Kathie Lee Gifford On The Greatest Story Never Told 47:32

It's time to take the quiz. Five questions, five minutes a day, five days a week. Take the quiz every weekday at thequiz.fox and then listen to the quiz podcast to find out how you did. Play, share, and of course, listen to the quiz at thequiz.fox. Welcome to the Jason in the House podcast. I'm Jason Chaffetz. Thanks for joining us. Oh my goodness, this past week, so much has happened. I...

We got a lot going on. Look, I got a great guest today, Kathy Lee Gifford. I already spoke with her. We were recording this in a little different order here where I had a great conversation. She's got a new book out. She is just a dynamo. You're going to want to hear that. But given all the breaking news and everything that's happening, I feel compelled to spend a little bit more time talking about some of the items in the news. And then, of course, we're going to highlight the stupid because there's always somebody doing something stupid somewhere.

And we're going to go back to a Florida man and we'll get to that in just a minute. But when we're recording this on Friday and this podcast comes out on Sunday, so who knows what's going to happen over the next 48 hours. But considering where we sit here this Friday morning, let's go back to what was happening before because it was just the previous Saturday night that

Fox brought me into New York. I was going to, with my colleagues, co-host what's called The Bottom Line, a great show, Saturday and Sunday nights on Fox News at 7 p.m. Eastern. Myself, Katie Pavlich, Joe Concha, and I can't remember who the other one was. We were all getting ready and preparing to go live at 7 o'clock. But

Prior to that, Donald Trump was set to take the stage there in Pennsylvania. And so we're watching it. He comes out pretty much on time. He goes out rousing crowd, huge crowd, you know, beautiful day. It's the summer. It's the height of the campaign season. It's a critical state like Pennsylvania, you

Lots going on. He's out there. He's pumping his fist. Everybody's jumping up and excited. And then at 6.11, the shots rang out. The president put his hand up, went down to the ground. And quite frankly, we didn't know if he was going to get up again. But then, miraculously, you've seen it. You've heard it. You've watched it yourself. I don't need to re-describe everything, but when he stood up and pumped his fist and had...

blood on his face and was escorted off the stage and into the car, you thought, oh my goodness, but you still didn't know if he was going to be all right. A little bit of chaos ensued. You know, I've heard the president now, he did his acceptance speech and he pointed out something in that acceptance speech on Thursday night that I thought was really interesting. He said, you know, the crowd didn't scatter. They didn't run. They stayed right there. And it's true. I

I've usually shots are fired or something dramatic happens. Everybody starts running. And in this case, that's not what happened, which is really fascinating. And it'll be interesting to dive in that a little bit more. But I remember as this thing went, as this was going down, as this situation was playing out, thinking to myself, all right, this is a catastrophic failure on behalf of the by the Secret Service.

And I did a podcast very specific to the background of my work on the Secret Service. And you can go check out that podcast. If you go to the Jason in the House podcast, you can go check out. It's just 20 minutes or so. I had done a full deep dive into the Secret Service podcast.

Now, again, we're recording this on Friday. It comes out Sunday and Monday. There is going to be a secret service hearing with the director of the secret service. Director Cheadle is going to have to testify before the oversight and government reform committee, the committee that I used to chair. She is probably going to go up and claim that it's an ongoing investigation and she can't answer this, that, or the other question. Now I, I,

Quite frankly, I've talked to some members on that committee and some staff on that committee, having been the previous chairman, and explained to them how to get around those excuses.

They have bet there better be some full explanations, not just the simple timeline. The shooter did this. This is the one we did that. No, we need to know why the extraction was so poorly executed. We need to know why and how that shooter was able to.

to get up there. And here's a couple of key things that I think people should be looking for. Because through my investigations, one of the things that was pathetic is recruitment. Number two was the training. And then the other one is radio communications. Now, everybody wants to hear all the nitty gritty details and, you know, dive deeper into things. But think about how difficult it is for law enforcement to

When all of a sudden everything just hits the fan and everybody starts chattering, nobody can hear each other. But if you practice that, if you have discipline in that, then you learn how to deal with it. And my guess is when we do the after action report and they get in and they dive deep here, they're going to find that they didn't execute that very well because they don't do any training.

