Tom Shillue and Joe Concha Go Off Script

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TOM SHILLUE: You still have Tom Shillue, and you also have Joe Concha. Joe, thanks for coming in here. We have a segment that’s a little bit planned, but we like to leave a lot of room for improv when Joe Concha comes in, because you can talk about many, many subjects.

In fact, you just came down from the 29th floor here at the News Corp conglomerate, or whatever we call it. At Fox News, Fox Nation, the entire Fox family, you were doing Fox Nation’s Who Can Forget What Year Were You Trying to Not Forget?

JOE CONCHA: 1976, which I did.

TOM SHILLUE: And, yeah, we all contribute to the show. It’s fun. I was talking to Christine about it. We were comparing it to I Love the ’80s, where they used to do that on VH1 and people would talk about their favorite things about the ’80s. This is more of a Fox News, newsy look at remembering the news headlines, pop culture, and news. So, yeah, what was happening in that year?

JOE CONCHA: It’s very interesting. That’s when Charlie’s Angels came about, for example.

TOM SHILLUE: Oh, yeah. Very big. Very–you know what’s funny? The research for that called it “jiggle TV.”

I was about to say that, yeah, but I didn’t think of Charlie’s Angels as jiggle TV. They weren’t jiggling that much. That show was actually a legit cop show. I don’t want to sound silly, but it was a cop show with three good-looking ladies. It wasn’t like Baywatch. No, these were ladies. They had an assignment, they rode skateboards, and they shot guns. But it was the ’70s, I guess.

CHRISTINE: What is “jiggle TV”? I want you both boys to explain this to me.

TOM SHILLUE: Was it just the producers of the show that were calling it “jiggle TV”?

CHRISTINE: No, critics were calling it that. Critics were.

CHRISTINE: I’d never heard that before.

JOE CONCHA: And apparently they thought it was sexually provocative, but it was not. For 1976, maybe it was, because every cop show was all about gritty guys in bad suits. This was the first time you had females who were investigating things.

But what I found most interesting was that, at first, “jiggle TV” was seen as an insult. Then ABC saw the ratings go up and up, and they’re like, “Maybe we’re onto something.”

But I found the most interesting part about it was the role of Charlie. I didn’t realize that was John Forsythe’s voice. He was the guy from Dynasty, you may remember.

TOM SHILLUE: Yes.

JOE CONCHA: He had the best job in the world because he just got to give instructions. He started the Zoom call 55 years before COVID, when you think about it. He never had to leave his house, never had to meet with his employees. He just gave the assignment through a speakerphone and went back to playing tennis or whatever he did.

TOM SHILLUE: That’s a good job.

JOE CONCHA: “Good morning, angels.”

TOM SHILLUE: “Thank you!”

JOE CONCHA: “Good morning, Charlie.”

And he was the highest-paid guy on the show, and he had maybe 15 or 20 lines that he didn’t even have to be on camera for.

TOM SHILLUE: No, it was just a voice-over. And didn’t he have a body double? John Forsythe was not playing Charlie. You’d see, like, his shoulder and leg, right? And it was a different guy, was it not?

JOE CONCHA: It was probably like, you know, the grip. They just said, “All right, you act like Charlie right now.” And that’s that.

So I found that very fascinating.

And then I learned that Jimmy Carter, who obviously was elected in 1976, was the first president ever to be born in a hospital. Isn’t that amazing?

TOM SHILLUE: Yeah.

JOE CONCHA: You would think someone before that, but everybody else was born, I guess, like in their outhouse or somewhere else. Is that where you both were born?

TOM SHILLUE: Yes, I was.

Good morning from the hospital.

JOE CONCHA: Go, hospital.

TOM SHILLUE: Yeah, but I know a lot of home births now because, you know, being–like the Catholic homeschool families, a lot of them go 100% home birth.

And, you know, yeah, like Gaffigan’s kids–all home.

CHRISTINE: Is that right? Yeah, it’s a thing.

TOM SHILLUE: In a bathtub kind of thing?

CHRISTINE: In an inflatable pool-type thing.

TOM SHILLUE: I don’t even think they do that. They just, like, you know–

CHRISTINE: Are they giving birth?

