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We have an extremely special guest today.
So Pete Dominic, who is a man, a renaissance man.
Man of many talents.
A man of comic, news commentator, host, journal activist, panel moderator, so much more.
Pete's going to be joining us in the program today.
Sunlight Moonlight podcast is where we talk to creative people about what they do for
their work and about what working people do to be creative.
So Ryan, as we get started here on the Sunlight Moonlight podcast, what is your, I will ask,
what is your big item from this week?
Well I have two.
My son is sick with a clue.
Oh, I'm sorry.
There's that.
He's been out all week.
And then I have a show on Monday up in Catskill, New York.
So what kind of show?
If you know anybody.
It's my band, Ears with Eyes, which is a punk performance art type deal.
We set up like we're in an office cubicle.
I show up with crutches because I'm so damaged by the job.
And then by the end of the show, my shirt is off and I'm trying not to hurt people or
myself doing the best Iggy Pop impression I can do.
I, one of my favorite things, having played multiple shows with you, having seen you perform
live in several different formats and outfits, my favorite part is when your shirt comes off.
It happens.
I mean, if you're going to go for it, go for it.
What I think is weird though is that when you take your shirt off, you're wearing a
sweater underneath your shirt.
I'm very hairy.
And I kind of want you to take that one off too.
Well, we can discuss that later.
Your suit.
Her suit.
My big item.
How about you?
Yeah.
Well, my big item from the week.
I'm wearing baseball is here for the, for the, um, one of my children.
And that's been a, I've turned into a sports psychologist for a seven year old, which is
really, really what I want to be doing with my time, trying to support him getting through
all of the mental machinations of the baseball diamond, the team dynamic, trying to hit a
ball off of a pitching machine.
All the skills.
It's harder than it sounds.
That's the whole thing.
And renovation for the home is underway.
We have no HVAC, which is why it's a little warm here today in the Northeast, but we're
tough in it out.
I'm really excited.
I've done a bunch of work for the show this week and talked to a bunch of people.
I'm also job searching, which is rewarding and very interesting.
And I learn a lot each day, but can be a little taxing on the psyche.
Yeah.
Trying to figure out where you fit into this world professionally while still trying to
maintain some sort of self or creative identity.
I should be looking for work, but I am not.
That's okay.
I can, I'm kind of like, I can do it for both of us.
Dude, hook it up.
I had an old boss.
We were both looking for work at the same time.
And I used to say to him, Hey, if you find one, find two.
That never happened.
That's probably your best saying.
It's good.
It's a good thing.
I have some other ones.
Yeah.
You have a few, but that's.
Don't eat yellow snow.
That's a good one.
That's a zappa song.
Is it really?
I didn't know that you did.
I didn't come on.
I'm not your much more yellow snow.
No, I know my favorite from Zappa is the boogerman.
That's a really good song.
I wish you could play those tunes on the show because we could do a whole Zappa show.
We're here on the sunlight, moonlight podcast.
Ryan Haver's Dom Dorman.
This episode's guest is our good friend and old coworker Pete Dominic.
Pete's a fantastic standup comedian was the warm up comedian for the Daily Show and the
Colbert rapport.
I actually saw one of Pete's warm up performances at a recording of the Colbert rapport back
in the day.
I did a great job and he's been motoring ever since for years and years over a decade.
Stand up with Pete Dominic was on serious, serious satellite radio, serious XM radio.
That's where Pete and Ryan and I all work together as coworkers.
Ryan and I work to support Pete and his show and all the other shows at Sirius, both in
network distribution and also broadcast engineering senses.
I think, I mean, Brian, let's not bury the leaders.
We bantered enough.
We should bring Pete on.
Let's get Pete on because he's a busy guy.
I can't believe how busy he is.
Yeah, I mean, he seriously does a lot.
I'm trying to get him on here.
Let me see if I can do this.
I believe in you.
There he is.
Here he comes.
Let's get the banner out of here.
There he is.
You're here.
There he is.
I'm alive.
You are him.
Gentlemen, wow.
It's so great to see both of you.
So honored and flattered that you asked me to join you, you two are, as I recall, two
of the good ones.
Oh, that's nice.
Thanks, man.
You know, there's a lot of good ones.
There was a lot of bad ones.
When you're working in corporate anything, corporate America, once less corporate media,
you know, people play by different sets of rules and you have to play the game.
If you want to keep your job, you can't rock the boat.
And it's, you know, I don't really judge many people for any of their behavior, but you
guys were always super supportive and kind to me.
And I always felt, you know, whenever I'd see it, feel happy to see it and secure knowing
that you were supporting the show.
And, you know, if anything went wrong, it was most likely my fault.
Yes.
And when that happened, we made sure that that was very clear.
Yeah, we wanted to make sure that you knew that.
Yeah, it would be like you guys would be like, Hey, Paul, I'm like, it's Pete.
And whatever.