They don't do enough training. I guarantee you that's what it's going to be. Maybe not the biggest headline or the most sensational thing, but for the agents and uniformed division at the White House and others, when you don't have training and you don't have the proper radio communication, you can't do your job and everybody looks pathetic and it puts the protectees in danger.

So, look, there's going to be a lot more about this. We're going to let these hearings play out.

Again, I have a specific podcast about the Secret Service. But nevertheless, I still believe in my heart of hearts that it's divine intervention, that President Trump is still with us. And that speech he gave, a wonderful, wonderful, heartfelt speech from Donald Trump about unity and bringing the country back together. And the idea that he's lucky to be there. Now, we also need to remember there are two people still fighting for their lives. Their lives will never be the same having been shot.

And then the firefighter who lost his life and that poor young family. And there's that GoFundMe page. But still, that'll never make that family the same. There's going to be those hard nights when the headlines subside and life goes on and dad's still not there. That husband is no longer there with that family. And that

That is so sad, but it's also so unnecessary because if people had been able to do their job the proper way, good coordination with local law enforcement, you know, they do a lot. They've spent a lot of money. If you see something, say something, and then nothing happens. That's what's so demoralizing. It's so fundamentally, totally, completely wrong. And it doesn't need to be that way. And yet...

Nine years ago, we made all these recommendations. One other recommendation that I would, I want to highlight. We had done the deep dive bipartisan investigation of the Secret Service, but then also the Secretary of Homeland Security. And also, I believe it was Jay Johnson had put together a blue ribbon commission to also look at Secret Service issues. And one of their core recommendations, among others, was,

was that they hire a new secret service director from outside the agency. And the reason it wasn't critical to hire somebody outside the agency is, as they highlighted, they don't have the friends. They don't have they can look at everything new and fresh. They can challenge all the typical norms. But that what Joe Biden did was exactly the opposite of their recommendation.

The recommendations were not adhered to. They did not solve the training issues. They did not solve the communication issues.

And they hired a director who had worked there, I think, some 20 plus years. I mean, you can say, hey, she's got experience. Then she left, was an executive at Pepsi and then came back. News reports, if you believe them, are, you know, the reason that they liked her is that Joe Biden's detail she was involved and engaged with.

and that Jill Biden really liked her. And if you look at the goals of what the Secret Service wants to accomplish, what they want to do, one of the three is diversity. I have a problem with that. I think competence is what you really need. Now, if you prioritize making sure that you get diversity over competence,

Then you might have a situation where, for instance, your protectee is, say, 6'4", maybe, oh, I don't know, 200-plus pounds, and you have agents on the personal protective detail that can't lift that person. They may have the right personality. They may get along well. They may be a pleasant person to be around. But if you can't smother the president, if you can't, your protectee, if you can't lift that person off a stage if they're injured, then

You can't have that job. You just can't have that job. There are lots of jobs you can have, but there are physical requirements on the personal protection that require a degree of physicality that you just may not have. So it's not whether it's a male or female thing. It's your ability to actually execute on the job.

If you're, say, maybe a sniper or planning or a driver or other critical roles in the mission, hey, you know, you don't... Again, I'm not prescribing a gender for the solution, but I thought the extraction was pathetic. And if you can't holster your gun, if you prioritize holding your glasses rather than having your hand free to grab your gun,

your weapon, anybody can figure that out. Barney Fife could have figured out that that rooftop was a vulnerability. And when you have citizens, local law enforcement, evidently, at least the evidence thus far, yelling, telling, highlighting the fact that, hey, you know what, there's somebody else up on the roof. Think about it. This shooter was not stealthy, was not sophisticated, wasn't creative.

got up on a white roof wearing camo. They should have been able to identify that so quickly. Anyway, I could go through the details. It is infuriating. It can never ever happen again, but I can tell you having done that, that secret service report, having looked at more than 150 security incidents in the past, unfortunately for the secret service, I think for a lot of these incidents, they've gotten really lucky and unlucky for the person who lost his life.

