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EP674: AJ Rice - Confessions Of An Early MAHA/MAGA Backer
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“Any type of creativity involves some destruction. It does. So it’s a two-step forward, a one-step back situation.”
Disruption isn’t just a tactic—it’s a way of life for those who refuse to take the conventional route. This episode unpacks the messy, nonlinear path to building a meaningful business and career, showing that embracing creative chaos can fuel authentic leadership and entrepreneurial success. The key insight: true innovation doesn’t wear a uniform, and it certainly doesn’t follow the rules.
AJ Rice shares how a passion for literature and culture collided with a post-9/11 political awakening, launching him from grad school to the media world to eventually helming a powerhouse PR firm. He breaks down how backing Trump early wasn’t just a business decision—it was about backing authenticity, independence, and disruption. And now, as a bridge between MAGA insiders and RFK Jr.’s team, he lives at the crossroads of politics, publishing, and pop culture.
AJ is the CEO of Publius PR and a bestselling author of The Woking Dead and The White Privilege Album. Known as a behind-the-scenes architect of conservative media influence, AJ has worked with names like Laura Ingraham, Donald Trump Jr., and RFK Jr. His firm represents voices across politics, medicine, and culture, making him one of the most connected men in the world of populist PR.
Expert action steps:
- Accept the non-linear path. Success rarely follows a straight line. Embrace setbacks and failures as part of the creative and entrepreneurial process, and be ready to make trade-offs between different priorities like career, family, and financial goals.
- Earn your way up. Don’t try to shortcut your way to success. Build your foundation from the ground up so you understand every step of the journey and can navigate challenges with confidence.
- Write your own story. Take full ownership of your life and choices. There’s no fixed formula or image of what success should look like—what matters is authenticity and merit, not conformity.
Lean more & connect:
https://www.ajricepr.com/about
The Woking Dead – Author: AJ Rice
The White Privilege Album
Visit https://www.eCircleAcademy.com and book a success call with Nicky to take your practice to the next level.
Recommended
Transcript
Authenticity and Breaking the Mold
00:00:03
Speaker
There is no uniform to your authenticity, no uniform to conservatism, no uniform to libertarianism, no uniform to being a successful entrepreneur or a thinker. In fact, the people that burn their uniform, the people that shatter the mold, are the people that become revolutionary.
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:24
Speaker
Welcome to the Thought Leader Revolution with Nikki Ballou. Join the revolution. There's never been a better time in history to speak your truth, and find your freedom, and make your fortune. Each week, we interview the world's top thought leaders very se built this accessible and seven figure practice.
00:00:42
Speaker
This episode episode has been brought to you by eCircleAcademy.com, the proven system at six to seven figures a year to your thought leader practice. what you on all Welcome to another exciting episode of the podcast, The Malt Leader of the Revolution. I'm your host, Nikki Ballou.
00:00:58
Speaker
And boy, do we have an exciting guest lined up for you today.
Guest Introduction: A.J. Rice
00:01:01
Speaker
Today's guest is one of the men credited with helping elevate and uplift the Maha MAGA movement into the White House.
00:01:13
Speaker
I am speaking, of course, of none other than the one, the only, the legendary A.J. Rice. Welcome the show, A.J. Nicky B., great to be here, brother. It's about time, right? I was going to well ah was waiting on you, you know? I thought we had a date, and now that I'm here, I'm never leaving. So it's a pleasure.
A.J. Rice's Early Influences
00:01:32
Speaker
Really an honor to be here. Brother, it's an honor to have you here. So AJ, you and i we've gotten to know each other a little bit. And I'm a huge fan.
00:01:43
Speaker
But the folks that listen to this show, these are society's great heroes. They're the entrepreneurs. They're the men and the women who dare to dream. And through daring to dream, elevate all of humanity.
00:01:56
Speaker
And they listen this show, not for me, because I'm here every week. They listen this show because of you. They want to learn from you. They want to apply what they learn into their lives and their businesses.
00:02:08
Speaker
But before they can do that, before they can open themselves to you, they got to get to know you. So tell us your backstory. How'd you get to be the great A.J. Rice?
Millennials' Self-Reliance Challenges
00:02:19
Speaker
I appreciate that, really. And look, the thing is, you know, anybody that's an entrepreneur or a Renaissance person, it's never really a straight line to get to where you need to, right? You you sort of build on successes, but you have to appreciate your failures too. I mean, creative destruction is real.
00:02:38
Speaker
And, ah you know, without failing, Michael Jordan got cut from his high school basketball team, right? there So without failing, there's no upward mobility for sure. And sometimes look, especially with the millennials and I'm a geriatric millennial, I'm an old millennial, I'm like Gandalf the millennial over here.
00:02:57
Speaker
um You know, pretty much anyone born from 1980 now, You know, we're not going to have the legacy benefits and the pensions and the social security to sort of rely on. So we have to you have to take control of your your own life.
00:03:11
Speaker
That could be creatively, financially, could be finding a wife, you know, romantically with, the you know, whoever
Education and Career Impact by 9/11
00:03:19
Speaker
you wish. um So from my perspective, I come from Philadelphia. The audience is going to hear a lot of that um in the next few minutes.
00:03:29
Speaker
And, you know, ah kind of a blue collar background. My parents were sort of the first sort of boomers that went to college in their families. um You know, Irish Catholic and, you know, mostly as far as politically Democrats, Democrat sort of Irish Catholic, JFK Democrat.
00:03:47
Speaker
um And, you know, I was sort of a liberal arts guy. So, as you know, in school, that's there are the things that you know attracted me. So, voracious reading, but also history and why, you know, the United States and in particular Western civilization, which includes Canada and England and Australia and many other ah part of the sort of Anglosphere, why it's special and how did we get here?