TOM SHILLUE: Just pop them out? What do they need a bathtub for?

CHRISTINE: It’s a water birth.

TOM SHILLUE: But they don’t have to do a water birth. That’s like, you know–I mean, they don’t do that at the hospital. They do it, you know, in a bed.

CHRISTINE: It’s supposed to make the baby think that they’re still in the water, so they’re not having, like, a crazy experience.

TOM SHILLUE: No, the homeschool moms I know don’t do any of that. It’s not New Age. Apparently, the baby goes through trauma.

CHRISTINE: Let me just tell you one thing right now. I would love to take my daughter–there’s, it’s not a psychic, but it’s somebody that can talk to her because she was a C-section baby, and apparently that’s very traumatic, and she might have stored trauma that I don’t know about. So I would like for that to be–

TOM SHILLUE: Well, you know what? I was about to start making fun of Christine’s New Age talking here, but I think C-sections, you know, I wouldn’t argue with that–that maybe there’s something that’s traumatic about a C-section. I’m not saying I’m anti-C-section. It has to happen all the time.

CHRISTINE: C-section–it has to happen all the time. You disagree with me about Lindsay Clancy. You disagree with me about me freaking out in Times Square. But me taking my daughter to a guru to heal her from a traumatic C-section, you agree with?

TOM SHILLUE: Well, no, I don’t.

I don’t know if you have to take her, you know, but the thing is, I don’t discount the idea that birth has a biological way that it’s supposed to happen. And even Shakespeare said–Macduff was “untimely ripped from the womb,” if you remember.

JOE CONCHA: No, I didn’t know that, no.

All I know is, with my kids, with my son and my daughter, we tried to do a natural birth, but she got stuck. So we had to do the C-section. It wasn’t like we planned it.

TOM SHILLUE: Yes.

JOE CONCHA: And then, after that point, we had to do a C-section because they were just afraid the same thing was going to happen with my son.

But the joke that I tell when I do speeches around the country, just to break the ice, I say, “You know, it’s my son’s birthday tomorrow.” It’s always my son’s birthday when I’m on the road, right?

And, you know, “I can’t believe it’s been 10 years since he was born. And my wife and I decided that, before he was born, we weren’t going to name him. We wanted him to come out of the womb so we could see his face, and then we would decide what kind of person he looked like.”

So when the doctor did a C-section, unfortunately, with my son, he pulls him out of the womb, holds him up to me, and says, “Dad, it’s a boy.”

And I looked down and I said, “Wow, and what a boy!”

And he said, “No, no, no, sir. That’s the umbilical cord. You have to cut that.”

I’m like, “Oh, all right. Well, he is Irish, so that kind of makes sense.”

And then the crowd, who’s not expecting jokes at some of these political speeches, they just love it from there.

So then it gets better. My wife is looking at the kid and says, “You know what? That looks like a nice Gaelic boy. That looks like Liam.”

I said, “Yeah, I could see that. But look at those eyes. Look at that jawline. And honey, let’s go. Let’s go, Brandon!”

And then the crowd loses it.

Then we got him.

It was worse with my daughter, because her name’s Cameron, but I wanted to name her after my grandmother, Karen, which would be really bad. So I kind of went down the comedy route, and I think I got it down.

TOM SHILLUE: Shillue, boy, I didn’t expect this segment to be this way. And we’ve got a minute.

I was going to do the headlines with you.

JOE CONCHA: No, let’s go.

TOM SHILLUE: Lindsay Clancy, the New York stabbing and shooting. But no, this is quite good, talking about births, home births, things like that.

But let’s get to the headline. Yeah, let’s do the New York shooting. You saw it on social media.

JOE CONCHA: Yeah, the stabbing and then the shooting of the woman, right?

TOM SHILLUE: Were you impressed with–I don’t know if you heard–Zohran Mamdani came out and said, “Hey, the cops did a good job.” And, you know, I was impressed with that.

JOE CONCHA: Which is, like, the 99-to-1 issue. And he went with the 99, which is the cops had no choice. She was lunging at them with a knife. She already stabbed two people. She clearly had to be taken out.

