is there. And I bring with me an iPad that has the video of her trying to blow herself up. There's a bunch of cameras watching her, watching me, watching her, watching the video. And I play the video, and I said, I just want to understand what you're thinking at this moment. And she watches the video and she goes, oh. And for those of not watching on YouTube, she got this huge smile on her face. And I said, what are you thinking right now? And she goes, oh. She goes, that was the moment I almost tasted paradise. Not what I was expecting. And I said, okay, like would you do it again? And she goes, oh, absolutely. That is my mission in life. To be a martyr and to die for the Palestinian cause, okay? And that is when my worldview changed, that if this person who the Israelis saved her life, they treated her as if she was an Israeli, probably even better than a lot of Israelis in terms of healthcare, then she tries to kill them, then they still treat her and give her an education and send her back to Gaza. If that person does not want peace, there really is no chance for peace. So that is, I think where the moral clarity came from. And what's surprising to me is when I tell that story, Dave, there is so many people on the left, the pro Palestinian, pro Hamas types who get so angry at it, at that story and they say, well you know, that's the exception, not the rule and blah, blah, blah. I said, that's fine. Why don't you go to Gaza, spend a couple of days there and then come back and talk to me.

B (8:57)

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A (9:52)

Yes. No, I've not had anyone take me up on that, but I'd be happy to have that conversation.

B (9:59)

What was it like for you as a correspondent? And I think it's interesting and it's noteworthy and honorable that you mentioned at the top of this, you did not know a tremendous amount about that, that area that they sent you to, but then to wake up, to have a wake up moment while you're there, that goes so against the conventional thinking there. How was that for you? Just sort of, how did you blend that into your professional ability to do your job and go against the grain? Obviously, Fox is more in line with what I think is reality there. But still amongst the journalist class, to say what you just said is still not thought of as loud or something. Yeah.

A (10:38)

Journal class. Okay. Yeah, let's be real. And still with a lot of networks. I think that kind of thinking is heresy. Right. I mean, we saw what happened after, after October 7th and how the pro, pro Palestinian folks were treated in the media. So I think very differently. You know, Dave, I. Maybe it's my upbringing, maybe it's the born lucky story of how I, you know, how I was ostracized in high school and how I was beat up and tortured in middle school that I've kind of not. I don't really care what other people say or think. You know, I live in Washington. I'm not of Washington. I don't go to the cocktail parties. I don't play the game. I kind of have this saying that, you know, I eat when I'm hungry and I dance when there's music and it just never, it's never really bothered me. And look, I didn't get invited to stuff, you know, all the foreign correspondent stuff in Jerusalem either. That's fine. Is it probably because of my reporting? Yeah. I think it's something that's so important about this profession that I was talking to one of our News Nation correspondents about this of like how journalists now and the pundit class almost take it as a matter of pride that they don't go be amongst the people they're reporting on. Right. And I think you see this. Why people were so surprised in 2016 and to a certain extent in 2024 when Trump won, is that they didn't go into Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania and North Carolina and Georgia and really understand the people that were gonna make this decision. And in the same way, I think that there's a lot of people who sit in wherever they are, New York, London, whatever it is, or even in Jerusalem and not get out into the west bank or into Gaza. And therefore they don't really understand who and what they're reporting on.

B (12:37)

What do you make of the general state of journalism at this point as someone that was sort of mainstream with Fox, you know, news nations, A little bit of both Sort of a blend, I would say, or kind of hybrid between, you know, sort of mainstream and online. To someone that your political opinions obviously are outside side of what is accepted mainstream, let's say. What do you make of the state of the online versus mainstream world?

A (12:59)

You know, journalists make lousy media critics. So I leave that to somebody else.

B (13:05)

What I'll say, fortunately, I don't consider myself a journalist, so I opine on it endlessly.

A (13:10)

You can opine away. I think what's really interesting is when we started NewsNation now five years ago, people used to come up to me and say, well, you know, I saw you on Fox. Where are you? And I'd say, I'm at NewsNation. And they'd go, news what? Where? What's it called? Who? And now people come up to me and say, I watch you on News Nation. I watch you because you give both sides a hard time. And I love that you talk about what's right and wrong, not what's left and right. So there is an appetite for what we're doing. And I know that because people are repeating it back to me. Not my viewpoints, but how we approach things. And there's a reason we're the fastest growing cable network, not just news network, but cable network in the country. And that's because people are seeking this out.

B (13:58)

All right, so let's back up for a moment and talk about the book a little bit, because that obviously is the setup to what leads to where you are now. Well, give me the premise of the. I know the premise of the book, but give me the premise of the book.