00:04:16
Speaker
So I've read everything from, you know, ain' from ancient Greece all the way forward. And i was in ah Penn State you know, studying English literature. ah And look, my background is, you know, I'm a, I'm a disruptor.
00:04:31
Speaker
I like to, I like to mess with people. I don't like to be told what to do. I like to be told what to read. But I, you know, I worked in the, you know, as a sort of a volunteer on some political campaigns in the late nineties through the 2000s. And I was a junior in in college when September 2001 happened.
00:04:52
Speaker
and And look, i I've got a theater background. I've done some film. i've I've directed. I've written screenplays. You know, I've dabbled in all
Career Shift to Political and Media Roles
00:05:03
Speaker
of that.
00:05:03
Speaker
um And, you know, there was a part of me that thought maybe if once I was done with my bachelor's degree, I would go get maybe a master of fine arts in creative writing or something. But when September 11th happened, it sort of redirected the river. It kind of was one of these things that psychologists like to call flashbulb events.
00:05:22
Speaker
And, you know, we all don't have many of them. You the boomers have a lot. You know, where were you when JFK was assassinated or, you know, when Nixon resigned or whatever. But for me, i mean, I remember the Challenger shuttle exploding when I was five years old.
00:05:37
Speaker
I remember the OJ verdict where I was when that happened. And I remember September 11th. You know, has there been any sense? I mean, we're talking 20 years now. And, you know, although...
00:05:49
Speaker
there's been traumatic events like COVID and, and, uh, you know, the financial crisis in 08 and so on. And they affect our culture. They affect our economy.
00:06:01
Speaker
I don't remember where I was at that exact moment. Right. It's not one of those, you know, flashbulb Polaroids in your head. Um, and I redirected my life, uh, because of Osama bin Laden.
00:06:14
Speaker
Um, Ironically. It's funny. The guy that shot him is a client of mine. and john but Rob O'Neill. Rob O'Neill. they got Yeah, which is sweet revenge.
00:06:26
Speaker
um But how did I get there? How did I go from studying Hemingway and Wordsworth and Twain to working with the Navy SEAL that kicked in Monod's door?
00:06:38
Speaker
ah Well, I went into graduate school to try to get a master's. Instead of in creative writing, but into you know Middle East studies and political science. I started working on campaigns.
00:06:51
Speaker
And I helped a Republican congressman, Mike Fitzpatrick, ah who's no longer with us. He died of cancer. But his brother actually has the seat now.
Radio Show Experience and Growth
00:07:01
Speaker
Get elected in 2004. And I came to D.C.
00:07:05
Speaker
And, you know, Capitol Hill's tough, man. It's a lot of email checking. going on up there on a lot of Starbucks runs on behalf of the American taxpayer. Um, you know, and I saw actually an ad for an internship on the Laura Ingram radio show.
00:07:22
Speaker
Um, Laura is now famous here in the United States for her TV show. ah Back then she was the, most she was the most listened to female radio host the United States. We had close to 400 stations. Um, and I went in and I worked with Ingram, sat there and, you know, Ingram, uh, she's tough cookie.
00:07:39
Speaker
She was actually going through, um, ah breast cancer ah surgery and and treatment when I went in there. And, you know, she was, you know, bald and she had a little mannequin head and she had a wig. I mean, and she's tough.
00:07:54
Speaker
She's tough. And, you know, she she she came from nothing herself, put herself through her apartment. um You know, her mother worked in the diner and, you know, she's from like blue collar Connecticut, Danbury, I believe.
00:08:07
Speaker
So we kind of hit it all. And, you And she basically brought me in as an intern. And within about four months, I was her assistant. Then I was her associate producer. Then I was her executive producer.
00:08:19
Speaker
And we built that show up to be a powerhouse. And then I got kind of moved around to start other shows and to work on other shows. So the American radio world here in the United States, Whether it's with Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Man Cow, Howard Stern, or ah you know Sean Hannity, Mark Levin. I know all the Glenn Beck.
00:08:38
Speaker
I've either worked with or or knew at the time all these guys. I know them all now. the ones that are still The ones that are still with us. And, you know, I basically worked as a producer for almost a decade.
00:08:50
Speaker
Build up some of the biggest shows in America. And then I, you know, look, being a producer of some of these shows could be a young man's game. i I created a consulting business, which includes public relations, which is what I do now.
Transition to Public Relations and Trump Support
00:09:02
Speaker
And I was able to sort of reverse engineer the fact that I went from sort of, you know, taking incoming from people that wanted to put their guests on my shows to now being the person that's sending out people to get on shows.
00:09:18
Speaker
um And it's it's it's interesting because, you know, a lot of these sort of local hosts around the United States, regional hosts, I know them all because when you work on a and nationally syndicated radio show, you know Laura's show in particular was carried on hundreds of stations.
00:09:36
Speaker
Most of those stations also had local hosts who I work with now. And, you know, it's a funny thing. I, it helps to have someone like Ingram in your corner when you start off.
00:09:49
Speaker
I mean, Monica Crowley too, who's, Monica Crowley is going to be confirmed any minute here to be assistant secretary of state. Um, and we'll work with Rubio, Marco Rubio here in the United States.
00:10:00
Speaker
Um, so they've kind those two in particular, those two women. And look, my mom's a tough cookie she said breast cancer doctor. Um, you know, they kind of pulled me from the river like Moses. I mean, they were sort of, they're sort of my surrogate big sisters, surrogate media mothers.