Well, you know, it's funny because Pete, I was going through some old photos the other
day, I have a whole photo, a folder on a hard drive that was all photos from when I was
doing remote broadcasts for serious satellite radio back in the day.
And I found a photo of a young Pete Dominic from from 2007.
We were down in Miami doing radio row.
And Pete was running his show from down there interviewing all what they would do is that
serious would send down a bunch of different.
It wasn't just NFL radio.
It was like a bunch of different entities to try and capture the, the, the not only the
sports well known folks, but the celebrity aspect of a week, a week long event like that.
And you were, you were so you were a company man wearing your little dog star hat.
And that was a really fun time.
I think that was probably one of the first times we worked together.
I mean, I know you were in studio before that.
I don't remember seeing you there.
I will.
I mean, I have the proof is that I took a photo.
I'm going to see the photo.
Well, tell everybody who the photo is in the photo with me that you sent me.
Well, all right.
So there's one photo that's just Pete and he's giving me the thumbs up and it's very,
very entertaining.
And then there's another photo where Pete is interviewing Jared from Subway who turned
out to be a horrible pedophile pedophile.
What's weird is I also that same trip interviewed Jerry Sandusky, the Penn State coach.
Oh, man.
The gymnastics Dr. Nasser.
No.
And Bill Cosby.
Jesus.
In the same week?
No, of course not.
But I imagine if I did, but the I just remember all I remember about that trip is that when
you're in as you describe radio row, they like just start feeding you gas and people just
come over.
But a lot of these people are kind of legendary.
And as the host, you want to be prepared, but I don't even think I had a producer during
that trip.
So I just I'm almost positive it was the very, very famous track star.
I think his name is Edwin Moses or something.
And they brought him over to me and, you know, he's a legend, but I didn't know anything
about him.
And it was just so embarrassing that I was sitting down with this legend and I couldn't
show him like the proper respect.
I was like, so you like running and jumping and stuff?
So you like professional sports?
It's a rough scene because it's so chaotic.
And it's so long.
It goes for this long week.
And actually, that was one of my one of my last events that I did in that role at Sirius
because after that, I kind of burned out.
I was on the road for a while.
I got mono and I remember that for a while.
Yeah.
And then I wound up taking a different role that was based in the studios at Sirius XM.
But that was that was a fun time.
And it was it was always difficult, you know, sort of dealing with different personalities,
because some of the folks were really nice.
Some of the hosts and talent were really nice.
Like Pete, Pete was always easy to work with.
And hey, can you turn up my headphones?
Yeah, of course, like that's not a problem.
But then other folks would be like, you know, don't you know who I am?
And I'd be like, no, but I can help.
I always watched people behave as I came up as a comedian and how they treated people
and how they treated me.
And I never wanted to be someone who somehow, you know, appeared better than when you're
when you're on air personality.
A lot of that can kind of happen.
But I really prided myself on making sure that I was it was never that guy and getting
to know everybody's name at the company that I possibly could.
And that's, you know, I mean, I just don't understand any other way to behave.
But there certainly is a lot of that.
But at that event, that was that was the Super Bowl.
And so it was like mostly sports.
Obviously, there are some entertainers.
I was at that point just in the comedy department is before I moved over exclusively to politics.
But those remotes, you know, the Super Bowl is one thing.
The Republican and Democratic National Conventions.
Now that was like crazy because the people that you would just that would just stop in
and sit down with you, talk about not being ready.
You know, it's like one minute you're talking to Newt Gingrich next minute.
The former governor of South Carolina, the guy who what was his name?
He left South Carolina and just had an affair and went to Argentina.
And oh, yeah, like Rick Sandford, I think.
I don't know.
Anyway, those conventions were just wild being at those.
But working in a serious exam was the greatest opportunity.
And I had such an amazing time.
I was absolutely heartbroken when it ended.
I still miss a lot of, you know, I miss live radio and some of the people.
And it was really such a fun ride.
I think it was almost 15 years that I was there from comedy to politics.
And I got to do everything.
It was really, really wonderful.
It's really cool and a really interesting journey for you.
So how did you how did that happen?
So like you were doing stand up, you were doing warm up for Daily Show and Colbert.
And then how how did the radio thing happen for you?
The comedy channel was before serious next to merge.
The comedy channel had a show called comedy by request.
It was like music.
Oh, right.
And and that show, they wanted a host that was an actual working, you know, decently
known comedian.
And so I auditioned like I was on panel on some other shows as a guest at Sirius at that
point.
So the comedy guys knew me.
But I auditioned against like five other comedians and I got the gig.
And it was a huge break for me because I wanted to do anything.
I could get off the road.
My daughters were my oldest one was really young, my younger one wasn't born yet.
When I got that gig and it was it was it.
I mean, it was $75 a day, but it was an ID.
And once you get Pete Dominic and ID, I'm going to borrow, borrow into you.
And eventually I just broke them down.
And, you know, when the companies merged Sirius and XM, they had this independent political
channel, which is when I pitched my show and they gave it to me for $60,000 plus benefit
which was to me a millions of dollars to a comedian who was on the road, you know, making
a pretty good living.