A (14:12)

Born Lucky is the story of growing up with autism and my father choosing to adapt me to the world rather than the world to me. So we wrote it as hope for every family of a kid having a hard time, for every parent, grandparent, doesn't matter if it's autism, adhd, anxiety, bullying, physical disabilities. It's hope of what the power of great parenting can do to help kids be more. And nobody's talking about that right now. Nobody talks about the power of parents and nobody talks about pushing kids to be more. There's just this overwhelming industry and desire, industry and desire to create accommodation. And that's obviously not what my father did with me. So Born Lucky is that story. And I think the reason it's resonated is because there is a thirst right now for parents who say, wait a second, I don't think the experts are right here and I want to push my kid to be more.

B (15:20)

What is it that Your dad saw or where did his line of thinking come from? Because back then. Do you mind if I ask how old you are?

A (15:28)

I'm 43 now, so I was diagnosed with what we now know to be autism at about 7 or 8 years old. There were some diagnoses earlier. I didn't talk until I was well past three, but yeah, that was right.

B (15:40)

So. So back then, so 80s ish. It was thought of as very. It was thought of very, very than it is thought of now. You know, I always kind of joke with my, with my staff here because they're, they're a bit younger than me. Like when I was growing up. I'm 49. We had kids that definitely now would have been diagnosed with autism or certainly ADHD or that kind of thing, but back then they were just thought of, thought of as rambunctious or some of them were just super quiet or just the way we dealt with them in class was just. It was very different than now. We're likely to be medicated, et cetera, et cetera. It's been a massive shift in just a couple decades.

A (16:17)

Yeah. And to be fair, there was a lot of things that were offered to me and offered, I should say, to my parents for me. Accommodations, possible medications, on and on and on. And my parents said, absolutely not. So when I was about eight years old, my parents were told they needed to have me evaluated. They took me to one of those medical office buildings, right? Linoleum floors, stale coffee, old magazines. They waited for a couple of hours, as nervous parents would. This is before cell phones or anything else. So they just sat there and like, what's going on with our kid? The woman brings me back and she says, boy, your kid's got a lot of problems. Big behavioral issues. If somebody touches him in class or in a line or in playground, he's going to turn around and slug him. So no birthday parties, no play dates, nothing like that. Big sensory issues. If there's socks or a jacket he doesn't like, he melts down, the day is over. And then big learning disabilities, right? So an IQ test is the average of two halves of a. Of a test. So two halves average them together. 20 point spread. As a learning disability, I had a 70 point spread. A woman said this was the largest spread they'd ever seen. And my dad goes, okay, what do we do? And she says, well, you know, not much. You sort of meet him where he's at and, you know, kind of he gets along. And my dad goes, no, no, no. What do we do. And she goes, not much you can do. And that became a challenge for my dad. So, you know, they never told anyone. No friends, no family, no teachers, no counselors, no therapists, nothing. And it was my dad's mission to really adapt me to the world.

B (17:50)

And so what did that actually look like? I mean, how do you take a kid with some serious stuff and throw them into the world and good luck.

A (17:57)

Yeah. And you know, dad, the born lucky story is a parent who decides rather than trying to take the adversity away, which is quite in vogue now. Born lucky is my dad holding my hand through the adversity, right? So saw from an early age, there was no way that I was gonna have friends in school, be good at school, or be good at athletics. Those are the three things that kids. And to be fair, a lot of parents derive self esteem from, right? And take pride in. So dad said, how do I give this kid some kind of self esteem? Self esteem is earned. It's not given. He said, all right, push ups. So I started with 200, 250 push ups a day, five days a week for a couple of months, and then I would get some kind of prize. But it was all this idea of trying to find a way to have me have accomplishment. Dad said that I wasn't gonna have any friends, so he said, I'll be your friend. And he was my only friend, still my best friend, but my only friend for a very long time. And he would take me to restaurants or take me to coffee with his friends, and I would start sort of gibbering on and talking and interrupting, and he would tap his watch, and that was my signal to be quiet. So if we were out with Dave, it would have been with Mr. Rubin for coffee. And as soon as we sat down, I would have been peppering you with questions, right? About your podcast and how do you sell ads and how do you book your guests and how long do you decide to go for? And on and on. My dad would tap his watch. He'd say, the tap watch was be quiet and bookmark this moment. So as we would leave the restaurant afterwards, I hadn't been humiliated by dad saying, you know, lucky, be quiet. But the flip side was we then post game it, right? And, you know, he go, okay. So when Mr. Rubin was talking about his weekend in Miami beach and why he decided to move to Florida, why'd you start peppering him with questions about how he books guests? Well, gee, Dad, I don't know. That was kind of interesting. Well, what could you have asked Mr. Rubin that he would have been interested about Lucky. And then we would go on with that and play that. So just. It was this very intimate, hour by hour, day by day, trying to teach me the social emotional fabric that comes naturally to so many.