00:10:19
Speaker
I call them fire and ice, Monica Crowley and Laura Ingram. They're different, um and they're both tough. One actually worked for Reagan. One worked for Nixon. i And they have kind of kept me out of trouble for the last 20, 25 years.
00:10:33
Speaker
um they are I was their producer. They are clients now to some degree. I go on their shows. as a guest, which is interesting considering, you know, when Ingram puts me on her Fox News show, you know, I always have to remind her that I, you know, my job used to be to go get her coffee. That's wild. I used to have to go get the woman coffee.
00:10:59
Speaker
Right. So, but that's growth. In the mailroom, right? Do you think Bob Hope wanted to sell? He started in the mailroom. And every single person watching, whether you're an artist,
00:11:12
Speaker
Whether you're a speaker, you're a thought leader, you want to invent something, you want to be an entrepreneur, you all have your mail rooms. We all had a mail room. It's a metaphor for life.
00:11:26
Speaker
you know My wife goofs on me because when I was in school, I worked all kinds of odd jobs. I worked at wineries. I used to write jokes for stand-up comics, which if you buy these books, you go, now I'm writing them for myself.
00:11:39
Speaker
um yeah know But I worked at the Gap. And, you know, this is a male and female clothing retailer, popular, been around since the 60s. And, you know, we would I would have to fold sweaters and stack them so that they lined up perfectly like these books behind, you know, small, medium, large, extra long.
00:12:00
Speaker
And I had to learn how to air fold so I could pick up. a So but I go shopping now with my wife and walk it around the mall, go to the fancy stores and. And I see some table where it looks like hell, a tornado hit it.
00:12:13
Speaker
My wife's talking to me and i'm I'm grabbing sweaters and I'm air there um they are folding sweaters like a Jedi. Not even looking, right? So needless to say here at my house, I think the audience knows who folds the laundry, right? So so look, so yeah, and look, when it comes to the PR world,
00:12:32
Speaker
You went from sort of being in the sort of theater, English literature world, the political world, working on Capitol Hill, becoming a producer. And that sort of morphed into what I do now, which is I run a PR firm and we actually promote a lot of the people from Trump world, the people from RFK Jr. world.
00:12:51
Speaker
um I like to think that we're the, you know, the center of the Maha, MAGA cinematic universe here. um um'm I'm like the Kevin Bacon of of Trump and RFK Jr. world. It's like one degree, two degrees separated from AJ Rice.
00:13:08
Speaker
That's awesome. But Trump kind of changed the dynamic, brother, in the sense that a lot of the other PR firms here in town, and I'm here in Washington, D.C., they threw in with all the people running against Trump 10 years ago, nine years ago So, you know, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, whoever.
00:13:29
Speaker
You Rand Paul, they threw in with them where we threw in with Trump almost out of the gate. You know, when the OG came down the golden escalator and we've been with him ever since. And because of that, you know, I'm not just backing the right horse for myself selfishly about my career or, you know, however much money you think you can make doing this.
00:13:53
Speaker
It's about you know saving the country, too, for me. It is. ah You know, and and look. Saving the world, brother. Because if freedom was extinguished in the United States, it would be extinguished everywhere within a decade.
00:14:07
Speaker
Sure. Don't kid yourself. Right. And, you know, while going through this, I had the opportunity in this weird way, you know, because I had worked on Trump's behalf through the first term and after the 2020 election,
00:14:23
Speaker
um People write books about Trump. We promoted them. you know Some people that work in the administration, like Peter Navarro. um I actually do work with Donald Trump Jr. I was the publicist for both of his books.
00:14:37
Speaker
And I've actually been on his show, his podcast recently, promoting my own. um Nice. And you know it's it's a weird thing that happened in 2023 because I was working with Donald Trump Jr.'s publishing house which is called Winning Team Publishing, and they do Judge Jeanine Pirro's books and Charlie Kirk and MTG and many others.
Unexpected Collaborations and Publishing Ventures
00:15:00
Speaker
um But I got approached by the RFK junior world, and I never thought a million years, being pretty much a Republican in my whole life, but coming from parents that came out of the Irish Catholic Kennedy Democrat Party, which, you know, sadly to say does not seem to really exist anymore. If they do, you know, they get thrown out of the family, like our current HHS secretary.
00:15:29
Speaker
But I had the opportunity to work with his super PAC and to work on his Dr. Fauci book. The head of his super PAC is the head of Skyhorse Publishing, Tony Lyons, who's a friend of mine. We do a lot of their books.
00:15:41
Speaker
So it's this weird thing that happened career-wise, where I have all these MAGA people and I'm doing all these doctors... Robert Malone, Naomi Wolf, Pierre Corey, all of them, Edward Dow.
00:15:54
Speaker
I'm doing all these guys, and I'm doing all Trump people. So when I saw these two men on stage together, RFK Jr. and look, they've known each other a long time.
00:16:05
Speaker
They've sued each other and all kinds of fun stuff i yeah over the years. RFK Jr. tells us this story. It's pretty funny. He's like, I think I was suing Donald Trump, and he he gave me a lift on his plane to go to the courtroom.
00:16:17
Speaker
Well, I was suing him. um You know, and but that's just kind of guy Trump is. You know, he loves competition. But he knows when you're being authentic, like he is, you know, you you have a situation here that that took place in this last election where the Democrats got to a point where this is a branding issue, but it's also a substance issue.
00:16:42
Speaker
but They lost Joe Rogan. They lost Elon Musk. They lost feminist icons like Camille Paglia and Naomi Wolf. They lost ah Tulsi Dabbard. And they lost the oldest male heir of the most famous Democrat family in the United States.