And I was still doing that.
So that's how it happened.
I auditioned and got that gig and then I turned it into something even bigger and better.
Did you know who else auditioned for it?
Yeah, I do.
Anybody who know or know?
Yeah, it was Gaffigan, Seinfeld and Murphy.
And it was also Sam Kinnison.
Wow.
The Ghost of Sam Kinnison.
Wow.
That's really, I mean, what a high profile.
Yeah.
I'm heavy hitters.
Yeah.
Well, talent, boys.
So I and the channel was Politics of the United States, right?
It was POTUS.
Was that?
Yeah, it became and the merger, it was that that was the channel I got put on.
There was another channel before that one, before the merger.
It was a whole strange thing, but it was just like such a great place for me to experiment
and grow.
And the channel I created was basically the anti political show, meaning all the political
shows, mostly they were right wing political shows that were popular.
There's some progressive ones, but they were only a few at that point and still really
that are very successful.
And I just thought like these shows are also stupid because the host positions himself
almost always a guy like he knows everything about everything, healthcare, foreign policy,
environmental policy, education, like that's not no one is that no one is that person.
So I just said to my audience from the very beginning, I don't know shit.
I have an associate's degree.
I'm a comedian.
I don't know anything.
I'm just really curious.
And so the whole show became me booking experts like one an hour, asking them questions and
saying, I don't know.
And my boss at the time, who was a radio veteran, I remember when I first started, he wasn't
even my boss yet, Dave Gorab.
He said to me, he goes, listen, I got to give you advice.
You can't host a show, a political show and say the words.
I don't know.
You can't do that.
I just said, well, I'm not going to watch me.
It would be lying.
It would be disingenuous.
It's disingenuous than anybody else does it.
And so the show really gained a lot of credibility and integrity because I was honest about what
I didn't, didn't know.
And more importantly, I was pretty good and still am really good at finding the best people
to talk to her, the most articulate, the most credible, you know, and that's what I did
there.
Well, I think, I think like some people in your position, they act like experts on really
complex, complicated topics that most people aren't experts in.
So I mean, I think you, I think you, you're doing a service to it by saying like, I don't
know, let me get some experts on.
Yeah.
I mean, if I'm interviewing a constitutional law scholar, I'm not asking him about COVID.
Like, I'll talk to an epidemiologist and I'm not asking her about con law.
Like yet you have these hosts.
There was this guy, Andrew Wilkow at series XM.
I was just thinking.
Oh my God.
He was the biggest son of a bitch prick asshole.
He's the meanest, most insecure, most closeted piece of shit.
And I hope he hears this.
He was so mean to everybody.
He was anti gay, which was.
And he was so fucking loud too.
You could hear him on the other side of the building.
Yeah.
His tagline was, I'm right.
You're wrong.
That's the end of the story.
And I'm like, what are you for?
Yeah.
I remember having a run in with him and his producer at the Christmas party.
And we were arguing about the electoral college.
The greatest thing that ever happened was we shared a studio and he hated me and I hated
him even though we barely knew each other.
And I just hated the way that he treated people, his behavior, the way he carried himself and
obviously his views were reprehensible and still are.
But we both shared a studio and the Howard Stern guys, like one of the after show extra
shows on the other channel also shared that studio.
So, you know, it would always be a mess.
And they had sex toys in there.
And they left this huge dildo, like one of those big, almost like comical, like a rubber
one that like, you know, moved.
And so I'm walking out of the studio and Andrew Wilkhouse walking in and I'm like, hey man,
and I pick it up and I go, I think you left this here and it's like shaking.
And he screamed, he shrieked like it was a spider.
He's like, oh, get it away from me.
Get it away from me, which is, you know, kind of a sign.
And I just put it in my mouth.
Pete Dominic here on the Sunlight Moonlight podcast where we talked to creative people
about what they do for work and what working people do to be creative.
Pete, your journey there, stand up with Pete Dominic lasted almost 15 years.
Then it ended.
And then I remember this period when you took it upon yourself and you said, you know what,
I'm going to keep doing what I want to do and I don't need this satellite radio platform
and you built yourself a studio, right?
Well, Series XM had built me a studio and I was still using that and then yeah, I did
build a different one in a shed outside.
I remember.
Because I thought, you know, if I'm not going to be in corporate media anymore, I should
be really anti-corporate media, have a shed in the woods, what could be more independent
than that.
But yeah, it was the hardest part of my career in life.
I was flying high for years doing everything.
I was at CNN, I was at Series XM and Comedy Central all at once.
I was on TV every night.
I mean, for one point at one point and it was an amazing ride.
But I will say, you know, people often ask me, how do you have a popular, how have you
been successful with podcasts and how do you make money doing it?
I'm like, well, I was on national radio for almost 15 years.
So I, you know, without Series XM, I never could have done what I'm still doing now because
that audience, enough of them came with me and it's obviously always hard to build and
to grow and to sustain subscribers and listeners and so on, whether you're doing on your own
or with corporate media.