B (20:13)

Where was he getting his training on this? I mean, was he reading books on this, or was he just. This was just on the fly. How do I help my kid? I'm just gonna try some stuff.

A (20:21)

Yeah. I mean, he had. My father has an eq, the temperature of the sun. So does my wife and my dad, phenomenal salesman and entrepreneur. And that understanding came, I think, innately. It also came from how to Win Friends and influence people. The Dale Carnegie book was always sort of his bible. But he also realized that I was gonna get beat up emotionally and physically every day at school. When I was in seventh grade, I'd been through three, four schools. Principal called my parents in and said, look, everybody at this school thinks Lucky's really weird. So, you know, they're sitting there at some little principal's office across the desk, thinking, you know, two weeks into school, hopefully this is just a check in. Really weird. Arrow number one through their heart, arrow number two comes. And frankly, I do too, think he's weird, said the principal. So my dad realized he was my only protector. Eighth grade comes along, and there's a art teacher who doesn't think I'm gonna be Picasso. So we're sitting in art class, and, you know, teacher looks over at me when he doesn't like my painting and says, hey, Vitter, if my dog was as ugly as you, I'd shave its ass and make it walk backwards.

B (21:36)

Wow.

A (21:37)

Yeah. So you think about if the teachers are saying that, what the kids are doing. I go home, I tell my dad, and, like, every night, he would sit there and just sort of let me vent and take the emotional frustration and hurt and cruelty that I had experienced sort of onto himself. And, you know, Dave, I didn't know this until we wrote Born Lucky. But so many nights, he would then go down into the living room by himself and sit there and cry himself for hours. But he would make me go to school the next day. And that really is the resilience part that he taught me.

B (22:09)

When did you start seeing a shift in your behaviors or your ability to communicate or have friends and all the rest of it?

A (22:20)

It's a great question. My wife would argue it's still a work in progress. And to be. And to be perfectly fair, it is. You know, people have asked about Born Lucky as it's come out and we've gotten this great reception not because of me, but because of what the story is and what it says. And some have said, well you know, you know, how do you cure somebody of autism? Or you know, read this to cure people? And I now you're never cured. I mean I equate it a little bit like to being an alcoholic. I will always have autism. I will always sort of fight my own instincts. To answer your question, probably out of college as I got into the workplace, I started realizing kind of how to really moderate my behavior and read the social and emotional cues that people are giving. But it still to this day is a discipline. It's not natural to me.

B (23:11)

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A (24:33)

Let me give you a perfect example. A couple of months ago, right before the book came out, I was playing golf with my father in law up in Idaho. And we finished the golf game and we played with this other guy. I'm in the parking lot trying to pack my golf clubs into the travel bag, which is one of life's more frustrating experiences to begin with. I don't know if you're a golfer, but golfers all understand this. But I'm down on my, my hands and knees trying to pack the clubs into the travel bag near the cart, near where the cart area is. And this guy who we had played with comes over and he's standing above me as I'm shoving the clubs in. And he says, hey, hey, Leland. Looking down at me, and I say, huh? Shoving the bag, clubs in the bag. And I'm late. And one classic characteristic of autism is being very task focused, right? You sort of like, just zone everything out. And he tries to talk to me. He's an older man, and I'm just completely ignoring him. I'm just focused on the golf bag and the golf clubs and not being late. And I could almost hear my dad in the background being like, okay, Lucky, you need to stop. You're, you know, eight year old lucky, stop, stand up, look Mr. So and so in the eye, shake his hand, tell him how nice it was to play golf with him. Take a minute. You're not that late. It's not that important. And I could not do it. Like, I couldn't stop myself. And he finally just walked away. I was, it was so unbelievably rude to him. I found his phone number, I texted him and I said, hey, look, I just want to apologize for being so rude to you. Totally unacceptable, on and on. I did not follow up and say, oh, by the way, I have autism or, oh, that's the autism, you know, talking or whatever. Because my dad always taught me the standard's the standard. And you need to learn to operate in a world that is how the world operates, not the world changing for you.

B (26:23)

What do you make? So now you end up as a news anchor on television. It's not like you could have been an accountant or you could have been, you know, a garbage man.

A (26:31)

Like, you didn't, right?