00:17:03
Speaker
and that would be R.F.K. Jr. So for all this talk here about, you know, what what happened, Democrats are doing the autopsy on themselves now. Well, you know, and they talk about how they need their own Joe Rogan.
00:17:16
Speaker
well It's a joke. They had their own Joe Rogan. He was called Joe ro Rogan. Joe Rogan and Tulsi Gabbard endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2016. They did. so it's So the question is, what did you do?
00:17:28
Speaker
How did you lose this large swath of people? um And look, I'm in the mix with all of this. i've You know, a lot of the members of the Trump White House are my clients.
Talent Scouting and Book Writing
00:17:38
Speaker
Pete Hegseth, Scott Besant, Tulsi.
00:17:43
Speaker
rk And look, there's a story behind all of and we don't have enough time. But i look, i am I like to think of myself as a talent scout. Not just the names you know, but the names you don't know yet.
00:17:56
Speaker
Right? I'm trying to be like a scouting director for the New York Yankees. You know, I got this kid from Kalamazoo, Michigan. You know, he's um he's he's a mixed race descent, the shortstop.
00:18:09
Speaker
Doesn't hit for a lot of power, but he's a natural born leader. Oh, really? What's his name? his name Derek Jeter. That's his name. Okay. So you've got to try to find the Derek Jeters out there. you got to try to find the Kobe Bryants out there.
00:18:24
Speaker
Right? That's what you're looking for in my world. And then I got this boneheaded idea, Mickey, to write my own books. I basically said to myself, you know what? I'm going to put myself through the same pain that because I'm Irish and I'm a masochist, obviously, um that I put all my clients through, right?
00:18:43
Speaker
So in 2022, I put out The Woking Dead. And in 2024, put out The Woking Dead. That's a good name for a book, man. That's a really good name for a book, The Woking Dead. Let's get a copy here. Here we go. Let's get a copy.
00:18:57
Speaker
All right, here we go. So the the audience can see. Here it is. Look, you got the hand. Look, that's Nancy Pelosi's hand coming up there. Ladies and gentlemen, no, it's not. it's ah It's a zombie hand.
00:19:09
Speaker
So, look, i'm I'm a pop culture
'The Woking Dead' and Pop Culture Commentary
00:19:11
Speaker
guy. Hold on, hold on. Nancy Pelosi is a zombie. I'm a pop culture guy. Look, there's a lot of zombie references in this. Not just star The Walking Dead or George Romero's movies, but...
00:19:23
Speaker
you know, even Michael Jackson's thriller. In fact, the book begins with Vincent Price's monologue from thriller, um, which brings us to this book with an apology to the Beatles.
00:19:35
Speaker
Um, although the cover of this book took inspiration more from Pink Floyd's the law, right? And obviously we don't give a crap with Yoko Ono. Thanks to hell with her, but we'll apologize to the, the four gentlemen from Liverpool.
00:19:52
Speaker
Um, But I tried to blend pop culture and entertainment, which was my life before politics, into politics. Because I grew up with Howard Stern. i grew up with Russell Limbaugh.
00:20:04
Speaker
Andrew Breitbart was a mentor of mine. ah You know, we put when he was just running the drug report, um you know he he used to say he look the american people they swim downstream from culture more than they swim downstream from politics and look limbo used to say you know his job was to use irreverent humor to illustrate truth use comedy to illustrate truth right so that's what i try to do and look you know some people you know if they're Politically correct, their heads explode with some of my books and some of the chapter titles and so on. But ah look, you can have a little fun.
00:20:41
Speaker
Your latest book is called The White Privilege Album. um And it's available, i'm assuming, everywhere, like Amazon, et cetera. So we're going to make sure we put all that into the show notes.
00:20:54
Speaker
But let's buts unpack a bit of what you said, okay? So you're literature ah graduate. yeah You studied English literature.
00:21:07
Speaker
um i don't know if you can see my background, but this is my office. And there are 2,000 books here. There's another 3,000 the rest of my house.
00:21:19
Speaker
I've read well over 4,000 books. I'm a poet. I write poetry. I know that you've told me that you're into poetry as well. I'm going to read you one of my
Favorite Books Discussion
00:21:28
Speaker
poems in a moment. But before I do that,
00:21:31
Speaker
What was your favorite book when you were studying at Penn State? What book touched your soul and why? Well, ah like a lot of people, I don't like to be told what to read.
00:21:47
Speaker
i don't like to be told ah to think. So, you know, I'm always trying to counter-program, not just every moment, including probably this interview.
00:21:58
Speaker
um But also... You know, look, there are people that go to school, they go to college, and they're there to get the A, keep their GPA up, and move on. What's your favorite book, buddy? What's your favorite book? That's the question. Come on.
00:22:15
Speaker
Well, I don't know whether I can drill down on that. I will tell you, the book that changed me, that got me into reading long before Penn State, you know, when I'm like 10,
00:22:29
Speaker
was The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and The Hobbit. Both of those. Those are great books. Both of those. Okay, so if you're looking for the first Ember, those I think are probably, know, without like little kid stuff, you know, like the Dr. Seuss. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm talking about long-form narrative storytelling. Correct, yeah.
00:22:52
Speaker
Those two got me into the world that then became... Henry James and Joseph Conrad and Faulkner and Fitzgerald and Ezra Pound and so on and s so on and so on, and so on, right? Okay.
00:23:07
Speaker
You know, you don't you can't just drop into the turn of the screw, okay? Unless you're Hunter Biden, then you can do to the turn of the screw. But you can't just drop in there, right?
00:23:19
Speaker
what's your What's your favorite book of all time that you've read, like a novel, not not like a nonfiction book?