But yeah, I mean, thanks to working there for so many years, I was able to bring all
those, a lot of enough folks with me to be able to keep doing what I'm doing.
And it's, I can't believe I have been able to be successful because it's been really
hard and I do it all on my own.
But I, you know, I publish, I post a new show every day, sometimes six days a week with
like a whole news segment.
Every day it's, it's a lot, but I've gotten, you know, good at it enough that I can, can
do a pretty good job at it.
It took me a long time and once I figured out how to do it, I was like, what were all
those producers doing for me?
Yeah.
Those years.
Yeah.
We were talking about that before you came on, like you're, you're so busy and, and you
know, and, you know, like you said, you're live every day, six days a week.
So your workflow must be so dialed in.
I mean, that's a lot of work.
Yeah.
It's take, I've been doing it almost four years now and I've got it.
Yeah, it is.
That's a good observation.
I've got it down pretty good.
I couldn't edit audio when I left serious.
I had no idea.
And now I've got like wizard fingers and everything moves real quick and I, I, I've gotten pretty,
pretty good at that.
And you know, I've got no ego anymore.
It's gone.
And so I just do everything and work really hard and that's, that's hopefully enough.
And so far it has been, it's, it's, it's probably a little too much.
I don't have the work life balance I want, but my daughters are older now.
So I have a lot more, I have more time to do it and I love the work.
I love, I still love every day getting to interview what I, who I think are the smartest
people in the world about the most important issues in the world.
And that would explain why Ryan and I have not been invited to be on your podcast.
Well, if I wanted to talk about how to decorate your room with guitars, I would invite both
of you on.
Just let us know when, whenever you're ready, I can't talk when I can talk about most things,
but I've never been able to talk about music or movies or TV.
Like I can't have a conversation.
Those are my cultural blind spots for sure.
I can't have a conversation.
I love music.
I love listening to it.
But when people start talking about it, I'm like, I don't know.
You guys were talking about Zappa earlier and I'm like, yep, got nothing.
Can't name one song.
Well, and you know, hearing that journey, we're here with Pete Dominic on the sunlight,
moonlight podcast and where you wound up today.
And you're still juggling this.
So how do you sort of reconcile, you know, being, having this, this daily podcast that
is very demanding and very topical.
And if you have to get it out or else it's old immediately with the fact that you're
still doing stand up and still, you know, doing panel discussions and appearing on these
political talk shows.
How do you make that all work?
When do you have a family?
Yeah.
How do you, how do you balance?
Yeah.
Well, I'm not doing as much stand up.
I mean, I do it when I want to do it, when it's lucrative and I'm doing out more speaking
gigs, speaking engagements, which pay a lot more and I'm in and out in one day and I'm
working now at last week tonight on HBO.
I warm up the audience there on Saturdays, but mostly I do the podcast and so, you know,
mostly I'm home and I've been able to kind of, like I said, figure it out, but you know,
I take what comes through and consider doing stuff, but I love, I love the speaking engagements
that I get to do with a whole bunch of different kind of nonprofits and generally speaking
progressive organizations or movements.
And so it's been, that's been a really great opportunity and I don't do too much of it.
And like I said, my daughters are 16 and 19, my older daughters are freshmen in college,
so she's gone and just getting her return to Texas is a huge achievement.
So you know, they don't need me for much of anything at all, which is by design, they're
both independent, confident young women and I'm really proud of that.
So I pour a lot into my work.
It's, you know, I do that and then I just basically do a lot of health and fitness to
maintain this perfect physique and facial structure.
Me too.
For those of you just listening who are not watching on YouTube, Pete is extremely strikingly
handsome.
Yeah.
And in great shape.
I'm 48.
My body fat percentage is lower than it's ever been.
I'm ripped.
Even my skull is more ripped than it's ever been.
You can see the muscles in your brain flexing as you speak.
It's really fascinating.
You are very handsome.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
We actually have a question later on for you that I know from social media that you do
go to the gym and that you are, you take your health seriously.
And so I wanted to ask you a question about that.
We'll save that for later because it gets into a sort of a darker part of the, at the
end of the show.
It's a really good question.
It's, you're going to love it.
Yeah.
We, well, we do a segment at the end called easy uneasy.
And that's where Ryan will ask you a question that's easy to answer.
And then I will ask you a question that probably will make you uneasy.
Oh, boy.
I hope it's about your wife.
Yeah.
Pete Dominic here on the sunlight, moonlight podcast as advertised, expected nothing less.
We're having a great time talking to Pete with all of the, the, the booking that you
do for stand up with Pete, your podcast and stand up with Pete.com.
Who do you think would you say is your biggest get to date?
Henry Winkler.
Really?
I mean, I'm thinking of celebrities.
I suppose that before, after the Emmy.
Before, oh, after the Emmy, you said, uh, I think both.
I become pretty friendly.