B (26:32)

You. You chose the worst of all things. I mean, like, how does that feel to you? Like the perfect ending of the story in a sense that, you know, you ended up being someone that was in front of the camera, which in a lot of respects would be the last thing that someone growing up like this would have. Would have ever wanted or expected.

A (26:51)

It's a great question. I never thought of it that Way. I think one of the great gifts my parents gave me was never telling me that I was diagnosed with anything. They never told my sister. You know, they told my sister when she would ask, what's wrong with Lucky? And there was a lot of times really hard on her. I asked my sister, what's the first memory she has of me? And she said, well, you were in fifth grade. I was in kindergarten. And I would wait in kindergarten for you, my big brother, to come pick me up. And we would walk home every day, and we'd walk through the PE Fields of this school we were at, later got kicked out of the school or got pulled out of the school, I should say was going to get kicked out. But every day we would get to the woods, my sister tells it, and I would start crying, and she would hold my hand. Her first memory of her big brother is him crying. And she would ask my parents, what's wrong with Lucky? And my parents would say, nothing's wrong with him. He just sort of gets broken every day at school, and we have to put him back together. We as a family have to put him back together. And I think that that message of it, it was the entire family, all for one, one for all. It's us against the world. And that message from my parents extended to me, but it was never, there's something wrong with you or there's something different about you. And I think it's one of the great gifts, because it never occurred to me that I couldn't go be a TV anchor. And I think had I known, oh, I have autism and I have all these issues, and, ah, ah, ah, ah. But don't worry, you're special and you have superpowers, but you have all, you know, I would have never done it. And that. That really is. Is. Is a big part of the Born Lucky story, that if you allow yourself to be defined by a diagnosis, you will be for life. If you don't, you won't be, because that's a. That's a personal choice. You know, it's the. It's the. The inverse of. Of being a victim, which my dad never let me be, that, you know, victimhood is addictive to, like, a drug like fentanyl, and the. The reverse is true, that if you aren't a victim, no one can make you one.

B (28:54)

What do you make of some of the moves the administration has made in terms of, you know, vaccine schedule and trying to figure out, is this stuff connected to autism? And just generally, the fact that people, largely because of Bobby Kennedy are at least talking about the roots of autism and how to deal with it.

A (29:09)

I wrote a Wall Street Journal op ed about this and I said, thank God we're now talking about this and willing to at least have the conversation. When I was diagnosed, it was 1 in 1500. Now it's 1 in 36. Three times higher for boys. Higher. And poor and more in minority communities. And I watched Chris Hayes and I will do a little media commentary here. I watched Chris Hayes of MSNBC sort of do this podcast and he scoffed. He goes, God, Bobby Kennedy's just obsessed. Obsessed with finding the cause of autism with disrespect.

B (29:38)

We played the clip. Yeah. So ridiculous.

A (29:41)

Well, you know what? Actually, sorry, I won't say that.

B (29:46)

Say it. Come on.

A (29:47)

Go jump in a lake, a very cold lake. Chris Hayes. Why wouldn't we be obsessed with finding the cause of autism if my wife was pregnant? If she was. We've just been married for about six months or so. But if she was pregnant and someone said to me, you can have a child with autism or not. Take your pick. Obviously, I would pick. No, anybody would. And I just find it offensive that people are saying, well, you know, because, you know, because Bobby Kennedy's not the right person to search. Like, he's doing more than anybody else did. So I'm thrilled that we may be able to find some answers so that people don't have to go through more kids don't have to go through what I did.

B (30:31)

Right. It's one of those things. It's like they just don't like the messenger and they don't like who hired the messenger and how. Obviously they would be doing this reverse if it was their guys going for it.

A (30:42)

Yeah. And that's where we have become as a country, which I think is sad. And you've been very kind to let me plug the book Born Lucky a few times.

B (30:52)

One more time. Come on, bring us home.

A (30:54)

Here, watch this one more time. Hope for every parent of a kid having a hard time. But I'll plug News Nation. I say, I think that's what's different about News Nation is that bias is in having an opinion. It's an excluding of an opinion and it's being scornful of an opinion. And we don't do that. And I think that's what makes us different.

B (31:12)

You're doing a fine job on News Nation. I've had my issues with Chris. We sometimes get along, sometimes don't. It's all good. It's all good.

A (31:19)

That's how everybody PM hour. That's the apm. I only do nine.

B (31:23)

That's how everybody feels about him. It's okay, Leland. It was a pleasure connecting with you and we'll talk soon.

A (31:29)

Thanks, Dave.

B (31:32)

Sarah.