Influence of Mark Twain on American Literature
00:23:26
Speaker
Probably Huckleberry Finn. That is a phenomenal book.
00:23:30
Speaker
I'd like to know why. America from and it. Look, there the old way of writing ah was not to put the language of the narrative into the common man's voice.
00:23:48
Speaker
Right? So it was always high English. right the queen Even before Twain. even an american stuff but floor twain Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emily Dickinson, you good you know, even Edgar Allan Poe wrote who's, you know, he's writing in the 1830s, and I loved him to death. Don't get me wrong. Into the Maelstrom is, if you ask me about short stories, that that would be a top three.
00:24:16
Speaker
But pre-twain, you have almost stuff that sounds, you know, like theatrical presentations.
00:24:26
Speaker
Yes. um Which comes out of the English tradition. But you've got this group of guys around 1849 with the gold rush. And it's not just Twain. It's Hart Crane and Stephen Crane and the Red Badger Courage. You go to all this, right?
00:24:41
Speaker
These guys start talking the way, writing the way people in the saloons are talking. yeah Right. Right. So obviously there was a, there was a, you know, James Fenimore Cooper, right? The the last of the Mohicans, right? Great book. Great book.
00:24:56
Speaker
Right. And it's funny, him and Twain hate each other. That's a whole other story. But, but, but Twain's arch nemesis was, was Henry James. And what's funny is they had the same editors and same editor, uh, HR brands or something like that. HW brands or something like that.
00:25:13
Speaker
yeah Yeah, and but they but James was horrified. He was polluting the English language, you know writing from a from a perspective of you know all these little people that we should never hear from. Because he was well-born and well-bred, and he was pedigree, and he say, you know, he's writing a Washington Square. He's a snob.
00:25:36
Speaker
Yeah, right. He's snob. Right. So, but Twain creates this branch, and from that branch, You get Faulkner writing about the South.
00:25:48
Speaker
yeah You get Steinbeck writing about the Duff Bowl. yeah You get all of Hemingway's stuff. And if you take it a step further, you get to ah slightly different mediums.
00:26:01
Speaker
graphic um yeah comic book. Stan Lee will tell you when he's alive. He would like the way people talk in his comic books. He did. Whether is the X-Men or the Fantastic Four.
00:26:12
Speaker
You study a guy like Elmore Leonard. i love Elmore Leonard. Who's considered a pulp writer. No Twain, no Leonard. No Leonard, no Quentin Tarantino.
00:26:23
Speaker
So if you follow the balancing ball, and look, I have dealt with this in my freaking world. You're brilliant, dude. You're freaking brilliant. Look, most people, here's the thing.
00:26:36
Speaker
You get Judge Jeanine on the phone right now. You get Laura Ingraham on the phone right now. You could talk to Don Jr. You talk to any of the but killers that I have represented, either as a producer or as their publicist, they will tell you, we hire AJ because he talks to me the way Joe Pesci would talk to me.
00:26:55
Speaker
Okay? The way Scorsese would write, you know, mean streets, right? Or taxi driver or raging bull or good fellows or the departed whatever hell it is.
00:27:06
Speaker
So, so the answer has to be Twain. Huckleberry Finn fine, but it has to be Twain. It has to be because Twain is a divergence in what art can be.
00:27:20
Speaker
Right. And look, plenty of these other guys that come off of this, the Twain branch, right? Hemingway, for example, was obsessed with this thing called the iceberg method.
00:27:35
Speaker
And he said he wanted to write the way Cezanne painted, the famous impressionist, right? But Cezanne used iceberg, too. There was the object that you see, and then you have the below the water line.
00:27:50
Speaker
What the hell is below the water line? The iceberg, the majority of it, right? So that's, so like you take a short story by Hemingway, like the snows of Kilimanjaro.
00:28:01
Speaker
I asked students all the time, because I used to, you know, I did a lot of, I did some like pinch hit teaching of when I was in grad school and English literature and political science. What is the snows of Kilimanjaro about?
00:28:14
Speaker
People think they they give all kinds of nutty answers, African metaphor for this, or but it's actually about pregnancy. and rebirth. The snows of Kilimanjaro is a pregnant woman's stomach.
00:28:27
Speaker
But Hemingway has gone on the record and told us that. A lot of people don't read literary theory or literary criticism, and then you could say to yourself, well, where was Hemingway when he wrote this? What state of mind was he in?
00:28:38
Speaker
Which wife was he on? Which wife was he on, dude? That's brutal. Right? And you try to figure out how he got there. But just to answer your question, Huckleberry Finn,
00:28:51
Speaker
Life on the river um has to be, has to have primacy, and does in my life. Because I, look, when I got to D.C., and this goes on everywhere.
00:29:03
Speaker
i don't care whether you're in New York City, d c Toronto, Montreal, wherever the hell you are. You know, there's the fancy kids, and then there's the kid the the the Horatio Alger kids, the bootstrap kids, the kids that came from piss and vinegar, the kids that came from nothing, the kids that went to state schools.
00:29:19
Speaker
You know, when I got the Laura Ingram show and I became associate producer, we had this intern program. And all these kids in this intern program went to Georgetown and Yale and didn did this one and to that one and Stanford. or the And they would rarely show up.
00:29:36
Speaker
They wouldn't do what the hell they were supposed to. I pull Laura aside and I say, hey, we need some state school kids in here. Okay? We need some ass-kicking kids. Kids that appreciate the education they're getting.
00:29:49
Speaker
That they were prepped from kindergarten all the way through whatever the hell, you know, year they're in now. Junior in college, law school, whatever the hell it is And she was like, and i so she goes, all right, bring in three.