I mean, a lot of the people that I got, you know, on the podcast, they were guests of
mine at serious XM.
So I had a relationship and I had their contacts.
But you know, a lot of the people you wouldn't know.
I mean, the people that my audience loves are the smart policy experts, the health policy
guy, the epidemiologists, the climate folks, the political analysts that people just love
to hear from.
So I pretty much get anybody in that world to talk to me.
And the ones that are the best aren't necessarily the most well known because the most well
known ones have higher profiles often as a result of being kind of star fuckery sellouts,
you know, to say, they'll say kind of, you know, almost anything.
So so that some of the names you wouldn't know, but they mean a lot to people because
these folks help people understand what the hell's happening in the world, how it impacts
their lives.
So name a subject and I can name, you know, any number of guests that I've had on on that
subject.
But that's generally what we do every day on the show.
Yeah, I think, you know, watching and seeing through your promos through social and who
you have on the show.
Some guests have become familiar to me, some of the policy experts and the and the constitutional
law folks.
It's serious.
I interviewed a lot more celebrities, but that's because they wanted me to because it
was good for, you know, the network.
I didn't really, sometimes they were great, but a lot of times they were not fun to talk
to their, they might be great actors or artists on, but, you know, somebody else is writing
their lines and you get them in studio and say, what is happening?
But I mean, then obviously there are some comedians and actors who are the funniest
people you could ever talk to like Kevin Nealon or Jeffrey Tambor or Bob Saget was always,
always amazing.
I mean, so many, so many different people.
I love talking to those folks, but, you know, what I'm doing on the podcast is generally
speaking different.
We're, we're having such, you know, it's so crazy what's happened in the world and people
really want to understand it and they want to know that they're living on earth one
and in a reality with other people where, you know, Joe Biden won the election vaccines
work and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon.
I interviewed Buzz Aldrin at Sirius and it was probably the most awkward weirdest thing
of my career.
He got, he's weird.
He's not good.
You're real.
Yeah.
He's very eccentric and he got, he got mad at us doing a misunderstanding.
Yeah.
The couple of clips I've seen of Buzz Aldrin being interviewed are not like, I don't know
if he's all there really.
Well, I don't know that he was ever all there, but, but, but the best clip of Buzz Aldrin
is a guy accusing him of not ever walking on the moon and saying it was all conspiracy
and Buzz Aldrin just punches the guy.
He's like, that's the best thing on the internet to me.
That's how I know, like if I ever get a little bit, have trepidations about, you know, was
it real like that?
Wait, you see that clip and you're like, no, no, no, that guy walked on the moon.
Yeah.
If I walked on the moon and someone told me I didn't, I don't care if it was the baby,
I'd punch that baby right in the face.
We're here with Pete Dominic on the sunlight moonlight podcast.
I think known baby puncher Pete Dominic.
Yeah.
Baby had a coming and Ryan baby Thanos.
Well, that's right.
We, I, you know, they did talk about going back to see baby Thanos and maybe just ending
it there.
Job.
I'm a big Marvel guy.
Fine, I think you had a question about controversial guests.
Well, yeah.
I mean, who is your most controversial guest to date?
Geez.
Most controversial guest.
There was a lot back at Sirius that I, that I interviewed, but on the podcast, I think
this stuff with the Middle East has got everybody fired up.
So people get mad at those guests no matter what they say.
That's for sure.
I think Tim Wise, who is like an anti-racist and one of my favorite guests, he's, he gets
people pretty fired up, but you know, the audience at this point is, is so kind of like-minded.
It's not too controversial at this point on, on the podcast, but yeah, I mean, I don't
have anybody on really too much that, that I have.
I don't like to, to platform people who are going to, I've got a debate over, you know,
vaccine effectiveness or climate or things that are settled.
And so I just want to, yeah, so that's, it's a tough question for me to answer in terms
of the podcast now, but I'd say probably the Middle East stuff.
I mean, the most controversial thing I've done is being on Joe Rogan.
If right before the pandemic, that's-
That's where I was going next.
Yeah.
I think it was hatred that I have ever gotten in, in my, as an appearance, I get a lot of
hatred locally because I'm very active in our school board fights.
So that's a whole different story, but, and they know where I live obviously, but you
know, the Rogan fans, you know, they, they all want me to kill myself.
Well, for what reason, just cause you weren't a disciple?
It was almost exclusively because of the argument we had around guns.
Oh, around guns.
Yeah.
I watched those clips.
They're really interesting.
But yeah, I mean, Rogan fans are like,
you either totally are for Joe Rogan
and agree with everything he says,
anything that's contradictory, they're just against that.
Yeah, I sometimes get jealous of him
because I was doing what he was doing
long before he was doing it.
He was a guest on my show before he ever was a podcaster.
And I knew Joe for my whole career.
And so that's why you had-
You guys came up together as comedians, right?
Yes and no, he came up mostly in LA
and I was in New York Comic.
So it made me better than him and still does.
But in New York Comics,
we feel like we're way better than LA Comics.