Two that are fighting for their lives and a president, former president, that was shot in the ear in moments, a second, a fraction of an inch away from losing his life. All right, let's move on because you know what? If that isn't stupid enough, there's always somebody else doing something stupid. So let's go to Florida, of course. The Florida...

In Florida, man, this comes from thesmokinggun.com. I really kind of enjoy this website. I don't look at it every day because there's not necessarily new content every day. But if you look at every week or two, it's pretty entertaining. So this headline is cops. Emperor's helper found with no clothes. First line, the emperor's helper had no clothes, Florida police say. Following recent reports about a male intruder sleeping...

inside a Vero Beach apartment complex stairwell. The police were called. They came in and they found a naked man in there. The naked man was, quote, fully nude and said, hey, you know, what are you doing here? And he said that the reason he was there, the reason he was engaged is that he was the emperor's helper. Literally following through with the idea that the emperor's

Emperor had no clothes. This was the emperor's helper with no clothes. Nevertheless, he was detained, charged with trespass, pleaded no contest, and was adjudicated guilty of the misdemeanor. And he's going to be locked up for one week. But that's the stupid, at least for today. All right.

Now it's time to bring on Kathy Lee Gifford. Kathy is just bounding with energy. I mean, how many times did I find my wife watching Regis and Kathy Lee? And she's just a huge fan. And we've had her on the podcast before. I've gotten to know her, consider her a friend now. And she's really fun. And she's got this book. And you'll see right from the get-go, she's pretty passionate about it. So let's bring on Kathy Lee Gifford. Kathy Lee Gifford, I'm so glad to be on with you.

i appreciate it thank you so much i don't see me but uh maybe you see me but i'm happy to hear your voice i wish i could see i wish we'd do this in person but no i look darn good today darn i wish you could see me well okay i believe you i believe you i saw you in palm beach recently it was so nice to spend time with you there it was that was fun that was fun i could have chatted with you for hours you you've

You do so much. You've got such an incredible background. You're just always fun and exciting. And I just love it. It's contagious. Thank you. Thank you so much. Well, I've got this new book, which is something I've never, ever done before. A thriller. You know, it's a real thriller instead of my regular kinds of books. And I think this is my 31st book. I've lost count. I truly have. And I know yours, The Puppeteers.

And, but this one, this one, my son talked me into, this one's called Herod and Mary. And it's basically a brand new series called Ancient Evil Living Hope. Because people say, do you think the world's more evil today, Kathy, than it's always been? And I go, no, Satan is Satan. He has always been Satan. And he was there as a snake in the Garden of Eden. He goes all the way back to that and he's been there all through. But what we forget is,

is that our hope is in God Almighty, Jehovah God, and Jehovah God, and the Holy Spirit, and Jesus, His Son. And that's where we have to put our trust in. And so, you know, to juxtapose the story of Herod, one of the most unbelievably prolific, brilliant minds ever. I had no idea about Herod.

When you read the Bible, you don't learn much about Herod at all. It's like a black and white print. It's not in technicolor. It's not in Dolby sound. After I learned about Herod on one of my rabbinical trips to Israel, I came home and ordered five books about him by Josephus and different great historians and everything else. And I went, oh, my gosh, if Jesus is the greatest story ever told, and I believe it is,

Herod is the greatest story never told. I'd never heard of it. I'd never heard of this man, what he did, what he built, what his place in history with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony and the whole. I mean, he had one foot in Rome, one foot in Israel. He wasn't even the king of the Jews. He wasn't even a Jew.