00:30:02
Speaker
So I bring in three killers. Right? They went to one at University Nebraska. One of them was at, I think, West Virginia University.
00:30:12
Speaker
And I brought in a kid from Penn State, which is where I went. They're like coal miners, grinders. What do you need now? What do you need next? They were early. They stayed late because they had a different mindset, a different work ethic.
00:30:25
Speaker
Right? yeah ah you know Yeah. That's how you can go from selling used books in your garage like Jeff Bezos to sending rockets into space with five feminists on on board.
00:30:38
Speaker
like You stay there. You know, i's thinking, Bezos... This is a great way to get rid of your fiance if you don't really like her that much. You know, you could have a little oopsie. Anyway, ah but the the reality is that I brought in those types of people. But here in town, there was a lot of people that, you know, I didn't get. There was a lot of jobs I probably didn't get.
00:31:00
Speaker
lot of shots I didn't get because I lacked the pedigree. or the stupid freaking bow tie, or whatever it was. I gave a speech once, I called to a group of young conservatives. they There's a video of it. it was It was called the burn your bow tie speech.
00:31:18
Speaker
You know, in the 60s radicals, the feminists in the streets, they're all burning their bras, right? They're taking their bras off. They're not shaving their underarms. And they're burning these bras. Well, I told right-wingers right around 2007 or 8 to burn their bow ties.
00:31:33
Speaker
Conservatism... does not have a uniform. Libertarianism, Americanism, there's no uniform. You don't have to dress like Alex P. Keaton.
00:31:45
Speaker
You don't. You can if you want. You'll notice Tucker Carlson took his bow tie off. He banned it. He was one of these people that had it on all the time on CNN for years. Right?
00:31:56
Speaker
So there's no, look, you can be, you can ride a motorcycle, you can have a face tattoo, you can do all kinds of things. And that is kind of what RK Jr. and Trump and Elon and a lot of disruptors have proven. that Look, but ah Bezos is disrupting.
00:32:14
Speaker
There's plenty of them. that you That there's no straight line. That you don't have a uniform, either intellectually or physically. You can have an accent. You can not have an accent.
00:32:24
Speaker
You can speak like Plain. but Or you can speak like Henry James. And that you should get a shot because you could be talented. hey There you go. ah Donald Trump isn't exactly ah a well-bred man. He's a very wealthy man, but he's yeah ah he talks like he's a New Yorker, a man from Queens, yeah and he doesn't always speak in complete sentences and paragraphs. So there you go.
00:32:49
Speaker
So it's interesting what you said about your favorite book, and I thought that was a very, very brilliant analysis of... American culture drawing a straight line from Mark Twain to today.
00:33:02
Speaker
and and ah And I thought that was absolutely brilliant. I'll tell you my own favorite novels. i have a ah couple. ah I can't narrow it down to one. Growing up, my favorite novel was The Eagle Has Landed by Jack Higgins. i don't know if you've ever read that book.
00:33:18
Speaker
it's It's a brilliant book. And the main hero of that book is a German officer in World War II who was sent to kill Winston Churchill.
00:33:29
Speaker
And... ah he hated the Nazis and he acted so bloody honorably. I don't want to give away the, the, the plot line in case there's folks here who haven't read it and will have a chance to read and enjoy that book.
00:33:43
Speaker
But I have read that book at least 30 times, at least 30 times. That's how much I love that book. ah And that book for me, was the straight line to all the novels that I've enjoyed since. So folks like Tom Clancy, The Hunt for Red John LeCarre, The Cardinal of the Kremlin, all the other books, Vince Flynn.
00:34:03
Speaker
um you know I knew Vince. Did you? He was a great man. I knew Vince before he died. He was really good friends with Ingram. He was great American. You know, he died of like strange add this blue cancer. You got him. Yeah. Laura was there.
00:34:19
Speaker
Laura visited him in the hospital, I believe. So, yeah, yeah he was a great man. Vince Flynn. and And now Bell, right. yeah Jack Carr. I'm assuming. Yeah. I love Jack Carr. I've read ah read a bunch of his books. you know But the other person whose novels really impacted me and really is responsible for me becoming a conservative is Ayn
Influence of Ayn Rand on Conservative Views
00:34:42
Speaker
Rand. I read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.
00:34:45
Speaker
I read Atlas Shrugged when I was 20 years old. And I read it over a course of a week. I had a pay Purdue. for university ah in ah political science, international politics.
00:34:58
Speaker
And i was reading Atlas Shrugged. That week I slept a total of one hour the whole week. I was either writing my paper or reading Atlas Shrugged the entire week. I read that book, that 1,100-page tome then.
00:35:10
Speaker
And that set me off on a quest to seek out conservative authors and writers. And that led me to to William F. Buckley and National Review.
00:35:21
Speaker
ah And, you know I read a whole bunch of Vinerand's other books. I started to read William F. Buckley's novels, the Blackford Oaks books. and Have you read the Blackford Oaks books? They're fantastic.
00:35:32
Speaker
No, i yeah I mean, I've read Christopher Buckley's Thank You for Smoking. That's a great book. That's a great book. I've read that. But you ought to read it. Not in Man at Yale. His novels are fun.
00:35:43
Speaker
His novels are a lot of I've never read any of his novels. Check, check, check. Quite frankly, let lately, i don't read as much novels as I probably should. I mean, I feel like I read them all but for like 20 years of my life. And in the last 10 years, not, mean, maybe a couple a year, not as many as I used to. Fiction's good for your soul.