And we are because the audience is in New York at Diverse.
And if you can make all those people laugh
versus a bunch of douchebags in LA,
it makes you a better comic.
There's no doubt about it.
You only go to LA when you're already seasoned, I think,
and you wanna sell out.
But I was on his show in 19, right before the pandemic.
He was always kind of controversial in a lot of things,
but it was COVID that put him,
kind of that I think sent him off the edge
along with a lot of his listeners.
And it's a shame because he used to have the best experts
on epidemiology and vaccine science on his show.
Peter Hotez and Michael Ulsterholm, like he had them on.
And I've talked to those guys and they're like,
I still text them and he doesn't return my text.
So like he knows better.
He knows better and he doesn't do better.
It's really disappointing and it's very shameful.
You know, one-on-one, he's probably treats people
as well as not better than any other comic.
But at the same time, if you're a halfway decent person
and you're making that kind of money,
you don't leave everybody behind
that you came up with too, you know?
Yeah.
And it's serious money.
I mean, he's got a compound in Texas and like that's like...
Yeah, no, I mean, he has like a... I didn't want to talk about it.
Well, something from his show that you were on
that stuck out to me is you had mentioned
and I'm wondering where you're at now with us.
You were thinking about running for office.
Yeah, I got recruited.
As soon as I left Sirius, I got recruited.
The Congresswoman in my district retired
and people were throwing my name around for like two weeks
and then other candidates stepped forward that were way more...
You know, I was more just a kind of celebrity
who knew a lot about politics,
but you know, this Harvard-educated black gay man named Mondair Jones
put his name in the hat and I was like, bye.
But then I did run...
I got recruited and then the run for town council.
I almost did that.
But in the end, my wife wouldn't let me.
I think I want to say that's a smart move,
not only because I really like your wife,
but also because local politics, I think, are for people like you,
I think your talents are probably better served elsewhere.
Like, you're doing more...
I think you're doing better work in this capacity
than you would be doing.
It's hard to be...
My closest friends told me I couldn't be a politician
because I was too honest and I would have to lie
and I wouldn't be okay with that.
You know, after three districts,
you know, we might be in the same district.
That's possible.
So do we have... Who's your guy now?
Is it... It'll be Mondair again.
Okay, no, we have...
We have a Lawler who beat out Sean Patrick Maloney.
That's right. Lawler is my current congressman,
but he is going to be running against the guy who's seat
he took after it got rewritten.
So... Maloney, right?
Huh? Maloney. Sean Patrick Maloney.
No, he's out.
Mondair Jones is going to probably be the nominee
up against the current Republican, Mike Lawler.
And his just for men beard face.
So I don't like...
Yeah, I don't like dyed beards.
Yeah, I don't like congressman
who support Donald Trump.
Yeah, well, and...
Yeah.
Well, so here's...
That's a good segue actually.
I was wondering as it...
So you're wearing these different hats.
We're here talking to Pete Dominic
on the sunlight, moonlight podcast.
Stand up with Pete.com, Pete's Daily podcast.
So you're in these different roles, okay?
So as stand up with Pete and as a journal activist,
I mean, I feel like you've kind of picked a side, right?
You know, you sort of not...
You're not presenting yourself as somebody who's like,
I'm going to get people from both sides
and we're going to debate it like you've made decisions
in your life.
And I respect that rather than someone pretending
like they are impartial.
With Donald Trump, the presumptive nominee
for the Republican ticket
and close, very close tie with Joe Biden at this point.
As a comedian, do you, is there a part of you
that hopes Trump wins just for the material?
No.
No?
No, not even...
No, I have daughters.
No, no, I care about other people.
I would never want bad things to happen
to other people, to me, to the planet,
so that I could have...
I'm not even that good of a joke writer.
So like my stuff is about my own life so much as well.
And furthermore, like you can't even make jokes
about Trump anymore or political jokes very much
because you divide the audience pretty quick.
You do them at the end of your set, if anything.
So I don't even do that stuff very much.
People are always surprised I'm not more political in my act,
but like, you know, my best piece,
my best chunk right now is how terrible I am as a homeowner.
I can't fix anything.
You know, it's stuff self-deprecating things
like that that I talk about.
But no, I mean, I think that he is easily the worst person
in the world by magnitudes of...
I mean, I just...
He's a terrible, terrible person.
Nobody likes him.
His wife doesn't like him.
His kids don't like him.
And the people, you know, yet he's got a cult following still.
But no, so the answer is absolutely not.
I think that he is a danger to society, to the planet,
and to every living thing.
Yeah, I mean, I think that's pretty clear.
And I also...
What always struck me about him,
even watching him come up, you know,
being a New Yorker my whole life,
and, you know, my father worked in real estate,
and, you know, Donald Trump was like his God, right?
He... or the deal came out, and he was just like a disciple.
And that's...
It was unfortunate for everybody around us.
But I always think it's really sad how, you know...