I said, why doesn't anybody tell me these things? So that's what I'm trying to do now is wrote this thriller about this man who murdered pretty much every one of his political enemies, murdered his entire family pretty much.

and died with his genitals hanging off his body with maggots and black hanging off. And nobody would, even his slaves didn't want to go near him. He sunk so badly. So, you know, this is a man who lived a big life that I'd never heard of before. And I went, I want to juxtapose Herod up against the most profoundly beautiful, holy woman ever.

ever chosen to be the mother of the savior of all of humankind. How would that look? If there was evil in the world at the time of Herod, that there was living hope in a 14 year old girl, maybe even younger, who said yes to an angel and said, let it be as you have said. And she believed.

She knew she could be murdered, stoned for having a child outside of wedlock. She had never lain with a man. She knew she was a virgin. And the angel said, the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and you will be with child, and you are to name him Jesus. And you know what she said, Jason? She said, let it be as you have said. I want to be that person, Jason. I want to be...

I want to be that woman. I'm not. I have at times been that woman. I want to be that woman all the time. She is living hope, living hope. And she had to stand there and watch her son be crucified. But she was also there when he was raised from the dead. So the story is unbelievable. This was the hardest book I've ever written.

And I wrote it with this brilliant, brilliant man, Dr. Brian Lipton, who has, you know, got a million PhDs.

And he is so brilliant about our biblical history and everything else. So we tried to stay incredibly true to biblical truths and archaeology and all of those things. It's a turn. Again, it's a thriller. And I've never written that. Every chapter you go, who's he going to murder next? Oh, my God, what's he going to do next?

And we introduced Mary, but she came a little later chronologically. But I don't know if you've had a chance to look at the book or to read it, but it's very, very timely. It's like ripped out of the headlines today. There is unbelievable evil in the world. Look at October 7th, what Hamas did in Israel.

Look what is still happening in Africa. It's evil, evil everywhere. But God, the creator of all things, is there too. And we have to go to him in order to find hope. There's no other place to go. You said your son kind of inspired you to do this. What was he...

seeing, feeling, thinking that kind of pushed you and drove you to say, this is different. I haven't done this before. Did he go on that trip with you or did he just, was he just sort of reflecting mom and saying, you know, you're talking about this, you're feeling it, you should do this. How did that go down? He remembers when I came home. He's been with me on those trips, but not this one. When I came home from that one, I was obsessed.

I was obsessed with Herod. I had him find me five books written about him. And I read every single one of them. I tried to get in touch with Mel Gibson so we could make a movie about it. My son went to Oxford University and got his master's in this kind of thing, storytelling, scripts. He's a brilliant, brilliant... I mean, he's descended from Rudyard Kipling on my mother's side.

And I swear, he's Roger Kipling. He really is brilliant.

And he's just masterful about things like that. And he sees things that other people don't see because, first of all, he also loves Jesus. He's a man of God. He's a beautiful husband and father. And he's been a great son to me since my husband passed nine years ago. And he said, Mom, you're so passionate about certain things. You've always said, my dad used to say, we find something you love to do and then figure out a way to get paid for it.

And I was always passionate about storytelling, whether it was in music or in acting. That's what I wanted to do. Never wanted to be a talk show host. Nobody was a talk show host back then. But I did follow my passion because my daddy was right. I mean, people, you know, they said, you've got to be this. You've got to be that. No, we've got to be what God created us to be.

In the Psalms, David talks about how everything is made inside of me. My dreams are already there. They're of the Lord already. Already. Now, the word usually is used fearfully, wondrously and fearfully made in my mother's womb. That's a terrible translation. It doesn't mean fearfully. There's no fear about a beautiful baby in a mother's womb. It means awe and wonder.

That's what it means in the Greek and in the Hebrew. The word is yireh, Y-I-R-E-H, fear. The only people that should ever be fearful of God are his enemies. None of us who love him should be fearful of anything. That whole saying, you know, the fear of God, and it's like, well, wait a sec, that's...

Yeah, I don't fear someone who loves me. Yeah. You know, he loves me. He died for me. I don't fear him at all. I know just his just the ones that are the kingdom of God's enemies. And we know who they are. One of them was Herod.