I’ve seen a couple of things on social media saying, “Why didn’t they just shoot her in the foot?”

Yeah, you have somebody come at you with a knife who’s already stabbed two people. Then you think about where you want to aim.

TOM SHILLUE: No, I’ve seen that on social media. They post the video of it and someone says, “Come on, all those guys, all those cops couldn’t subdue one woman?”

And it’s like, yeah, they did subdue her. They subdued her in the only way–they tased her. She was completely unfazed by the Taser, and she continued coming at them with a knife.

Cops have died, you know, by not shooting people. It doesn’t take much to kill somebody with a knife.

JOE CONCHA: No. And unfortunately, the woman who died, some sort of banking executive, and I think she was with her husband, right? So that was just so sad to see.

And again, I can see why Christine’s freaked out. That’s literally a block from us. I walk through there all the time, you know, and just that this could happen.

So, yeah, I don’t know what else he could have said. I mean, that’s defending the indefensible if he didn’t say anything otherwise, right?

So he’s shrewd politically. There’s no question about that.

But I want to hear your thoughts on Lindsay Clancy, because I understand there’s some disagreement here.

TOM SHILLUE: Well, we’ve been talking about this for a couple of days. Obviously, the jury came back with–you know, what do you call it? A hung jury?

JOE CONCHA: Deadlocked.

TOM SHILLUE: Deadlocked jury. So it’s not a hung jury yet. Hung jury means they come back and they’re like, “We’re done.”

JOE CONCHA: It’s done, yeah.

TOM SHILLUE: So they’re going to come back again tomorrow?

JOE CONCHA: Yes.

TOM SHILLUE: Okay. So what does that show you? To me, it shows me it’s going to be a hung jury because this is the kind of issue where you have people who are intractable.

Like, I would not say anything but guilty. Christine would not say anything but not guilty.

JOE CONCHA: And that’s why that’s a preview of things to come–what’s going on in that jury room, right?

There are people that look at the five-year-old and the two-year-old and the eight-month-old, including one of the children who understood what was going on and tried to run away. And she ran him down.

And you hear that and you say, “What about the victims here? What about the three children?”

No matter what she was going through mentally–now, all that said, Christine’s argument, I won’t make it for you, Christine, but basically is that obviously she was on all these drugs and had major mental problems and didn’t know what she was doing.

So it’s the type of thing where I understand both arguments, but I think in the end you have to look at the victims, and I would come down on guilty.

TOM SHILLUE: Okay, so yesterday I used the example of Norman Bates because he’s a fictitious character. But let’s go to a real character now, okay?

What about Mark David Chapman? He was hearing voices. He heard voices that told him–

JOE CONCHA: John Lennon, right?

TOM SHILLUE: Yeah. Yeah, but it was Jodie Foster, right? He shot–

JOE CONCHA: Am I right? No, Jodie Foster is Hinckley with Reagan.

TOM SHILLUE: Okay, Hinckley. Yeah. So let’s do Hinckley.

JOE CONCHA: Yes.

TOM SHILLUE: Hinckley was hearing voices, and he sincerely thought that Jodie Foster wanted him to shoot the president. Was he not guilty by reason of insanity?

JOE CONCHA: But, yeah, I think when you shoot a president–

TOM SHILLUE: And hope that’s her.

JOE CONCHA: Yeah.

TOM SHILLUE: So he’s in jail.

JOE CONCHA: He’s in prison.

TOM SHILLUE: No, he’s out now.

JOE CONCHA: Okay, he is?

TOM SHILLUE: Yeah. They let him out, I think, last year.

CHRISTINE: Year before. You want to Google that?

TOM SHILLUE: But he was guilty. He was found guilty, right? So if Chapman was found guilty, why not this woman, even if they were both hearing voices?

JOE CONCHA: Excellent point. Yep. That should be the end of it. It should be what the result is.

And obviously, in this case, three very young children suffered a horrible death. And in the end, no matter how it happened or why it happened, it happened. And there needs to be accountability.

TOM SHILLUE: Yep. Well, look. Apparently we’re cold for saying that.

That’s what you came in for, and now you’ve got to go do Kudlow. Thanks for coming in.

JOE CONCHA: Always, my friend.