Okay, so if Donald Trump says he's a bad guy,
he was so wealthy, maybe he wasn't,
but now he is because of Truth Social.
He's got... he's so wealthy and ostensibly successful,
and yet still so kind of mean and angry.
Well, he always thought that was such a shame.
Truth Social is empty.
It's zeroed out. It's bottom out.
He'll get no money from that, so that's not even true.
And I'll push back also, and you said, you know,
when you said you're one of those guys who, you know,
is not shy about picking sides, I mean, there aren't two sides,
because I know a ton of Republican, conservative Republicans
who disagree with me on almost everything.
As long as you agree on the winner of the election is the winner.
Like, that's democracy.
If you don't agree with that, it's not a side.
Like, we have to have a starting point
where no matter what the election is,
whoever gets more votes is the winner.
And the fact that he convinced so many people
that he won, that it was rigged, is...
Well, those people are idiots,
because there was never any evidence of that, his own people.
I mean, at this point, I like, Ed, I don't have any...
I used to have empathy for people who believe certain things,
but I don't, you know, run COVID and other things
that are a little harder and more controversial.
But I have no empathy for anybody
who thinks that Donald Trump won the election,
because there was never any evidence of that
according to his own people, according to, you know,
every court in the land.
And so, if you think...
If you're okay with what he did around the election
and what it led to with January 6th and everything,
then you're on a...
It's not that Republican or Democrat, liberal, conservative.
It's you root for the Lakers, and I root for the Knicks,
and the Knicks lose, and I say they didn't lose.
Like, who does that?
Like, no, it's gross.
It's not even... It's just beyond...
I don't know... If anybody ever did that in my life,
I wouldn't be friends with them.
Like, what do you mean? You didn't win.
It's okay that you didn't win.
You played hard. You didn't win. Sorry.
Well, I like that there's starting to be justice about that.
You know, the ruling against Giuliani in Georgia,
I think, was a huge victory for truth.
And you can't just call people criminals and liars
and get away with it without any evidence.
So, that made me really happy just to, again,
being a lifelong New Yorker and seeing the arc
of Rudy Giuliani's sort of ascension and dissent.
If you lived in New York, when I lived in New York,
I moved there in 95 and when he was mayor before 9-11,
if you knew any black or brown people,
you knew they hated him.
Like, he was only liked by people in Manhattan,
white people, wealthier people,
because of the bullshit he cracked down on crime
and all that stuff.
But I think I was always the worst.
He's always been almost increasingly
just an empty barrel and just a creep around women.
He's a terrible person.
So, I couldn't be happier that he's,
at the end of his life, been completely disgraced
along with almost everything else.
I mean, everybody, you know, Trump touches, dies.
Well, and also, I mean, he was married to Donna Hanover,
the reporter for years and had wound up cheating on her
with, well, she was Nathan.
I was just like, I liked Donna Hanover as a reporter
and that kind of hit me personally.
But we're here with Pete Dominick, standuppeat.com,
on the Sunlight Moonlight podcast.
We're coming to the end of our time here, Pete,
and I can't tell you how much I appreciate you being on with us.
We mentioned before that, for the end of the show,
we do a segment called Easy Uneasy.
And this is the part of the show where Ryan will ask you
a question that should be easy to answer,
and I will ask you in contrast,
a question that may make you uneasy.
Great.
This is a two-parter.
And I know the answer to the first one,
but I'm still gonna ask it because I wanna hear it from you.
Do you work out?
And how often?
Yes, as much as I can, almost every day.
And I was a personal trainer when I first started in comedy,
pursuing a career in comedy in New York City,
and I did that for like seven years.
And before that, I was a high school college athlete,
lacrosse and soccer and skiing, snowboarding.
And so my dad's like a competitive cyclist
and ski instructor, he's 80 years old
and he's still in great shape.
And so that's kind of how I was brought up.
And so yeah, I work out almost every day,
I eat pretty well, and I have a whole practice
that I do to take care of my emotional
and physical well-being every single day.
I mean, I'm not always consistent with any of it,
but I have a pretty well-defined meditation,
exercise, reading, writing, and I could do better on diet.
My problem with food is I sometimes forget to eat,
if anything.
I wish I had that problem.
Yeah.
Sometimes I forget to stop eating.
Yeah.
Which is, it doesn't end up well.
I love chips.
So that's my weakness to fry is the end of May.
I will die of French fry inhalation most likely, but.
Yeah, that's easy.
That's easy.
What's the, did I answer it?
Yes.
I think so.
Ryan, are you satisfied?
I'm satisfied.
Okay, so knowing my joints,
I want to keep my joints healthy for as long as I can.
I literally, in my meditation,
I go through each one of my joints in my mind.
I really do that.
My shoulders, my knees, my back, I think about it.
I think about how much I sit in front of a computer.
I get up and move.
I stretch.
I do as much as I can to stay healthy
because I just think it's just nothing more depressing
than to be in some kind of physical pain.