The next one's Nero. And hopefully we'll just continue to do all these stories about these people that existed at that time. But God won every time. God won every time. There is hope. So the book's called Herod and Mary. And you know what I did? I went to kathyleegifford.com.

And I had to remember to spell Kathy with an I-E. Thank you. It's only been 60 years. I've been famous. But I've heard it. I've always heard it. I don't like, I don't know. I just, I had to remember that. Anyway, I'm just reminding people so they don't make a mistake like I did. But, okay, so I got two other things I want to ask you about. Can I ask you about those? Sure. The Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Now, I've seen countless stars go up and put their hands in the print, but I've never talked to one about what that experience was like. Was it like, I can't believe this actually happened to me? Or was it, my hands in this cement, this is a mess. What was it like? Explain to us what went down there.

It's funny actually, because it was during COVID. So I never went and put my hands in it. I just, I didn't. Oh, you didn't? No. You just have the plaque. You know what? Every time I would get an award or something,

Frank would look at me, my precious husband, he'd look at me and go, didn't you already get that? I would have thought you would have got it a long time ago. Honestly, that's exactly right. When Kelly Ripa got it before me, I said, OK, I mean, I'm sorry. I gave her that show on a platter.

And I wish you're ill, but I'm just like, all right. OK, so there's not a lot of justice in this world. But anyway, by the time they gave it to me, I could have cared less, frankly. I would have loved those kinds of awards when I was younger and sort of needed them. You know, right. Always Frank would say, you know, he's in eight. Frank is in eight halls of fame.

My husband and he earned every single one of them. I feel like whatever award I got, I did work for. I did. I, you know, I didn't sleep with anybody to get a job. That's for darn sure. And I probably should have not. Didn't do your career has gone pretty darn well. Kathy Lee, this is not like, yeah, I believe you. I believe you.

I have that big, big thing here in my house. You know where I have it? In my garage. My big Hall of Fame thing is in my garage. What's the other one? I wouldn't have expected that. The other one is that you were a Tony nominee for Best Actress. I would have kind of guessed that, but what I didn't know is that you wrote several musicals.

Yes. I wrote something called Scandalous. Yeah. But I wasn't the one that was nominated. My leading lady, Carolee Carmelo, was nominated for Best Actress. And so when I thought she got that, we were all nominated, all of us. But I did. I wrote every word of it and every lyric in it. How do you sit down and just say, oh, I'm going to write a musical? I mean...

Because I get obsessed with people. The way I was obsessed with Herod, I was obsessed with Amy Semple McPherson, this woman who lived in the 20s and the 30s, who was the most outrageous person I had ever heard of. That was before I knew about Herod. And her story was incredible. And I started writing a musical about her. It took me 13 years.

To do it. Over 100 rewrites cost about $16 million to raise the money. And I did. And it closed three weeks after it opened because of Hurricane Sandy. Not one show that opened up that fall lasted except for the ones that were, you know, already big, big hits. And believe me, that that is one of the that's probably the most.

the hugest personal, professional disappointment of my life. Okay, well, I'm sorry to bring up the biggest disappointment in your life. I was trying to go somewhere happy. Professional. I've had worse, personally. Professional one. It's been 13 years and never give up on that. And I remember every single night in previews, there was this very heavy set of

young man who was going to college in New York and he was gay and he had shared that with me and he would come every single night because I made tickets available for people in New York who were going to school. He came up to me every single night sobbing his eyes out and he goes, you wrote this for me, Kathy. You wrote this for me. And I remember thinking, okay, I'll

Lord, your ways are not my ways. Your thoughts are not my thoughts. If it's just for this sweet, precious man, young man, you know, who comes every single night and cries his eyes out, then I have to, that's, I got to accept that. Well, that's sweet. I got a Tony nomination. My show got a Tony nomination. That's right. Yeah. And they can't take that away, can they, honey? No. Well done. I mean...

