Last month Steven Crowder announced that his time at the Blaze was coming to an end. The exact details of what led up to that decision weren’t clear but it was pretty clear that Crowder was stressed out that the Blaze seemed to be refusing to turn over information on his “Mug Club” subscriber base, i.e. all of the people who’d signed up to pay for his show. Crowder didn’t criticize the Blaze or Glenn Beck but he did say he wanted to collect that information directly from subscribers on a website he’d set up for that purpose.

I said at the time that there was clear interest from readers of the Daily Wire to see Crowder come over to their site and predicted there would be a conversation to try to make that happen. What I didn’t know is that Crowder had already had that conversation with the Daily Wire more than a month before the announcement. All of that might have remained private except that yesterday Crowder devoted an entire video to bashing an offer he’d received and criticizing the company that made it.

“This has been a long time coming,” Crowder said. He continued, “This is a conversation that I’ve actively avoided, sidestepped and I’ve hoped and prayed that it not be necessary behind the scenes for a long while but that’s no longer possible.”

“I believe many of those in charge in the right leaning media are actually at odds with what’s best for you, the viewer— the customer, and more importantly the country,” he said. “Big tech is in bed with big con,” he added.

You can watch his full statement below but the focus is on a particular contract offer, he didn’t name the company that made it, which he thinks was very unfair. He pointed to some penalties saying the contract stipulated you would lose $100,000 per day if you were suddenly unable to work due to illness or accident. “Anyone wonder why there’s burnout in this industry?” he asked.

He was particularly upset by a clause in the proposed contract which said the company would cut your pay in response to lost advertisers or a suspension from social media (YouTube, Apple, Spotify, etc.) “Those guidelines pretty much read ‘Don’t say anything offensive ever,'” he said. He went on to say people coming up in the industry should refuse to sign “slave contracts.” Here’s the clip.

Crowder was careful not to name the company behind the offer he attacked in his clip but lots of people were speculating that it was from the Daily Wire. And so, in response, Jeremy Boreing put up a response today admitting that, yes, the proposal in question had come from the Daily Wire. They had offered Crowder $50 million for four years of exclusive rights to his show. Boreing then walked through the contract and argued that it was not unreasonable and that Crowder had misconstrued some of the points made in it.

This clip is 50 minutes long so I can’t summarize all of it. The gist of the story is that Daily Wire spoke to Crowder’s agent in October and they put together this proposal which was only meant as a conversation starter, i.e. this wasn’t a contract ready to be signed it was something to get the ball rolling. Boreing says he fully expected Crowder would a) ask for more money and b) push back on some specifics before they reached a deal. And he said he was prepared to pay more. Basically, you never make your best offer out of the gate because you want to leave a little room for negotiation.

According to Boreing, he and Crowder have been friends for 10 years but Crowder’s reaction in private was pretty much the same as it is in that clip above. He was upset at what he felt was lowball offer and particularly upset by some of the elements of the contract including the bit about cutting payment to him if he were demonetized or deplatformed. Boreing wanted to negotiate but Crowder asked him to start over from scratch. After talking to his partners at the Daily Wire, Boreing declined. That seemed to be the end of it for several months. Then last week, Boreing says Crowder called him up and said he was still upset about the elements of the offer and was going to do something about it. That something was the clip above (and the website he’s created to go along with it).

Now here I’m going to interject something that’s my own opinion after having watched both clips. It’s not my intention to create drama. I like Crowder’s work and I like the Daily Wire. I see both as (hopefully) friendly competitors with Townhall Media including our own site. All of us have a lot in common even if we don’t work together and, full disclosure, my daughter was an intern for the Daily Wire a few years ago while attending college. So, really, I’m not looking to start a fight with anyone.

But I genuinely think part of this bad blood was partly caused by a mistake. Crowder was clearly upset with a stipulation in the proposal saying his deal would be cut by 25% if he were demonetized by YouTube.

The problem with that of course is that Crowder was demonetized by YouTube 3 years ago. So that stipulation above under “Content Strike” sort of makes it look like the Daily Wire is saying Crowder is worth 25% less from the start which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Crowder even says he was confused by this and thought it was a mistake but was told that was standard language. I can sort of see how this would upset Crowder because it either suggests the people making the offer aren’t paying attention or that they’re threatening to take money from him despite the fact that he’s doing pretty well despite the demonetization by YouTube several years ago.

During Boreing’s very respectful walkthrough of the preliminary offer, he says the part about demonetization by YouTube could easily have been crossed out in negotiations. I’m sure that’s true but again the fact that it was in there at all does seem more like a mistake than a fair point of negotiation. Crowder can’t negotiate with something he doesn’t have. It’s not a concession by the Daily Wire to get rid of that because it was never on the table in the first place.

That said, Boreing does have a point that being demonetized is not the same as being banned. You can work around being demonetized, as Crowder has, but if your entire channel and 6 million subscribers goes away, that’s a bigger issue because there’s still no way to easily replace that audience. As Boreing says, right now there’s just no alternative to YouTube with the same reach.

For the most part, I do think Boreing makes a good case that this was a sincere starter offer with mostly practical clauses designed to ensure Daily Wire didn’t go broke if for some reason Crowder couldn’t or wouldn’t deliver his show. He genuinely seems to be a fan of Crowder’s work even now and says this public argument is one of the worst moments in his career just on a personal level. I get the impression that if these two guys could have gotten together in a room to talk maybe a lot of this could have been avoided.

But maybe not. Boreing’s impression is that Crowder was looking for a lot more than DW could possibly offer so maybe it was never going to work out. Here’s the full response.

Update: Well, this isn’t going to be over today. Steven Crowder just released a response to Jeremy Boreing’s video in which he reveals that he recorded their conversations. This clip contains excerpts but Crowder says he’s prepared to release the entire thing if necessary.

Crowder isn’t denying they offered him $50 million. He’s pretty cleverly turning that on its head and saying that he’s willing to walk away from $50 million based on principle. Here’s the clip:

Update: Boreing isn’t pleased about Crowder recording the call.

I would play the part of that call where we talked about our kids, Christmas, and him buying baby formula for his brother’s children, but I wouldn’t even know how to secretly record phone calls with my friends.

— Jeremy Boreing (@JeremyDBoreing) January 20, 2023