So I'm happy to take the pain of exercise and stretching
and all that to make sure that I can stay this way
as long as possible.
I'm happy to take any kind of exercise
that I can do to help you get out of this
beautiful, beautiful specimen that I've become.
Yeah, I mean, when you have a vessel like that,
if you don't take care of it,
it's really not fair to anybody.
That's basically how I see it.
Also, I like a good body scan.
You know, you go through every joint,
every, you know, all of your connections.
I go like checklist in places that people shouldn't be
just to show people that.
By the way, this is funny.
I'm 48 and now my beard is, you know,
I've been bald for 24 years.
pretty white. And so for the first time, I'm running the same
place I run, you know, a few days a week. I see a guy, you
know, maybe 10, 20 years old to me, and I'm running and this
has never happened. And he, he starts clapping.
What are you doing?
That's great. He's like, good for you, old timer. Yeah, I have
the great beard now too, which during a job search, so I can't
grow a beard until I get a job again, or else I'll just get
aged out of the market. But knowing how much you work out,
and how much you must be inside gymnasiums of different types
and around other men who are working out. When you're
showering in the locker room, when you're hanging out in the
locker room, because I'm sure you spend a lot of time there too,
knowing you. Do you ever look around at other men's channels?
Not anymore. But I used to all the time when I was work at the
gym, it's basically all I did. I mean, I have tons of stories
about my early days in equinox. I mean, one time when I was 21
naive, I just moved in New York, I'm working at this gym, and I
just had no idea. But I'm in the steam room, and I'm sitting
there and I look across the way and there's some guy sitting
across me opens his towel, he's got a full bone.
And so I did that happened to me that happened to me in Midtown
New York Sports Club that happened to me. Yeah, that's how
we met. I was like, aren't you look at us now? Don't you work
it serious? It's so good. Turn my volume up. Could you? So the
guy like I got like really kind of like upset and I like left the
steam room and then he walked out and I got in the shower and
then he got in another shower and then I got out and he got
on he like nodded for me to go back in. I was like, I mean, that
was just one. I mean, there was so many other but absolutely I
look at naked men and compare and contrast, you know, all kinds
differences. I remember seeing like for the first time, like a
really old man's penis. And I could not look away from it. I
was just like, wow, we had just looked like a sad little burrito.
It was had a hood on it. And I remember, I remember, you know,
I never seen an old man naked like that. And I was like this
guy and then they just like, guy, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like,
this guy and then they just like guys like that just love to
walk around naked in the locker room. So I feel like an
obligation to stare at them.
There's definitely an age to which yeah, I mean, the guy has
earned the right to just walk.
I saw that old guy naked for the first time. So I just looked at
him. I just I clapped just like you in the park. Just like the
guy.
That's that I should know better than to try to make Pete
Dominic uneasy with any question.
Well, but I'll make you uneasy on your show. I have a freely
inappropriate feelings about your wife. Because granted, she's
a very attractive woman. But like, I met her once and we hit it
off. So like, we got along so well that like, when I see her
posts on Facebook, I'm always like, what a great, what a great
quality woman just beautiful, smart as hell, funny, confident.
So, you know, I'll turn it around on you and I hope that makes
you uneasy.
Well, you know, what I'd say makes me most uneasy is how
well your wife and my wife got along when we met like that.
That was got a little weird for a little bit.
You know, the actress Bridget Moynihan?
Yes.
She's she's to date Tom Brady.
Tom Brady's yeah, yeah.
She's on blue blood. Beautiful woman used to be a model. And I
got to be pretty friendly with her. Because I interviewed her a
few times at Sirius and we were at this concert that called
Global Citizen, the anti poverty organization, Central Park,
and a whole bunch of like celebrities backstage and stuff.
So I'm hanging out with her, my wife and her husband. And so my
wife and her husband are hitting off. And so Bridget Moynihan
looks down at me. She's like six, three. And she's like, she
goes, Hey, our spouses are really hit enough. Maybe we should
swap without missing a beat. I go, Yes. Now, how about now?
Yes, we should. That's great, man. Good for you. If you're into
that guy.
That and Mandy Patinkin asked me to go to an orgy, but I
didn't go.
How do you say no to that?
I just I told him I was like I was I felt I was young, I dumb
and I had like a girlfriend. I don't know my girlfriend will
like it. There could have been a six fingered man at the orgy.
Really regret that decision. You didn't want to see an old man's
penis. Oh, I did.
Sorry about that. My my seven year old son has just started
pounding on the door, which means it's we're out of time.
We're out of time. So Pete, this has been great. Stand up with
Pete.com daily podcast. Look out for Pete warming up the last
week tonight show every Sunday. It's the CBS studios, right? If
you're going there. Yeah, why don't you let your son come in
and meet his real father?
My boy. Thank you so much. I want I want to have you back.
Unbold again. Again. This is the Sunlight Moonlight podcast,
Dom Dorm and Ryan Havers. Thanks. And we will see you the next
time. Thanks so much. Thanks, Pete.