00:36:02
Speaker
Fiction's for I think you're probably right. It's good for your soul. It's good to read. do ingest a lot. I do ingest a lot of documentaries now. And I do some, all I do, I have done some, some audio versions of actually stuff again, older, you know, you like you discover a writer and you go crazy through them, you know, stuff, but not, not modern stuff, not guys that are alive, like go through like Roger Kipling stuff or Graham, Graham Green, right? green Sure. youre John Dos Passos, folks like that. I mean, that's, that's amazing stuff. The power and the glory. I mean, I,
00:36:38
Speaker
You know, there's, there's, it's funny, you know, um so I saw Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino one time talking about, you know, cause they made from Dusk Till Dawn together. And then, you know, you have the Mariachi trilogy, which is with Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek. And then, know, they made those death proof movies together, which are like pulp serialized machete. And, you know, if you read, it's funny because I heard Elmore Leonard say this once too.
00:37:07
Speaker
If you pick up The Power and the Glory, which is about this character, and this character's name is just the Whiskey Priest. He's basically this Catholic priest in Mexico and down the Southwest. It's like, you know like Desperado. He's like a wild man. He's like defending this town and killing people. It's like crazy, right? And it's it's funny because Graham Greene's considered, you know, high...
00:37:35
Speaker
high literature, but he was himself, and he might have been getting influenced by Hemingway and other people at the time, because they were contemporary. But like some of his stuff, like Our Man in Havana, with there's a movie, Ali Guinness plays him. Yeah, yeah, that's a great movie. I love that movie. Yeah, he's someone too, like Hemingway and then Leonard later, that's starting, they're channeling Twain, because he's writing, yes, he's writing around about British people Like, a what's what what's there's one there's a movie, Brandon Fraser, he's in Vietnam. What the hell? Michael Caine and Brandon Fraser, they're in Vietnam before the French leave, and there's still a French colony.
00:38:16
Speaker
So he always has some slick English person there. But for the most part, other than the one slick English person, he's writing in the language of the people, too. Right? And if you look at, like, look, I'm Irish Catholic, so i love Irish literature.
00:38:30
Speaker
I mean, look at James Joyce. He said it. He said it. he said and He said, I'm channeling. um I want to be the Irish Twain. So whether you read the Dubliners or Finnegan's Wake or Ulysses or any of these things, he's writing in the scumbaggery language of the whores and the drunks and the bartenders of Dublin.
00:38:51
Speaker
Right. So, i mean, look, Twain affects, he ripples down through the timeline in a lot of these people. Right. A lot of these authors. Yeah, he's great.
00:39:02
Speaker
He's great. So um your books, ah you know, The Woking Dead and The White Privilege Album, how do folks get a hold of these books? They go to Amazon. Is that the best way? what do you want them to do? Sure.
00:39:19
Speaker
Yeah, they've both been number one Amazon bestsellers. in the political humor categories among others, bunch of different categories. They're both on Amazon. They're on Barnes and Noble. They're on Books and Million.
00:39:33
Speaker
You can get them from Simon & Schuster's website. You can get them from Post Hill Press website, which is my imprint under Simon & Schuster. You know, pretty much ah you know Target and Walmart have them.
00:39:44
Speaker
And we have, um you know, with The Woking Dead, we have a paperback. We have ma hard but actually two different hardbacks and a paperback. And audiobook, and you can get it on like a reader, an e-reader.
00:39:56
Speaker
um We just dropped the audiobook of the White Privilege album in January. So there's no paperback yet, but there will be later this year.
00:40:07
Speaker
And look, you know, it took me four years to write The Woking Dead. It took me two years to write the White Privilege album. And it's funny, i studied I've studied all these different writers we've talked about in their methodology.
00:40:20
Speaker
Some of them do get stuck. um you know, and they won't write, I mean, Fitzgerald got stuck for years. um You know, some people think his wife was the reason he couldn't finish things.
00:40:33
Speaker
Zelda, Zelda Fitzgerald, the great partier. um But other authors, like some the ones you mentioned, like Vince Flynn, you know, when I met these guys, had a chance, Ted Bell has been, we've worked on and his books.
00:40:47
Speaker
You could kind of, I've been able to pick their brain. And the one thing that I can say, and this also goes for filmmakers, whether it's Wes Anderson or, or the Coen brothers or Woody Allen or Hitchcock, doesn't matter who it is.
00:41:01
Speaker
They all created a formula. So first book took four years. Second book took two years. The third book is done. It's being edited right now. It'll be out next year.
00:41:11
Speaker
That took me about 11 months. So I've created a formula. I look at it. Um, I go about this in a multidimensional marketing way.
00:41:23
Speaker
If you go through you go through all my books, you'll see Easter eggs and stuff that I've hidden. My publisher doesn doesn't even know they're there. you know so ah what Wasn't it the White Album? If you played it backwards, it said something? No, joking.
00:41:38
Speaker
But like look, with with my first book, I got a bunch of my famous friends that give me blurbs. for it Laurie Ingram, our current Secretary Defense, Pete Hegseth, gave me a blurb for this.
00:41:49
Speaker
He wasn't Secretary of Defense then. But with this book, I got blurbs from way more famous people. My blurbs for this book came from Abraham Lincoln, Joseph Stalin, Benjamin Franklin, Santa Claus, Christopher Columbus, and many others. So if you're looking for a funny book endorsed by both Joseph Stalin and Santa Claus, pick up your copy of the White Privilege album.
00:42:14
Speaker
and you won't be disappointed. We'll make sure we put all that in the show notes so people can can grab their copy. We end off every episode, brother, by asking you, our guest expert, for your top three expert action steps.
