A giant right-wing beef has been brewing for the past 24 hours, and the whole thing might come down to Steven Crowder not knowing how to read a contract. After announcing that he was leaving The Blaze after four years, Crowder started fielding offers from other right-wing media outlets. One such offer (which was revealed to be from The Daily Wire) seemed extremely lucrative until Crowder perused the contract and proceeded to throw a fit over the employment terms.
In a video shared with his audience on Wednesday, Crowder accused the outlet (without naming that it was Ben Shapiro‘s company) of colluding with Big Tech by essentially punishing him if he runs afoul of other platform’s content moderation. Via The Daily Beast:
“If any of the major platforms (e.g. YouTube, Facebook, Apple Podcasts, Spotify) issues a content strike (other than a ‘companywide’ content strike) such that Crowder content cannot be monetized on such platform, and the company is not able to resolve the issue within 90 days, then the fee will be reduced by 25% from that point forward,” read one portion of the contract that Crowder shared with his audience.
“Think about this for a second,” Crowder said. “Those in charge—the big conservative, the Big Con, and it really is the biggest con going right now—they’re making it known in their contracts that they will enforce the guidelines of big tech and punish conservatives on their behalf.”
However, what Crowder didn’t disclose is that contract was part of a $50 million offer from The Daily Wire that would pay him for producing 192 episodes a year for the next four years. That’s only four episodes a week, plus four weeks paid vacation. This information was brought to light thanks to The Daily Wire CEO Jeffrey Boreing releasing a lengthy video where he not only read the offer on the air, but explained how Crowder “misconstrued” the facts. Boreing also blasted Crowder for calling the cushy gig a “slave contract.”
“Steven’s philosophy appears to be: ‘I deserve to be paid millions and millions and millions of dollars whether my show drives the revenue or not.’ That’s not a business relationship,” Boreing said while walking through the contract line-by-line. “He’s looking for a benefactor.”
The Daily Wire CEO eventually called Crowder’s weird tirade one of the “saddest things he has had to face.”
(Via The Daily Beast)