‘Tooning Out the News’ with R.J. Fried
The Last Laugh
The Daily Beast
4.6 • 661 Ratings
🗓️ 29 June 2021
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
10 years before he created the hilarious, Stephen Colbert-produced ‘Tooning Out the News,’ R.J. Fried spent time in the trenches of actual cable news, working for MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell. That experience, along with his years as a writer for ‘The Late Show with David Letterman’ and Robert Smigel’s Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, helped prepare him to run what has somehow become the most consistently funny and hard-hitting political comedy show on TV. On this episode, Fried breaks down how he gets people like Alan Dershowitz, Matt Schlapp and real-life members of Congress to subject themselves to brutal interrogations from the show’s cartoon news anchors—and reveals which right-wing pundits he’s turned down.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Here's a quick question for you. What would you ask Rudy Giuliani if you got a hold of his cell phone number and he actually picked up? |
| 0:08.9 | Oh my God, we got to talk about this. It's the biggest story in the news, of course. It's my blockbuster one-on-one conversation with Rudy Giuliani. Take a look. |
| 0:17.2 | So I swung by the Grand Havana room and they mentioned you have some kind of outstanding upholstery cleaning |
| 0:22.5 | bill. Sounds like you sat on that chair for |
| 0:24.6 | four minutes and the stain was like nothing |
| 0:26.7 | they've ever witnessed in this world or any |
| 0:28.7 | other. I don't remember breaking a chair. |
| 0:31.5 | Yeah, I don't think it was breaking |
| 0:32.8 | so much as a stain that they were worried about. |
| 0:36.4 | Stain. Yeah. |
| 0:40.6 | Now that brings us to tonight's installment of Stain Gate. |
| 0:50.1 | This is the Last Laugh. |
| 0:56.7 | I'm Matt Wilstein from The Daily Beast, and that was my guest today, R.J. Freed, prank calling Rudy Giuliani as cartoon news anchor James Smartwood on Tuning Out the News. |
| 1:02.8 | Before RJ created Tuning Out the News, he actually worked behind the scenes at MSNBC |
| 1:08.0 | on the last word with Lawrence O'Donnell. |
| 1:11.0 | From there, he moved on to the late show with David Letterman before launching our cartoon |
| 1:15.1 | president on Showtime, which, like his newest show, is also produced by Stephen Colbert. |
| 1:21.2 | Of the many political comedy shows on TV right now, tuning out the news somehow manages |
| 1:27.3 | to be the most consistently funny |
| 1:29.7 | and hard-hitting. |
| 1:31.6 | So I was just really excited to talk to RJ about how he gets people like Jeffrey Epstein |
| 1:37.0 | Defender Alan Dershowitz and actual members of Congress to sit down and subject themselves |
... |
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