00:42:26
Speaker
These are, in bullet point form, your best pieces of advice to help my listener take their life, their business, to the next level. What say you?
00:42:37
Speaker
Well, number one, I mentioned it earlier, none of this is supposed to be a straight line, right? any Any type of creativity involves some destruction. It does. So it's, you know, it's a two step forward, know, it's four to one step back situation.
00:42:54
Speaker
And especially people, millennials and Gen Z that are out there listening in particular, um you know, you're going to have to play a little free card money with your life. You're going have to figure out what, you know, what your priorities are. Is it career? Is it family? Is it spirituality? Is it just cold, hard cash, whatever it is.
00:43:13
Speaker
um you're not going to get them all and you're not going to get them all at the same time. You need to understand that. um One thing that I, that would be the first thing. The second thing I would say is there are a lot of people in my world that are no longer here. They're still alive, but they're no longer here and they're no longer here because they didn't build the mountain from the ground up.
00:43:36
Speaker
They thought they could take a helicopter to the top of the mountain and then just ski down at it will. Sometimes when you do that, you don't know the mountains. You haven't climbed it from the ground up.
00:43:47
Speaker
You don't know where every rock is, where every avalanche could happen. You don't know. So build your own mountain from the ground up. Don't try to take a shortcut.
00:43:58
Speaker
You know, yeah I have a friend who's got a helicopter. is it It's Kobe's pilot. You can't do that. You've got to go from the ground up. Absolutely. And then you can ski down it at will and climb back up and ski down it at will.
00:44:12
Speaker
Right? um And the third thing I would say is that whether it's your country or whether it's your own life story, no one else can write it for you.
00:44:25
Speaker
You know, the Canadian government, the American government, the Australian government, wherever you're at, ah these elected officials serve at the pleasure of you.
Wisdom on Authenticity and Individual Uniqueness
00:44:35
Speaker
The states created the federal government here in the United States. It wasn't the other way around.
00:44:39
Speaker
We tell you, don't tell us. ah And look, every good every form of government has checks and balances. But just understand that, you know, you do as an individual, writing your own story, and you can write like Twain or you can write like James, it doesn't matter.
00:44:57
Speaker
You want to speak the King's English? That's fine. You want to speak Tarantino English? That's fine. Because there is no uniform for your own personal authenticity, right?
00:45:09
Speaker
And if you if you stay... Look, the American people, and i'm I'm assuming most Canadians too, they believe in two things. One is merit, you know, that that there's a meritocracy. And I think the anti-woke movement, um the anti-affirmative action movement, the DEI movement in the western Western civilization is partly part of this. I know u k just the UK just had an election before.
00:45:36
Speaker
my buddy Nigel Farage, and his UK reform party is now moving in the direction of being the primary opposition to the left-wing kooks running London.
00:45:48
Speaker
But also this, you understand that, you know, when you're writing your own story, you have to think back and you have to say yourself, am I being authentic?
00:45:59
Speaker
So merit is one thing, authenticity is another, and that is why Kamala Harris ah was not elected president of the United States, and it's why Bill Clinton was. um And like you said earlier, Trump's a hardhat guy from Queens.
00:46:14
Speaker
He's not I-beams. Trump and Obama both have parents that were born in another country. Obama's was in Kenya. Trump's was in Scotland, his mother.
00:46:27
Speaker
So, look, there's no, like, there's no like ah you know, lists of absolute genetic qualifications or upbringings to be successful. You have to believe in these things I'm talking about.
00:46:43
Speaker
And like Nicky talks about every week when he, when he does this show. I really liked that quote that you gave us say it again about there's no uniform to your authenticity. How did you say it exactly?
00:46:55
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, there isn't there, there, there is, there is no uniform to your authenticity. There, there isn't. There's no, like I said to you earlier when I was coming up, no uniform to conservatism, no uniform to libertarianism, no uniform to being a successful entrepreneur or a thinker.
00:47:11
Speaker
In fact, the people that burn their uniforms, the people that shatter the mold, are the people that become revolutionaries, right? Whether it's Elon Musk, Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln, whoever it is.
00:47:25
Speaker
Yeah, that's brilliant. That's brilliant. AJ Rice, man, it's an honor to have you here on the show. We'll make sure that all your details are placed in the show notes. Listener, AJ Rice is the real deal. There is no uniform to your authenticity.
00:47:39
Speaker
Remember that. ah Go to Amazon to pick up a copy of his books, The Woking Dead and The White Privilege album. um Don't just pick up a copy for yourself. Buy five to ten copies and hand them out as gifts to all the people you love and all your best clients.
00:47:56
Speaker
And make sure that if you got something great from this episode, you share it with others and that you leave us a like, you leave us a rating, you leave us a review. Brother, thanks for coming on the show, man. An honor to have you here.
00:48:09
Speaker
God bless you. God bless you. Look, it's ah it' an honor. ah You're a patriot. You're a great Canadian. You're a great member of Western civilization. And I know you do nothing but want to help people.
00:48:22
Speaker
And I hope but you know everyone watching today had a smile on their face most of the time and met and hopefully learned something as well. So it was really the pleasure to be here. Yeah, you bet, man. You bet.
00:48:33
Speaker
And that wraps up another exciting episode of the podcast, The Thought Leader Revolution. To find out more about today's amazing guest, the one and only A.J. Rice, go to the show notes at thethoughtleaderrevolution.com or wherever you happen to listen to this episode, be it iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, YouTube, Rumble, or what have you.
00:48:52
Speaker
Until next time. Goodbye.
00:48:59
Speaker
This episode has been brought to you by ecircleacademy.com, the proven system to add six to seven figures a year to your thought leader practice.