You've kind of done it all, but okay, I have also got to ask you, as long as we're on the phone here and we're talking here and chatting, and again, I wish we were doing this in person, but what's your take of what's going on in the world? Because I want you to know, I think you're going back to your book. You're exactly right. People say to me all the time, oh, Congress, why don't they just all get along better? And it's the most tumultuous time ever. I'm like, no, not really.

You know, back in the 1800s, members of Congress were like shooting each other and having fistfights on the floor of the House. Let's not forget how Alexander Hamilton died. Yeah, you know, there's that. Yeah, so no, you know, and if you look at the way Abraham Lincoln, like I went to the, I don't know if you've ever been to the Lincoln Presidential Library. I believe it's Springfield. In Illinois? In Illinois. In Illinois.

No, I haven't. Oh, okay. So they have a room. I think there's more than one room. And it's the press clippings and these depictions of the – a lot of cartoons were done back there, right? Communication was different. They were addictive. They thought – I mean, you would have thought if you just read and looked at the cartoons that Abraham Lincoln was the most evil person to ever walk on the face of the planet. Right.

And Abraham Lincoln. And so the way they treated him and the way the vitriol and the aggressive nature against him and his family was just like unparalleled. But then you look today and you think, all right, so this has been the more things change, the more they stay the same. Right. That's right. Ripped from the headlines from Herod and Mary. Same thing.

From the political side of things, as you see things, what, I mean, I'm not asking you to do Democrat, Republican, whatever. I've been an independent since I was 18 years old. I have my political thoughts, of course, but I'll never forget years ago, Billy Graham said to me, excuse me, when I was in my twenties, I met Billy and he was a lifetime friend of mine and one of the greatest politicians.

human beings I've ever known in my entire life. And he said, Kathy, you're going to have a huge career. He said, you're going to have a huge career in the world, in show business, in the media. You know, that's what God's called you. That's going to be where you share Jesus. That's where you are going to share Jesus. And I have with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people.

On the air, millions, but privately, like privately, hundreds who've come to know Jesus in a personal way. So I've always known that that's where I was called to be. But he said, Kathy, if you want any advice from me, do this. He said, the one thing I regret about my life is when I got involved a couple of times in politics.

He said, I shouldn't have ever done it. He said, if I were you and you take my advice, just keep doing what you do, Kathy. Share the love of Jesus with people. Just tell them that God loves them. That's it. Keep your politics private.

And I have been tempted on many occasions to say things through the years. And I have not, because I remember Billy saying that to me. And I thought he said, you lose half your audience. The minute you do, you leave half, you lose half of them. It's true. Like, why don't, why don't we lose the one, you know? Well, why don't, I just don't understand, you know, the, the example it's always thrown out there is Michael Jordan, right?

where he was supposedly questioned about his shoes and why don't you comment on this or that? And he said, look, I sell shoes to Republicans and Democrats. I'm not getting in the middle of that mess. You know, I'm paraphrasing, obviously. But, you know, people get involved and engaged. They'll get immersed in your book or whatever it might be or whatever.

or go to a movie or a sporting event or whatever it is, they don't, politics doesn't need to be omnipresent. It doesn't need to be everywhere all the time. No, exactly. And, you know, it breaks my heart because, you know, it hurts people. People, hurt people hurt people, right? Right. And they use all kinds of things to devastate their enemies and that sort of thing. I hate to see it.

I hate to see it, but I'm just grateful that I don't get involved. I remember somebody came up to me recently here in Tennessee and said, we got to get you to run. I said, oh, no, honey. I just had my hip replaced. I said, well, I can barely walk, so I'm not going to run for anything. That's a pretty good excuse. You'd be awfully good, though. You would be awfully compelling. It'd be pretty hard to argue that.

with you on this, I guess. I don't know. I just want to love people. Jesus said they will know you are my followers by the love you have for people. That's all Jesus did was love people. And I leave judgment up to God.

I leave all judgment up to God because I have no right to judge another human being. God has shown me mercy in my own life. And if I can't show mercy to others, then I don't deserve the mercy that he's shown me. So I know I'm all good about that. And I think that that's the reason that people do respond to me when I share Jesus with them. They know that I just accept them as somebody that's precious. God loves you.

