Farewell To A Legend: Lou Dobbs

The great icon of TV journalism passed away last week at the age of 78

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My friend and network colleague Lou Dobbs passed away suddenly on Thursday — and I wanted people to know how much he meant to me.

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Lou was a legend in the world of TV news — with a career that spanned five decades and three TV networks along with countless radio stations. When Mike Lindell told me that Lou had agreed to join our streaming TV network last year, I was thrilled and incredulous.

It was like finding out that Babe Ruth was joining your expansion team.

I will never forget the first time that I talked with him on the phone. Lou told me that he loved my show, and that he thought I was doing a great job as a journalist and anchor. This was praise from the highest source. This was praise from a figure who was universally respected and revered in American journalism — and not a man known to drop compliments indiscriminately.

Dobbs landed his first big show at CNN in 1980 after Ted Turner spotted him at a local Seattle TV station and offered him a position at the first 24-hour news channel in the world. He was a constant presence there until 1999 — when he clashed with CNN head honcho Rick Kaplan because Dobbs was tired of the favorable coverage of President Bill Clinton that was demanded at the network.

That’s right: Dobbs left CNN because it had become a partisan hack channel for Democrats in 1999.

How’s that for being ahead of your time?

Already, Dobbs had stopped being merely a business reporter. He was focusing his shows on illegal immigration, and the greed of the big corporations, in the late 90s. Dobbs had become a populist — almost twenty years before Donald Trump made his unlikely run for the White House in 2015 on a platform that sounded like an opening monologue from Dobbs’ show.

Another stint at CNN between 2003 and 2009 ended abruptly because Lou insisted on discussing Barack Obama’s birth certificate and eligibility for office — the so-called “birther” theory. He was the only TV anchor in America who was brave enough to discuss the issue on-air.

In 2010, Fox Business Channel hired him for a new show — which continued until 2021 when the network abruptly cancelled Lou because he refused to stop covering the stolen 2020 election.

Though Lou’s show could be pulled off the air, his influence could not be dismissed by any TV network. His ever-popular radio show gave him the freedom to spread his populist ideas without interference. By 2012, he was so popular that he flirted with running for President of the United States in an interview.

That’s what made Lou Dobbs a legend: he was fired from both CNN and Fox News for telling the truth. In both cases, his reputation was enhanced rather than diminished. If anything, these cancellations somehow confirmed his status as a cultural icon in America.

Steve Bannon went so far as to say that Lou Dobbs “was Trump before Trump.” Clearly, the political territory that Dobbs had staked out for himself over the years on his shows (anti-immigration, birtherism, trade protectionism, anti-NAFTA) was adopted wholesale by Donald Trump in his first campaign in 2015.

When Lou was dropped by Fox News over his coverage of 2020 election fraud, it was yet more proof that Lou was right and the TV executives were wrong. Not just wrong but cowards. Dobbs would not be bullied or intimidated by them — and he would not be silenced. At a time when most people are enjoying their retirement pensions, Lou insisted on doing a new show for Mike Lindell’s new streaming network.

What did he say on that first show for FrankSpeech TV?

“Good evening, everybody, and welcome to Lou Dobbs Tonight,” he said, “and now we resume our conversation that was unexpectedly, and in my opinion somewhat rudely, interrupted some three years ago.”

That’s why Lou Dobbs kept doing his show: he wanted to keep bringing the truth to the American people.

He never told me that he was sick. He just asked me to be a guest host for his show while he “went for a few visits to the doctor” and I did it. I was getting ready to cover for him again when the news broke that he was gone. Lou had wanted to cover the RNC from the floor, and so he called me last month to announce that we would co-anchor live coverage together for the network. He never made the flight — and I never got the chance to do a show with Lou Dobbs.

We have lost a colleague, and a hero, and a legend in the world of journalism.

We needed his honesty more than ever in this dark time.

We could not spare him — and yet the Lord has brought him home.

Lou, we will miss you.

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