God loves you. I had somebody that, you know, very, very, very well-known guy. So why do you love me? Nobody, no person of faith has ever told me my whole life that I'm loved. And I said, well, then you've never met a person of faith.

Because people of faith do not judge people. We have no right to. We love people. It takes all my energy to be kind and loving to everybody. It really does. And I'm challenged many times about it. I don't always do it well. But I know that's what I'm supposed to do. And that's what gets me up in the morning. And that's what gives me, you know, if you have a pulse, you have a purpose.

You know, I have a pulse still. It's not as strong as it once was, but it's still there. You're listening to Jason in the House. We'll be right back. Stay with us. The world of business moves fast. Stay on top of it with the Fox Business Rundown. Listen to the Fox Business Rundown every Monday and Friday at foxbusinesspodcasts.com or wherever you download your favorite podcasts.

Oh, well, that's the only thing you said that I'm not quite believing here. So, but I mean, every time, I don't know. I mean, you and I haven't interacted a whole lot, but you are, you sort of personify vigor and I love it. It's contagious. So, yeah.

Well, I jumped off that operating table that day. And I was walking around up and down steps that very day. So it's been about two and a half weeks. And I'm ready to go to New York next week. Oh, really? That recently? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The technology is amazing, right? You get a hip or knee replacement. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, my, my, uh, my surgeon said to me, he said, Kathy, and he showed, he rolled up his sleeve and showed me his bicep, which was, you know, amazing. And he said, it said Jesus Christ and unbelievable. And, um, uh, below that it said, uh, Roman numeral. He said, that's the day I was baptized. He says, I'm going to take such, such good care of you.

And he did. He prayed with me five times before, you know, all through the whole, the whole thing. You know, just always just let's, let's take, let's just pray, sweetie. It's just pray. That's good. I hope you feel better and you can move better. And that's good. I mean, it's amazing how, how many, how many,

It's helped so many people that technology. Oh, I know. Well, I've been in horrendous pain for over two years and everybody was kept looking, kept looking. They thought it was in my spine. And one doctor finally said, you know what? It's your hip.

It's your hip. And within two weeks, I had the surgery. But to have people miss it like that, and these are great doctors and beautiful people, they just didn't see it. And for whatever reason, it gave me a tremendous empathy for people that live with chronic pain.

Because I've been very, very active my entire life. I've climbed mountains. I've just, you know, I've shot movies. I've just done Broadway. I've all those things. And I've been very, very active and very healthy. And all of a sudden then to be in just, you know, he said to me after he saw my hip, he goes, Kathy, that's one of the worst hips I've ever seen. Worst hips I've ever seen. How were you existing? Hmm.

Can you? I said, I don't know. Grace of God. Well, glad you got it done. That's good. That's good. Well, I got another hip that might be needing. You got the other side. All right. I got to get your take on just one more thing. One more thing. And you're always so generous with your time. So thank you. Social media. Oh, yeah.

Good, bad. I've got some Jewish side. Give us the Kathie Lee Gifford take on social media.

Well, I'm just grateful to God it did not exist while I was doing daytime television. Regis and I would not have lasted two days. We never edited ourselves. We never talked to each other before we went on the air. We didn't have any writers. We didn't have anybody. We just went on and then just let it fly. We let it rip.

And we had so much fun. We never even talked to each other before we went on the air. And it was just great fun and great. And it was a huge success because it was so real. It was authentic. That's the trouble with so much of television today. It's it's not authentic at all.

At all. It's everybody's, you know, I don't know. It's just that's why I can't stand to watch most of television unless it's, you know, unless there's somebody that's actually speaking truth and is not reading from a teleprompter for the most part. Right. We never had a teleprompter. We had nothing. We had nothing. We talked for 23 minutes without a commercial break. And then we went to commercial break. Twenty three minutes of nothing.

Just hilarity, actually. It really was. Changed the paradigm of daytime television. Oh, totally. Totally. And it made everybody smile, and it was positive and uplifting, and it was just downright funny because the way you played off each other was just...

And that's probably the magic, right? It wasn't pre-planned. It was authentic. Nothing. We didn't even say hello in the morning until we came out to sit with each other. And we adored each other. He was my friend. Did you know him before you started the show? No.

No. It wasn't like, hey, we've been friends for five years and now we're doing this show together? No, we hadn't been friends for five minutes and it was just boom and we took off. And he was, after I left the show in 2000, he, it was, you know, all these years since he just died a couple of years ago, we became better friends than we'd ever been before. Right.

I saw him two weeks before he passed away. He came to my house in Connecticut for lunch and we laughed our butts off again. And and then when he passed his wife, Joy, who I went over to see her, she said, Kathy, that was the last time I heard Rich Regis laugh was with you. And it's just I just sobbed.

You know, I we made each other cry laughing and people said, what's the big secret about you and Regis? I said, fun. We have fun. You know, we don't bring politics into anything. We don't want to hurt anybody. We don't we're not mean spirited. You know, I could never be a part of a show like that. Every years ago, they asked me, would you want to be a part of the view? And I said, no.

No, I don't want to hurt people. I want to entertain people. That's all I've done since I was a little kid. I was 10 years old when I got into show business. 10 years old, started singing professionally. That's all I wanted to do. Make them laugh, make them cry, baby. And be sure to tip your waitress. Well, you touched... I don't know how many millions of people you've touched along the way, but it's such a gift and a blessing to so many people who just would enjoy that time of day and

and just get away from the world and just hear a different perspective and put a smile on their face. I'm going to see Hoda next week. Same thing happened with her.

You know, she and I didn't agree on everything at all, but you'd never have known it. We just loved each other and we still do. And I'm, you know, I'm going to be there at the On The Today Show to give my dear friend a hug and a signed copy of my brand new book, Herod and Mary. Well, you can... She's read one of my books all these years, frankly. Yeah.

Well, you can order it now. So listen, you can go to kathyleegifford.com. That'll give you a sense of where to go. Or you can just go online and Herod and Mary. That's pretty easy to remember. I highly recommend you get the audio version because that took me four days to do. Four days I will never have time. Oh, good. You did it in your own voice. Good, good, good. Always, yes. Yeah, the audio version's great.

Jason, you take care of yourself and your beautiful family. I loved hearing you talk about your wife that night we were together. Such love and respect for your beautiful wife. And I just I love that to see a marriage that has been tested, has lasted and is still as passionate. You are blessed. You're blessed to have each other. I am. And thank you, Kathy Lee. I really appreciate.

Really do appreciate it. And thanks for joining us. And you're so sweet and generous with your time. And again, the book is Herod and Mary. And I'm sure I look forward to when we get to chat again, hopefully in person. So thank you. Well, next time it'll be about Nero, baby. All right. Sounds good. Kathy Lee Gifford, everybody. Thank you. God bless you, darling. Thank you.

All right. I hope you can rate this podcast. Really appreciate that. You can subscribe to it so you get it every time we got a podcast coming out. I think when there's big, big

big news out there of which I can offer some personal insight. I think we're going to do specific podcasts on that as well. But then we also have these. These are good. We had the convention. We had, you know, the Secret Service, the shooting. But they come out every week. So you want to subscribe to it so you know when they're out. I want to remind listeners, you can listen ad-free with a Fox News Podcast Plus subscription on Apple Podcasts.

And Amazon Prime members can listen to this show ad-free on the Amazon Music app. Also would encourage you to head on over to foxnewspodcast.com, foxnewspodcasts, plural, .com. And you can find this thing anywhere you listen to podcasts. Again, rate it and join us again. I'm Jason Chaffetz. This has been Jason in the House.

I'm Guy Benson. Join me weekdays at 3 p.m. Eastern as we break down the biggest stories of the day with some of the biggest newsmakers and guests. Listen live on the Fox News app or get the free podcast at Guy Benson show dot com.